15:3:1 - Week 1

The first week of January has already ended and I am determined to hold myself accountable for achieving my personal goals this year. I'm taking part in a couple of projects at the moment and the really great thing is that there is definite overlap between all three of them which means more focus... more accountability... and more attainability. 

Today's post is about the 15:3:1 project

15 minutes per day - I have a journal that I'm writing in every night... it's part of another project that I'm taking part in. The goal: writing down three 'wins' each day.  

• Writing down your three wins each day is a crucial part of forming the habits that you want moving forward.
• The positive reinforcement created by writing things down that you associate with 'Project A' activates your brain’s reward centre and helps you to repeat the behaviour and seek out the positivity in your everyday life. 

I'm calling it Project A because I'm still not sure if I want to publicly share this project just yet.

So far the journaling (which I actually started in late November) is going really well.  Yes, I've missed a couple of nights along the way, but in general I've stuck to the plan.  It's interesting to see what I've considered 'wins'.  I really do just let myself relax into it and write whatever pops into my head. 

Sometimes I write about something really connected to 'Project A' and sometimes I include things that have made me feel good during the day or things I've been particularly grateful for.  For example, last night one of my 'wins' was:

• Had to lift a couple of decking boards today.  So pleased that I have the ability (and tools) for simple home D.I.Y projects.

To explain that one, Alfie and Zara were due to have their worming tablets (gosh they've gone up in price!)  I gave Alfie his one (which to be fair was quite large) and he almost immediately went on the deck and dropped it... and of course it went straight between two of the decking planks!  At this point he didn't really know what he'd lost so he was distraught thinking he'd lost a treat and started whimpering and looking through the gaps in the boards and then back at me. 

Just last week Zara had done much the same... but with an actual treat!  I had to remove one of the decking planks, recover the treat, give the treat to Miss Zara and then replace the board.  Mission complete!

This time I had to uplift TWO boards and then Alfie was determined he would get his treat back all by himself.

 Did he find his 'treat'? No he did not!  Mumma had to get down on her belly and reach under the boards to get it.  

Did he like his 'treat'? No he did not!  In fact he spat it out on the carpet three times!  In the end I covered it in peanut butter and then it magically disappeared in one second!

3 hours on a Saturday morning doing something creative for myself

This week I chose to do something creative with cookies.  I was recently gifted a 3D printer (thank you Alfie and Zara) and I've been printing cookie cutter and stamp sets.  On Saturday morning I grabbed some cookie dough out of the fridge (it was left over from New Years Eve) and cut out some shapes.

Hard to tell what the cookies are from the shapes but once you add the fondant it all starts to make sense.  I did most of them with plain white fondant and then I two-toned some dusk and sage to do the bunny ears.

 Then it was time to get creative.  I have been watching tutorials and wanting to try a couple of different techniques to see what I liked.  

The first three cookies were done using Colour Mill colours mixed with Vodka to 'paint' the cookies.  I quite like the little guy on the left with the balloon... the other two not so much:

 

 

For the next set I mixed in some more vodka to water the colours down for a more watercolour effect.  Have to admit that I do quite like these ones:

 

 

 For my final cookie (or so I thought) I copied an idea I'd seen on someones Tik Tok page... and Oh My Goodness I LOVE how this one turned out!!!

So that's where I was going to leave it for the day... and I had definitely spent more than 3 hours... but soooo much creative fun!

So... I started to tidy up... but an idea kept nagging at me... so why not give it a go?  I took one of the cookies from the same cutter set as the watercolour cookies.  Then I gave it a wash of colour to soften the white a bit... added some rose gold paint... and then started layering up the fondant embellishments... and here's the end result:

I've definitely found my favourite style.  It pretty much reminds me of when I was card making and did Tim Holtz styled cards.  I think I'm going to do more of this style in the coming weeks and see what else I can come up with.

P.S. if you thought creativity was clean and tidy... hmmm... not in my world LOL

So that's it from me.. 15:3:1 is alive and well :)