free printable

My Amazing Month

March 3, 2019 by Annie Leave a Comment

This is a blog post straight from the heart. I need help! I need My Amazing Month! Do you ever feel like you are your own worst enemy? I did really well last year to lose a bit of weight and improve my work life balance and self-care. I made great progress with all my projects but it has all started going badly wrong!! I feel like I need a kick start to a new routine and to find some motivation from somewhere. Do you know the feeling?

It is time to stop thinking about it. It is time to stop putting this off until next week, next month, next year and start making the changes. Join me and we will knock ourselves into shape together!!

I don’t know when you are reading this. I am writing it just at the start of a month. I have missed the first two days and I am tempted to put this all off until the start of next month but NOOOO!!!!! that is just more of the same bad attitude and there is no need…. This is ONE month – it doesn’t have to be a calendar month. Download the tracker, print it, fill it out and START NOW!!!

Let me introduce you to the tracker that will help us sort ourselves out!! There are five sections to the tracker – five sections that you need to give thought to as you prepare for your Amazing Month!

1. Focus

This section of the tracker is where you put the areas of your life you want to focus on. I have allowed space for five items here. Any more than five and you are not focussed! Arguably you could only include one item here, it all depends what you want to fix! Whatever you put as your focus I would ask you to consider including self-care. Life is so pressured and we are all so hard on ourselves. It is easy to forget that we have a responsibility to look after our mental well being.

2. Goals

Use this section to capture the goals you are setting yourself for the month. These should be things that you can achieve in the space of a month as progress towards your wider/life goals. If you are looking to complete a larger project then break it down into a realistic chunk that you can deliver if you really apply yourself for 31 days! I will share my completed tracker here so you can see the challenge I am setting myself. I also plan to post my part completed tracker each week so you can see whether or not this process is working for me!

3. Daily Tracker

This is the business section. Look at your goals and focus and work out what actions or habits you need to set in order to deliver against your 31 day goals. There is enough space to record 10 items here but if you feel you need more just print more sheets! I suggest you also write the items you are going to track on an index card or other small format that you can keep with you all the time. You could print two copies of the tracker and cut this section out to keep with you. Keep checking the balance of the things you are tracking. Make sure you leave room for self-care and try not to make the schedule so punishing that you can’t keep to it. The idea here is to plan for success.

4. I am doing this because…..

This is your space to remind yourself of why you are doing this. Try to put thoughts and feelings into this box that will keep you going through the month when things get hard. Things will get hard if you have set your goals appropriately but the messages you give yourself here will carry you through. One thing that drives me as I start My Amazing Month is that the do nothing option doesn’t leave me in the same position in a months time. Everything would be on month worse!! 🙂

5. Treats!

Ok – it cannot be hard work all the way. There have to be some treats to look forward to and to fall back on when things get too hard! Consider here which treats would fit in well with your goals. There is no point in having a box of chocolates as a treat if losing weight is one of your goals! This is just one month remember?! You have to try to live without the box of chocolates for 31 days! List here the things that you would like to have as treats during the month.

One of the by-products of my plans for the month is a significant cash saving. I am planning to do more walking and less eating and drinking! This means I can plan a nice treat at the end of the month, a spa visit or some new clothes. Why not see whether you can make savings as part of your Amazing Month and then you can use any spare money to treat yourself to something at the end of the challenge.

That covers all the preparation work. Here is the free download and below that is a picture of my completed tracker as I start My Amazing Month.

My Amazing Month – A4 (172 downloads) My Amazing Month – Letter (54 downloads)

Are you going to join me? I don’t know how many people this will reach but I would love to hear from you in the comments section if you are joining me in this challenge. I will share my progress and I look forward to hearing about your success too!

If you like this tracker then please check out my other pages where you will find printables to help you organise life and plan family activities.

Have an AMAZING MONTH!!!

Annie 🙂

Get Organised!!!

March 2, 2019 by Annie Leave a Comment

Three more basics for your family bullet journal. I use these more than any other pages in my bullet journal so I thought I would create them as loose leaf templates for you. The downloads are available in A4 and letter formats.

Do list

The trusty do list! I used to have several of these running in different notebooks and a couple of electronic ones for good measure! I recognise that my do list habits are not good. Habits such as adding tasks to the list that are already complete (so I can give myself a tick)…. not really helpful. Another trap I often fall into is putting enormous tasks on the list that I have no hope of completing… again not conducive to making progress. Here are some tips for constructing a useful motivating do list….

Make each task clear so it is obvious when it has been completed.
Break down larger tasks into actionable elements
Only put tasks on the list that you can complete yourself
Put the tasks on the list that will make a real difference
Put the hardest tasks first and do them first or alternate one hard one easy.

Final tip from me is to date the tasks. Write down the first date you put the task on the list. This is one thing I started doing when I realised my do lists going back months had some of the same items on. These were items I always wrote down but never actioned. I was constantly carrying the weight of failure to complete these actions. Either these were things that weren’t important to me (or anyone) or I was really letting myself down by not doing them! One item that sat on my list for more than a year was to start a blog! 🙂

Do List - prints to A4 paper (216 downloads)

Do list - prints to Letter paper (167 downloads)

The printable formats you can download here have a space to include the date. If you find a task sitting on the list for a long time then consider…is it REALLY something you want to do? If so GET ON WITH IT! If not, strike it from the list and give yourself a break!

When did I last….

This is a great tracker for routine tasks. Everything from changing beds and towels to caring for pets and cleaning rooms that aren’t in frequent use (if you are lucky enough to have them!). Even jobs that are supposed to be done weekly get a slot on my list and putting them here means my do list doesn’t fill up with repetitive routine.

You can also use this tracker as a reminder to stay in touch. Time passes soooo quickly. Adding reminders such as when did I last call Jack or visit Rachel reminds you not to lose touch. Fill out the list and check it over each week.

When did I last... prints to A4 (214 downloads)

When did I last... prints to letter paper (239 downloads)

Activities List

This is one of the layouts we use as a family to record things that any of us would like to do. We have often used it at the start of school holidays to work out how we will spend any free time we have together. Having this list helps to get the best ideas together. The first step is to brainstorm all the activities each member of the family would like to do. We keep a list open all the time and add to it whenever the inspiration comes!

The layout includes columns to estimate the cost and to indicate whether an activity is indoors/outdoors… important when you consider the normal British weather. Using the completed list to drive the discussion about how to spend time as a family teaches us lots of interesting things:

The budget is not limitless
Everyone likes doing different things
Negotiation and persuasive skills are needed if you want your activity to make it to the top of the list
Time is precious!

The layout also includes a section where you can add notes and review the activity. We use a simple method of *’s out of 5 and each member of the family has a colour they normally use. I think this teaches us that it isn’t always the expensive activities that are the most enjoyable. The ratings people give can be a real eye-opener!

Activity Planner - prints to A4 (507 downloads)

Activity planner - prints to letter paper (223 downloads)

Next week I have a habit and sleep tracker for you… or I will have if I complete all the actions on my do list! Have a good week!!

Annie 🙂

Family Menu planning – free printables

February 24, 2019 by Annie Leave a Comment

I don’t know about you but I find menu planning for the family one of the least enjoyable jobs of the week. Trying to keep everyone happy and keep them healthy whilst fitting around everyone’s busy schedules is hard! Keeping up with changing tastes is impossible. It is easy to get into a rut of making the same dishes over and again. Even this only works till everyone gets bored and tastes change – which seems to happen every other week!

I have two free printables for your family bullet journal to help you with the job. Firstly, a tracker that lets you list all the meals make and get feedback from everyone on which dishes they like or do not like. We keep this list in our family bullet journal and anyone can update their preferences as they change. Everyone’s tastes change from time to time but this is especially true for children as their palettes develop.

From time to time we try new recipes and we decide as a family whether or not something new is worth adding to the list – ie would you ever want to have this again!? The format of the tracker allows you to list down the left hand side the dishes you make. Along side the list of dishes, we take a column each and put our initials at the top. Everyone scores the meals according to their own preference. We use a rating of 1 – 10. You could just put stars next to your favourites or use ticks and crosses – choose your own method to show your preferences! The free downloads for these printables are at the bottom of this post in both UK (A4) and US (letter) formats.

The other bullet journal format that I like to use is the documented weekly menu plan. I find that this helps in soooo many ways! Firstly it helps keep cost under control – planning ahead for the week enables batch cooking and planned use of leftovers. We also do less impulse buying which means reduced waste. Where possible we involve the family in planning which can lead to happier meal times and less grumbling (note I say ‘can’ lead to!). Keeping a bank of these sheets also means that you can refer back to weeks that worked well and repeat them – although too much repetition is a source of grumbling, at least it is in our house!

It helps when starting the plan for the week to run through the favourite dishes list at the top of this post – it is easy to forget things that you have made in the past that have worked well. It is also fun if your children are old enough, to get them to add dishes from recipe books that they themselves can make. Anything to add a bit of variety is a good idea.

Each day and meal on the menu plan has a space to write how many people the meal is being made for and the boxes are deep enough to include more than one dish. We have some days where we cannot all eat together and other times when we have family or friends round. The notes section is helpful to include any info for the week eg if someone is away from home or has decided to avoid meat for the month! 🙂

Here are the links. I hope you find these printable trackers helpful and that you come back again for more of these free downloads as I build the collection for your family bullet journal. Please let me know if there is any particular format you are looking for and I will try to produce it for you.

Menu Plan layout - A4 size (169 downloads)

Menu Plan layout - Letter size (165 downloads)

Favourite Meals - A4 format (171 downloads)

Favorite Meals tracker - Letter format (159 downloads)

Happy menu planning and have a good week!

Annie 🙂

pricing basics

June 30, 2018 by Annie 2 Comments

Firstly if you are reading this CONGRATULATIONS on finishing your handmade project. Finishing projects is not my particular strength but I am super good at starting them 🙂

I love to browse the beautiful projects on Etsy and Ravelry and I believe that all the lovely creative people who make them deserve to be rewarded appropriately for the joy and beauty their work delivers. However, when I checked out the pricing of these amazing handmade products it appears to me that it is often grossly undervalued by the creator!

My current passion is crocheted blankets. Looking on Etsy I found that pricing in that category has a huge range. Some blankets are priced at £1,000 + and are commission only or designer one-offs made with expensive yarn. However, some are priced at a level that looks to barely cover the cost of the materials.

There are several different ways to value your work for sale and the best method for you really depends on your overall goal.

The basic approach. If you were producing goods for sale in a commercial world you would work out the full cost of your raw materials, add in the cost of your time and any overheads and apply a profit margin to get your price excluding shipping cost. From a review of handmade goods for sale on Etsy, I can see some examples of this type of pricing but in many cases the prices being charged look too low for this to have been the calculation used.

This means at first impression, either craft workers are selling their work at a loss or grossly undervaluing their time. It could be that they are selling individual projects at a loss but overall their business is making a healthy profit… interesting?

There are many possible reasons you are looking to sell your work but most of us are looking to make money one way or another!

If making money is your primary objective, is the income from selling your finished products where you will make that money? This might sound like a strange question but…. bear with me….

Let’s assume you spend hours producing a beautiful crocheted blanket. The cost of yarn alone is likely to be at least £25 and could be far more than £100 for premium yarns. Add in the time to make the item… again this will be a huge range of values let’s assume 90 hours which would mean two hours a day for a month and a half. In the UK we have a national minimum wage which pays adults between six and eight GBP per hour so to simplify let’s go for the middle of the range and say £7 per hour. This means the labour cost of your project is 7 multiplied by 90 i.e. £630.

I am not sure whether you would expect to earn the minimum wage for your talented creative time but that is the minimum value that the outside world would place on your time in employment in the U.K.

Keeping things simple, you can see that the cost of producing the blanket is £630 for your time plus at least £25 for the materials giving COST £655. This means that you have to charge at least this much to avoid making a loss. The value you calculate for your time is the same as a wage or salary compensating you for your time. Anything you sell the item for on top of this cost is the profit you make. I have put together a worksheet to help you with pricing your project. Here is the free download. I hope you find it helpful. Pricing basics (661 downloads) . This is what it looks like completed for a project.

I have not completed the commission cost as this is a function of the price on some selling sites. You do need to consider this cost when working out how much you are earning. I do not include shipping costs to your customers as these are normally on top of the sales price.

If craft projects are not your source of income and you ‘donate’ your time for the love of the craft then all you have to consider is your cost of yarn and any overheads. Anything above that would be ‘profit’. However, do consider, your time is a limited resource. You can only produce so many items. You would need to view this as a way of funding your hobby rather than anything you can build a business on.

There are other ways to make money from your work. In the example above, you have spent let’s say 180 hours to create a single product. If you want to make a living, you have to cover the cost of those 180 hours with the sale of that one product. What if you had two products at the end of the project? You would spread the cost of that time over those two products! The main source of your income is the primary product but you can make secondary products from the same effort.

1. If your project was designed by you, the best secondary product from your work would be the pattern or instructions to produce the work. You need to write up the pattern or instructions. Ideally get those instructions tested by someone else. Save the pattern as a PDF type file and you then have something you can offer for sale as many times as you like. This means those original 180 hours have produced a number of products that is only limited by the demand from your clients! You could end up making more money from the pattern than from the finished item! I will put out a more detailed post on this in future.
2. You could photograph the work and put those images up for sale.
3. You could put short video tutorials together showing your work in progress and explaining any tricky elements. Again these videos can be monetised.
4. If you enjoy writing you could consider blogging about your craft. Using images of your work and explaining the techniques used. There are many free resources to show you how to start and monetise a blog. This link takes you to one of my first posts where I go into more detail on getting set up and the free tools I used. Starting a blog is easy follow the link below, pick a name for your blog and sign up for a low cost plan. Note this link is an affiliate link which means I could receive a small payment at no additional cost to you. This is how I keep my blog going.