happy new year | foggy dress

This photo was taken when Aust & I went back to Taiwan & Hong Kong, May 2013

Happy Chinese New Year! 新年快樂！Chinese new year is, like, THE holiday in Asia. When I lived in Taiwan, the new years celebrations would include 2 weeks straight of eating delicous food until your eyes popped out. And people were giving me 红包 (red envelope) with money inside $$ (but I couldn’t accept it because I was a church missionary at the time!). It’s a great holiday; older family like parents, Aunts & Uncles, would give us red envelopes (hundreds of dollars!), but once we were married they said ‘Sorry! No more!’ So last year I gave my little brother the first red envelope I’ve given out, and it made me feel old.

This week I’ve been learning a new language, and you should too! When someone starts to learn a brand new language at 21, you’d think it was too difficult an endeavor and almost unachievable. Well I started learning to speak, read and write Chinese when I was 21, and somehow I achieved a basic grasp of the language in a short 18 months. Granted, I had God on my side (literally–missionaries are promised the gift of tongues!) because I honestly could not have done that on my own. But this time around, I’m picking up a language at 26 (did I say I’m old already?)! I’ve been taking free online courses from Code Academy and I HIGHLY recommend them! I’ve been able to pick up the basics of HTML and CSS and have been tweaking my new website aaaaallllllll week long. My eyes hurt, but I’m pretty excited to show you on Monday!! (Thanks for all the help, Ivan!)

Eat lots of good food , try learning a new language, and 恭喜发财 ‘congratulations on obtaining riches’!

hugs, hanalei

Do you like to make new year’s goals? Or do you find them to be more headache and stress than good? I like to have at least one simple, easy goal for the new year. For 2014 I have decided to focus on one, broad goal that I can break down into small projects. My New Year’s 2014 Goal is: to get more organized.

This has been a goal of mine since moving in, but life picked up and before I knew it I had been living in our apartment for 6 months and I still had yet to upack/organize my craft drawers (when we moved I literally shoved things into the drawers until they were so full, I could barely close them) and a million other areas of our home/life. I wasted so much time looking for things when they were hidden under layers of junk! Take a look at the few things I’ve tackled already (I still have quite a list of things needing organizing…like my closet and our spare room!)…..

foggydress_organize2014 ^^ ORGANIZE THE CRAFT DRAWERS: it may not like that much of a difference, but it’s already a thousand times better ^^ORGANIZE MY RECEIPTS: I’ve been keeping all my old receipts in a folder with other important papers, but switched to a strictly-receipts folder. I empty out my wallet of receipts at the end of the month, every month. I keep them for one year, so around December 2014, I’ll throw out all my receipts from Dec 2013 and replace them with Dec 2014 ones.

foggydress_organize2014 ^^ ORGANIZE MY SCHEDULE: this pertains to my social, work, and blogging schedule. I love and will probably still heavily use my phone/online calendar for scheduling and reminders. But I need to get back to the good old handwritten planners, if only to use my pretty gel pens more often 🙂 foggydress_organize2014 ^^ ORGANIZE FABRIC SCRAPS: I needed a place to keep all my little, useful fabric scraps. I found this old basket at my mom’s house, and spray painted it silver to match my silver wire rack. What are some of your New Years goals?