New Year, New Goals
Wow, didn't 2016 whizz by in a flash?
I'm so excited to be back in the studio this week, even if it is freezing and a little untidy! We received an absolute record amount of orders over the Christmas break and yesterday we headed to the Post Office with no less than 70 orders - I only went just before the new year with the first 20 & there's 10 more in today!
With such a fab start to the year, I thought I'd write a little list of goals below, both personal and professional, for the year ahead.
CREATIVITY:
Creativity is something that we've rarely found the time for outside of work, but this year I'm determined to get at least some practice on my iPad every night and I have lots of lovely books to work my way through, which I'm already loving! Some of my biggest creative goals for the year are to improve my hand lettering and composition skills as well as really getting to grips with how colour works and to practice creating some beautiful colour palettes. I hope that by the end of this year, I will begin to see some significant improvement in all areas of my design work.
Rob's really excited about working on some screen printing this year, it's one of those things that he comes back to every year but we've never really had the time or space to get around to it. Now that we have the studio we certainly have the space to be able to experiment with this type of thing and so he's decided that this is the year to finally get stuck in. I'm really excited to see what he creates and I might even have a little try myself!
FITNESS & HEALTH:
Christmas is a hard time to stay focussed on fitness and we've certainly slipped up more than a little on the clean eating front over the holidays. We got a new blender for Christmas and with the last of the Christmas chocs almost finished, we're excited to get back on track with smoothies, soups, fresh foods and Fitness Bender workouts. We're excited to add bouldering to the list of fun fitness activities this year, we climbed a couple of times before Christmas and really enjoyed it - my promise to myself is to try to not wuss out of the high moves!
Being a vegetarian is hard. We're recently converted, and whilst we're really good at the not eating meat part, I'm useless at checking ingredients/looking for the v! It really couldn't be much more obvious I know, but it's about getting into the habit of checking and then learning what you can and can't eat. This year, we will be better vegetarian!
HAPPINESS:
Realistic work/life/sleep routines. We work A LOT, I sleep A LOT, and that normally means that we miss out on the 'life' part. To start with, I've bought myself a new daily journal which will arrived today and I plan to pencil in some little adventures asap.
Realising the little things that make us happy on a daily basis. For me, that might be painting my nails, wearing eyeliner or making time to read or be creative. Rob likes to play on the xbox, cook up something yummy (& healthy) for dinner setting some time aside to learn new creative skills.
ADVENTURES:
We received a murder mystery evening experience with a 3 course meal for Chritsmas. Being the most awkward people, it'll be funny to see how we cope with this but I'm really looking forward to it. For my birthday we're going to see Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone at the Royal Albert Hall with the Royal Philharmonic playing all of the music live - we saw the Jurassic Park version last year which was so good. We'll definitely also try to fit in some camping and festivals in the summer and perhaps a long weekend in Scotland?
BUSINESS:
I've got SO MANY ideas in my head for Pingle Pie all of the time from new products to marketing etc. I spent most of 2016 feeling overwhelmed by them all and not really focussing on any of them. This week I'm going to sit down with a cup of tea and make some solid plans about future products and marketing plans, I'm quite excited about getting my ideas down on paper and making some big decisions! Rob's got a little something up his sleeve too but I don't think I'm allowed to say anything just yet!!
HOME:
There really is no place like home and we're finally at a point where we are ready to find a new one. We've been talking about moving for at least the past 4 years, at one point we were days away from buying a house when it fell through and we decided to go for it with the businesses instead. Every cloud really does have a silver lining! I feel as though everything is coming together and I truly cannot wait to upgrade and to put our own stamp on a place.