New Year, new plans?

No, actually, I think my plans for this year are probably about the same as they were last year.  But the resolutions, they are different.

First, let's check out last year's resolutions: 

1. Intentionally exercise at least three times a week.FAIL. A lot of fail. I managed it for, oh, a couple weeks.  But then my dad came out for a visit, and that always throws my schedule off.  And then it was summer, and hot.  And then I went to visit my sister. And then my family came to stay with me. And then I wrote a novel in a month. And then my family came back again.  
2. Blog daily. FAIL.  HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!  It was a nice idea.
3. Read lots, at least a book a week.  YES!  I'm not sure if I read a new book every single week, and I didn't actually document them very well, but I did read lots, sometimes three or more books in a week, so I think it all evened out.

And now for this year's resolutions:

1. Finish all of the movies on my shelf before buying new ones.  As of Jan 1, I had 24 unwatched movies.  As of today, I'm down to 15. 
2. Finish an old project before starting a new one.  I have 13 in-progress projects.  Well, 12, now, because I finished one yesterday.  And I'm close to finishing another tonight.  If you want to see the whole extravaganza of procrastination shaming, you can visit my crafty Tumblr at daniemakesthings.tumblr.com
3. Finish the unread books on my shelf. Current count, 67.  Plus 2 in progress.  Plus several ebooks on my phone, but I'm not counting those.
4. Finish the first draft of Frenchie and start on edits.
5. Get my office organized.  With the visit from my niece, lots of stuff moved into the office in an effort to baby-proof the house.  And then we moved rooms around so my new roommate could move in, and my craft room/spare room stuff had to relocate to my office, too.  So I've got my desk, my five bookshelves, a recliner, two boxes of still-unpacked office stuff, four boxes of still-unpacked random crap, four big Rubbermaid bins of yarn, a big box of purses, and about a dozen bags of craft projects (or projects-to-be), plus a closet full of winter coats and costumes.  This will be a long-term project.

It looks like this year is the year of finishing crap.  That's not necessarily a bad thing, actually.  I've got a bad habit of starting on new things before I finish stuff.  (Could you tell?)  

I'm pretty sure that I can make these resolutions this year.  I feel as if I should have one or two that are more challenging, but in all honesty, finishing Frenchie and starting the edits is going to be rough.  Once I realized that this story is actually one that I enjoy AND is commercially viable, it suddenly seemed scary.  Up until this point, I've either not liked the end result of what I've written, or it didn't really fit into any particular genre and was therefore not really marketable, so there's been no pressure to do anything other than write it.  But this one... once it's polished, I'm going to take a deep breath, write and polish a query letter, and start looking for an agent.  That's big.  (At least, it's big for me.)

Oh.

Hello, there.  I bet  you thought I forgot about you, didn't you?  After all, it's been two months since I last posted, and that was just a picture of a blanket. (Although it was a huge and awesome blanket.)

I didn't forget about my bloggy friends, per se... I thought about blogging a lot.  I composed posts in my head.  I just didn't actually get around to writing them down and putting them on the internet.  Oops.

I can't promise that I will get any better, either.  The thing is, most of my online time lately is mobile.  I check email on my phone.  I use Facebook and Twitter from my phone.  I do pretty much anything I can from my phone.  Unfortunately, I really don't like the Blogger app, so I don't use that from my phone.  That means that if I want to blog, I actually need to sit down at my computer.  My computer, however, is on its last legs, I think, and I try not to abuse the poor dear.  I didn't even use it for NaNo this year!  (Which I won, btw, by cranking out 32k in the last 7 days of the month.)

But it does feel good to be sitting down and typing, so maybe I will manage to get back into it.  If I don't, though, I hope you all enjoy your wintery holiday time (unless you're in the southern hemisphere, in which case, enjoy your summery holiday time), and try to keep an eye out for my return!

Finally!

After two years of work, I have finally finished the blanket for my niece! Woot! Here it is!

Quick project!

I'm part of an iFamily. When the extended family gets together at my sister's place, we have 7 iPhones, 5 iPads, and at least 6 iPods that I know of. That makes for a lot of chargers hanging out, and they're all identical. Until now!
Today, I made charger art. I used Recollections brand double-sided adhesive in two widths, and pink and purple Recollections fine glitter, all of which lived in my craft stash.
First, I covered the charger in adhesive, alternating wide and narrow pieces. I removed the backing from the wide strips and sprinkled on the pink glitter. I pressed it all in, and tapped off the excess, then removed the backing from the narrow strips and sprinkled on the purple glitter.
I also covered the USB cable end with adhesive strips, and used just the purple glitter.
Voila! Now, no one will accidentally take my charger halfway across the continent when we pack up to leave :)

Cooking like a madwoman!

In general, I don't cook.  I bake.  I'll make a loaf of bread every day if I have someone to share it with.  I bake cookies in batches of 12 dozen.  But I don't like to cook. This weekend, though, I went shopping and got stuff together to make dinner.  Lots of dinner.

It all started with this post I saw on Pinterest.  It's a woman who did a whole pile of prep work in one two-hour period, and froze everything for a bunch of slow-cooked meals.  I love my Crock Pot.  I love it so much that I have two of them, actually.  I can have a good meal that's ready when I get home from work, and it doesn't heat up the whole kitchen like the oven will.  I used a couple of her recipes, and then went through my three slow-cooker cookbooks and grabbed some more.  In all, I made 9 different meals, which broke down into 17 batches that are now taking up the bottom of my deep freeze.

It was a LOT of food: 18 chicken breasts, 4 lb stewing beef, 2 lb kielbasa, 8 italian sausages, 9 onions, peppers, carrots, celery, potatoes, spices, soups... that shopping trip included more food than I normally buy over the course of a full month!  But I worked it out, and with leftovers, I should have enough for 20-30 meals, maybe more, depending on whether I make rice or pasta or potatoes to go along with the main dish.  So I'm thinking it'll work out well.

Even following the recipes, though, I ended up with some extra food, mostly because of the way it was packaged.  So last night, I made up alfredo noodles with grilled chicken and grilled orange peppers, and tonight was meatballs and bowtie pasta with tomato sauce.  I've got to say, I'm looking forward to just microwaving or slow-cooking my meals for a few weeks...

Also, it took three showers, a gajillion hand washings, and multiple scrubbings with my stainless-steel smell-remover thingy to get the scent of 9 chopped onions out of my hands.  Just saying.

Anyways, my point here is, I'm going to try all these recipes now, and the ones that I really like, I'll be repeating at the end of October, so that when NaNo rolls around, I don't have to worry about cooking.  I can just use my time to write.  Yay!

There's nothing like a crush...

...to make you feel like a schoolgirl again.

Yeesh.

You'd think, that by 32, I'd be past this whole crush thing.  Nope.  But you know what?  I'm going to just go with it.  Because he's smart, he's attractive, and he does nice things for me.  I don't know if he's actually interested in me or not, but that's okay.  I'm going to enjoy looking at him, and chatting with him, and I'm not going to let myself over-analyze every little move he makes.

But getting a mix cd is a good sign, right?  Even if it was more than a year ago?  And flowers from his garden two years ago?

No! Stop!  No analyzing!

Let me think about it

If you follow me on Facebook, you probably saw a post a few weeks ago about how I was doing a lot of thinking and being all existentially contemplative.  I was thinking about a lot of different things, but among those things was this: I may not be a traditional plotter, but I do plan out a lot in my head.

I've realized over the past few months that I can't just sit down and write.  Well, I can't sit down and write a whole story.  I have to let the first part of the story spill out of me in one big blast, but then I have to wait.  I wrote the first chapter of "Frenchie" (my current WIP) about three months ago.  Maybe more.  And since then, I built my plot wall to keep track of where I'm going, but I haven't done much more with it.  Except think.

Here's the thing - the thinking is a big part of it for me.  I had this Big Important Letter to write, and I kept putting it off and putting it off.  I drafted it in my head several dozen times, but I didn't put it down on paper.  Finally, at the last possible minute, I sat down at the computer, and it just poured out of me.  One draft, a few brief tweaks, and I was really happy with the result, as were the others who had to approve the Big Important Letter before it could be sent.

As much as I would like to be writing "Frenchie" right now, I've realized that I'm still in my equivalent of a plotting phase.  I've wondered a few times if I should write down any of my plotting, but it doesn't feel like it will help.  I'm pretty sure I just need to let it happen.

But it's almost ready... I can feel the story bubbling inside me.  Is that weird?  Maybe.  But that's just the way I work.