This month was a little rough as far as going on dates goes. I’m not going to lie, I thought we were going to have to skip it. Then I realized that we have some big goals coming up this year (travel, paying down debt, both girls in college in the fall) and we will probably need to be better about budgeting. So, we had a Create a Budget date at home.
I wish I could say that we didn’t find any surprises when we dove into our finances, but I would be lying. It is amazing how much we have been spending on restaurants – and I have actually been cooking a lot, so I would hate to see what it was just a couple months ago. Rising prices have not helped, but we have definitely gotten used to the convenience of grabbing food on the go or treating ourselves to a nice dinner more than we should.
We’ve also been spending more on coffee shops (Tim Hortons, Dunkin’ Donuts, and Starbucks) than I would have ever suspected. I will take full ownership that this is mostly me, and I have been taking steps to eat breakfast at home more, so I know this will improve dramatically.
After analyzing several categories over the past few months, we have made a budget that should allow us to pay down some debt and also save some money towards other goals. We did not include my income in the budget, so that is where our Adventure and Create dates will likely come from and also where things like hair cuts, mani/pedis, and gifts will come from. It isn’t perfect and will likely need adjusted, but it should make a real impact on our spending habits.
For your viewing pleasure, here is our workspace and our faces when we finished.
Do you have a budgeting system? Any tips on things we should always include? Let us know in the comments! 🙂
I am having a very hard time believing we are in a new year – but I am super excited by the possibilities! I am currently working on reflecting on my goals from last year – what went well, what I need to update, what I want to add, what I want to leave behind. I can tell you that I did accomplish so much in the past year. I can also tell you that I had several goals that I did not even start or that I made progress on and then lost the progress. I do think I need to make my yearly, quarterly, monthly, and weekly goals line up just a little better. There are definitely monthly goals that were lovely but didn’t move the needle on my big goals. There were definitely things I could have been more consistent with. But there were also things I did very consistently and things that did impact my goals in big ways.
Let’s start this month by reflecting on my goals for last month. I think this is going to be a mixed bag because I was very sick for 2 weeks in December, so I did not do anything that wasn’t absolutely necessary. But I know I also tried to plan goals that allowed me time to get ready for the holidays and celebrate with my family, so we shall see….
Add previews to my Time, Winter, and Arctic products – I did not start this. I am obviously at a block here, so I need to start really small with a goal for January that I can accomplish and that will move this forward.
Market my January classes on Instagram and Facebook groups to fill my classes – I have been doing this – I need to make a big push this week. I actually have decent enrollments right now for my classes that start next week. It could definitely still get better, though. 🙂
Add 20 Pinterest pins – I did not start this. Again, I know it is important to move the needle here, but I just need to rethink how it will work.
Figure out sewing machine logistics in my classroom and list a sewing class – I did not do this. But I do have ideas for a sewing club and will try to get it listed this week.
Make 4 blog posts – I did 2 blog posts – and then this will be the 4th one for this specific day in the beginning of January. I’m going to count this as a done.
Hang blinds and plates in my office – I did not start this one. I completely forgot about it, actually. Adding it to my list for this week.
Send Christmas cards to friends and family –I did this! And they probably even received most of them before Christmas!
Make dinner 12 times – I am pretty sure I did this as well.
Hike 4 times – visit 4 winter hike series parks – We visited 4 of the winter hike series parks and we did 7 hikes total in December!
Do my 20 hours of continuing education for my SLP licensure – I actually ended up doing 22 hours of CE this month.
It looks like I get about a 6/10 on this one. I am super pleased with this because, as I said, I was out of commission for a good chunk of the month. I have been feeling really, really frustrated with having 2 businesses I am trying to grow at the same time recently. When I started my TpT business, I was averaging about $1500-$2000 a month on Outschool. I thought it was stable, so it seemed like it would be easy to maintain while also building my TpT business. Instead, I have really had to put in a lot of time into both. I am feeling stretched and need to find balance there. So, I think adjusting my goals a bit to fit where I am in my businesses and life will really help.
So, for January, while I am still working through goals and my visions for my businesses, I am going to make some pretty simple goals. Here is what I have:
Get my goals for 2023 and my first quarter goals ready.
Get matte screen protector for iPad so I can photograph Valentines products and get previews made.
At least 1 adventure and 1 create date with blog posts.
Film 12 craft videos for Crafty Phonics – L Sound FLEX class.
List a sewing class and a Communicate and Create for the Make Your Year Edventure Conference with classes to continue after.
Finish the ACE Educator process.
Walk outside or on treadmill 20x.
12 hikes – finish my last few for 2022 and begin 2023 52 Hike Challenge.
Make dinner 20x.
Pay off $1500 in debt.
I’m not going to lie, a lot of this list is things that is already in progress. I am working through writing my goals. I have chosen the workshops for my ACE educator pillars. I have already hiked twice. I ordered the matte screen protector last night. I am paying bills this morning. But, if I write this list and actually finish the things on it, I know that it will propel me into February with so much momentum. I am excited and hopeful and feel more in control of my businesses already.
What are your goals for January? Do you have goals for this year to share? Let me know in the comments!
December almost got away from us friends. We had 2 weekends of Frozen Jr. where I was co-costumer and Keith was light designer, and I honestly thought we may have to fall back on that as our create date for the month. Then I realized that we have never made a charcuterie board together, and it would be a perfect thing to make for New Year’s Eve. Boom! Month saved! We spent the first part of the day at 2 stores to make sure we had a variety of things to fill our board with. We may have gone a bit overboard, but I think there was only one thing in this picture that we didn’t use at all.
Keith started by filling the corners with cheese and berries and I made some meat flowers.
Next, we made little streams of cheese and meat to the sides. Crackers came in above and below the cheese and meat. Finally, we filled in the top and bottom with sweet stuff – cookies from friends and family and Andes mints on the bottom and chocolate covered peanut butter pretzels, thin mint chocolate covered pretzels, and cocoa peppermint almonds. Chex mix and Fritos Scoops round out the offerings nicely.
After that, we each loaded up a plate and settled in to watch football and performances for New Year’s Rockin’ Eve. It was lovely!
Don’t worry, this was just the first pass – I ate more. We hope you had a fantastic New Year and that 2023 brings you joy and peace!
What did you do for New Year’s Eve? Did you have any good food? Let me know in the comments! 🙂
A few days before Christmas, Keith and I found ourselves on our own for the evening. We decided to check out the Pandora Hike that was being hosted by Scioto Grove Metro Park. It was pretty cold, but we figured we would be moving, so as long as it wasn’t too far, we would be okay. We arrived at the nature center and were greeted by the rangers. They gave us a UV flashlight and sheet and marker to record the clues we found to spell a secret word. We set out from the nature center through some lovely scenery.
We found all 7 clues along the path near hanging lights. I was unable to get a photo, but the flashlight revealed a letter on each symbol.
In the end, it was not a super long walk, but it was fun. And we definitely solved the puzzle. I am not going to spoil it, though, in case another metro park decides to have a hike. Here is our completed clue sheet.
This would be an especially fun experience for families with young children. Older children will likely feel it is too easy, but will probably still like hiking and shining the light on the clues. I would definitely recommend it if you ever have the opportunity.
Have you done any special events at Columbus Metro Parks? Let me know which ones you love in the comments! 🙂
There are currently 3 locations that have Dreamscape AMC Theatres in the United States, and one of them happens to be 10 minutes from our house at Easton Town Center. So, because November was a little bit crazy in the Emigh household, we decided it would be the perfect month to try the Dreamscape experience. The website was a little hard to use to get our tickets – maybe it was getting a lot of traffic, or maybe it has some sort of internal problems, but that ended up being the most frustrating part of the experience for my husband. We bought our tickets the night before, but the people that did the experience with us bought them right before we started, so both options may work for you.
Dreamscape shows are VR experiences, so I was a little worried and took a Dramamine beforehand. When we arrived at the theatre, we had to choose our avatars and we got to enjoy the pre-show lounge which featured decorations from all of their current offerings and a digital schedule board that showed which shows were currently boarding. There was also some merch for sale if that is your jam.
The first thing we had to do was get our gear on. There were hand and foot sensors, a very heavy backpack, and VR headset. Please enjoy the blind selfie I took in gear – sorry it doesn’t show everything, but it shows the headset.
The Alien Zoo room was really cool and about 15 minutes long. We got to see lots of interesting creatures, interact with things, and “move” through the environment without having to do a lot of walking. It was really weird to look at Keith but see someone else – it was maybe the most discombobulating part of the whole thing. Two of the people with us were children, and I did have something taken from me during the experience because they saw I had it and couldn’t find their own. It really didn’t make a difference in the end, but if you are an adult that goes with kids, please be ready to help them to find the objects and buttons in the experience so that it doesn’t affect the experience for others.
Overall, we really liked the experience and will likely be back for another round in the near future. We saw that there might be a How to Train Your Dragon themed room, so if that ever heads to Columbus we will for sure want to try it. Have you ever done any VR? What did you think? Let us know in the comments! 🙂
Is it just me, or was November a downhill slide? I never quite got my feet under me, so I did not even get to set goals for the month. I did make it through a lot of additional volunteer obligations, but I seriously feel like I have been just surviving for the past couple of months. I never even recapped my goals for October, so let’s see what the damage was there before we start with December as our clean slate. Here is the good, the bad, and I’m pretty sure the very ugly.
Figure out photography and previews for 10 TpT products – I still didn’t do this.
Add 10 new TpT products – I did not do any TpT the past 2 months.
Create an Outschool and Allschool schedule that feels doable – I did create a good Outschool schedule, and tried to add in some Allschool without any enrollments.
Finish organizing our front room – I did this!
Hang blinds in my office – I did not do this.
Figure out classroom set up for live sewing classes – I did not do this.
Make 4 blog posts, 20 Instagram posts, 20 Facebook posts, and 20 Pinterest pins – I know I made 3 blog posts, but I don’t think I did much with any other social media.
Make dinner 10 times – I got into a really good pattern here. I am proud to say I did do this.
Hike 6 times – I hiked 3 times in October and I did not hike in November at all.
Do 6 strength training workouts – I did not do this.
So, to recap, I earned a 3.5/10 over the course of 2 months. This is better than the 3 that I gave myself for September, but in 2 months I would have hoped to accomplish more. There were family and volunteer things that kept me from getting everything I would like to done, but I definitely still had time I did not use towards my goals. I feel a deeply tired, whether from my businesses or from the rest of my life. So, I am going to claim that Fall 2022 was a season of rest in my business and growth in other areas of my life. I have continued to have at least one sale each month in my TpT store, and I am still teaching many loyal students on Outschool, so that has allowed me to coast for now. I would like to think that I can start to pick up the pace a bit, but I know that this month is going to be hectic with the holidays. So, my goals will be:
Add previews to my Time, Winter, and Arctic products.
Market my January classes on Instagram and Facebook groups to fill my classes.
Add 20 Pinterest pins.
Figure out sewing machine logistics in my classroom and list a sewing class.
Make 4 blog posts.
Hang blinds and plates in my office.
Send Christmas cards to friends and family.
Make dinner 12 times.
Hike 4 times – visit 4 winter hike series parks.
Do my 20 hours of continuing education for my SLP licensure.
I feel like this is a really good mix of personal and business goals, and it should set me up for success in the coming year. I also got really specific with some of these goals in the hopes that they won’t seem as overwhelming to me. I am looking forward to seeing if this plan will bring me more success with my goals this month.
What are your goals for December? Let me know in the comments so we can cheer each other on! 🙂
September felt really busy. We started the month with a college visit and it just kept rolling from there. We are officially back to all the activities, and I find myself thinking wistfully about the time we weren’t so busy. I am loving seeing all of our friends, though! I just need more down time than I used to, I think.
Last month I tried to scale back my goals a little bit, so let’s see how I did for the month.
Figure out photography and previews for my TpT products and add them to 20 products – I did not do this.
Add 10 new Fall products on TpT – for the first month since I started my shop, I did not add any new products on TpT.
Write one time Public Speaking classes for Outschool to covers ages 3-18 – I wrote 2 classes to cover ages 3-7 and so far they are crickets…
Write a series of craft classes – live and flex – I wrote Fall and Halloween FLEX craft classes, and have drafts started for Thanksgiving and Christmas.
Finish organizing my classroom and the front room – my office is done and front room is 75% done.
Figure out how to set up my classroom for live sewing classes – I did not do this.
Make 5 blog posts, 20 Instagram posts/reels, 20 Facebook posts/reels, and 31 Pinterest pins – I wrote 2 blog posts, 12 Instagram posts, 14 Facebook posts, and no Pinterest pins.
Make dinner at home 15 times – I probably cooked 5 times.
Hike 6 times – I hiked 3 times.
Do 8 strength training workouts to start building some muscles – this didn’t happen either.
This was obviously a down month – I’m giving myself 3/10 and that feels generous. I am a little surprised because I felt like I was accomplishing things, but I see that I was accomplishing things for my volunteer obligations as I was neglecting my actual tasks to move the needle in my businesses. I costumed a show, sized kids for choir attire, measured and organized our costume plan for our high school fall play, sent sponsor and donor letters and also created a budget for our performing arts boosters. I was definitely busy and productive. But I was not focused on these goals.
Last week, I signed up to also teach on Allschool. I have yet to create any classes, but I am hopeful that I will be able to get a little traction there at times that don’t seem to be working for Outschool. With all of this in mind, here are my October goals:
Figure out photography and previews for 10 TpT products.
Add 10 new TpT products.
Create an Outschool and Allschool schedule that feels doable.
Finish organizing our front room.
Hang blinds in my office.
Figure out classroom set up for live sewing classes.
Make 4 blog posts, 20 Instagram posts, 20 Facebook posts, and 20 Pinterest pins.
Make dinner 10 times.
Hike 6 times.
Do 6 strength training workouts.
I think this looks like a list I can stick to. I just need to hang it in my office and check it when planning my days. Hopefully this will be the month that I get to say I did it all – wish me luck!
What are your goals for this month? Let me know in the comments so we can cheer each other on! 🙂
September felt really busy friends – did you feel that as well? By the time we would get to talk about a create date for the month, the option was full or canceled or our schedule changed. So, this was the month that I had no choice – the month I made Keith paint pottery with me. My wonderful husband has tried so many new things with me, but he really, really doesn’t like painting pottery. And his job is stressful right now, so that stress is bleeding over into other areas as well. I would love to say that this was a pleasant time for both of us, but that would be a lie. I did really like the people at uPaint Pottery Studio and thought they did a great job explaining things to us. I thought they were missing detail work brushes which made some of the things we wanted to do really hard. Maybe we just didn’t ask. Maybe it was because we were at literally the last table they had. Who’s to say? Regardless, we were there on a create date mission.
We each picked a pumpkin themed project and a fall leaf. Keith’s had a spooky face on one side and was a plain pumpkin on the other, so we figured we could just turn it around after Halloween and leave it up through Thanksgiving. I picked a fun pumpkin dish and decided to use the special writer paints they had to write the season/my name. Here are some before shots:
In the second photo, you can see we used quite a few sponges to “erase” mistakes. We will most likely just be displaying a plain pumpkin all fall – the jack-o-lantern face did not go as planned. I was pleasantly surprised when I picked everything up, though – it all turned out pretty well.
Could I list all the mistakes we made. Yes, yes I could. Am I really happy to add these to our fall decorations anyway? Also yes. I love that the leaves are our wedding colors – we wanted a fall wedding and used leaves as our inspiration even though our date was in August. Would I take someone else to paint pottery with me at uPaint Pottery Studio? Definitely. I loved their selection of projects and their wide array of colors to use. I love that they had special paint writers.
Have you ever painted pottery? Where did you go? What did you paint? Let us know in the comments!
I know I say this every month, but I can’t believe that August is over. It was a wonderful month – full of amazing moments and definitely core memories. Our baby started her senior year of high school, our oldest started working on her new degree path in college, and we celebrated our 23rd anniversary with a magical trip. So much to be thankful for, and so much to look forward to. Before we can look forward, though, we need to look back at August and see how my goals for the month went. So, without further ado, here goes.
Add 20 TpT products to my store – I added 18 new products, bringing me to 101 products! I am counting this as complete.
Write a sticker club class for Outschool – This did not get done. I think this is a sign that it is not really in my heart to do it, so I am scrapping this goal.
Write a series of Public Speaking classes for Outschool that covers ages 3-18 – I wrote a series of classes that goes to 9 – so far no sign ups, so I am in the process of adding one time options. This one gets half credit.
Write a series of craft classes – live and flex – This one is still being developed in my head – I am going to start with some one time Fall/Halloween craft classes and see where it goes. But I did not do it this month.
Set my fall schedule on Outschool – I have done this and continue to revise it as I go.
Finish organizing my classroom and the front room – This one is still in progress. I have this week off, so maybe it will happen.
Make 10 blog posts, 20 Instagram posts/reels, 20 Facebook posts/reels, and 31 Pinterest pins – I made 13 total blog posts, 6 Instagram posts, 15 Facebook posts, and 11 Pinterest pins. I am going to give myself a 70% here, but I really hope to be more consistent in September.
Make dinner at home 15 times – Definitely did this. It was really nice to know what we were eating. I am hoping to do even more meal planning in September.
Hike 8 times (we are headed to Disney for 3 days, so I know I can hit this if I count each day as a hike) – I did this! Not completely caught up on 52 Hike Challenge, but so close!
Do 6 strength training workouts to start building some muscles – This did not happen, but we did walk A LOT – both at Disney and at home.
When I look at it by the numbers, I get a 5/10 for August. Not great, but not terrible, either. I need a change in my business, and I am really hopeful that September will be filled with just the right amount of change and motivation. I really can’t wait for the change in seasons – I put out some of our Fall/Halloween decorations already and I am hopeful the rest will be out by the end of the week. Cooler air, beautiful leaves, campfires – bring it on! Here are my goals for this month:
Figure out photography and previews for my TpT products and add them to 20 products.
Add 10 new Fall products on TpT.
Write one time Public Speaking classes for Outschool to covers ages 3-18.
Write a series of craft classes – live and flex.
Finish organizing my classroom and the front room.
Figure out how to set up my classroom for live sewing classes.
Make 5 blog posts, 20 Instagram posts/reels, 20 Facebook posts/reels, and 31 Pinterest pins.
Make dinner at home 15 times.
Hike 6 times.
Do 8 strength training workouts to start building some muscles.
I am excited to get in there and learning to do new things in classes and with my products. Hoping to gain more learners and customers this month. If I can build enough momentum, it should carry me into the fourth quarter and through the end of the year – there’s still time to make some great strides towards my 2022 goals.
What are your goals this month? What new things will you be trying? I can’t wait to hear all about it in the comments. 🙂
This month we celebrated our 23rd anniversary, but we have actually been together for 26 years now. When we started talking about taking a trip to celebrate, we were drawn to Disney and their 50th anniversary celebration. You see, we were at Disney for a day during their 25th anniversary. We have photos (somewhere, safely packed away) of the giant pink birthday cake castle. In the end, we decided that Disney deserved redemption for that horrible design idea and we went about booking a whirlwind, adults only weekend at Disney World.
We knew our flight would be getting in pretty late, so our awesome travel agent suggested that we stay at the All Star Sports Resort just for that night and then transfer to our other resort for the rest of the stay. Since there is really only one hotel near the Orlando airport (actually, in the airport) and it is pretty expensive, this worked out really well. We arrived around midnight and then caught a Mears bus to our resort. We had to sit and wait for people for a half hour, but eventually we were on our way to the resort. While we waited, I bought our Genie + for our first day since it was after midnight. We know it is controversial to get it for every park, but we also knew we were headed into a sold out weekend, so we decided it was worth it.
We arrived and got ourselves into our room (checking in on the app and being able to go straight to the room is amazing!) and ready for bed by 2. At 6:30, I got up and around so I could get our first Lightning Lane booked at 7 (Na’vi River Journey) and also book Individual Lightning Lanes for Avatar Flight of Passage since we knew we were leaving the park around 2 and wouldn’t have a lot of time to stand in lines. We then dropped our luggage off to be transferred to our next resort and hopped on the bus to Animal Kingdom. There are no photos from our arrival – my contact solution takes 6 hours to neutralize, so I had to wait until 8 to put my contacts in. I ended up putting them in while we were in line for our first ride of the day, Kilimanjaro Safaris – not ideal, but my glasses are about 3 prescriptions behind and I really wanted to be able to see… The safari was excellent first thing – we saw a lot of the animals and even to got to hear the lions “talking” to each other. Here are some of my favorite photos.
Black RhinoGiraffesMale LionFemale LionFemale LionsAfrican ElephantsAfrican ElephantOkapisFlamingosWarthogZebraHippos
After the safari, we headed to Avatar Flight of Passage to get in the Lightning Lane line. Oh my goodness! – it was amazing! I was really glad I took Dramamine that morning, but it was such a beautiful adventure – highly recommended! Here are photos from inside the ride just before they have you empty your pockets.
Here are photos from outside the ride for your viewing enjoyment – Disney does such an amazing job of setting the scene.
We also paid for the PhotoPass, so we got lots of pictures of us together – I would definitely do this every time just to get photos with our whole group in them. They can also add some fun effects, called magic shots. We really enjoyed discovering exactly why we made those faces for the photographer.
After Avatar Flight of Passage, we headed straight to Festival of the Lion King since we knew it was starting soon. We saw this when we visited almost 18 years ago, so we were really happy to see that it was fully back in time for our trip. While we waited for the show to start, I booked our next lightning lane. I wanted to get Expedition Everest, but it ended up being down for the whole day (and half of the next we later found out). So, I booked us to meet Mickey and Minnie at Adventurer’s Outpost as our final attraction before leaving the park that afternoon. We also scheduled a mobile order for Satu’li Canteen to be picked up after Na’vi River Journey. Here are some photos from Festival of the Lion King.
After enjoying Festival of the Lion King, we had time to get a few photos before heading to Na’vi River Journey at our designated time. It was a beautiful ride full of surprises and amazing scenery. Here are a few examples of what you will see – although photos do not do it justice.
We headed straight to Satu’li Canteen to pick up our mobile order and it was pretty easy to navigate. I had the Cheeseburger Pods and they were really good. Keith had a rice bowl which was also pretty tasty. Here are photos of our food and also shots from a boat cavalcade we saw while walking between attractions.
Our next stop was the Wildlife Express Train to Conservation Station. We did the Animation Experience, but that is a whole separate blog post as it was our Create Date for August. Look for it very soon!
When we finished at Conservation Station, we had some time to shop and get photos, and then it was our turn to meet Mickey and Minnie! It was wonderful – they were quite impressed with our pins that said Celebrating 23 Years. And they gave the best hugs!
After meeting our favorite mouse and his gal, we had to head back to get checked in at our resort – Port Orleans French Quarter – and get ready for our next adventure – Mickey’s Not-So-Scary Halloween Party. But that’s a separate post.
Have you ever been to Disney’s Animal Kingdom? What was your favorite attraction? What animals were you excited to see? Let us know in the comments below. 🙂
Adventure. Create. Relate 