August Goal Update

I’ll post about my September goals next week. In the meantime, here’s how I did with my August goals.

Design and order sewing labels. Done! Since they’re custom and I needed some advice on what style to get, I don’t have them yet…but I can’t wait to see how they turn out! After several days of internal debate over whether I should use “saroy” or my full name or a monogram or something else entirely, I decided to go with just my name for simplicity’s sake.

Make a photobook of Emma’s first year. I got one done and two more are in work. Before we went to Corpus a couple weeks ago, I made a book for Jose’s mom. I needed a quick turnaround so I used Walmart’s online book-making tool and I was actually quite impressed. It was easy to use, they had a good selection of layouts (including a “magic” feature that would arrange a given selection of photos automatically on a single page), and while the quality isn’t spectacular, it’s really not that bad — and it was ready for pickup <36 hours after I placed the order. AND Jose’s mom loved it.

Of course I want to make one for my parents too, and since I’ve already spent the time in Walmart’s tool, I’m going to stick with that. I just want to edit the photos a bit. The book for Jose’s mom had a lot of Emma and her, and a bunch of Emma with other Corpus family from our trip to the beach back in June; I need to take out some of those, and add in a bunch from our trip to Charlotte in April and from Mom’s visits to Houston over the past year.

And finally, I want to highlight Emma’s weekly and monthly photos along with the monthly letters I wrote, so I’m making a book via Blurb specifically for those. It’s a smaller one that can be tucked away as a keepsake since it’s mainly for me…and for Emma when she’s older. It’s half done and hopefully I’ll finish it this weekend.

Be in bed by 11:00. I tracked my success with this one — on “schoolnights” only — and the result was 12/21 nights or a whopping 57%. That doesn’t sound great, but considering that I was only 30% successful the last time I tried a similar goal in April, I’m counting it as a win for August and I’m going to try for >60% in September.

Complete 2 M.A. book layouts. No comment.

Make myself a skirt. Both done and not done, depending on your point of view. I bought a book called “The Essential A-Line” and the whole idea is that you can use a single pattern to make nearly unlimited variations of skirts. I know an a-line silhouette works pretty well for me and I have high hopes of being able to do exactly what the book says — make several different skirts without having to figure out a new pattern every time. Given that goal, I decided to take things slow and do it right by making a muslin first. What’s a muslin? Well, it’s the basic skirt made out of cheap-o fabric (often muslin, hence the name) that you make to check and refine the fit of a pattern. I also used it as an opportunity to learn how to install an invisible zipper, since that’ll be the closure on any of the skirts I make from this pattern and it’ll be a useful skill to have in the future.

So I did make myself a skirt this month — it’s just not one that I can wear outside the house. But now I know I have a good pattern and I’m ready to tackle my first real skirt. I got some fabric at Joann’s last weekend in a work-appropriate color palette and pattern and by the end of the holiday weekend I hope to have something I can wear to the office!