I can't believe all of 2017 went by and I didn't blog once. Well... I can believe it, but it's just kind of surprising how long it's been. 

2017 was a big year, maybe the biggest! 

We downsized our big lovely house, after selling/giving away a lot of our stuff, we moved the rest of our belongings to storage and lived in a temporary little furnished cottage while we planned a wedding, traveled, got married and prepared to move from GA to WA. 

In September we made the big move and it was pretty crazy for awhile. The trip was amazing. Moving a business to a new state was... less than amazing. I'm still working on getting my studio set up just right, but overall, it's pretty incredible. We made it through the holidays and I'm feeling so good about the new year! 

I started off by reading Deep Work by Cal Newport. I'm pretty obsessed with the podcast Hidden Brain and the host, Shankar Vedantam, interviewed Cal for one of the episodes and really made me interested in reading the book. While it's not really geared toward an artist selling online, there are a lot of tools he gives that are really helpful.

My work day is an interesting play on using social media to promote my business while not getting sucked in to the overuse/addiction/time suck that the online world can be. 

It tied in perfectly with one of my new year's goals of scheduling. Ever since I started working for myself, I've always relished the non-schedule. The do-what-I-want-whenever-I-want felt like the ultimate freedom. Using a calendar and creating a schedule seemed opposite to that. But I've come around and so far, I'm really enjoying the effects of scheduling my time and using this amazing planner from Native Bear! 

Part of me wonders if I have too many goals and changes I wanted to enact for this coming year, but I don't really think so. Part of what we wanted by moving to WA was to create the life we wanted to have. Planning time for hikes every (or almost every) weekend to see all the beautiful places on the Olympic Peninsula means no work on the weekends. Having time for friends and making connections is also really important. It means learning to be efficient with my time and scheduling the things that mean more to me than sitting in front of a computer trying to run a business...

Creating art and being outside and exercising are some of those things. And in the past 4 months have seen little of those. It's about finding a balance and not working all the time. I'm pleased that in less than two weeks I've been drawing and painting again. Yesterday I took a break and went on a run through the woods and looked at the ocean (or the straight of Juan de Fuca to be technical). Everyday I'm so grateful to be here. It took be plans to get us here and we made it. Looking forward to this year full of big plans! 

(be on the look out for more mountain and water themed rings! and paintings because photos just can't capture the beauty my eyes see)

What are you big plans for 2018? Are you planning a big move, writing a book, finally cleaning out your basement to create an art space? 

Every year I want to start earlier in getting the snowflake ornaments done - it's not quite as early as I'd like but it's at least before Thanksgiving! It is kind of hard to think about snowflakes when it is so warm out and Christmas seems so far away. Alex has been working really hard on these while I'm catching up on custom orders. We have 4 dozen listed so far. 

News for the next couple of months:

Deadline for custom work needed by Christmas/New Years is November 18th.

The OCAF holiday market is happening in Watkinsville Dec. 2 - 4th. I will have work in a booth with other Athens Metal Arts Guild Members (snowflakes included). 

I'll be having an Open Studio on Saturday Dec. 10th from 10 - 5pm. ATHICA will also be having their holiday market and several other artists in the Chase Park Warehouses will also be having open studios as well including David Hale and Erin McIntosh. 

December 15th begins the 2nd half of the yoga teacher training I'm staffing and I'll most likely be out of the studio from the 15th until the end of the year. 

And the end of the year will be here before we know it! 

I had a lovely feature on the Wedding Lovely blog today! 

Check it out! 

When I was growing up my stepdad had a lot of little phrases he liked to use. He often would say them in a joking manner with a little chuckle. As a kid, it just kind of seemed like a funny thing to say, "Today is the first day of the rest of your life."

Even though it's a cliche, that same sentence has real meaning, especially now as an adult and a yogi. Every day can be treated as a new beginning, with a sense of curiosity and wonder, but some days really are bigger and brighter than others. Today starts a new chapter in my business and my life since the two are so interconnected.

At 1:00 am this morning, Alex changed the domain over to the new site as we finished up the last few touch ups. Within a few minutes, BethCyr.com became a brand new website. I've realized over the past few years that websites are never really finished.  There is still a lot more work to be done - new products to be added and some behind the scenes pages to be created. But we set a date and everything on our list has been checked off, so it is time to release it to the world.

Within the next week we'll have the wholesale catalog and ordering form completely done - the general public can't see it, but it's there! I'll have a convenient way for retailers to purchase my work - both made to order and one of a kind work that always seemed to mentally prohibit me from doing wholesale. It is a big step to be creating another focus for my business.

It's time to release the anxieties of the past and welcome the changes of this new path.

A huge thank you to everyone that read over content and tested links and gave feedback - I am so grateful.

We hope you all enjoy the new site!