2016 Goals: June

Alright... so I missed May. Dang. But I have a good reason... so good, it deserves it's own post. Later. Promise.

Here's how the first half of 2016 has gone:

16 GOALS FOR 2016:

1. Read 30 books. 16/30 (Over half way there! On the right track!)
2. Try 16 new Ottolenghi recipes. 3/16 (Hmmm.. time to pull these out for a browse-through for more ideas)
3. Try 16 new (loose-leaf) teas. 16/16 (Awesome! I'm not drinking much tea through the summer, but this fall my goal is to finish some of the tea I have so that I can buy more guilt-free!)
4. Put up shelves and organize craft room. Make it inspiring. (Going to work on this soon as we want to move our rowing machine down here where it's cooler.)
5. Finish Amber art book - this year I WILL! (Only a few pages left!)
6. Work in sketchbook daily. (Getting a bit more consistent with this since signing up for Alisa Burke's Beautiful Birds class.)
7. Blog weekly. (Ha! Let's consider July a new start and see what I can do!)
8. Finish 2 cross-stitch samplers. (This is definitely more of a fall/winter craft for me... I'm going to pull out a project though. Maybe if I see it daily, it'll prompt me to add a few stitches.)
9. Travel somewhere new. (We booked off a week and a half at the end of July and are planning on driving out East! Looking forward to it!)
10. Sign up for and pass my SOCRA certification. (YES!)
11. Make an inventory of all my books. (Must start this soon!)
12. Wake up earlier and practice yoga every morning. (Now that I work 8-4 or 7-3, I'm changing this goal to be evenings. I fell off the wagon the last few weeks due to the heat, but I will reapply myself this month!)
13. Make a weekly meal plan and prep veggies on the weekend. (Keeping up with this one pretty consistently.)
14. Get rid of junk we never use (i.e. downsize our "things") and organize storage and spare spaces. (Need to get on this one...)
15. Work on making the backyard nicer (plant flowers, landscape, garden). (Pat built me a raised bed that I've transformed into a garden! The landscaping still needs some work, but I have lots of potted flowers and am quite happy with how things look so far!)
16. Set reminders in my phone to make me check in on my goals at least monthly (and blog about it). (5/12 monthly reviews - only missed one for the first half of the year.)

Looking pretty good to me! I'm making good progress with the ongoing goals and have crossed off a few of the easy ones. I was trying to think if I wanted to add any goals to this list, but there's nothing striking. I'm going to keep plugging away at these. Accomplishing goals is so satisfying!

What goals have you crossed off your list lately?

Sketchbook Pages: Recently Finished

I haven't been around here much lately - it's always difficult to justify spending time on the computer when it's so gorgeous outside! Never mind that work has been crazy busy and other things are happening around here that I'll share in another post.

Anyway, to get back into the blogging rhythm, here are two random sketchbook pages from my recently finished book:

I sketched out this rough tree on our trip North to visit family for Easter. I was inspired mostly by the shape of some evergreens and wanted to keep it simple, so I just used a bit of cross-hatching to distinguish the needles from the bark. I'm really happy with how it turned out and want to experiment a bit more with this style.

I'm still turning to mandalas most of the time, and I decided this one needed to be more of a flower. I used a few markers to add colour and really make things pop. I particularly love how the pink petals and yellow polka-dot centre turned out.

Besides mandalas, I've also been doodling lots of birds lately... but I'll save that for my next post. Hope everyone had a great weekend and is looking forward to the long weekend next week (I know I am)!