21 Feb – 7:00 am

Saving Time, Doing It All

One thing I’m learning as I continue my journey into being more productive is that I have a hard time settling down and focusing. It takes me a while to really get focused on a task, so it makes sense to me that any tasks I can do in big batches – answering emails, writing blog posts, making invoices, looking for client supplies – I definitely should. I’ve been trying that out for the past couple of weeks, and so far it’s been working great. For example, I made it a goal to have my blog posts queued up and written at least a week before they are posted. I think it improves the quality of my blog, and they can be posted at a consistent time.

It’s also become increasingly hard for me to carve out an hour or two every single day to write a blog post, edit it, make an image and post it – so one Saturday I sat down and wrote out about 10 in just a couple hours. Knowing that I was doing this one task in bulk was really inspiring – think of all the stress and time I’m saving myself! – and it allowed me to stay focused on what I wanted to accomplish.

The same has gone for the more boring tasks that I have to do on a daily basis. I hate answering emails. It always takes me forever to write responses, and if I’m not careful, it can be a giant time and focus suck. So instead, along with checking my email more infrequently, I’ve been answering all of my emails in 15 minute bursts. Knowing that I don’t have a ton of time to do it makes me focus on the task at hand, and it makes me less obsessive about the contents of the email – although I always have to go back through and delete 99% of the exclamation points. I have a problem.

Do you find yourself with daily tasks that you think are taking up a lot of your time? Consider setting aside a couple of hours every week or every month, and getting them all out of the way at once. You will feel more together, and giving yourself the luxury of uninterrupted focus will mean that your work is of higher quality.

20 Feb – 12:27 pm

Happy Monday!

I’m getting a bit of a slow start this morning, but I wanted to tell you guys about how I think David and I achieved the perfect Sunday. We woke up, ate a delicious breakfast, bummed around, and then went to a friend’s housewarming brunch. We got to see some people we don’t see all the time, and I learned that my one friend and I both have the same type of wanderlust going on, so we started planning a road trip.

On the way home we stopped at the grocery store, got most of our shopping done for the week, cleaned the apartment and then I made this delicious dish (seriously, make it tonight) except instead of dumplings I used roasted eggplant, and I paired it with homemade Caesar salad. I don’t want to brag, but it was an amazing meal.

All of this sounds normal and boring, but what made it perfect was that it snowed! In my life, snow is a special occasion, so we ended up going outside and walking around to enjoy it. Everything feels so magical when it’s snowing, even if it’s just slush on the ground.

I always feel like I’m in Narnia before everything got better. Of course, it’s melted, warm and sunny this morning, so that made the walk feel even more like I was just hanging out in a magical wardrobe for a couple hours. Caspian always gets so excited – he was charging ahead like he was late for something.

Then we came home, read on the couch in our freshly cleaned apartment, and (if you’re me) stayed up too late reading the Hunger Games in bed. Boom. Perfect Sunday. All future Sundays? The bar has been raised.

17 Feb – 1:21 pm

Ready for the Weekend?

I know I am! My plans include a masquerade party, working on an exciting new project, a housewarming brunch, and some major coffee shop time.

What are you doing this weekend? Whatever it is, I hope it’s great!

16 Feb – 11:41 am

New Desk!

This is an old picture, but you can get an idea of how little workspace I had, and how perpetually messy things looked.

For the longest time, I have been doing my more ‘crafty’ work at the kitchen table. It sucked. My supplies were scattered all over the apartment, making it impossible to quickly find things. Every time I finished up for the day, I either had to clean all of my stuff up, or just stare at the mess until the next day. And let me tell you, it was a BIG mess. Designing and making cards take a lot of materials. I missed spending time in my office, and I especially hated that I couldn’t just close the office door and forget about it all in the evening. Being in my apartment was starting to feel like always being at work. Who wants to think about the work they could be doing when they’re relaxing?

So last weekend, I started brainstorming ideas. When I decide to do something, I get impatient, so I needed a fast solution. The desk had to be a specific size and height, and I didn’t want to spend a ton of money on it. I decided to ask David’s dad if he had any ideas. He is an excellent woodworker who has built things like dining room tables. We talked about it for a while, and the next day he called and asked if I had time to work on it that afternoon. Umm let me think about that.. Yes!

He had a lot of good ideas. We were originally going to try to find some cabinets and use them for the base, Young House Love style. I started thinking about how much that would cost, and how we probably couldn’t do it right then (I told you I’m impatient), and we also agreed that it would look like a lot of stuff was crammed into one small corner. I wondered if we could use my existing file cabinet as a base, and we thought of buying a second file cabinet until David’s father suggested using the workbench as a base.

The finished desk!

We ended up having to use a wooden block to make the desk level, and I love it. It looks like it’s floating, and the raw wood edge gives it an industrial vibe. The best part is, it’s very stable. We wrapped the wooden block in nonstick cloth, and we also put the cloth between the door and the workbench.

You can see a little bit of the nonstick cloth here. It looks like it shouldn't be stable, but it is!

We clamped it down on one side, and while it it looks like it might be wobbly, it’s actually rock steady. I painted the door white, to keep with my white theme I have going in there, and it looks SO fresh and bright.

Here are the clamps keeping the other side in place.

The best part is, I have all the workspace I could ever need – and the total cost of the project came to $22.00. That’s right, less than 30 dollars for a desk that’s customized to my work space, and exactly what I want. Sometimes I find myself wandering into the office just to gaze at how beautiful it is.

I don’t want to overplay my role in this project. David and his father put the whole thing together, and made sure it was level and sturdy. I so appreciate their time. If I had tried to do this on my own, my desk would be much uglier and I probably would have broken something.

I’ve had it for over a week now, and I just love it. The luxury of having all the space I need to work is the best, and it looks like it was custom built for the space.

15 Feb – 4:59 pm

Freelance, Month 7

This is the first month that I haven’t played chicken with the bottom line of my bank account, and I haven’t worried about where my next job is coming from – because I already know. I feel like I’ve mastered what I have on my plate now, and I’m ready to grow.

The problems I now need to solve are more long term. What’s foremost on my mind are things like: how can I grow my blog? How can I continue this job lineup so that I’m always planning for the money I’m making several months out – not a week or two out? How do I continue to increase my productivity so that I can take on even more and not feel overwhelmed?

I’m also finding myself dreaming of shaking up my environment. I love home, but I have fantasies of escaping to the beach for the summer(anyone want to let me crash at their beach house?), or working from a train as it works its way across the country. It’s exciting to be able to see a time in the not too distant future where I could make these dreams a reality.

14 Feb – 7:00 am

Happy Valentine’s Day!

I’ve always loved Valentine’s day. I like candy, and I like love in all forms – including friendship and family – and I like any excuse for a celebration. Last year at this time, David was moving in with me, and our apartment was in a shambles. I actually don’t even remember what we did for Valentine’s day, which probably means we didn’t do much of anything. Wait! I remember! We both went to the ABC store separately on V-Day to buy presents – and ran into each other, had an incredibly awkward conversation, and left separately. This year, we have an intact apartment, and we still like each other after a year of living together, so I was feeling like we could do better than THAT.

I decided to put up a few decorations that I made from pinterest tutorials – they were easy, and cheap since I had all the materials on hand. I especially loved making these woven heart baskets. I hope some day to get to the point where I’m able to send all of my friend Valentines, but for now I’m excited to decorate the apartment.

Here is the link to my Valentine’s pinboard

Have a good day, everyone!

13 Feb – 7:00 am

The Past According To Facebook

I have a love/hate relationship with Facebook. I love it because I like to know everything about everyone, so it’s nice that Facebook is basically an RSS feed for my friends’ lives, but I hate it because Facebook is the worst.

I think the new timeline feature is much more visually appealing than anything I’ve seen Facebook come up with before, and I think it’s such an interesting concept that you can have this online log of your life. Although my Facebook page is an empty husk of what it used to be, I think it would be cool to have all of your online activity displayed in a similar format. Like my blog, but integrated with my twitter, and facebook, and Instagram.

Back when I joined Facebook I was a bit more active then I am now. It’s unsettling to be able to click on a year and be transported back to a completely different time in my life, all neatly organized for me (and everyone else..) to see. Anyone who’s friends with me could revisit a time when I was a different person, and did things that I maybe wouldn’t do now. There are pictures of me in places I barely remember, with people I haven’t talked to in years. There are wall posts from people who I’m not even friends with any more. It’s a natural part of life, friends come and go, but Facebook makes sure that they stick around forever. You are almost forced to live in the past. Someone you used to be close with will pop up on your news feed, and seeing that tiny picture of their face will instantly bring back a flood of memories. You might evolve, but Facebook will remind everyone that back in 2006, you took way more pictures of yourself.

It makes me wonder how much I should curate my online presence. I struggle between looking good and being honest. It’s embarrassing that there are approximately 100 million photos of me making silly faces tagged back from my freshman year of college – but that’s where I was in my freshman year of college. I posted goofy stuff on my wall, things that I would never post now – but it’s nothing that would make anyone think less of me. I have blogs from when I was 11 floating around (I can’t get into them and hide them because I no longer have the same email addresses). While I hope that nobody who knows me ever finds them, (I was a pretty weird 11 year old..) I’m glad I have that documentation of my life at that point in time.

I guess I just have to hope that if anyone is really interested in combing through my past they will remember that people grow and change, and not judge me too harshly for all the self portraits, and song lyrics. I also have to hope that nobody is really that interested (I can’t even make it through my timeline due to the fact that it’s boring) because if they are, that’s kind of creepy.

10 Feb – 7:00 am

Sustainability Walking Tour

The Sustainability Walking Tour is another project I completed while working at the North Carolina State University Sustainability Office. It is a sustainable walking tour map, which takes the user around campus and and highlights the more sustainable features of NC State. My boss wanted to use a Z-Card, as it is business card sized and perfect for handing out as a promotional material. It provided the exciting challenge of fitting a ton of information onto a very limited space, and making each section not only easy to read and understand, but also distinct from the other sections. This was honestly probably one of my favorite projects from my time at the Sustainability Office. It was fun to work on such an interactive medium, and the challenge of fitting so much content into such a small document was exciting, and gratifying.

You can see more of my work at www.alisoncitron.com

9 Feb – 7:00 am

Working 9-4

I’ve recently noticed that the more time I have to work, the more I stretch out that work to fill the time. If I have 6 different projects I need to finish up in one day, I can stay focused, but if I only have a couple things that I HAVE to accomplish, and a couple more that it would be nice to accomplish, I can easily work for 10 to 12 hours and still not get it all done.

Basically, I will stretch my work to fill my available time, and it means that at the end of the day, I’d be scrambling to finish it all up. A couple Fridays ago, I found myself working until 8:30 – when I could have easily been finished by 4, if I had just focused. I felt unproductive and unfocused, and I knew I needed to change.

Last week I decided that I am going to have ‘office hours’ and that they are going to be from 9-4. I get started working around 9, and I try to stop working at 4. I was so, so productive last week. I got more done in a day than I did the entire week before, and I was finishing up right at 4 – although to be honest, I was using the extra time to get ahead on other work-related projects. For me, something about setting my end time at 4 just works. It’s short enough that I feel compelled to stay on task all day, but long enough that I don’t feel stressed trying to get it all done.

How do you stay focused? For me it’s a spectrum – some days it’s easy, and others I feel like I’m constantly fighting myself to get it all done.

8 Feb – 12:29 pm

Bein’ A Bridesmaid, Part 2

Alison: Here’s the thing about being a bridesmaid. You are signing up to wear (and, in most cases, buy) a dress that someone else has picked out for you. This is weird. No one has, most likely, picked out your clothes for you since you were five, unless you’re an actress or model. In that case, shut up, nobody feels sorry for you, because that’s awesome.

Some brides will ask you for your input in choosing your dress. Some brides will just give you a call, or send you an email with the dress they want you to wear, and you have to buy it, possibly without even trying it on. It’s not ideal, but you can always get it tailored! I’m fairly certain it is impossible to find a dress that looks good on everyone, unless you are in the sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, but eh, that’s life.

Jessica: In the early stages of planning my wedding, I totally wanted to be the cool bride. I hoped to pick a fabric and color from J. Crew and let my bridesmaids choose the style of dress. I really wanted everyone to have a dress they loved. I also wanted each of my bridesmaids to be able to pick the style of dress. Each has a very different body shape, and obviously what is appropriate for a 17 year old might not be something that a 27 year old would want to re-wear.

After going through several sites that are good for bridesmaids dresses, I realized a couple of things:
    a) the dresses at J. Crew were just as expensive as buying a dress from a “wedding store”, if not more expensive
    b) the fabrics and colors weren’t what I was hoping for
    c) in order to get dresses from a retail store and make sure that they were tailored in time for the wedding, we wouldn’t be able to wait to see what J Crew had to offer

So I decided just to pick a dress (a wrap dress) that would work for all the girls. And because I felt super guilty asking my bridesmaids to pay $200 for a dress I chose, I gifted them with $150 towards their dresses (and paid for my sister’s dress entirely because she was 17). Honestly, don’t expect your bride to do that. It was a lot of money that I actually contributed out of my own pocket, but I felt that it was worth it to not ask my friends/sisters to pay $200ish for a dress that I chose. I also didn’t ask them to buy a certain type of shoe or jewelry either.

*Note about this photo: My sister was sent the wrong size dress (ughhhhh) with no time to return or alter it, so she’s wearing a different dress than the other girls. That’s another tip: THE MINUTE you get your dress, try it on to make sure it’s the right size/close to the right size. That way you have plenty of time to return/alter the dress before the event.

Alison: It seems to be the standard that the bridesmaids foot the bill for the dresses and shoes. According to Emily Post, this is something that you should expect. It can be upwards of $200 just for your outfit when it is all said and done, and that doesn’t include the potential costs of a gift, bridal shower, bachelorette party, and any travel expenses you may have!

For one of the weddings I’m in, my bride asked me to buy a specific dress from J Crew. I actually really like the style, but at J Crew I am 3 different sizes depending on where you are on my body. That’s why I’m getting it tailored – it will fit me perfectly, and I’ll feel confident, because I won’t be wearing a dress that pulls or gapes open.

Don’t be sad if you weren’t included in the bridesmaid dress decision. Let’s get real here: This is not your event. It’s not really about you, and even if you have the sweetest bride in the world, you still need to respect the fact that this is her wedding. In fact, Emily Post also says that it’s traditionally only the maid of honor’s job to assist in picking out bridesmaid dresses. That was a surprise to me, and although I think most weddings are much more relaxed now, it’s something to keep in mind.

If you are lucky enough to be included in the bridesmaid dress hunt, we have a few tips to make sure everything goes smoothly:
Once you are out of the dressing room, you and your body are fair game for comments. These comments may not be coming from people you even know, and they may not be very nice. When I started to feel a little sensitive (I found myself wanting to shout ‘let’s just write wide load across my butt and call it a day!’) I found it helpful to remember that while I was asked to be in the wedding because my individual relationship to the bride, when I am in a wedding party I’m contributing to a larger ‘look’ that is her vision for her wedding. So if she doesn’t like a dress, it’s not my fault, and if someone else says something about how I look in a dress, they are probably so wrapped up in their own wedding planning that they aren’t even thinking about my feelings. Unless they said I looked great – then they are obviously really smart and observant.

Jessica: Hopefully your bride is being kind and is looking out for you – she wants you to look your best. If you’re the one bridesmaid trying on dresses, keep in mind that she is (probably) mentally trying to picture what it would look like on the other bridesmaids. So if something is pulling on your hips, it might look really bad on another bridesmaid.

Alison: Bridal and bridesmaids dresses tend to be sized a little less generously than normal clothes. If you’re normally a 4, you might be a 6 at David’s Bridal. Even if you think you’re above clothes sizing.. it can be a real blow to the ego to be struggling to pull up a dress that’s already a size bigger than what you normally wear. Just… be prepared for that.

Jessica: My bridesmaids were shocked when they were given their sizes based on their measurements (one who is normally a 0 or 2 had to order a 6 in the dress).

Alison: You may fall in love with a dress, but it’s really your bride’s opinion that matters. Try not to get too attached until you are walking down the aisle in that dress. Also, if you can tell she doesn’t like it, don’t keep pushing it. This is actually a decision a lot of brides agonize over. You don’t want to make their decision any harder.

Jessica: It is a really hard decision for brides! I really wanted to make sure my bridesmaids felt beautiful during the wedding, but that their dresses worked with my “vision”, which included the groomsmen’s outfits and the entire look of the wedding (I might have been obsessive).

Check out how that tie coordinates with that dress!

Alison: In the end, I have learned that the more you can set aside your own feelings and opinions during dress shopping, the more fun it will be. You get to try on all kinds of different beautiful dresses, and it is illuminating to try on dresses that you may not have picked out for yourself. You can expand your style horizons, and play dress up! Embrace the fact that you are helping make someone else’s wedding dreams come true, and enjoy the ride.

Read Part One of Bein’ A Bridesmaid here.

Jessica and I went through the war together (otherwise known as studio). She moved far away to California after school, but we talk so much on g-chat that it’s like she never left. She is currently working as a senior designer, and lives in an adorable cottage with her husband and dog. She can see the ocean from her house, and I kind of hate her for that. If you like me, you’ll love her blog!