Hello May!! I always love May, it feels like the beginning of summer. Of course, it being my birthday month doesn’t hurt either 🙂 April was good, but not great. I was sick for most of the month, so that made it harder to be productive. I definitely was still feeling more energy than in prior months, even though I wasn’t feeling 100% health-wise (allergies and/or a cold). I did not check off very many items on April’s goal list. Hopefully, I’ll get back on track this month.

In April….

I did NOT make raviolis.
I could barely taste anything most of April so tackling a cooking project was a big no 🙂 This is going to be retired off my list for a while, I don’t see us doing a cooking project this month.

Guest room.
We did get the mirror and we are finishing a few things this weekend.

Skillshare
Totally rocked it 🙂 Since I wasn’t feeling well, I did a lot of classes. I watched a good amount of tv/reading too, but it felt good to be somewhat productive by watching classes. 12 classes total, 6 longer courses and 6 shorter.

Fundamentals of Lightroom I: Organize Files and Boost Your Workflow by Lotus Carroll (2h 19m)
She goes at a good pace and certainly goes through a lot of the functions to get you set-up to use Lightroom. I’m not sure if this would be overly helpful for someone who already works with Lightroom, but you might find some useful functionality tips you didn’t know. My one complaint is that there is a bit of background noise in her videos that I find distracting.

Pattern Design I: Creating Inspiring Repeats by Elizabeth Olwen (52 minutes)
It was a good class, the handout she provides is very, very useful to refer back to. It’s a basic introduction to the process and I liked the talk about inspiration and mood boards.

Start a Home Web Design Business & Make $1000+ Per Month by Christine Maisel (1hour 13 minutes)
I was more curious about this course, anything that has a title like this I’m wary of. She shared a lot of basic customer service/business principles. I hated the style of presentation, essentially bad powerpoint, really this could just as easily been a podcast. However, it was easy to just listen to while I did other tasks around the house because nothing on the screen was that important. She does share a ton of documents and other resources as bonus material so that is nice.

Style Your Letters Boldly: Hand-Addressed Envelopes by Erik Marinovich (1 hour, 53 minutes)
It was really cool to get to see his process. It’s pretty amazing how much work goes into it. I love how he shows how to work with your mistakes and encourages you to be free about it. I also appreciate that he takes it from a more beginners perspective and gives tips to help a beginner, instead of just throwing the letters up really quickly. He showed personality in the course too which was nice.  It was an interesting course.

DSLR Photography for Bloggers by Brit+Co (58 minutes)
I liked this course, much more instructional in nature as opposed to inspirational or “this is what I do”. I would like them to do a follow up one on editing. Good tips on set-up and role of light in photography.

Cityscape Photography: Capture Your City’s Story by Trashland (51 minutes)
It’s almost like having a photography lesson from Holder (The Killing); the photographer reminded me of him. He really focused on perspective and rule of thirds. It was cool to see by centering certain aspects of the photo it really gives the photo movement, and pop.

Signage Photography: The Words Around You by Monica Galvan (29 minutes)
This was the best “short” photography classes I’ve taken. It was much more instructional in nature, than the hey this is what I do that some of the other ones are. She went through all the VSCO settings, and showed what she did to several photos to get them to look cohesive. I think one good tip, and I have found this to be true, is you should go to the extreme with the different settings to see how it affects the photo. You learn a lot more about the settings that way.

Experimenting with Perspective: Taking Pictures from Above by Jason Peterson (33 minutes)
I don’t really see myself getting into helicopter photography or anything, but it was neat to hear how he approaches what he does. It was interesting to see how much editing he puts into his pictures. That was my biggest take away is the amount of editing done for an Instagram shot. I like that a lot of these small photography lessons share what they do for editing, it really gives you the full idea of what is done to make the shot.

Be a Traveling Entrepreneur: How to Live and Work from Anywhere by Libby Tucker (24 minutes)
DO NOT waste your time on this one. I’m sorry, but it was not informative in the least. She doesn’t even say how she is able to be a traveling entrepreneur other than she drew a line in the sand. Also, she has noise canceling headphones, and won’t take people to the airport during her productive hours. This is an example of the not so great classes that are popping up on Skillshare.

Introduction to Mobile Photography: Capturing on the Go by Cory Staudacher (21 minutes)
Pretty good use of 20 minutes. Nothing really ground-breaking, and he did tend to repeat himself a bit. He uses multiple editing apps to finalize his photo. Mentions the Filterstorm app ($3.99) as did Peterson to clone objects out of your pictures, I was surprised by how much he cloned out of the shot. Good tips about taking multiple shots and going for different exposures.

Lifestyle Photography: Capturing Food, Flavors, Conversations by Marte Marie Forsberg (19 minutes)
Not bad, not too much on the instructional side, but she made some good points. She mentioned “What do you feel when you enter a place, and how do you show that in a picture”. I thought that was an interesting approach.

Photographing Perspective: One Place in Four Styles by Christian Cannon (34 minutes)
Interesting course. I liked his ideas on the alternative selfie and putting yourself into your pictures. He mentioned many editing tools, though his main one is VSCO. One he mentioned, that I had not heard of prior to this course was SKRWT, which is suppose to be the tool for straightening/lining up your pictures.

Exercise
There is a fine line for me between listening to my body (aka I need a break) and talking myself into taking a break. This month was hard because I was sick, though I still managed to do three yoga videos a week. I took it easy. I’m still enjoying yoga, but I didn’t advanced this month or stepped-up my workout. I LOVE LOVE Adriene’s weight-loss series, I just really like her style of teaching and listening to your body. She does such a good job of reminding you to do what feels good, and how to make a pose fit you. I sucked on steps, only one week over 50,000.

And the rest…
I didn’t cross-off any other April goals, but I did FINALLY finish my About page. It’s not exactly what I wanted to do, but I’m happy with it for now. My big hang-up was the coding/image mapping, but it is up. I made further progress on my read/do pile of things too. I also, worked on the You Can Draw book, practiced handwriting, and picked-up some knitting practice. Even if I didn’t exactly cross-off April goals, I made some progress on other things.

April 365
I’m not loving my April pictures, I felt my March ones were stronger. I think it was because, I just wasn’t feeling well. It was hard to get out and feel creative about grabbing pictures. Below are my favorite four and then all the rest. The most liked on IG was the watermelon pic, sometimes I just don’t get it 🙂 I do have 31 pictures as I’m trying to play catch-up to finish with 365.

May Goals

New month, fresh start!

Exercise

• GO TO A YOGA CLASS!!
• 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.
• Go on a hike this month, if my allergies stop trying to murder me 🙂

Planning
Plan trips!!! I know I’ve been lame on this one.

• LA
• Roadtrip to San Francisco
• San Diego bucket list
• Work on big picture goals and develop plans of action.

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.
• 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.
• 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.

Blog

• Find blog to sponsor
• Reach 200 Instagram followers. I really want to put more effort into IG. I love it. Are you following me? 😉
• Go through at least 20 of my pinned articles on blogging.

Create

• 4 design projects
• 4 Skillshare classes
• 1 recipe shoot (or more). I had a lot of fun playing around doing the one for the Strawberry Overnight Oats.
• Read/Take a class/Work on landscape/travel photography

What are you looking forward to in May? Any must see/eat/drink places when planning our San Francisco trip?