I got you a little something. It’s fine if you don’t have anything for me, I mean, we said we weren’t going to get each other gifts this year, and I totally meant it. It’s fine! I just made you a little Spotify playlist of some of my favorite love songs. No big deal. Just because! Just for you.

To listen, click the image below.

1. The Cuppycake Song – Buddy Castle
2. First Day of My Life – Bright Eyes
3. No One’s Gonna Love You – Band of Horses
4. Super Bass – Nicki Minaj
5. You and I – Ingrid Michaelson
6. In Spite of Ourselves – John Prine, Iris DeMent
7. Love You Madly – Cake
8. Tonight You Belong to Me – Nancy Sinatra
9. I’m Into Something Good – The Bird and the Bee
10. You Make My Dreams – Hall and Oates
11. God Only Knows – The Beach Boys
12. Make You Feel My Love – Adele
13. Forever and Ever, Amen – Randy Travis

Each of the sisters is likable, imperfect, refreshingly human. The author used Shakespeare a lot — truthfully, I thought several times that it was over the top, this family sitting around the dinner table, peppering their conversations with couplets and expressing their feelings through iambic pentameter. Fighting with your dad through a monologue from The Tempest? Like, we get it. You really like Shakespeare. But this is forgivable – the story is solid, the characters real, their lives tough and heartbreaking, their decisions imperfect.

The sisters, Bianca (Bean), Cordelia (Cordy), and Rosalind (Rose) each have their own lives to deal with on TOP of moving home and caring for their mother, who is living with breast cancer. They fight, they apologize, they do their best to keep the peace, and there is something very refreshing about the way they pick at each other and fight for each other, teasing and taking care from one moment to the next.

For me, who never had a sister (and who never argued with my parents through the words of The Bard), The Weird Sisters was an interesting glimpse into what it would have been like to grow up with other girls to compete with, fight with, compare myself to unfairly…you know. Sister stuff.

Perfect for reading before bed with a glass of wine – If I had a rating system (let’s say I do, and let’s say I rate in coffee cups), I would give The Weird Sisters 3 1/2 out of 5 mugs. Easy to read, but with enough substance and emotion that you don’t feel like you’re underachieving.

*This review is sponsored by BlogHer, who provided the book and compensation for my time. All opinions are mine. I swear it, by my troth (or something appropriately Shakespearean). For more information on my review policy, click here. 

I’ve made a decision.

Next year, I am going to do my darndest to find my way to the Alt Design Summit.

Several of my favorite photographers went this year, and they came back with glowing reviews. Actually, it seems like pretty much everyone who goes comes back with glowing reviews, not to mention fresh ideas, new friends, and a completely rejuvenated sense of inspiration.

From the Alt website:

“If you’re obsessed with lifestyle, food and fashion blogs, fantastic images, smart ideas and great design inside and outside — all wrapped up with a social media bow — Altitude Design Summit is the place to be. Because we feed those obsessions. “

Doesn’t that just sound perfect? And not just as an excuse for a fun “bloggers summer camp,” as one reviewer put it. I truly believe Alt Design Summit would be a serious catalyst for my blog and business, from networking to brainstorming to the nuts and bolts to finding inspiration where you wouldn’t normally expect it to be hiding.

To get there, though, I’m going to have to kick it into a higher gear. Just like having a nice camera doesn’t immediately make you a photographer, attending Alt Design Summit isn’t going to morph me into a heavy hitting blogger overnight. You’ve got to fine-tune your skills with what you’ve got—you can’t wait for the shiniest equipment, the fastest laptop, the most expensive camera, the swankiest conference to make the hard work easy. Between now and next year’s conference, it’s my responsibility to get serious about my goals, my business, my website, my vision.

Figure out why I’m blogging at all.

Get better at it.

And THEN take my serious, writerly, “serious blogger” self to the Alt Design Summit, and know that I earned it.

Clock’s ticking. Let’s get to it.

What inspires you to be better at your job? What goals or benchmarks have you set for your business this year? Leave your answers in the comments and let’s keep each other in the game.

I’m totally into Ukulele Wednesday again. Can you tell? Come back next week for another one!

*the word “earworm” was totally lifted from my mother. Thanks, Mom!

I’m a very goal-oriented person. Clearly. I set goals all the time in 2011, and it seemed like each month ended with a bulleted list of reasons for not achieving my goals.  Lesson learned: I know that in order to achieve the goals I set for myself, I need to have a certain level of accountability…

So, here are the goals I set for 2012 at the beginning of the year.

And here’s how I’m doing so far:

Reach my goal weight by June 1

So far, so good! I realize that it may come off a little vain or brainwashed by magazine culture to have my weight at the top of my list of resolutions for 2012, so I want to clarify. This isn’t about me weighing what the gossip magazine and television industry says I should weigh – I don’t want to be a scary skinny bobblehead who survives on, like, kale and pickles and lemon juice. This is about my health, my willpower, and my need to stop eating so much pizza and drinking so much beer.

All that said, I lost 5 lbs. in January. Success!

12 in 12

Mom and I ran the Greenville News 5k, and my official time clocked in at 41:53 with a pace of 13:31. In February, we’ll be running the Frostbite 5k here in Asheville, and my goal is to finish in under 40:00. Bring it, February!

No More Debt

Josh and I are on this new budget system that I heard about on the Elevation Church Podcast. It seems to be working well so far, and I think we’re off to a good start.  The hardest part about a budget is realizing that you don’t get to go out to eat or to a bar every time the mood strikes. We’re learning to bargain with ourselves to see where our “fun” priority falls for the week, which is good—but tough to get used to.

Read at least a book a month

Haven’t you heard about my book club? This month I finished The Weird Sisters, which I’ll be blogging about for the BlogHer book club soon. I’m currently reading The Zookeeper’s Wife for the What Are You Reading? book club, and you’re not too late to join us! Click here to join the discussion on Goodreads.

Build a business

Well, I’m freelancing steadily! I have one major client keeping me in steady work. I’m getting used to setting my own schedule and being my own boss. I work on freelance assignments in the evening throughout t\he week, and each Friday I make myself a cup of tea and shut myself in the office with the dogs to finish up the week’s assignments and invoices.

I’ve been doing a lot of brainstorming for the actual business itself – the name, the website, the services offered, the business plan…it’s overwhelming, but I keep reminding myself that this isn’t the kind of thing you cross off your list in a day. I’m happy with where I am and I’m excited about where I’m going.

Did you set goals for 2012? How are you doing so far? 

To make this online book club easier for all parties involved, I set up a group on Goodreads. This way, we can check in and discuss what we’re reading as we’re reading. I’ll still be posting end-of-book recpas on this blog, but if you’re interested in being a part of the What Are You Reading? book club discussions, click this link and sign up.

Currently Reading:

The Zookeeper’s Wife by Diane Ackerman

Previously:

One Hundred Years of Solitude 
Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children 

Pretty Paper Products

Rifle Paper Company is run by a husband and wife team in Florida, and literally everything they make is adorable. This week, I’ve been drooling over their gorgeous calendars (pictured, available here), but they make more adorable paper than I could begin to list here – including precious custom illustrations for your stationery, invitations, or calling cards.

Nan Lawson

Nan Lawson is an illustrator after my own heart. Her self described “cute quirky and nerdy art” is adorable, and I want to hang it all on the walls of my office. Check her out on etsy for more precious prints like The Piemaker (be still my Pushing Daisies loving heart!), pictured.

Downton Abbey

If you’re not watching this show, drop everything and START WATCHING THIS SHOW. I’m not even going to elaborate. You’ll start watching and then you’ll watch the whole first season on Netflix in one week like I did and then you’ll understand.

Family, y’all.

Katniss loves her family more than she loves her own freedom. She is a total mama bear when it comes to Prim, going so far as to volunteer to take her place in The Hunger Games – which gives her a 1/24 chance of survival. For Katniss, there was no other option. She couldn’t let her sweet sister go into that terrible arena, so she went instead. Simple as that.  And I can’t even talk about sweet Rue without getting a little weepy, so let’s just say that Prim is not the only kid Katniss would do anything for. She’s a killer with a heart of gold.

Survival Skills

Here’s the deal: if Katniss Everdeen and Bear Gryllis had a wilderness survival showdown, my money would be on Katniss every day of the week. Katniss can kill and prepare her own food, climb any tree,  outwit her predators, and  she gets ruthless when she needs to.  Chances are, Katniss would charm Bear into giving her half his food and all the blankets and drinking water before she left him in her dust and scampered into her top secret tree fort to commune with the mockingjays and wait for him to cry uncle.

Great Hair

Katniss understands that the best hairstyles are the simplest, which is why she mastered the side braid early on. Girls, you do not have to tease and spray and curl and straighten and spray some more. Just take a page from the book of Katniss, learn how to French braid (or fishtail braid, if you’re feeling fancy!), and move on to more important things. Like survival skills and archery and Peeta vs. Gale (This blog is firmly Team Peeta, for the record).

Priorities

This is probably my favorite thing about Katniss. Peeta and Gale are cute, sure, and she gets the warm fuzzies from them both…but when it comes down to it, she has bigger fish to fry. Like political upheaval and her generation’s survival. Katniss isn’t heartless – she has crushes and she gets her smooches in where she can. But at the end of the day, she’s not a breathless, fluttery, boy-crazy nitwit. Snuggling is nice, but surviving and protecting the people you care about is more important, and Katniss gets that.

Another Role Model:

Lessons from Jo March

My handwriting has always been a big part of who I am. Now that I’m a grown up and I don’t have time for silly things like throwing away sheets of paper because I didn’t like the way my writing looked, I have settled on what you see below, and I’ll take it.

You like how I automatically added the “u” after “q” in my alphabet? Me, too.

If you feel like it, leave me a link to your handwriting in the comments! It’ll be like we’re all passing one big note around the Internet. I like the sound of that.