February - Lately I've been...

January felt like a very long month. It was been so cold, dark and dreary, with some added stress which has left all our plans up in the air for several weeks, so I'm very glad that we are now in February! I thought I'd write a little catch up of what I've been doing over the last month, and what I'm hoping February will bring.

Thinking about

I've had a lot on my mind which has led to me focusing mainly on getting the children to school and back and making sure that we have enough food in the house. Unfortunately there isn't an end in sight so for the time being I'm just thinking about the best way that we can get through it.

Crafting

One of my New Year's resolutions was to make some time for crafting everyday, and so far I've been very successful. I've been mainly working on two projects, a cross stitch sampler and my Persian Tiles crochet blanket, and I've made some really good progress with both of them. I've found the crafting a really good way to take my mind off things, especially because both projects involve counting lots of stitches, so it has become a really good distraction.

A post shared by jenniferjain (@jenniferjain) on Jan 29, 2018 at 6:36am PST

Watching

We've not made it to the cinema this month but we have watched a few films at home, including Bladerunner in preparation for watching the sequel. I recorded The Miniaturist over Christmas and although so far I've only managed to watch part one I'm really enjoying it. We are also keeping up to date with Vikings.

Eating

I'm afraid that all my New Year diet plans went out of the window almost immediately, which is something that I need to work on. We still had quite a bit of chocolate and other snacks left after Christmas, but they've pretty much gone now, so as long as I don't buy anymore then I'll be fine. The trouble is that when I'm at home on my own, which is every weekday, it's too easy to just grab a pack of biscuits or a chocolate bar. The most effective method for me when I'm watching what I eat is to track my calories using My Fitness Pal, so I'm determined to get back on with that very soon.

Travelling to

Very unusually I've not travelled anywhere this month! I think that the furthest that I have been is to take the children to school.

Reading

Reading has also taken a bit of a backseat. I don't have a book on the go at the moment although I have a couple lined up, I've just not been making the time for reading lately.

Planning

After the changes to YouTube which means that I now can't monetise my channel I've been planning where I want to go with creating video content. I still need to work on increasing my subscribers (please do pop over if you want to help me out! Jennifer Jain on YouTube) and I also need to increase my watch time massively - difficult because most of my videos are very short. I don't earn a great deal from YouTube, but I earn a little bit and it all helps. So I need to think about making videos which are possibly longer and ones that people will be interested in watching. I was really proud of my most recent video, a time lapse of us all assembling Mia's new Ikea Stuva loft bed, and it seems to be doing quite well so I'm very pleased with that.

Next I'm thinking of another timelapse of me sorting out and organising my bookshelves, but I'm not sure I'm ready yet for the disruption that will cause!

Looking forward to

I'm looking forward to things becoming a little more settled. I'm not sure when that's going to be at the moment, but I'm hoping that things will get easier!