2015 Goals and How I plan to Achieve Them

For New Years Eve Reed and I headed down to Charleston, SC to spend a night with good friends enjoying the coast and lots of bubbly drinks. On our 3 hour drive down we discussed goals we both had for 2015. We are both pretty stoked about our list and think with a bit of elbow grease we should be able to achieve all of them by 2016!! The list is kinda long but I thought I would share a handful with you because I'm hoping to keep you updated through out the year :)

First I'll do a couple of my Business goals.
As an owner of a small business I have a long list of things to learn and improve on but the biggest three for me are advertising, taxes and new products.

Hopefully in the near future I will do a quick write up on some of the easy, cost efficient and most effective ways I've found to advertise. It may be a bit redundant from other sources but I'm hoping to put it in a perspective that other people who have no clue what they are doing with a business can find a little guidance from my years of running blindly :)

TAXESSS. Basically they suck so no surprise they are something I need to get better at. I've had lots of mishaps that I've had to fix and am learning quickly on how I can make this dreaded topic a bit easier on myself. So I'm going to attempt to make taxes cute and somewhat approachable in 2015.

New Products! This is the fun one. Usually I produce a couple new products every month. But this year I want to push myself to produce 2 new "lines" of products and 5 new large scale furniture designs. Thats a lot. BUT I think the more I push myself the larger audience I can reach and with that the more stream line I can make my shop! (I'm working on starting 1 of the lines this January and having 3 of the furniture pieces completed by April!!)

Now, for the family portion of my 2015 goals. These are the ones I am most stoked about.
I may be like super weird, or getting old, but I'm  a big time budgeter. And I love it.
Like seriously there is something about figuring out how to be smart with our money that just makes me giddy in side! (Weird because I hate math and usually anything to do with numbers...) Most of the goals I will be sharing with y'all are for our 2015 budget. We have some big dreams we are wanting to move forward with and the first big step with all of those is figuring out the MONEY side of things.

First things first. Revamp our 2015 budget. I shared our Envelope system with you almost a year ago and we are still rolling with it and LOVE IT. So be on a look out for a revised version and an update on how we feel about it :)

After we tackle that baby we will be adding the 52 Week Money Challenge to our 2015 budget. We are hoping it can be a fun and rewarding thing to keep track of.

The biggest most exciting goal for 2015 is that we are going to PAY OFF THE TRUCKKKKK. Yes, its going to be the hardest part but we are hoping with revamping our budget, and with the 52 Week Challenge that we can achieve finishing off 3 years of payments in just 1 year.

I know this is "supposed" to be an art/craft/DIY blog so you may not understand why I'm sharing so much about dumb numbers (I'm not sure I do either). But I think the biggest lesson I learned in 2014 was that even though I am a creative person, I cant be creative and complete the projects I want with out proper planning on all sides. That means I need to budget my time and money in order to achieve the projects I've so excitedly planned in my sketch book :) I hope you will join me and maybe find some help from a few of these new little "series" that I will be sharing!!

Party Pail Party Supplies - Beautiful Paper Decorations

Have y'all heard of the party supplier Party Pail? I hadn't heard about them until just a month ago when they contacted me and asked if I would be interested in trying out some of their products for my next party. Once I started clicking through their site I was amazed with all they offer! I created a long list of things that I wasn't expecting to receive but thought I should at least try :) 

Party Pail offers everything from party supplies (paper plates, cups, flatware, ect.) to any and every decor item for loads of different party themes! I knew for our 4th of July BBQ we needed something to give it a little oomph. I already had the paper products I found in Targets Dollar Spot so I was just looking for decorations. 

Party Pail hooked me up with 16" white and red paper fans that were super sturdy and took up a great amount of space above our food table. I also got LOADS of balloons, and red and white tissue balls. These types of party decorations make for a quick and easy way to make your party FEEL like a party! I was super pleased that I could set up everything in under an hour and it looks like we spent lots of time and money. Trust me, I loved the products, and already have a plan to work with them again for some of my seasonal decorations!  

I added a couple little things from the house, like this amazing blue table cloth we got as a wedding gift. We also picked up some festive flowers to add to the simple table scape. Plus I got a super awesome vintage Spiffy Insulated Jug with fun red white and blue stripes that held a yummy lemonade spritzer!

Plus, a new pup is always a great addition to any get together ;)

We knew it was gonna be a little roasty toasty out side but wanted to have an all day blow out Independence day celebration. So besides the festive decorations from Party Pail we decided to spice things up with a BRING YOUR OWN POOL PARTY! Yep you right, it was awesome. A couple people picked up some cheap baby pools and brought their beach chairs. For the rest of the day we soaked up the sun and cooled off with our feet in the pools. 

And you can't have a festive party with out wearing the right outfit! Reed and I went all out with American themed apparel. We had a blast with our party and I can't tell you how awesome it was wot work with Party Pail so go check them out and see what you can get for your next get together!