skill goals Archives - Food, Booze, & Baggage

June Monthly Goals

June 1, 2015 by Mariah 14 Comments

May flew by and I kind of sucked on getting my goals checked-off. May didn’t go quite as planned and I forgot to take into account time I had already committed to other activities. I think I was a too ambitious in my May goals. At the same time I feel like I should push myself with my goals. Le sigh, let’s get to it.

Exercise

GO TO A YOGA CLASS!!

Didn’t make it out to one 🙁

Continue video workouts and focus on 30 minute + classes. I also want to start practicing a new pose or two a week; pick a pose to work on or towards.

I did good with the 30+minute classes, but did not do extra poses. I want to do better and I only got in 3 classes a week on average.

Go on a hike this month, if my allergies stop trying to murder me 🙂

We made it to Torrey Pines State Reserve yesterday. Pictures and more will be in my Discovering San Diego post later this month.

Planning

NOPE

Roadtrip to San Francisco

A little, mainly I pinned a lot.

San Diego bucket list

YES, plus putting together the brewery list

Work on big picture goals and develop plans of action.

I’ve started an idea journal and tried to work on some items related to those.

Routine

Be out of bed by 6:30 a.m. during the week. I actually usually wake-up around this time, but end up laying in bed playing on my phone for 30+ minutes. I want to break that habit. Basically, I want build a better morning routine.

NOPE

Get out of the house at least once a week, during the day, while P is at work. Go to a yoga class, go to the beach, something. I really need to force myself to get out of the house on my own.

Yes, and no. I had things scheduled each week, so this wasn’t a tough on, but I didn’t really go out just to go somewhere.

Develop a cleaning routine. I’m going to try doing a few items everyday, instead of spending several hours in one day. We will see how this works.

NOPE

Blog

Find blog to sponsor

No, any suggestions on this one?

Reach 200 Instagram followers. I really want to put more effort into IG. I love it.

No, I gained 30 which is not too bad, I didn’t really focus on this so it was ok. I didn’t even keep up with posting.

Go through at least 20 of my pinned articles on blogging.

Yes. I’ve been deleting pins and putting some of the idea/articles to practice even.

Create

4 design projects-Not so much
4 Skillshare classes-YES 5+1 YouTube

Photography Challenge: Capturing The Beauty in An Everyday Object by Andrea Stocks (20 minutes)

I liked this one the least of many of the short photography classes. I didn’t feel she gave very much in terms of sparking creativity or instruction. It fell short, though I liked the idea behind it.

Fundamentals of Lightroom II: Editing and Post Processing by Lotus Carroll (1 hour 37 minutes)

I thought this was a very good, concise class. She went through a ton of tools. I now see why Lightroom is so valued by photographers, and I was impressed with how much fine tuning you can do with it. Very useful class if you are starting out in Lightroom.

Making Your First Zine: From Idea to Illustration by Kate Bingaman-Burt (46 minutes)

The instructor, Kate, is very enthusiastic and captivating. This was one of those just fun little classes. I had no idea about the history of zines or all the different categories of zines. It’s an interesting class. I liked the examples she shared and prompt ideas. I’m trying to think of one to do and share.

Mini-Class: Urban Explorer Photography: Shooting the Forgotten + The Familiar by Cubby Graham (17 minutes)

A good little class, not overly instructional, more inspirational, but did have great tips. It inspired me to try to work with the VSCO app more, and try to take more photos through the VSCO camera instead of just using the phone camera. He did mention several apps I had not heard of: NightCap & Average Camera Pro. Both apps are for getting better pictures in low light with your iPhone.

Freelancing For Creatives: Kickstart Your Independence by Margot Harrington (58 minutes)

This was an interesting class. It definitely got me thinking and had some good concepts. Her presentation felt rushed, and I thought organized a bit oddly. It almost felt like she was just throwing thought/ideas at you. It was a good casual listen. She did provide an extensive list of additional resources, which are quite helpful.

Getting Started As A Freelancer by Clients from Hell (YouTube 1 hour, 12 minutes)

This was an interesting webinar. The host is a bit annoying, but it gave some good advice. I wished he let the guest talk a bit more. They went through a lot of advice and questions on starting as a freelancer. I liked the guest’s advice on using trial and error to get started, don’t be afraid to explore your skills and see what happens.

Classes I Did Not Finish Or Recommend

The Art of Travel Photography by Phil Ebiner (4 hours, 58 minutes)

I had this class picked out when I made my goal about travel photography, but had not started it. After 4 lessons in I had to call it and unenroll. It was not a well put together course. I couldn’t listen through 4 plus hours of it. I know I could pick up much of the same information from a few articles/posts I had pinned. I was hoping it would be more inspirational, more hands-on but he was just sitting in his parents garage presenting basic photography information in a poorly constructed format.

Shooting Outside & Making It Beautiful by Marshall Rimmer (14 minutes)

This was such an odd class. It was presented very weirdly, almost like if someone was asked what are your 5 top tips and they just blurted them out with no follow up or introduction. I didn’t feel like this was a very informative or inspiration class. He keeps saying take a picture but it’s suppose to be a video. I don’t recommend it.

1 recipe shoot (or more).

Roasted Tomato & Basil Gimlet

Read/Take a class/Work on landscape/travel photography

The class I was planning on taking, did not pan out. And I just didn’t take the time to find an alternative. Photography took a backseat this month.

May 365 Project

As I said, photography took a back seat this month. I didn’t even get 31 pictures 🙁

June Goals

How many fresh starts in a year? Twelve 🙂 Onward and upward as they say.

Exercise

Yoga, yoga, yoga 🙂
Get back into the Fitbit steps game. I’ve been slacking on this, I think part of it is because the weather has been blah. Goals is 50,000 steps a week.
Get a hike in or better yet two.

Planning

TRIPS
Idea journal and plans of action

Routine

Develop a morning routine. Get up out of bed by 6:30 am.
Better organize use of time.
Pick one project or action item to work on a day and schedule one or two hours just for that item.

Create

Recipe shoot/post
Work on photography
Do two design projects

Blog

Find a blog to sponsor
Reformat pictures on at at least 5 prior posts

What are your big plans for June? Any vacations planned?

April Monthly Goals

March 31, 2015 by Mariah 30 Comments

Guys, I can’t fully express to you how much better I felt this month. I just had more energy and felt more productive, I have not felt this good in months. I didn’t quite get everything I wanted to get done (who does, really), but I got a lot of things checked-off and just felt back into a groove!! I feel like a huge weight has been lifted with my energy levels and overall anxiety.

In March I was able to…

Mark off some of the items from the February list:

Ordered phone case and pillows (1,2)!!
I’ve made a small dent in dealing with my picture problem and lack of organization. Slow progress, slow progress. I’m currently learning Lightroom, so I hope that helps.
Got my haircut!! Yay! I had really worked myself into anxiety over choosing a hair salon and making an appointment, but it worked out just great. I love my cut and the stylist was the best. She is a native San Diegan and had tons and tons of great restaurant recommendations! This is honestly one of the better cuts I’ve had in a while! I did decide to chop it, I was so tired of dealing with my long-hair, and couldn’t hold out to grow it long enough to donate. I’m pleased as can be, with the whole experience.
Completed a deviled-egg recipe for the blog

Get back into practicing with the camera. Do more manual practice. Resume the 365 challenge.
I did get back to the 365 Project and have been using the camera in manual again! In my March goals post I did not include any of my 365 pictures for February, but going back I did post more than I realized. Below I’m sharing what I posted in February and also what I did in this past month for March. I’m loving this project still. I also joined a few photo challenges this past month, one week of #fmsphotoaday and the #TNCLovesSpring. I used photos from those prompts for some of my pictures. My goal is to do a few extra pictures here and there to catch-up, I would like to end the year with 365 photos for the project. Follow me on Instagram to see the latest pictures I’ve been snapping and challenges I’ve been participating in!

February 365

March 365

March 2015 365 Favorites Four — March Favorite Four

Keep up with the whole exercise thing. Yoga at least 4 days a week, and try to get in 50,000 steps a week.
I feeling so good about keeping up with a yoga practice! I finished the Adriene 30-day yoga challenge and did yoga at least 4 to 5 days every week! I wasn’t so great with my steps. I did have over 50,000 steps for 2 of the 4 weeks and more steps overall than February.

Get some Skillshare classes done and complete a few projects. Goal of 3 classes & 2 projects.
No more mindless TV during the day. One show maximum during the day.
I have really gotten back into Skillshare. I sort of combined the Skillshare and less tv goal. I’ve started watching short lessons while folding laundry, eating, etc., instead of random tv shows. I didn’t finish a project, but I’m definitely getting back into the groove.

Food Photography: Shooting at Restaurants by Daniel Krieger (34 minutes)
This was a short lesson on as the title says…shooting food pictures at restaurants. I watched it while folding laundry. I thought he gave good tips and really gave us his process of how he approaches his shots. I would have liked to see him sit at the one table and do the shots, just to see how he might approach that as opposed to moving around the whole place. I just don’t see myself moving around, even if the restaurant was dead 🙂 It did provide inspiration, and a new way to look at taking pictures of food, so it served it’s purpose as a class.

Food Photography: Capturing a Morning Worth Eating by Adam Goldberg (33 minutes)
Another short little lesson, I did while folding laundry 🙂 I did learn a bit more technical items from this one than from Krieger’s class. Like:

I did not know that you can tap the iphone screen to adjust exposure. No idea!
I was not familiar with Snapseed (free) photo editing app. I downloaded it to try it out. He highlighted a few features of editing with that app that was cool.

Food Photography: Prepping a Photo Shoot by Leela Cyd (28 minutes)
I feel like this one provided the least in concrete advice, it came across pretty general in nature. I would have liked to see more scenes of her actually in action and how she does her work. I watched it while eating breakfast and drinking my tea.

Food Photography: Shooting in 5 Styles by Leela Cyd (20 minutes)
This lesson did go into a bit more detail, so I guess I was expecting too much from the first one 🙂 Still didn’t feel like it was all that instructional.

Make The Most of Instagram: Build Your Brand by Gareth Pon (26 minutes)
Nice little bit of information, nothing that groundbreaking. He also used Snapseed to edit. He mentioned setting up constraints for yourself and finding your creativity in that constraint, which is an interesting idea.

Smartphone Photography: Capturing Landscapes by Tim Landis (29 minutes)
I liked that he filmed this one all outside. Had some good tips on ways to look at composing your photos. He also mentioned using Snapseed to edit.

Go through my to-read or to-do boards on Pinterest and my other to-do lists. Read or do the things.
Much like organizing the pictures, it’s a slow process. I think I might have added more than I got through, but I’m working on it!

April Goals

Make raviolis. I would love to have ravioli to freeze for quick meals.
Create and share on the blog a San Diego bucket list.
Finish guest room: buy mirror, finish putting up pictures and move random items to the garage. We are actually going to have guests in May. 🙂
Because I want to keep it a priority, I’m going to continue to include exercise as a goal. My goal is to continue to do yoga 4-5 times a week, but increase the length of the daily practices. I’ve mostly done 20 to 30 minutes videos, and I would like the sessions to 30 minutes or longer. I would also like to push myself by going to an in-person class, though I’ve been saying that for two months. Maybe April will be the month. Again, with the Fitbit to get 50,000 steps per week.
Pick pictures to print for existing frames we have.
Plan a trip to LA.
Continue with the Skillshare. At least 4 short lessons, 2 in-depth lessons, and finish the Lightroom tutorial I’ve already started.
Get my day started no later than 7:00 am during the week.

I’m going to leave it at that for April. I still have some March and February related items I want to cross-off. I’m hoping my March motivation/energy carries into April!!

Are you feeling more motivated now that Spring is here?

March Monthly Goals

March 2, 2015 by Mariah 37 Comments

I really don’t even know how to address my goals from February…so I’m not going to 🙂 Basically, I did none of them. Let’s just start fresh, shall we? Alright then.

March Goals

Let’s assume I try to mark off some of the items on the February list, without listing them all here in March. So February goals take-two 🙂
Get back into practicing with the camera. Do more manual practice. Resume the 365 challenge.
Keep up with the whole exercise thing. Yoga at least 4 days a week, and try to get in 50,000 steps a week. I’m actually pretty proud of myself in this area and have been doing better about sticking to doing one yoga video a day. I need to be more proactive about getting my steps in.
Get some Skillshare classes done and complete a few projects. Goal of 3 classes & 2 projects.
No more mindless TV during the day. One show maximum during the day. I’m going to see if I can’t find some podcasts or something more educational to have on; sometimes I just need the extra noise.
Go through my to-read or to-do boards on Pinterest and my other to-do lists. Read or do the things.
Catch up on all the blogging things 🙂 Reading, Writing, Commenting

In general, I need to hit the reset button on 2015. I need to organize and re-focus. I need to force myself into action, pick a direction…I’ve been floundering. I really hope March turns out to be the month that I feel more energized and I’m more productive. Fingers-crossed 🙂

What do you want out of March?

February Monthly Goals

February 2, 2015 by Mariah 31 Comments

Per my usual mantra, this month flew by!! Basically I sucked at getting any of my goals done. This month did not go as planned, not all bad, just not as productive as I had hoped. I was sick for one week, we decided to go to Vegas (not complaining), worked on some other things, and well, then the month was over. Shall we begin my walk of shame….

Use my planner and get posts for the next three months planned. Ideally, I would like to have all non-travel, non-goal posts already drafted.
NO, NO, NO

Write out yearly goals, and work on the Dawson workbook.
Didn’t get it until January 23rd…so.

Start the 365 Photo Challenge.

Did this one!! I’ve been posting on Instagram and really enjoying it. I did miss two days, and a few days I was fairly uninspired. My favorite 4 pictures from January are featured first: the palm tree in the brew pot, Sam, Eddie, & fallen flowers. I tried to pick things that made me happy that day or showed a glimpse of life. A bit like 100 happy days challenge rolled into pictures.

Finish 3 Skillshare courses.
2 out of 3:

EasyDSLR: Master your Digital Camera in less than 30 days by Kenneth Schultz
I found this class SO dry. It was hard to get through, and I could not get into it. There was some good information, but it was almost too much. His presentation came across scientific in nature (at least to me).

The First Steps to Hand-Lettering: Concept to Sketch by Mary Kate McDevitt
It was neat to see her process. It wasn’t that instructional in nature, more just watching her create.

Start a new knitting project…socks or different style headband.
NOPE

Finish you can Draw in 30 Days.
Fell into the same category as knitting, a big fat NO.

Continue at-home yoga practice (minimum 4 days a week) and again try to go to at least one class at a studio.
I’m pretty proud of myself in this area. I did 4 days the first week and 5 days the next 2 weeks (this last week we left on Wednesday for Vegas so I only did one day) I’ve been continuing with the Erin Motz 30 Day Yoga Challenge & started 30 Days of Yoga with Adriene (thanks to Arielle for the suggestion). I even did 2 videos some days. I did not make it to a studio class, but maybe in February.

Work with P on yearly goals… like travel.
A little, but nothing definitive.

Book San Diego whale watching tour
Yes! Pictures to come next week in my Discovering San Diego post.

Complete at least one new graphic design project
I came up with the button for the new-link up I’m co-hosting with Katie from The Hungry Goat, Into The Pint Glass. I’m counting that, but I was thinking something a bit more involved/challenging when I wrote this goal. I mean, a girl has to take credit for what she can 🙂 Especially for goals she made up and no one cares about; that is when it is most important.

I was just as unsuccessful with the Choose Your Own Challenge goals. Which is fairly laughable since January was “Complete”:

The “About” page…which you guys well know has been on the to-do list for a while!!
Almost there, it will be unveiled this week! I know everyone is just at the edge of their seats for that announcement 🙂

Work on or finish two more items off my 101 list…clearly those have been there a while too 🙂
Umm…not so much. I actually need to update that list.

Well, that was embarrassing! Oh well, onto February 🙂

February Goals

Continue with yoga! I’m enjoying it (kind of), it is still exercise, but it feels good. My goal is to get to a class, but continue at home practice. Again 4 days a week as the goal. I got a FitBit in January. So my goal with that is to do 50,000 steps a week. I know it should be 10,000 a day, but I’m starting slow.
Back to Skillshare…I’m going to stick to the magic number of 3!
Do at least one deviled eggs recipes for the blog.
Attempt to make throw pillows for the couch or buy some this month. If I can’t/don’t make them I will order some, no more putting it off!
Organize pictures on the computer. My pictures are out of control.
Work on the Dawson workbook. I’m a bit disenchanted with the whole thing now because it was such a long wait and hassle to get.
Get a haircut. So…I have not gotten my hair cut since we moved. I hate finding a new hair dresser! Plus I’m trying to decide, keep growing it and donate, or get it chopped off!
Buy or design phone case. We got new phones and now I need a case. I also need to sell my old phone (this is something I know I will put off)
Buy new jeans, again this is something I need to do. I HATE shopping for jeans, HATE IT. Jeans are one of those things I really have to go try on and rarely buy online, which is by far, my preferred method of shopping.
Crack down and really start figuring out my direction. I realize this is vague, but that is the best I can do for now.
Make an effort to explore more by myself.

I’m linking-up with Melyssa at the Nectar Collective to share my monthly goals.

For the Choose Your Own Challenge, February is “Create”–Create a DIY project, a new recipe, a song, a piece of art, the start of a novel, a new list…wherever your creative mind takes you, follow it.

For this one I’m going back to knitting & drawing.

Start knitting socks
Finish You Can Draw in 30 Days
Also…if I actually make those throw pillows, you better believe you will hear about that!

While January was not really get stuff done I’ve been putting off month, maybe February will be 🙂 Many of these items have been on my list for a while.

What are your goals for February? Any suggestions on a good brand of jeans?