I tweeted yesterday that that first night spent back home in your own bed is awesome, and it is. I love traveling, I love spending time with friends, but I love coming home, too. I especially love coming home to a working computer. Now I just need to tackle the mountain of emails, the 100+ posts in my blog reader, and edit the hundreds of photos I took, and I’ll be golden.
What have you been up to?
By the time you read this, I’ll be on a plane heading to the East Coast for a vacation with the girls! I’m so excited, because this is the first vacation absolutely, positively, strictly for fun, and with a couple life-long friends, too. So, it’ll be quiet around the blog for the next 7 to 10 days. In the mean time, did you get a chance to see all the spotlights?
One blog that I didn’t have time to feature, but is definitely on my must-read list, is Brooke Castillo’s blog on her website, BrookeCastillo.com. Brooke is a weight loss and life coach, and I love her unvarnished, right-in-the-face approach to giving advice. She’s not for everyone, and a lot of times I feel uncomfortable with the way she gets me to confront myself (but not a bad uncomfortable, just a pushing my boundaries kind of uncomfortable). But like Danielle La Porte, I dig the lessons, no matter how awkward they make me feel.
And if you’re still deciding whether or not to jump in and take Editing with Elements, I’m extending the $45 price till I get back.
See you next week!
…because if I don’t, I’m liable to grab my hammer and beat my laptop into tiny pieces.
So, I’m going to beg for a little forgiveness today for not having a color palette done – it’s been a hell of a week, topped off by yet another computer failure. You read that right. This laptop lasted me 7 months before problems arose, which is a brand-new record for me, though I’d prefer to not have to keep setting records like this.
My mother thinks I’m doing this on purpose; a good friend thinks I’m just not physically compatible with electronic equipment. Either way, the frequency with which laptops die on me is highly inconvenient to both my working and blogging schedule.
Damn Murphy and his stupid law.
Luckily, I’ve got a few posts already done, so things over the next week should be relatively normal-ish. After that, though, I’m out of town and who knows if my laptop will be fixed before that happens. I just want to give a heads up ahead of time that if I suddenly go radio silent, there’s an electronic reason behind it.
But on the bright side? I got my eclass done and uploaded, and I’m relatively certain the majority of my files are backed up. Also, at least this laptop didn’t catch fire, right? We can’t underestimate the importance of that.
Friends, my Editing with Elements eclass, the one I’ve been working on for weeks, is done. Done! Is there a sweeter word? Today, I think not, and I am smiling so big right now.
The idea for an Elements eclass came to me last summer, and it’s been a long road from there to here. It took me several tries to actually get this class off the ground. First it was a dying laptop working against me for months, backups failing, losing all of the work I had done not just once but twice, and then a sense of total dejection. It was so complete that I wasn’t sure I would ever want to try again, much less finish; it felt like every time I tried, something bad would happen.
But halfway through February, I sat down and made finishing it a priority. I wanted to do this class because I think any artist or blogger could benefit from a little photo editing know-how. And thanks to your feedback, I got the push I needed to start and finish. And I have to say the lessons are better now than they were the first time around. Clearly things happen for a reason! Also, third time’s the charm.
So, what’s Editing with Elements about? Here’s a few details:
To celebrate, I’m offering an introductory price of $45 USD from now until around mid-April. To learn more or to register, you can visit the class site. If you’ve got a question, email me!
Thanks for being there for this journey!
That quote above has been on my mind for the past week. I’ve been muttering it as a kind of mantra the past few days, and I feel like I’ve been really living it the last seven! It’s been an eye-opening experience, watching and catching myself doing what has become daily tasks that are really procrastination attempts in disguise. Staying focused was challenging, let me tell you.
Anyway, you know I took last week off to tackle two big projects, right – sorting destash beads and getting material done for my Elements class. I also used my time off to begin renovations and a move for Freshly Hued (it’ll be part of the blog shortly), tweak a few things on the blog, line up a few guest posts (March’s theme is going to be great), plan two vacations, and spring clean my office. I was on a roll.
It’s been a crazy time over here at Casa de Brandi, and I’ll spare you the boring details except to say that I’ve made definite progress on my class material (I’m about halfway done, which feels awesome), and I have managed to get my destash beads sorted, priced, photographed, edited, and listed (which was an event onto itself – how to bead suppliers do this every day?).
Honestly, looking at what’s done when compared to all of the things I had to do to get here, it doesn’t look like a lot at all because most of it was behind-the-scenes stuff. There are still more beads to be sorted and listed, still more class work and fine tuning left to do, I still need to clean the closets, and it’s a very good thing I like editing photos because there were several hundred to go through. I could have (and wanted to) extend the break out another week, but keeping that “work expands” quote in my mind, I figured let’s stick to my original deadline. And after a week of crazy busy days, I’m exhausted, but kind of proud at what I managed to do.
More on my class as that project progresses, but as for the destash? It’s all right over here. More will be coming (because I haven’t even gotten started on the findings yet, oy), but at least this is a start, right?
What’s been going on with you?
P.S. If you’re looking for the boros, I’ve got them photographed, just not listed in the destash shop right yet. Email me if you want to take a peek at them.
