Stepping Over the Threshold

Borrowed from Google Search

I cannot believe 2015 is almost over.

2015 started out slow and sloggy. Like walking through mud.

I was excited because I was desperate for changes, but had NO clue where they were coming from or how to make them happen.

I needed to change physically and mentally. My weight was at an all time high, and my outlook at a super low.

Our family needed to change financially and start heading toward a less stressful job situation.

Well, the job stress is always hit and miss. One of the joys of the oil field. You never know what's going to happen. To paraphrase a nursery rhyme, when it's good, it's very, very good, and when it's bad, it's horrid. Thankfully, we weren't hit by layoffs, but it's a crapshoot all the time.

Low gas prices = layoffs.

So while it's a blessing to not pay a zillion dollars to fill up, you do have to wonder if you'll have an income to pay for said gas in the near future. Adulting stinks some times.

This year I've been working very hard on gratitude. Appreciating the little things goes a long way when the shadows of responsibility encroach on your path. Be thankful for what you have, even if it isn't where you want to be.

2015 has made me feel empowered. How? Because I've done things I never thought I was capable of.

I've started 2 businesses.

I took control of my weight situation.

I took control of my mindset and my personal reactions to things that would have devastated me in the past.

I figured out how to make things work for me and to get rid of those that don't.

I've learned how to manage my time in a much more functional way.

All of this I'm carrying over into 2016, along with a new action plan to get where I want to be.

I've already talked a bit about my goals for 2016 here.  I'm feeling much more motivated and inspired going into 2016 than I did heading into 2015. And that is fantastic! I cannot wait to see what it brings!!

I am so motivated to step both feet over the threshold of 2016. We have big changes coming.

Home improvements.
New projects.
New accomplishments to tackle.
New days to punch in the face.

This quote really struck me, so I'll share it with you because you may need to hear it too.

"Change can be scary, but you know what's scarier? Allowing fear to stop you from growing, evolving, and progressing." - Mandy Hale

That is absolutely true. I'm usually not one to claim a word for the new year, but this year I have. My word for 2016 is "Fearless." That is my goal. Being fearless.

Realizing it's okay to change, okay to be flexible.
Realizing that the opinions of others do not pay my bills.
Realizing sitting back quietly in worry doesn't get things done.
Realizing that success is okay and I'm deserving of it.
Realizing it's okay to keep pushing forward when others are sitting still.

Fearless.  

This word will be my wings, my fuel, and my fire for the upcoming year.

Are you looking forward to 2016? Do you have inspiration or a word that's your goal? I'd love to hear it.

Memories from the Heart

Borrowed from Google Search

Merry Christmas Eve!!! Today is filled with time with my guys, finishing up my baking and treat making, and wrapping all the presents. I always wrap on Christmas Eve because the kids are so nosy and we don't really have a decent place to store the gifts without them being accidentally kicked across the room.

My mind flickers to the Christmas Eves of my childhood. We would load up and drive the 25 miles to my Memaw's house to Christmas it up there.

We'd have lunch, usually a repeat of the Thanksgiving feast - turkey, dressing, and all of the glorious sides- and then the adults would lounge on the couch combating a turkey coma while we kids would impatiently wait for time to open gifts. This was the perfect time to practice giving puppy dog eyes and teach this art to younger siblings and cousins. Being the eldest of all the grandchildren, this was my burden to bear.

Sometimes Santa would come by to visit before his long journey began. He'd drop in to make sure we were still behaving, checking if some of our names might need to be moved to the Naughty list. That was definitely an attention getter! You did NOT want to mess up hours before he came.

After the gifts were given, all of the younguns would flock to the playroom to bask in the glory of our new gifts, sharing with the little ones, or depending on the weather, we might dash outside and accost the swingset or perform a show on top of the cellar. The women-folk would visit in the kitchen while the men would chat about football or hunting.

Christmas at Memaw's also meant egg nog. Oh, glorious egg nog!!! The creamy concoction, nectar from heaven. Egg nog was served in little squatty glasses adorned with oranges and leaves near the rim. I thought these glasses were beautiful. They were the official egg nog glasses. It just didn't taste the same if it was served in another glass. These glasses were magic.

Sometimes we kids would gather around the TV, sitting on the floor in a little huddled group, to watch Home Alone. Nothing says Christmas like watching a kid protect his home from bad guys.

The revelry would die down and we'd all head back home around 8:00 pm. Occasionally one brother would zonk out before we made it home, and the other one and I would peer out the window contemplating if the flashing lights in the sky were Santa's sleigh or an airplane.

It seems so long ago that we had those Christmas Eves at Memaw's. Almost another life ago. It's been over a year since she passed away, but longer since we celebrated at her house. She suffered from severe dementia and had to move to an assisted living facility several years ago. It was like we started losing her when the dementia was taking hold. It was almost like she had passed long before she physically did. Dementia and Alzheimer's are wicked things. Thieves stealing a person's life in tiny bites. A sponging, cheeky, parasite that allows you to watch the light leave through the eyes and forces the relationship flip-flop where the child becomes the parent and vice versa.

But those days are done and I prefer to think back before those two jumped in and changed everything. I slip back to the Memaw of my childhood, the memories I'll always treasure, the magic of family on Christmas Eve.

I'll close this post with a story from last year. It was the first Christmas since she had passed away and my heart was weeping. My mind was flooded with memories all day in a beautiful, yet painful rush. I was able to tamp it down all day until right at dusk. I decided to take the dogs outside to do their business and have a little cry alone. (I hate crying. It makes me feel weak and weakness gets you nowhere.) I remember thinking, "Oh, Memaw, I miss you. I've missed you for a long time, but I really am missing you today." 

So I'm standing on the porch looking at the cluster of oak trees just behind my house, tears running down my cheeks, just taking a fragile human moment before I step back inside and become Super Mom again. Out of the blue, a bright red cardinal zips out of the trees, flies a few loopty-loops, perches on a branch and watches me for several minutes. I stand frozen, barely breathing, watching this tiny red bird, one of her favorites. Time stood still for a handful of precious seconds. A flood of peace washes over me and I know it's her saying hi. She came to see me on the day I'm missing her so badly, on the day that we would all be gathered at her house. She came to see family.

I know there's a logical explaination for this, but to me it was a gift and one I cherish in the deepest depths of my heart.

While I wrap gifts today, my mind will drift back to her. We'll have a grand old time. Too bad I don't have any egg nog or it would be perfect.

What Weirdos Do For Fun - Part 1

Such a classy title, I know, but our family is a little weird. We're so far out of the box, there's no box in sight. My kids are like, "Box?? What box, Mom?"

I can hear you asking, "How is your family weird, Alisha?"

Well, for one, we're super big into self-sufficiency skills. My husband, J, has always been interested in them, he got me interested (There was eye-rolling and fake smiles for a while, I will admit.), and then the kids got interested. ESPECIALLY the youngest one. DJ, the 9 year old mancub, is obsessed. Take his Dad's interest and multiply it by 1000.

He likes to watch Bear Grylls and have a running commentary on what he's doing wrong. Loudly. And frequently.

Now Ray Mears, that guy is a genius, according to DJ. 

All of this interest leads to weird activities.

Weird Activity #1) Tanning hides.

While J isn't an avid hunter, he does enjoy tanning skins and using them in his leather work. He usually has friends save hides from their game, he tans it, and puts it to good use. So far, he's done hair-on tanning, but we do have plans to do brain-tanned buckskin. Think the soft, supple leather that the Native Americans used for so many things. So I currently have 2 deer hides in my freezer caressing my groceries, and a ziploc bag of brains in the other freezer that I have almost mistaken for ground sausage. Oh, the breakfast of champions - brains and scrambled egg burritos.

If that's what it takes, I think I'll pass on the champion part. Just sayin'. 

Occasionally, here on the farm/ranch, my Dad will have a bovine die, so J will take the hide to tan as well. Circle of Life and all that jazz...

NAAAAAAAAAATAKENYAAAAAAAA ABA BEE SHE WAA WAA!!!

Sorry, Lion King moment.

There was also a suicidal coyote who got tanned. He electrocuted himself by biting an electrical wire at my brother's house. He's may make a hairy pouch or quiver for some homemade arrows.

It's not always mammal hides that are tanned. We do live in Texas and that means snakes. Rattlesnakes. We do have creepy crawly, venomous visitors from time to time, and due to safety of family, dogs, and livestock, they have to be dispatched with haste. There was a giant 4.5' long one heading up to my parents' house the day before Thanksgiving and he had to go to the Great Big Den in the Sky. His skin is currently tacked up and drying after being soaked in glycerin for several weeks. And I also have another skin in a mason jar in the living room. Nothing says, "Welcome to our humble abode! No, we're not weird! Why would you say that?!" like a clear jar full of soaking snakeskin in your living room. This one is an experiment. It was salt-dried first several months ago, so it may not take the glycerin as well as the one that was soaked immediately. We'll see.

Snakeskin soaking... in the living room. 

Weird Activity #2) Knapping arrowheads. 

DJ's box of knapping goodies and other project miscellany. 

Our house is not far from an old Native American camp site. We will find hollows in large stones where grains were ground and flakes from where arrowheads and knives were knapped. The flint used isn't native to this area, so it was brought in from other areas. So this caused a predicament. When you have a dad and son who are jonesing to knap their own arrowheads, you have to get creative. Glass knapping. Many, many hours of tap-tap-tapping and knap-knap-knapping have taken place on the porch. Then Mom is sweep-sweep-sweeping because she doesn't want glass shards in the yard or tracked in the house.

Here is a glass arrowhead and an arrow tip made from a used casing. 

DJ has been DYING for some flint and we weren't able to find a decent amount for him to knap until a few weeks ago. So I had to special order my kid some rocks for Christmas. There is just something so funny, yet messed up about that statement. What kid wants rocks for Christmas?? Mine.  

We actually found flint and obsidian from this company and J was so excited to get it that he actually grabbed a piece out of each kind to try out. 

Patience, you're doing it wrong.

On the weekends, my porch looks like an organic mixture of tree bark in strips and shards of flint and obsidian. That's the remains of creativity in action. 

It looks like a caveman salad.

Handmade knives DJ made from obsidian shards, tree bark, and mesquite twigs.

There is no way I can cover all the weirdness in our family in one post without it rivaling War and Peace, but there's a small peek. We will visit the world of weird again soon. 

Are YOU Ready for 2016?

2016 is just around the corner. Can you believe it??? Where did this year go?? And where are the flying cars??

Do you make resolutions?

I personally don't like to call them resolutions. It makes it easy to give up and quit. I prefer to call them goals. That way it sounds like something you can start again mid-year if you fall off the wagon. It's all about the psychology, baby.

Here are my goals for 2015.

I feel I did pretty well on these. 

Lose 20 pounds. 

Check. I lost 25. 

Take care of myself. 

This meant self-care. Like shaving my legs and wearing makeup more often, taking the time to do a face mask and pedicure, getting my hair cut more than once a year, decide whether or not I was going to continue coloring my hair, not wearing yoga pants EVERY.DANG.DAY...

Basically, trying to look and smell like a person that I would be okay with being trapped inside an elevator with for a lengthy amount of time.

Thank goodness for the shaving because if your leg hair starts hanging on the inside of your pants, feels like you have bugs crawling up your legs, and you frequently bust into a spastic dance, it's probably time to get cozy with a Bic.

Confession: Not all of these things happened on a daily basis, BUT they happened more often than they had previously.

Clean and organize house. 

Well, there are 5 people who live in this house. 5 people and 2 dogs. And a LOT of stuff. 

Thanks to the book, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo, I was able to think about the things we had differently. I didn't count all the bags of things I decluttered, but I probably should have. Honestly, I was ashamed to know. So far, between my cray-cray schedule and life happening, I've made it through clothes (Not my hubby's clothes, though, just mine and the boys'.), books, paper, and a few Komono categories. Yeah, we still have loads of stuff, but I'm still whittling away at it. It's going to be an ongoing process for a while (I'm sorry, KonMari!!), but it's happening and that's all that matters.

As for the cleaning part... *SIGH* I'm still working on that. My handy, dandy BuJo helps me there. Also having kids who are old enough to pitch in quite a bit helps too.

Save Money 

This is one of the "meh" categories. It didn't happen as much as I thought it would, but I did all right. This is something I intend on tackling hard-core in 2016. I'm going to follow this chart and double it.

Google search

Yoga 3x a Week

This is one that I guess I wrote down and then stuck my tongue out at it. I probably did yoga 20 times over the course of this year. I had good intentions, but absolutely no follow through. I honestly didn't really WANT to do it. It always felt like a chore. Not to mention the constant interruptions every time I pulled out my mat. EVERY TIME. I swear it's like the bathroom radar, you know how when a Mom sneaks to the bathroom and everyone and the dogs (literally) has to stand outside the door bellowing questions. Yeah, that happened 98% of the time. 

In case you didn't know, it is damn near impossible to do yoga with a 60 lb. dog trying to sit on your chest while a 20 lb. dog is trying to kiss your face off, 3 kids are asking rapid-fire questions, and the phone ringing off the hook. Definitely not a Zen moment.

Meal Planning

I did well with this one, considering this is my reaction when I even think about meal planning. 

Google search

It just irritates me so much!! But it's one of those extremely useful things that helps your life run smoother, therefore I endure it. Yeah, I may still give it the finger when I'm writing down all the week's meals, but I will admit it does work.


A few more things that happened this year that I didn't even write down because I didn't actually pre-plan them...

• I started 2 at home businesses
• I started blogging again
• I started reading for myself instead of just homeschool related things

These will carry over into 2016 for sure.

What are my goals for 2016?? 

• Tone and build muscle - I'm getting a resistance band set for Christmas and I will be using that bad boy.
• Read books on motivation, being an entrepreneur, personal growth, and literature
• Learn a new skill - I haven't decided this one yet. I have a few ideas spinning around, I just haven't settled on it yet. 
• Make better use of my time
• Grow both of my businesses
• Be more present in the little things
• Finish KonMar-ing my house
• Continue menu planning (#$*&#!@)
• Continue self-care
• Save money

Now that I've shared mine, what are YOUR goals for 2016?

My Bullet Journal

My monthly view 

Back in January 2015, I decided to get myself together. I had already fallen into the deep, black hole that is the awesomeness of planners, but I just didn't feel like I had all my eggs in one basket.

Enter bullet journals.

In my research on Pinterest, I had come across journals that people kept their to-do checklists, book lists, wish lists, ideas, lists of lists they wanted to make. It was just LISTAPALOOZA!

I've always been a list maker and my personal planner was shedding post-it lists, not to mention the piles of lists strewn through my whole house. One place for all of that?? SIGN ME UP!!!

Now to decide on my notebook. I'll admit, I could have started with a spiral notebook, but I'm a paper snob and I have been known to lovingly stroke paper if it's smooth, gorgeous, and the texture of a cherub's backside. Cheap spirals have cheap paper and if I'm going to make this happen, I needed something I WANTED to write in daily. So I decided on a large Moleskine with grid paper. I've always been a sucker for checking boxes. The instant gratification of seeing a task completed by a checked or filled in box gives me the warm fuzzies inside. Yeah, I'm weird. With the grid paper, I can draw my checkboxes IN boxes. Redundant? Maybe. But hey, weird, remember?

So over the last few months my layouts have changed. They started simple. Just a list quickly jotted down, items ticked off. But something wasn't setting juuuuuuuust right with me. I needed to get my doodle on.

One of my earlier layouts. Just boring ol' lists.

I've always been a doodler. Doodling my way through school, irritating teachers left and right because it looked like I wasn't paying attention. Doodling actually helps me focus and it seals in my memory what page has what on it.

LOTS of migrated tasks going on here. 

I'm not an artist by any means, but I have fun and enjoy my quirky, little sketches. It helps me relax and focus on one thing for a while.

Recently, I discovered the Bullet Journal Junkies group on Facebook and that place is BURSTING with BuJo inspiration. Not to mention, Kara Benz aka Boho Berry. She is what I aspire to be as a Bujoist. (I don't even think that's a word, but it is today!) Her layouts, lettering, and ideas make my brain jump for joy and my fingers itch to grab my pen and get after it. I also stalk her on Pinterest and YouTube. She has great walk-through posts that make me feel like I CAN make mine as beautiful as hers. *big fangirl sigh*

I've been playing around with my BuJo lately, shaking things up, so I decided to post a few pages in some Facebook groups I'm in and the interest was insane! You wouldn't believe how a little book of lists got people's attention. That's when I decided to blog about it. I've also sucked a couple of my best friends into this fun, yet useful stationery addiction. I'd apologize, but it's totally a "sorry, not sorry." ;) What's better than something fun AND productive? It doesn't make you gain weight (except in office supplies) and you don't have worries about jail, unless someone stole my BuJo, then I'd probably cut a B.

These are things I track in my BuJo right now:

*Daily to-do lists

*Monthly calendar views

*Weekly menu plans

*Monthly goals

*Favorites lists

*KonMari Categories (from the book, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up)

*Christmas Shopping list

*Books to read

*Favorite quotes

*Blog ideas

*Future to dos

*Ideas for my 2016 BuJo

You can check out the official Bullet Journal website and watch their video to see what it's all about and how to set yours up. I started out with their ideas only, but have modified mine to suit my needs. For instance, the vertical monthly view doesn't work for me. My brain says, "THAT is not a calendar!" So I make my own calendar view for each month.

REMEMBER: If it doesn't work for you, you're not going to use it.

You may like the look of mine, but it may not suit your lifestyle. That is okay! Customize it! If you want to do something, but you don't like it and it feels forced, you're not going to stick with it. Quitting will defeat your purpose if it's to enhance productivity in your life. And who says they all have to be uniform or you have to stick with one way for a year?? Change that stuff up! HAVE FUN!

Anybody else rocking a BuJo or prepping one for 2016?

Welcome to my Mosaic!

Wow!!! It's good to be back to the world of blogging!! It has been close to 4 years since I closed up shop on my old blog due to absolutely insane schedules, and honestly, I never thought I'd pick it up again. I've missed it though. It was a great way to document life, but I wound up feeling like I didn't have anything to say any more.

Those of you who know me personally have just died laughing.

Okay, okay, okay.

Breathe, y'all.

**waiting**

**still waiting**

Are ya good?

Okay, moving on...

The kids are older now, more independent, more headstrong, more manly. Just more. And that covers the amount of laundry too. MORE.

I'm actually at a point where I am happy to be myself and have a lot more self-confidence than I did before, so I'm eager to see where that goes in this blog journey.

So, welcome to my mosaic of a life!!

Be prepared to laugh at me, with me, and maybe learn a few things too.