15 Minute Challenge - Welcome to 2013

Happy New Year!  And welcome back to the 15 Minute Challenge.  For those of you don't know, the 15 Minute Challenge started out as a challenge to myself to find just a little time during the week to sew.  With a full time job and an active teenage daughter, some weeks my sewing room gets really lonely, my projects feel rejected and my sanity is hanging on by it's fingernails.  Playing with fabric makes me happy and in turn that makes me a nicer person to live and work with.  But with my hectic schedule, it's a challenge some days to arise from the recliner and navigate the stairs to the sewing room.  For some reason, knowing that I have to put in writing in a semi-public forum how well I do at finding time to sew seems to be the best motivator to overcome that inertia. 

For 2013, confession day will remain on Tuesday (i.e. the linky party where you proudly proclaim your success for the week will be posted).  In addition to finding the time to sew this year, I want to focus on improving my creativity (which covers the "recreate yourself" statement in the new button).  So each month will have a different "fostering your creativity" theme that I'll try to expand and develop in the posts for that month.  If all you want to do is put in your 15 minutes that works, but I'm hoping that if you have insights into any of the themes that you'll share those either in your comments or in your posts.  For the month of January the creativity theme is "Set a Schedule".  Setting aside a scheduled time to be creative seems a bit counter intuitive, but based on the literature it can help declutter your mind allowing your creative juices to come to the surface.  I'll expand on that theme more next week. 

Since it takes time to form new habits, lets start off the 2013 challenge with a give away.  To be entered into the give away you must be a 15 Minute Challenge Participant.  Which means you enter by linking in with a post that lists your sewing activities for the previous week and mentions the 15 Minute Challenge somewhere in the post in order to be eligible.  Each week in January (there are 5 weeks) you have the chance to link up and be entered into the give away.  (Even if you did nothing, if you are willing to write and link in with a post on your lack of activity, that's an acceptable entry).  I'll announce the winner in February.  What's in the give away? 

A copy of Adis Erla's book, My Runners Keep Going and a layer cake of Connecting Thread batiks. 

So now that all of the "paper work" stuff is out of the way.  How did I do the last two weeks of 2012 at finding time to sew in the middle of all the happy madness that is the Christmas holiday season?  I managed to sew 9 out of the last 14 days in 2012.

 So how did you do?  Did you sew or did you take a holiday vacation from your sewing room those last two weeks of the year?  Whatever the case, link up below.