sharing the good news of crafts and cupcakes
Wednesday, October 17, 2012
Sunday, October 14, 2012
Cupcakes!
So, I suppose I just let the last year and a half slip by without doing anything over here, huh? Sorry about that. Forgive me? I'd like to do a better job of working up my side business, so I should probably plug in on the old blog and figure out what happened to my Artfire link. I deleted the sidebar link today, but it hadn't been working for a while and I never took the time to look into what had gone wrong. I feel like I've squandered a bit of time and money with my ArtFire subscription, since I haven't been taking full advantage of it.
I've been thinking a fair bit about why I haven't gotten more stuff done in the last couple years,** since I feel pretty incredibly lazy knowing all the things I should get done and then I add my Pinterest obsession to the mix and there's a million more things that I want to do and be and, well, it can leave a person feeling kind of down about themselves. I'm not usually a down about myself kind of person, but I certainly feel like I've been lacking motivation and follow through and I want to get to the bottom of it so I can find the ladder and climb out of whatever pit of procrastination I've fallen into. I've traced it to a few things: two years ago we moved from a 3 bedroom, 1050 sq ft condo into a 5 bedroom, 1600 sq ft 80 year old house which needs a fair bit of work, with very little know-how and very little extra money. Two years ago, I gave birth to our third child: a wonderful lot of laughter and a bit of chaos. And it all seems to come down to one word: overwhelmed. And it's debilitating. And paralyzing.
** I know many of you think that I'm some kind of superwoman who gets loads of shit done and has it all together. And to be fair to myself, in the last two years we moved, had a new baby, raised that baby to be a happy and healthy two year old (on top of parenting the five year old and the seven year old), replaced our kitchen ceiling, painted all but a few rooms of the house, put in a raised vegetable garden. I also did P90X twice and lost 42 lbs, which means I'm down to pre-wedding weight. But there are also many afternoons and nights where I think I should be doing something... getting my basement organized, painting and organizing the craft room, decorating my house properly, organizing the rest of my house properly (I still feel like I haven't fully moved in on some days!) and I just sit there with no get up and go.
And sometimes I think that perhaps I'm afraid of failure so I don't push myself to succeed. I'm afraid that my results will never look like the cute pictures on Pinterest and I'll be disappointed in all the effort that I expended to get to the failed result. And when I face the reality of these fears, I'm saddened at myself because it's kind of new to me to be so afraid to fail, or at least to be aware of the fear and for it to paralyze me like this. But the overwhelmed feeling is contributing to the fear because I feel like there's so much to do that I can't possibly get it all done, so why even start?
So I need to do something. I'm not sure if this is the right place to start, but waiting for myself to get the motivation and energy to get the craft room to a beautiful and work-able place hasn't happened either, so maybe I have to work backwards. So I agreed to make some cupcakes for the dessert auction portion of the annual banquet at the university I work at: The King's University College. And I took it on as a little bit of a promotion challenge. I knew deep down that not many people would take my business cards and it probably wouldn't result in much new business. But my cupcakes went for $105! For one dozen Salted Caramel Chocolate Cupcakes (oh! they were sooooo delicious!). And one person liked my Facebook page. That was enough encouragement for me to get going on doing a better job of this business.
I decided to work on my business whenever my husband is out doing comedy (more on that later, perhaps), so that'll give me at least once or twice a week, which is more than I was doing before! Bit by bit.
Why not put a cupcake picture in the middle of a post?
I've been thinking a fair bit about why I haven't gotten more stuff done in the last couple years,** since I feel pretty incredibly lazy knowing all the things I should get done and then I add my Pinterest obsession to the mix and there's a million more things that I want to do and be and, well, it can leave a person feeling kind of down about themselves. I'm not usually a down about myself kind of person, but I certainly feel like I've been lacking motivation and follow through and I want to get to the bottom of it so I can find the ladder and climb out of whatever pit of procrastination I've fallen into. I've traced it to a few things: two years ago we moved from a 3 bedroom, 1050 sq ft condo into a 5 bedroom, 1600 sq ft 80 year old house which needs a fair bit of work, with very little know-how and very little extra money. Two years ago, I gave birth to our third child: a wonderful lot of laughter and a bit of chaos. And it all seems to come down to one word: overwhelmed. And it's debilitating. And paralyzing.
** I know many of you think that I'm some kind of superwoman who gets loads of shit done and has it all together. And to be fair to myself, in the last two years we moved, had a new baby, raised that baby to be a happy and healthy two year old (on top of parenting the five year old and the seven year old), replaced our kitchen ceiling, painted all but a few rooms of the house, put in a raised vegetable garden. I also did P90X twice and lost 42 lbs, which means I'm down to pre-wedding weight. But there are also many afternoons and nights where I think I should be doing something... getting my basement organized, painting and organizing the craft room, decorating my house properly, organizing the rest of my house properly (I still feel like I haven't fully moved in on some days!) and I just sit there with no get up and go.
And sometimes I think that perhaps I'm afraid of failure so I don't push myself to succeed. I'm afraid that my results will never look like the cute pictures on Pinterest and I'll be disappointed in all the effort that I expended to get to the failed result. And when I face the reality of these fears, I'm saddened at myself because it's kind of new to me to be so afraid to fail, or at least to be aware of the fear and for it to paralyze me like this. But the overwhelmed feeling is contributing to the fear because I feel like there's so much to do that I can't possibly get it all done, so why even start?
So I need to do something. I'm not sure if this is the right place to start, but waiting for myself to get the motivation and energy to get the craft room to a beautiful and work-able place hasn't happened either, so maybe I have to work backwards. So I agreed to make some cupcakes for the dessert auction portion of the annual banquet at the university I work at: The King's University College. And I took it on as a little bit of a promotion challenge. I knew deep down that not many people would take my business cards and it probably wouldn't result in much new business. But my cupcakes went for $105! For one dozen Salted Caramel Chocolate Cupcakes (oh! they were sooooo delicious!). And one person liked my Facebook page. That was enough encouragement for me to get going on doing a better job of this business.
I decided to work on my business whenever my husband is out doing comedy (more on that later, perhaps), so that'll give me at least once or twice a week, which is more than I was doing before! Bit by bit.
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