My Happiness Project - January

It is not unusual for me to have goals, and for the past month during a break from work and my Masters, my personal goals included catching up on some leisure reading. I seem to have accumulated a stack of interesting books last year with the best of intentions to read them; however, life happens and soon it was back to work and starting my Masters. 2015 was a tough year and I know one of my top priorities for this year needs to be happiness.

Ironically, I bought this book several months ago, before my life seemed to fall apart. I'm so glad that I finally took the time to read through it - I highly recommend it, not only to people who are going through tough times, but to anyone looking to make positive changes to their life. With the new year approaching and some free time to get my creative juices flowing, I decided to create my own Happiness Project inspired by this book. Of course I knew right away that I wanted to do something crafty...to be able to display my goals and resolutions somehow and then have a keepsake to show my progress afterwards. I decided to create 12x12 layouts for each month. I hope that by posting these on my blog it will allow me to reflect on the previous month and inspire me to start fresh with new aspirations each month. For my project, I will have a focus for each month with 5 goals to track. At the end of each month, I hope to include pictures on these layouts of the month's highlights. This is ambitious, but I hope I can do it!

January

You're looking for the explanation, the loophole, the bright twist in the dark tale that reverses your story's course. But it won't reverse - for me or for you or for anyone who has ever been wronged, which is everyone. Allow your acceptance of the universality of suffering to be a transformative experience. You do that by simply looking at what pains you squarely in the face and then moving on. You don't need to move fast or far. You can go just an inch. You can mark your progress breath by breath. - Cheryl Strayed (Brave Enough)

Goals:

1. Eat & Cook Healthy - eat Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner

2. Exercise - Yoga, Ski, Snowshoe, Walk

3. Go Outside

4. Sleep - Be in bed by 9:35pm on weeknights (that's when The Tonight Show starts!)

5. Be Creative - Cards, Cook, Crafts

Most supplies are Close To My Heart:

Paper - La Vie En Rose paper collection; White Daisy, Glacier cardstock;

Embellishments - Le Pen, Gold sequins, Gold medley, Black Hemp, Gold PML Overlays, washi tape;

Cricut cartridges - Artbooking; Designer's Calendar (not CTMH).

I got a Minc machine by Heidi Swapp for Christmas and was stoked to play around with it for this project. Here is a before and after photo of the tag on the first page.

Well, here goes! I was able to meet all of my goals for the first day of the month and I hope for more success throughout the month :)