So you’ve probably noticed the lack of craft here lately. It’s come from a combination of having no crafting time and being uninspired.

My life is very heavily scheduled, until this year James and I didn’t take weekend or evenings off and when one thing goes out of whack the rest tends to follow quickly until I feel I’m constantly treading water instead of actually moving forward. And for a while that works, I’ve crossed off so many long term projects from my list this year and I’m making decent progress toward some more, but eventually I just get burned out.

I’ve been running around so much trying to get things done that the house is a mess and when the house is a mess I feel less like doing things. It snowballs until I end up back in front of the computer for 14 hours a day rather than crafting or doing something creative. And if I do have a minute spare all I want to do is procrastinate. I’ve gotten distracted already several times just writing this article >_<

Being in an apartment that isn’t particularly appealing doesn’t inspire me and if I’m not inspired I just don’t want to craft.

So it’s time to do something about that 😀

Home-Make-Over-Journal-1

Welcome to my new series “Violet and Jimmy’s Home Sweet Home” ^_^

We’ve lived in this apartment for almost 2 years now (in fact my birthday is the 2 year anniversary) and in that entire time I’ve never done much to make it ours because we only ever sign a 6 month lease and every six months I think:

  • Oh well there’s no point getting new furniture,  I can’t afford it, I don’t have any time to DIY something that big. We’re only going to be here for another 6 months anyway…
  • Oh well there’s no point unpacking those boxes, we’re only going to be here for another 6 months anyway…
  • Oh well there’s no point getting/making nicer things, they probably won’t fit in with my awesome new decorating colour scheme when we move into our dream home and we’re only going to be here for another 6 months anyway…
And after 2 years worth of “we’re only going to be here for another 6 months” I’m at the point that I’m sick of waiting for *someday* and I am more interested in *right now*. Someday is when we’ll finally get that dream apartment but there’s really no reason that I should sit around making excuses to live in a place that doesn’t look the way I want until then. RightNow is a very important step to get to Someday and so it’s time to do something about.
This series is going to be something different. It’s going to be 1 part rambling post like this, 1 part craft tutorials as I go and 1 part art journaling the progress.
It will be on going, I have a whole apartment to make pretty and when we do finally own our first home I will obviously have that too. Hopefully some of you who are in the same boat as I am can relate to this and it will inspire you to stop waiting around and give things a go!

Home-Make-Over-Journal-2

So the first step to changing things is making goals.

Throughout these posts you will see my diary pages which are a combination of pen, water colours and stickers. I don’t have neat hand writing and my style tends to be very chaotic so I will provide transcripts below them with other notes included. My math teacher used to say that clever people always had terrible hand writing because their brains worked faster than their hands could and that’s what I’m sticking to 😉

Also my spelling and grammar sucks so there you go!

Home-Make-Over-Journal-3

So what am I trying to get out of this project?

  • To make every part of the house pretty without losing functionality -> I don’t think functional and beautiful are mutually exclusive. Our house needs to be practical so I refuse to settle for less function just because something is pretty.
  • To spend as little money as possible -> I have pretty much no budget for this so I’m probably not going to spend anything unless it comes out of the change jar. (Oh who am I kidding, all THAT money goes to claw machine!)
  • Regain my creativity and problem solving skills -> Not doing things regularly makes me lazy and I don’t like that.
  • Replace all ugly things -> Our place is full of mismatched junk that we’ve collected over the years which I want to replace or rework so it’s visually appealing as well.
  • Practice decorating for our real home -> Use this space to decide on the themes and colours we want for the next place.
  • Stop procrastinating! -> Self explanatory, stop over thinking things so much and just do them! *she types as she has an article about the Titanic, Realestate.com.au and Youtube open in the other tabs* >_>
  • Surround ourselves with beauty -> I think if our place is brighter and happier then James and I probably will be too.
  • Stop waiting and start DOING! -> Well… duh ^_^
Basically I want to go through everything we have and reevaluate whether it should be here. If I can make it better I will but if it’s something that doesn’t fit and has no use it will be de-cluttered!
So what kind of obstacles will I be up against?

Home-Make-Over-Journal-4

  • Lack of inspiration
  • Lack of money
  • Lack of time

Inspiration isn’t something that I can magic up but I think that by having a well kept to do list with a range of small quick projects as well as the bigger ones I can combat that. Money is something I can control to a certain extent and I will work harder at putting some savings together but realistically I’m just going to try to reuse the things I already have in different ways and burn through my craft stash.

Time will probably be the biggest killer here. James and I have been trying to cut back on working after hours so no more nights and weekends which is nice but not particularly realistic. To a certain extent at least, working for yourself means working when there’s work and that means sometimes you have to do late nights or weekends. What I am going to do is make an effort to have at least one evening a week for doing these projects. If possible I will actually do them in the mornings so I can take better quality photos and not have to set up flashes but that will obviously depend on schedules.

I think posting here about it will make me feel a lot more accountable especially for procrastinating because I’ll feel guilty if I don’t follow through XD

Funnily enough I think it also has a bit to do with what we have to watch or do in the evenings. I always do my best craft when we’re watching great TV or playing great games but nothing is really grabbing my attention at the moment. I’ve re-watched most of my favorites fairly recently and James is playing Grand Turismo 5 which is one of the most boring games of all time to watch. Let me know if you have any good recommendations!

So all in all I’m feeling pretty good about this! I’m looking forward to doing some of the projects I’ve been wanting to tackle for years and I’m really looking forward to having and awesome looking apartment which will make me feel great until we can buy our first place.

Hopefully it will be a good start to make bigger changes and better things for the future and I hope you all enjoy it too ^_^

Super props if you actually read all of that, I think this is the most I’ve written here in months… so that’s a good start *_*

Wish me luck!

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