October Wrap-Up and November Goals

October was a whirlwind of a month, to put it lightly. Much of the first few weeks flew by as our days were consumed with moving, and unpacking… and setting up the house… and figuring out bills… and… and… and…

That said, even with all the chaos, October ended up being a pretty good month in Magpie world. Let’s see what got accomplished.

1) Jim and I celebrated 7 years together.

So yea, I think we kind of like each other.

2) We bought a house (HOLY SHIT WE BOUGHT A HOUSE) and moved into said house.

Again, no small undertaking. So while most of my other personal projects and goals went on hold throughout this whole process, I still feel like I got SO MUCH ACCOMPLISHED in the last few weeks.

3) Painted and started getting my office in order.

The room I’m using as my office used to be a kid’s room, and was painted a lovely blue color with a bold brown stripe across the walls. The original plan was for us to just leave it as is, and for Jim to take this room for his office (Blue is his favorite color). But as we moved it became very clear that his hulk of a desk wouldn’t fit. So mine it became, and while I did quite like the blue color, the brown made it so that it wouldn’t match any of my decorations, and honestly, while the darker nature of the paint would have made the room awesome for sleeping? Probably not the best lighting for work. So I decided to paint it white.

That decision ended up being simultaneously a great and awful idea. Because while I love my new bright white office? Oh. My. God. The painting process was just never-ending. And I LIKE painting. Honestly, it’s not even done to the point where it should be (I left the ceiling the off-white color it originally was) just because I was SO DONE with painting after the 5+ coats it took to cover up the blue it originally was. It just turned into a total nightmare.

I just have to keep reminding myself that the bright white walls will be great for blog photos.

4) Almost finished three books

I read Tower of Dawn, Unfamiliar Fishes, and most of Outlander this month. Reviews (or rather two reviews, followed by a screed on how much I frickin’ love Sarah Vowell) to come.

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So, overall not bad for a month that was the craziest one I’ve had in, well, almost ever. But now that we’re finally settling in, I feel like I can start making more specific goals again, even if only small ones, just to keep the ball rolling.

Goals for November:

1) Purge my book collection.

I uhhhh maybe have a little bit of a book problem. This became overwhelmingly obvious as we were actually tasked with moving the entire collection over the course of two days. I had never had to do that before. All of my moves before this had been either temporary (which meant the bulk of my collection stayed at my parents house) or a gradual process (in the apartment, I basically moved a few books here and there from my base collection at my parents house as I needed/wanted them). But lugging them all from their hiding places, down three flights of stairs, and into their new home at the house made it abundantly clear exactly how out of hand my collection is. So it’s time to purge.

2) Sew something. Anything.

It’s been a long time since I’ve been able to drag out the sewing machine, and I’m beyond thrilled to finally have my own space in which to make stuff to my hearts content. My skills are undoubtedly rusty, so it’s not like I’m going to start with a vintage dress pattern or anything right off the bat, but a few small, simple projects to get my sealegs back will be just the ticket this November.

3) Get a head start on Christmas gifting.

As I shared last year, I have adopted my Aunt’s long-standing tradition of including a special ornament as the gift tag on all my gifts, and I sort of set a difficult precedent for myself by hand-making and personalizing them all last year. I have an idea for this year’s ornaments, but I’ll have to go ahead and get a start on them, like, now for this to go off without a hitch this year.

But then again, I’m me, so I’ll probably still be rushing to finish them all up at midnight on the 23rd.

4) Finish knitting something. Anything.

Again, I’m just really excited to get back into the habit of making. It’s been such a long time since I’ve felt inspired, and since I felt free enough to leave projects out where I can see them and work on them for 5 minutes here and there like I used to (it was often dangerous – either to the project or to the cat – to leave things out where she could get them in the apartment, and my schedule rarely grants me several hours at a time to make sufficient progress)

5) Get back in the swing of posting regularly, both here and on Instagram.

I had some insta-walk opportunities before the trees began to go bare the last two weeks, so I finally have some decent material for the feed. I’ve also got a few post drafts waiting in the wings, and so hopefully, now that we’re settled, I can start to fall into a routine!

So, small goals, admittedly – but I think they’ll do just fine for helping to get my lifestyle back to some sort of normalcy after such upheaval.

Do you have any goals for this November?