New Year's Resolutions

I'm not a big fan of New Year's Resolutions, mostly because when the dust settles and the resolutions are left by the wayside, I don't like carrying the guilt around. So most years I skip the resolutions. But this year, for unknown reasons, I felt compelled to resolve. And, my big, huge, amazing resolution for 2011 is to try to be less of a procrastinator. When I dusted off the cobwebs on my blog, I realized that I have a serious case of procrastinatoritis. I can't believe that I haven't touched my blog since July. Granted the last post about my cowboy boots is pretty spectacular and I love pulling up the blog and seeing the photo of the boots. But seriously... July?!

Anyway, one of my first self-imposed assignments was to get to work on pulling my receipts and invoices to get prepped for tax filing. Mission accomplished! I'm happy to report that when the W-2's and 1099's come in I'll be ready for filing. This opens up new worlds for me in January. What an incredible feeling. One thing that really helped me this past year was to update Quick Books as I made sales so that I was able to use the data for my quarterly state sales tax filings and as a result I had alot less to input at year end. I was also able to work during the year at plugging in my purchase receipts so the task of finishing up was a lot less than it would have been if I had to plug in the whole entire year all at once.

Next, I've been putting off and putting off going through my really, really old inventory as well as pieces that I've been hanging on to that had glaze problems. I like to smash them up and put them up for sale for the mosaic makers on Etsy. I sell them for a price that covers the shipping and listing fees. It's cool for me because I know that they're going to be put to good use and it's certainly better than adding them to the landfill. So this week I had a smash-fest and put together my first Flat Rate USPS Priority Mail box, I listed the box on Etsy and pretty soon after it sold and I was able to send it on it's way to a new life as mosaic pieces. Now my challenge will be to continue the momentum and get another Flat Rate box smashed and listed.

Another major accomplishment - I usually wait until the last day, last hour, last minute to send off submissions for my favorite teapot shows. One show in particular is the Mad Hatter's Tea Party over in West Palm at the Armory Art Center. It looks like this year I'll actually be sending off my entries early!!! I ran a glaze firing a couple of days ago and was able to finish up the embellishments today on two of the teapots. I'm sharing photos of one of the finished teapots in this post. I have a third teapot in today's glaze load and I'll be adding her wire, beads and earrings tomorrow. Even though this is the first week of January in the new year, I'm really liking the feeling of accomplishment and I'm also enjoying the new less frenzied pace. I don't want to set myself up for failure, but it sure would be nice to turn over a new leaf and shed my procrastinatoritis.