New Year's Resolutions and how to keep them!

I do believe that New Year's Eve is my second favorite holiday (after Thanksgiving). It's a big day of celebration, requires no gift shopping, no real food preparation and you can make a lot of noise! The best part though, is starting a brand new year. It just fills me with anticipation. What wonderful things will happen in 2011? I don't know about you but I have big dreams! I want to take my Close to my Heart business to new heights, I want to double my team, share all the products in the brand new catalog (you should see them) with my customers and do lots of home parties because that's where I really feel at home (even though it's in your home)!

Personally I want to continue to preserve the memories of my own family through traditional scrapbooking and Studio J and take even more pictures than before!

So, while I was thinking about my goals I did some research and found some great tips for keeping those resolutions and thought maybe you'd like to hear about them too!

1) Keep your resolutions simple. Don't say that you're going to do 300 layout pages this year when realistically you'll be lucky to do 50. Be reasonable and take it easy on yourself. You can always do more!

2) Stick to one or two resolutions. More than that and you're setting yourself up for failure. What are your two most important goals for 2011? My important resolutions are to keep in contact with my customers and team members on a regular basis and to put my own family's pictures into the albums and pages I make for my business, killing two birds with one stone.

3) Tell people!! We all need a little accountability. I make sure I tell my goals to my family, my team members and my customers!! That's a lot of people helping me to keep on track.

4) Set up a reward system! Rewards for me are easy, more products to play with! When I make my specific number of connections with my customers, I get to buy myself a scrapbooking or stamping present!

5) Get a resolution buddy! Find a like minded person who can help you stick to your goal while you're helping her!

6) Make a specific plan. I'm in the process of setting up a schedule so that I can keep in contact with my customers on a regular basis. I am gathering photos and organizing them so when the right paper and layout idea pops up, I can just throw those pictures right on!

7) Keep your resolutions posted! Let's be real, most of us check in on our computers once a day AT LEAST (for some of us, we're actually glued to it). Take out a post it, put your resolutions on it and slap it on your monitor.

8) Track your progress. If you are trying to do a certain number of layouts or cards this year, make up a chart or have a place where you can keep track. I have a blog that is just for me, noone can see it but every day I post how many calls I've made, how many points I've earned towards the Hawaiian cruise I want to win, and how many layouts I've done.

9) Be nice to yourself. If your kid fell off his bike the first time you wouldn't tell him to throw in the towel and give up on bike-riding, right? Well, be encouraging to yourself like you would to him!

10) Take baby steps. Ever watch that movie, "What About Bob?" Hilarious film and in it, the obsessive-compulsive character, Bob, learns to help himself by doing everything in baby steps. You can do the same. If you want to make more cards this year, take little steps. Use January to get yourself prepared, find your papers, patterns, stamp sets and tools and put them all in one place so that you can begin in February. That month, make a plan to make 25 cards, do one a day. Baby steps!!

Okay, so that's it and now I would love to hear what your scrapbooking, cardmaking, papercrafting, stamping resolutions are!! Post them here on the comments!!

Christmas Memories Preserved Fast!

As you saw in yesterday's post, I was able to scrapbook all of my Christmas 2010 pictures in about 5-6 hours on the day after Christmas. My layouts are winging their way to me as we speak and with so little effort and cost. You can do the same thing. Click on Studio J on my website and see how easy it is, then click on the membership deals to see how inexpensive your album can be! Here are a few more of my layouts.

Christmas layouts - The Last Bunch

Please check out the last two posts to see how I was able to scrapbook 70 photos from Christmas is less than 6 hours with Studio J. You can do it too or you can have me scrapbook your Christmas photos for you!! Contact me for more information: (989) 906-6420 or caldreamin05@comcast.net.

Christmas is done and so are all of my layouts

Yes, you read that right. Just two days after Christmas I have finished scrapbooking all the Christmas photos. I took 455 pictures this Christmas (I'm big on taking a lot of pictures to get just the right one), and whittled it down to 70 photos. Yesterday I uploaded my photos to Studio J and between the hours of 2:00 p.m. and 10:00 p.m. I finished 17 two page layouts. That was with a dinner break and an hour break to play Monopoly with my family. So, in all, my album took me about 6 1/2 hours. It was fun too!

I chose the Mistletoe paper set for the whole album because I just loved it for some photos I did a couple of months ago for some 2007 Christmas pictures. Some of the results are below, more coming the next two days. YOU TOO COULD HAVE YOUR CHRISTMAS 2010 PHOTOS ALREADY DONE. Here are your options:

1) Buy a Studio J membership for the cheapest page prices. You can buy a yearly membership for $99 or a 3 month membership for $30. When you do that your pages cost just $6.50 for a 2 page layout. You also have the option to buy a "5 pack" for $55, a little more expensive at $11.00 per two page layout but you can try it out that way. Full price is $13 per two page layout with no membership or package purchased. Check them out here.

2) Option two is to hire me to make your pages. I will make them for $10 per two page layout. You send me your photos (and even journaling if you like) and names of your loved ones and I'll do the pages for you and send them directly to your house. This is the best option for those of you who truly have NO TIME to do your own. Wouldn't it be great to be able to show off your Christmas pages in January?!!!! Call me at (989) 906-6420 or email me at caldreamin05@comcast.net for more information.

I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas, next up is New Year's Eve so you can bet we'll be talking about resolutions this next week and even projects you can to do to help keep them!