31 days in May and I blogged them all!

I thought I was biting off more than I could chew, thought I had over estimated my blogging prowess, but I proved myself wrong.  There’s nothing like setting yourself a challenge and rising to meet it.  I have had so much fun posting every day in May, but I know that it’s not something that I’ll be doing regularly.  My usual 1-2 per week, with the special edition of 3 or 4 is more my style, less structured and also gives me time to feed my ideas a little more.  There is one thing I will miss just a little bit, with the regular blogging my stats have skyrocketed.  While I don’t blog for the numbers it’s nice to know people are reading, and with fewer posts will come fewer views (theoretically), though I have mades some great new blogging friends who I hope will stick around!

The good news now is that I’ll have a bit more time to get back too the real world work of designing.  The Daredevil is set to have his first full day of child care on Monday, so watch out world here I come, munchkin free, and ready for inspired designing and busting barriers in my way.  Who knows, maybe our garden will finally be designed and built.  Maybe I could get myself a cool super outfit to bust out in, some ideas…

It’s also the last day of my Happy Days in May project, so to wrap it all up…

28 May 2012 – Child free for an hour while the Daredevil had his child care orientation, time to breathe and clear my head and enjoy a coffee without a babycino friend.

29 May 2012 – Hair cuts for the munchkins, the Drama Queen was right at home, and the Daredevil cruised through his first haircut – mullet be gone!  I have the best kids!

30 May 2012 – Frustrating but fulfilling, spent a large chunk of the day sorting out household and business accounts and records – feel much happier having completed them.

31 May 2012 – Crazy time with the cousins – how much fun can you have with 6 kids under 5 – apparently never too much!

Short, sweet, and time for a little feet up time, though I will be back tomorrow for Friday Finds – damn I didn’t time that one well.

Sam

Woo Hoo! One year old today

One year ago I sat down at this computer desk, at a very similar looking but different computer and tapped out my first blog post.  Drawn Outdoors the blog was born!

I’m just a little bit proud of the achievements I have made in the last twelve months, they’re only relatively small in the bigger scheme of things, but most have been significant first steps into previously untested waters for me.  A bit of faith, a bit of inspiration and a lot of hard work, and I am well and truly on my way.  If I could have predicted the future, I would have thought that this blog would have started out like a burst of Sydney New Years Eve fireworks, and then kind of faded away in the haze of smoke that was left in its wake.  I wasn’t sure that I would still have things to blog about, how I would find inspiration and ideas, and even if anyone would read what I was writing.

Fortunately I was wrong.  My daily page views are steadily increasing each month, and I seem to be enjoying blogging more with each post that I write, this is my 88th post, so by the end of May I will be well and truly into triple digits.  I am constantly amazed that my most read post has had over 1,000 views, and that it was this one…

The spectacular passionfruit flower photograph from http://www.apartmenttherapy.com/la/gardening/prettiest-vine-ever-passion-fruit-054643

What have I achieved, what happened this year and where to from here?? Is it time to make a new blogging year to do list, re-write some aims and objectives and set the bar just a little bit higher? Hell yeah!  It’s time to dream bigger, better and in every colour of the rainbow!

Drawn Outdoors’ first year saw births, deaths and marriages.  We had hospital stays and holidays, and an incredibly huge amount of rain!  At least the weather is my prevailing excuse for the lack of activity on the Drawn Outdoors courtyard.  Drawn Outdoors has attracted a few clients, I’ve dusted off the drawing board and designed some fabulous gardens, though still not ours!  As I said, baby steps, but at least when I prepare my tax return this year I’ll be able to show a very modest income!  Significantly I graduated from the Bizness Babes program, and blogged about it here.  Without these wonderful women and fantastic program I don’t think I would have had the nerve to start down this road.

As for the rainbow coloured dreams, as the Daredevil will be heading off for a day or two of childcare soon I’ll suddenly be presented with the luxury of time.  Time that will be used to grow my business, improve my blog and take the next step and start to develop my website.  With the extra time I’ll be able to start to market Drawn Outdoors and find clients rather than waiting for potential clients to find me.  And maybe, just maybe I’ll actually finish my business plan, rather than continually “improving” it!

I know that this year I’ll be taking bigger steps, confident strides, and there is a possibility you might even see some running and jumping, though dancing might be more my style.  Bigger things are in store, better things down the track.

Happy birthday Drawn Outdoors!  Thank you for reading, I hope I have informed and entertained.  At the very least I hope I have made you smile, think and feel inspired.  I hope you’re really starting to feel drawn outdoors!

Sam

Little drops of milk.

You might have noticed that last week was the first ever postless week for Drawn Outdoors…or maybe you didn’t, but either way, here’s the story of the post that never was.

Mr Perfect had last week off work.  He left the world saving and environmental super hero work to others and dedicated himself to Drawn Outdoors HQ.  Recently I posted about my need to organise (check it out here) and it has been a bit contagious.  Both of us have been feeling a bit unsettled and needing to reset some roots in our now not so new home.  We both expected to have a few more things done and be a little bit more progressed with some of the “projects” we had set for ourselves, but November came along and when we took a look at what we had achieved we were a little underwhelmed.  So, equipped with pre-prepared “Did you remember the milk” lists plus a new “week of organisation” list we set off on mission declutter and organise.

What did we achieve? How did we fare? Are we both still alive (well, obviously I am!)? and what happened to the missing post?  So many questions and well, plenty of time to answer.

The good news is yes, we are both well and truly still alive, not even a scratch or bruise to either person or ego,which if you know our accident prone abilities is a miracle in itself.

Our major achievement was that the messy room is now the not so messy room and we have made space for a desk and drawing board, so hello Drawn Outdoors head office.  The stumbling block now is Christmas.  The space for my drawing board has been earmarked for the christmas tree, so setting up the office will have to wait until the new year.

I’m super excited about setting up the office and have been planning where shelves, desks and storage will go, and what inspirational words and images I might need to make my business home.  This has been a long time coming.  I first started thinking about my home office a while ago in this blog post, and believe me, the thinking hasn’t stopped, it’s just been temporarily stored on a very pretty imaginary shelf.  Green is featuring in my imaginings at the moment, not sure how much I can use without it becoming too much though!

I don't think Mr Perfect will let me paint the walls green!

From a list of 47 things to achieve in the week we managed to get 32 completed, and during this week I’ve knocked a couple more off the list.  Some of the things still to be done revolve around the gardens, and the weather has kind of kerbed our enthusiasm to get outdoors and dirty.  With only a couple more to do’s to be done I’m calling Mr Perfect’s week off a success!

As for the missing blog post, there were a couple of posts started, a sentence here, paragraph there.  You will probably see them over the coming weeks or months as they are finished, but with Mr Perfect and his determination to “get things done” breathing down my neck, time on the computer became limited.  Posts were thought of, but not given time to flourish and finish and therefore I decided that if Mr Perfect could have a week off from the world, so could Drawn Outdoors.

Back to thinking green offices…

Sam