Update on Goals and Dreams for November 2023

 

What a beautiful month we’ve had! I appreciated the chance to savor it, which I don’t always feel like I can say about busy holiday months! Throughout this month, the daylight hours shortened considerably the leaves fell from the trees to settle to the bottom of the lake, and a chill blew into the county. I imagine it will stay for a while. But even with cold and darkness, there was a pure joy about this month that I’m grateful for! And today I want to update you on how the goals and dreams worked out for November!

ONE. Enjoy a weekend with our godson. Check! We even had a great time despite having him here on time change weekend AND on our donut duty weekend at church. He handled it all like a champ. It was fun to take him with us on shopping errands, on a walk around the lake, and for an outing to a Children’s museum. We played Legos, read books, and had much fun. It’s always sad to see him go back home.

TWO. Prepare for speaking events. I shared with a women’s group earlier this month and loved getting to meet them. I am also ready for my December day of sharing, which will cover the same topic. These are, as far as I know, my last two events of this year, so they wrap up what has been a sweet year of getting to share in different places and to different audiences!

THREE. Finish planning for our anniversary. Done! I tried to find the good balance between getting to enjoy some fun adventures and having time to truly and fully rest, because we need that, too! We haven’t had much time to get away this year (new job perils) but we are looking forward to this one!

FOUR. Film training videos for work. Well, if you missed this story earlier this week, scroll back and catch it. What a wild compilation of plot twists, but the most important part? WE GOT IT DONE! And what a fun experience it was, too!

FIVE. Decorate for Christmas. Done! It was SO MUCH FUN to see how our Christmas things fit into this house, and much like our furniture, it did all seem to just fit like it was made to be here. We really enjoyed putting our stamp of Christmas cheer on the house and we have dreams for the outside for next year! I posted a tour of it yesterday, so if you missed that, you can catch it there!

SIX. Design and order Christmas cards. Done! They arrived last week and I’m now ready to start stuffing and addressing!

Other adventures included:

Taking an online herb garden class. I found a link to take a multi-session class on herb gardening – for free – so I did it! I learned a ton about growing and harvesting herbs and am excited to put what I learned into practice in this next year!

Taking an online vision-casting class. I realize that may sound a little wackadoodle, so let me explain. A few years ago, I joined a mailing list for a writing group, and now and then, they offer some free webinars. They did a week of them this month in which they offered ideas to think about your writing vision and goals for the year to come. I thought what they taught gave great practical life advice in addition to writing advice, and I took dozens of pages of notes. I am still marinating on all I learned.

Joining a gym and starting Boot Camp. For the first time since WELL before the pandemic, I have joined a gym. And for the first time since JUST before the pandemic, Ryan has a side hustle of teaching classes at the gym! I’m actually taking his boot camp class, and it feels good to be back in a purposeful rhythm of working on strength. (I’ve lost a lot of muscle since my days of regular workouts!)

Celebrating Lexi’s second birthday. We love our girl and were excited to celebrate her well on her second birthday! This also means we’ve gone two years since my dog bite adventure, which happened just two days before Lexi was born. That was such an awful day, and I still have a healthy fear of dogs I don’t know because of it. I’m glad it didn’t make me chicken out from bringing Lexi home!

Dreaming up some new ideas for our home office space. This will be an ongoing project, but Ryan and I had the initial discussions and brainstorming sessions, and I’m excited to see how it all turns out!

            Come back tomorrow to see my goals and dreams for December!

Christmas Tour 2023

 

I was so excited to decorate the lake house for Christmas this year. It was our first time to put our Christmas décor in this space, and I just wanted to see how it would all fit! I spent last Christmas downsizing some of our decorations in hopes that we could create a look that really fit this space. Because our space is so narrow, we did take advantage of a sale to get two very skinny trees to serve as our family trees, and I’m hopeful they will last as many years as my first skinny tree! (I got it before Ryan and I were married, so I’m guessing it’s around 15 years old now, and it’s still doing great!)

            Today I thought I’d give you a tour of our home for this Christmas!

Here is our Names of Jesus tree. (This is the 15 year old tree!) I put it in the dining room this year. Looks perfect in the front window! 

I have a few other decorations scattered around the dining room, too!

Those wreaths hung in our sunroom when we lived in Kokomo, and in the years since, I put them on kitchen cabinets. They don't really fit well in this kitchen, so I put them here instead. I like it! 

My favorite Christmas art - a print done by Brent Vernon. 

Just a little extra...

I didn't put anything in our guest room/office/Lexi's room this year. Since that room is in transition, I just left it alone. I have big plans for next year, though!

Our bedroom turned out really cute, I thought. We got the "big tree" back in our Kokomo days, and it's the perfect size in this room.

The Christmas tree farm we started in the Kokomo sunroom has lived on our headboard the last several years, and this year is no different. Well, the only difference is our fairy lights stopped working, so we'll have to get a new strand for next year. Still cute, though!

And here are a few more gems scattered about the room:

Our kitchen isn't huge, so I just have this little corner in there. Gingerbread themed!

Ryan hung our stockings on the stairway this year, and I love how it looks.

(I have ideas for sprucing up the garland there next year, but I also love this year.)

We have a little shelf in the stairwell, and Ryan did a great job adding lights to the decorations I put there. (The shelf was made by one of our WillowBridge tenants.)

Found the perfect spot for the mistletoe!

I kept the bathroom decor pretty simple. This is Ryan's bathroom. I painted that canvas at a class with a friend a few years ago. I'm no artist, but I celebrate that it's recognizable. The trees and snowman were my gifts from my roommate Angela, back in 2010, shortly before she passed away.

I put these simple pieces in my bathroom:

Here are some of the pieces scattered around our living room:

Look what's back!!! We haven't had a place to hang it since our Kokomo house, but it's back now!!

This tree painting was the project at my mom's 80th birthday party - cookies and canvas themed. 

And here are the living room trees. The first pictures are from before the ornaments went up - and then after! 

It's cozy in ways that delight my heart. I am grateful to spend the Christmas season enjoying these sights! 

PLOT TWIST!!!

 

I hope I never get over God’s ways being so much higher than mine. The way He opens doors I never would have imagined and allows me to experience things beyond anything I could comprehend is both faith-boosting and humbling.

            Several weeks ago I was invited to record a series of training videos for work. They would be used to train Steering Committee members (which happens to be the kind of group I work with every day), and I could record the videos right in my home, using some software that was new to me. I set up a makeshift studio in our dining room, using our bathroom door as a backdrop, taped my scripts to my laptop screen, and recorded away. It took me about a day to get them right – and it was such a fun opportunity.

            Not long after that, I was asked to be part of some live training for new Program Directors. This adventure was more challenging, because training live meant no redos. All mess-ups were real time! Plus, the training I did wasn’t for a group of people I normally work with, so I felt very vulnerable in allowing the things I didn’t know to shine so brightly in front of about 30 people. They were all so kind, and even though the day felt messy in my mind, I guess it went better than it felt, because on that very day, I was invited to reprise that training in a video format.

            This time, I’d travel to a real studio with a teleprompter, lights, a videographer, and multiple camera angles. WHEW! That day was yesterday, but before we could even get there, we had some plot twists.

            I’d been watching the weather, because I thought we were going to get hit with some snow on Sunday. Of course we would! I had a driving event coming up…why would we NOT get snow? I was so relieved when the swath of snow went just to the north of us…narrowly missing our area. We “just” had rain. I celebrated it! And then Ryan reminded me that rain, if not given a chance to dry off the roads, turns into ice when the temp falls. And our rain kept going…and our temps kept dropping.

            We both feared I would have an icy drive to Ohio, so on Sunday afternoon we made the hard, yet responsible decision for me to drive on over, stay in a hotel, and be safe for a local commute on Monday morning. I cried from the change of plans and from leaving Ryan behind a whole day early. I threw all the things in multiple bags (don’t ask how much luggage I took for an overnight stay) and headed out.

            Traffic was fairly heavy, but I made it to the Columbus area without incident. I got all checked into the hotel and felt safe and warm in my room. I caught up on things on my computer, FaceTimed repeatedly with Ryan and Lexi, ate dinner in bed while watching a Hallmark movie (not the worst way to spend a day), and even read in my book!

            Monday morning came early – but not as early as it would have if I’d had a 2+ hour drive! I opted to stop at Tim Horton’s for some fresh brew, because the hotel coffee was not entirely amazing.

            I got settled into the studio and only through the help of my amazing friends and coworkers, we were able to knock out eleven training videos in under two hours. It was hard work, and learning to navigate a teleprompter was an adventure! (MANY BLOOPERS!)

            We finished up just before lunch – only to find out there had been an issue with the audio, and I had to reshoot all the videos! We decided to make the best of it and power through…and through the grace of God alone, we reshot them all in a mere thirty minutes. (We had worked out all the kinks in the first round.)

            I came home utterly exhausted, but as Ryan reminded me, I did shoot 22 videos in one day, so I was allowed to be tired!

            It was so much fun, and as I look at these pictures, I have to say that never would I have imagined I would one day shoot videos in a real studio. God has such plans, doesn’t He? Grateful to tag along and be part of them.