Hey Guys,

I'm seriously in love with my new creations. I want to buy them all for myself! Don't you just love them? I know I sure do.

Hey, here's a thought... why don't you buy one for your lover for Valentine's day? I wouldn't be offended in the slightest.  You know they'd love a throw pillow (you can never have too many), or even a bag to carry their books in, or a clock to remind them of when they need to call you and tell you they love you. BECAUSE WE ALL NEED THOSE THINGS.

CLICK HERE to view larger product images, product details & pricing at my Society6 page! You can also follow my Facebook page for new product updates: http://www.facebook.com/bylanalou

Guys.

My dream came true last week.

There are no words to perfectly describe my elation at finally owning a real, acoustic, upright piano.

I look at you right now from the beginning, wondering what you'll become. You have all the potential in the world to be wonderful, even with the hardships that are possible, and that I know are coming. I know that I can't plan for anything to happen the way that I exactly want. I can't expect certain things to happen, all I can do is try as hard as I possibly can to make sure that I roll with whatever you bring me, and make my life the best that I can!

Here's what I'm hoping to find from this year:

A new opportunity
A finished goal
A new positive habit
A successful break
An answered prayer

And probably a few other things, like... for my cats to become besties.

I'm being cryptic. I know. Time will reveal all of this to you guys. I promise.

Just say lots of prayers for me this year. I AM GOING TO NEED THEM. We all do, and I'm sure you've got a lot of people on your prayer list already, but please remember me, too, if you can. I need more strength in my legs, more breath in my lungs, and more spring in my step to make it through this year to come!

Oh, 2014... is it possible to skip you?

Justin and I watched the movie About Time last weekend. I absolutely loved it, and wish I had the ability to time travel like he did. I just want to go back to this day... just for the whole year. Has time travel been invented for everyone yet?

Taken in the Gulf of Mexico by my future husband Justin.

I've been thinking a lot about direction and paths lately. I know that we often don't end up originally where we thought we would, or even when we thought we would get there. I'm ok with that. However I would like to achieve the dreams I've set out for myself.

How do we make the big scary things happen to us? I don't mean bad things when I say this. I mean, the big amazingly wonderful, scary to achieve, hard to reach goals. You know?

The kind that require you to step off the cliff and pray that the bridge you cannot see, but must believe is there... is really there. I mean how do we know it's really there? What if it's only 2 inches wide, and I step in the wrong direction? What if I fall and everyone laughs and says, "oops there goes another failure!"

Fear of failure kills me. I have yet to fail at anything I really try at. I always somehow find the 2 inch wide invisible bridge, and after a few steps, I can RUN across this thing and make it to my dream.

Found in a google image search, totally fits, right?

Guys, I have some really big dreams, that right now seem impossible, or unrealistic. But my heart drifts to them almost daily lately.

I've really got to take the leap of faith. HOW ON EARTH CAN I DO THIS?

I feel like I need to really focus on this, and figure out how this always-prepared-before-she-jumps kind of girl can be risky.

First steps first... make a plan or talk about what is hard. SO I need to answer these questions:

1. What is it I want to achieve?
2. What are the basic steps to get there?
3. What are the even more basic steps to get to STEP 1 OF MY PLAN?

So... for the next little bit I will be focusing on Step 1, and how to get there!

Wish me luck! I can do this, right?

I've been thinking a lot about passions these days. What do I mean by that? Well, I mean passions in the noun sense of the word. As in, Jeremy has a passion for drawing cartoons. That kind of passion. (I don't know Jeremy, so we'll leave him out of the rest of this post.)

Justin seems to love so many things, and pursue them. He's a very passion-driven person and it's one of the reasons I love him. He is always pursuing some hobby or goal that he wants to. One time when we were dating he asked me directly, "What are you passionate about?"

Friends, this is my most dreaded question. Why?

Because I have no passions.... dun Dun DUN!

I know right? It's awful. I've been sitting here thinking and thinking and thinking. There is not one thing I could spend the rest of my life doing and just know it was where I belonged and I would never change my mind. There is not one thing that tractor beams me into it. That night after we talked about that, I went home and cried. For a few reasons actually... first and foremost, I felt like I was an extremely boring person, which led me to think I must be unattractive because of that, and then I wondered if I was destined to live life unfulfilled?

Ever since then, I've kind of struggled. SO MUCH in this world fascinates me. There are so many topics and hobbies, and skills to learn about and master. How does anyone just choose one and stay there? But, I have racked my brain for months wondering if I am boring because I don't have a passion, or if I just am lazy? Why don't I have one of those things that I've always known I would do? The more I think about it, the more it really sinks in that I must have something wrong with me because I don't have an easy to define, obvious passion... or maybe I just don't have one at all. It has really caused me to have concerns about who I am and what I'm doing here.

I painted this last weekend.

Then, just the other night, I opened up to Justin about this, and he said he'd always known since he was a kid what he wanted to do. This stressed me out even more. I have NEVER KNOWN. He asked me what I said I wanted to be when I was a kid. And you know what? I can't even remember. I just remember thinking, "Whatever I am when I'm grown up, I hope I'm good at it, and successful." What kind of a kid doesn't want to be a pirate or astronaut or president of the United States? Well... me, I guess.

I text messaged my mom today to find out if maybe I just couldn't remember the thing that I said as a kid that I always wanted to be... her response didn't surprise me at all.

"Well, you used to say you wanted to be a ballerina, or a tv reporter, or a writer. You never really stuck at one thing for too long, and kind of moved ideas around the whole time."

There you have it, friends. I was right! This explains why I had 5 majors in college , and even when I was about to graduate with my Bachelor's degree, I thought, "What if I studied this instead?!"

The point is, I've been looking at it all wrong, you guys. I do have a passion. I am passionate about learning! THAT is my passion. I soak information in. I'm always telling Justin, "Hey did you know [insert random fun and interesting fact I learned today]? I just can't help it. It drives him nuts.

I want to do all of these things:
Write a novel
Write a children's book
Work more on my 3 blogs
Learn to paint, if for no one else but me
Sew a massive patchwork quilt out of old clothes
Make more stuffed animals, since I'm a pro
Finish my Etsy stuff
Run a half marathon
Run a few more 5k's (before the halfsies)
Learn to sing better
Write a song on the piano
Learn to reupholster and restore furniture
Become a master chef (again if only for my family and me)
Impact the world for good
Travel the world with my family
Grow a garden that feeds my family
Learn another language fluently

The list goes on and on...

The moral of this story is this: not everybody is a tractor beamer. Some of us really love everything, and you can fascinate me with pretty much anything. I'm just here for the experiences.

What are your passions?

A quote from a favorite book of mine.

Mr. Awesome and I decided to sit down tonight and write out the list of what will go on our dream boards. We both are firm believers in goal setting and we decided if we're ever going to get anything in life that we want, we have to start mapping it out.  I did this on this very blog 4.5 years ago when I first started it. You can find that post HERE. I was surprised to see that when I went back and looked at the post tonight, of the 3 things on that short dream board post... I have 2 of them. I won't tell you which ones they are, but I will tell you one of them is almost identical to what I posted that I wanted, and the other is a close version of one of them. You decide or guess which ones I have! :)

It's fun to see that even though I didn't really put too much emphasis on staring at my blog post with my dreams on it... I still sent them floating out in space, and it helped me make sure I achieved them. Funny though, the ideas never left me and when I was able to get the things from that list that I have, I knew exactly what I wanted.  So that is precisely why our dream board task tonight is happening. We're sending our dreams out into the vastness of space and time, and we're asking the universe to help us get there throughout or journey in life together.

Tonight Justin and I decided to do just that. We made a small one for ourselves and one together.

I will share with you some of those things on our or my dream board here. This is not a complete list by any means, and it's not his personal list either. For the items on his list, you'll just have to ask him and see if he tells you.

I have 3 skills/trades that I want to master and also start selling them on Etsy or in a small shop of my own.


The courage to have red hair:

A small family so we can travel the world easily and experience all the different and great things other cultures have to offer:

And one of our favorites:


We are going to frame and hang the dream boards in our room so we are reminded everyday of what we want out of life. I am excited to look back on these lists and see what we've done with our lives. I only hope that we have no regrets when looking back!

What's on your dream board? Or what would be if you made one?