Working at home and Time Management

I love working at home, it is such a blessing to be able to do what I love and is so fulfilling and do it from home so I can homeschool my boys too (though the homeschool part can, at times, seem very much like a fiery trial instead).

But, I realize how few people get to do what I am doing and know it is a gift.

AND...

I often don't make the most of this gift.

It's so easy to get sucked into the black hole time-vampire that is the internet.

Information on ANYTHING at just a few clicks...

tutorials over everything and anything I'd ever want to do...

so many fashion ideas my head won't quit spinning...

I can easily spend hours planning how to plan and dreaming what to do next...
and then realizing it's time to run off to the next thing,
or start dinner,
and my plans to work are now plans to get the family moving,
 and another day has passed and nothing was done.

But this year is going to be DIFFERENT!  
Time Management is the theme for my year.
So I need to learn how to be better and more disciplined, so of course that means listening and reading and talking.

For LISTENING I love listening to podcasts while I'm sewing and my top favorites for time management, self improvement, and motivation/inspiration are:

Michael Hyatt's podcast This is Your Life --great motivational podcast that makes me feel like I can accomplish ANYTHING!

Dave Ramsey's Entreleadership --even though I'm not a business leader, we are all leading someone, and the tips and advice here are beyond amazing, for EVERYONE.

Erik Fisher's Beyond the To Do List --more motivation in this podcast as Erik interviews successful people.  My favorite part is when he asks each person what their normal or ideal morning is like.

For READING this year I have a list of 12 books (and growing) to finish this year.
  Some of them include:

Peter Bregman's
18 minutes: Find Your Focus, Master Distraction, and Get the Right Things Done

John C. Maxwell's

The 15 Invaluable Laws of Growth

and I just finished up Dave Ramsey's
Entreleadership book.
The section on time management was truly eye opening.




And at the end of last year, I finished reading
Michael Hyatt's Platform: Get Noticed in a Noisy World
which had a lot of real world, here's-what-you-can-do-today information.

And for TALKING, I'm hoping to talk to you and other work-at-home business people for tips and tricks for keeping focus where it needs to be.

What's your best advice?

Thanks in advance!  -Kari

Almost FREE handmade business cards

I was surfing the wild seas of Pinterest last night and saw one of the people I follow had pinned some handmade business card ideas.  

I ran out of my store bought business cards long ago, but couldn't find anything that I absolutely loved enough to plunk down $30+ dollars, so hadn't ordered anything yet.

source

When I saw these handmade cards, I immediately perked up.

source

My brain started spinning with all the gorgeous and simple ideas and I played around with it for a bit.  I came up with a self-printed, sleek, simple, and cute idea that I absolutely LOVE!

I was even able to figure out how to download a free font I love (from dafont.com) and install it into Word.  I printed them out on cardstock and then zipped a line of stitching down the side for a more personal and original look, then cut them out.

I think they look almost like a clothing tag and are PERFECT for sliding in with each order!

I. LOVE. PINTEREST!

The awesomeness that is PicMonkey...

I was so bummed when picnik.com went down.  Google bought it, took it offline, moved it to Google Plus (does anyone really understand Google Plus?) and removed the features that made it awesome.

It was a low point in my life.

BUT...

Then I found PicMonkey.com and my picture life was good again!

PicMonkey is super easy to use, intuitive, and has loads of features to turn boring pics into WOW pics.  Evidence below:

This is my pic, straight from the camera.

  (The wind picked up at EXACTLY the right time to add drama!)

Not bad, but now Wow either...

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Then with a few tweaks on PicMonkey Cami turns ghostly beautiful.

Right now PicMonkey is completely free (and no, I'm not getting paid to endorse their product, I just LOVE it!).  You sign up and can use all their features.  In the future, the special features will probably cost an annual membership (like Picnik did), but for now, it's completely free.

My favorite tweaks to the photos are really boosting the highlights, adding a bit to the shadows, upping the clarity and fading in some splashes of "orton" for a soft, beautiful look.

Love it!