2013 Year in Review

Word Cloud from tagxedo.com

I thought it would be fun to create another word cloud in review of 2013.  You can do the same thing by going here.

Here we go:

• The beginning of the year began with Focus on Life hosted by Sally at The Studio Sublime.  We were supposed to take a photo a week.  I was pretty good up to about October and then it all fell apart for me.  I did have a blast though and I thank Sally for hosting this wonderful blog hop each week.  It was fun to see what pictures I would take and what everyone else took during the course of the year.
• We only participated in five Art Bead Scene Challenges - I am really disappointed in this.  I have my fingers crossed that we will do better this coming year.  I am really happy with what we created for each of the challenges and you can see the pieces here.  I really see growth in our pieces which is what both mom and I want to see in what we do.
• 7th Bead Soup Blog Party - mom and I participated in this wonderful blog hop hosted by Lori, Pretty Things.  Our partner for this blog hop was Jill MacKay.  You can see what we created from the goodies Jill sent by going here.
• I think we participated in all of Erin's, Treasures Found, Inspiration is Everywhere, challenges this year.
• 2nd Annual Challenge of Music - I think this is the most favorite piece we have created (at least for me.
• 2nd Annual Challenge of Travel - this challenge was pretty interesting - it was a "Staycation".  You described your home town.
• Child of God hop - Back in August Erin had a story bead give away on her blog.  Erin was giving away two of her wonderful beads and all you needed to do was a leave a comment answering this question:
  
  
  
  If you are a Child of God and you can do anything, what is that anything you would want to do?
  
  My answer was:
  
  Erin,
  Again happy birthday and I am glad you were able to take some of it to do something for you!
  Thanks for sharing the story of Erv - he sounds like a wonderful man to be friends with!
  I would love to do something more for our military veterans. I especially want to do something at my university for them - I would love to have a Veterans Culture Center as a place to gather for events or have the ROTC students to come over and meet with veterans and hear their stories. A place to collect all the stories of our veterans who are alums and share them with the next generation.
  Thanks again for this awesome post!

• 4th Annual Challenge of Color - this time we created our own palettes to use for our pieces.  We created our palettes Colourlovers.com.  The piece we created was a dragon - which I have wanted to create for a long time - so this was a perfect opportunity!

• I turned 40 this year - I sure as heck don't feel like I am forty - but the proof is in the numbers.  But who is counting anyways!!!!  You can see a re-cap of my 30's by going here.
• The beginning of the extension build onto mom's house so I could move back with her began in April and seemed to be never ending.  The start of the build began here.  I need a page dedicated to just the build this past year.  That seems all that I talked about, and about, and about.
• My niece and nephew were here for their annual visit for two weeks this summer.  You can see all the pictures by going here.  It is always an interesting time when they are here for a visit.  They make you feel like a kid again.  I hope they don't want to stop coming to visit their aunt and grandma for a long time to come.
• We started something new this year - our pictures on metal prints.  We have been taking pictures for years and just storing them, so we finally broke down and had the pictures infused into aluminum sheets.  I need to get pictures of the prints taken so I can post them in the Etsy shop.
• I finally moved into the house at the end of November.  I took the last two weeks of November off so I could move my stuff to mom's house (now our house).  That was the first week - the second week was cleaning and painting my house to get it ready to show to the realtor and put it on the market.  You can see pictures of the move here.  You can see pictures of everything moved into the extension here.
• The last thing this year was participating in the 3rd Annual Holiday Ornament swap by Sally at The Studio Sublime.  Sally was actually are partner this year - now how cool is that!!!
• In December I finally broke down and went to the doctor - haven't been to a doctor (unless deathly ill and went to Urgent Care) in a very, very, very long time.  Mom has been after me and I know I need to take care of myself and not stick my head in the sand.  I had blood work done and found out I am Vitamin D deficient - so started taking vitamins.  I have scheduled my first mammogram for January.  I also need to break down and have my hands looked at again (they were really bad when I was painting and cleaning the house - I was wearing my braces, at night, for almost a month).

The goals for this coming year:

• Submit our portfolio to two of the shows we weren't selected for in 2013 and try one or new two new shows
• I have already submit a couple of pieces for a magazine but I want to submit more pieces in 2014
• Now that I am "Our" house I want us to get back into creating - we barely created anything in 2013.  I have already signed us up for The Echo Creative Blog Hop in February.
• I am looking for more blog hops to participate in - if you know of any please let us know.
• Both mom and I need motivation to exercise.  One motivation for me is that my HDL is low and I need to raise it by exercising or I will be put on medications (which I don't want!).  

  

  I need this guy chasing me on the bike!!!

 Well - that is wrap of 2013.  It sure seemed to go really slow at times and at other times it just seemed to rush right past.

I really hope you had a wonderful 2013 and that 2014 brings you much joy and prosperity!