Happy New Year 2024 – A review of 2023 and plans for 2024.
In this post I am sharing my review of 2023 and plans for 2024.
What happened to my business plans for 2023?
Every year I write a review and planning post and this year is no exception. Looking back at last year’s post I have noticed that I wasn’t that successful with my business plans. I had only a few enquiries for teaching German and only two students ended up having lessons with me. I still teach the one student and I enjoy teaching her. If you need a German tutor, check out my other website for more information here.
I have started to declutter my inventory – which means I took a lot of items that don’t sell off my website. It’s a pain to do as I poured a lot of time into my designs and polymer clay items once baked can’t be repurposed, but components like clasps or chains can.
I got completely side-tracked this year with painting and therefore had no time for silver clay and polymer clay.
While I have made my acrylic pour paintings available to buy last year, I haven’t actually had a chance (well time) to make my other paintings available. I need to add hangings and take good photos of these paintings to do so.
My craft fair e-book and my lino printing course hasn’t sold yet, which was very disappointing.
My YouTube channel still hasn’t reached 1000 subscribers; however, I have been steadily growing it nevertheless and at the time of writing I have 565 subscribers.
Businesswise last year has been bad. Very bad, to the point that I have contemplated giving it all up. It’s hard work to keep going in the current economic climate.
So, what happened to my non-business plans in 2023?
Well actually we managed to get a lot of things that we wanted to change in our home done.
We bought a new carpet for our hallway and stairs. We bought a new living room table that is smaller and rectangle, but can be extended. After trying to sell the old round one on Gumtree, Paul ended up selling it back to Ikea. He didn’t get much for it and it was quite a challenging experience (the customer service is ridiculous). I replaced the broken side gate in the garden using a local tradesmen who built it in situ. I also bought a new sofa and chair, replacing the old Poang chairs which were not that comfortable. Paul was complaining a lot about them. We sold one of them on Gumtree. We have also started to declutter the house, which is really an ongoing project. In May we had our garden secured by Protect A Pet. This was one day before my birthday and after they have left, I got a call from “Cats Protection Bridgend” that they had kittens up for adoption.
Which brings me to the highlight of last year.
The arrival of our beautiful kitten Lucy and Max
After Bobby died in September 2022, we were heartbroken, but we realised we couldn’t live without feline company. Which is why we decided to get our house and garden in order first before adopting. We were hoping to adopt kittens in summer. And we wanted two siblings. Two weeks before Cats Protection rang us I filled in our adoption application stating that we’d love gingers, tabbies or torties. Mainly because I didn’t want a cat that looked similar to Bobby (white and tabby) or Freddy (black and white). So, I was absolutely gobsmacked when the lady on the phone told me that they had three beautiful tabby kittens up for adoption. As we live in a small house two cats is the maximum amount that we can give a home to, so choosing from photos was very difficult. In the end we chose the boy, then called Alfie, and one of the girls, then called Abbie. We renamed them Lucy and Max and the names fit them perfectly.
You can find out more about their adoption story here.
We absolutely adore our kittens. They have adapted to their new life pretty quickly – pretty much from their arrival in our home and have grown a lot! They will be one year old in March. They have wonderful personalities and are very friendly and funny. We had to go to the vet a few times though and mostly for Max – first for Giardia, which is a nasty parasite and needs to be treated with a horrible tasting tablet which is incredibly difficult to give to cats (both kittens were treated for this), then he managed to hurt his eye, which was very scary, but in the end was treated quickly, and he also developed a strange condition on one of his ears, the ear curled outwards and it lost some of the fine fur. The vet said that it was an autoimmune condition called Pemphigus Foliaceus, which affects the skin on ears and paws. Thankfully the treatment worked well and it hasn’t come back. Max has the most gorgeous big ears and I love cuddling them. He is a loveable, mischievous boy who loves his food! His sister Lucy is more reserved and very vocal. She talks a lot and complains a lot! She reminds us a lot of Bobby and we think Bobby would have liked her, but would have hated Max! Max is very affectionate and a proper lap cat. Lucy’s cuddle time is at night, she’s very sweet. Unfortunately, she also has very sharp claws – and cutting them is quite a struggle. Both kittens hate pawdicures.
Charlie, the Ragdoll from our neighbours, is still visiting us every day and enjoys the kitten’s company and is still getting a lot of fuss and attention from us. It’s just amazing how well they get on with each other. Max loves Charlie to bits and they both groom each other, which is adorable. The only tricky bit is when he wants to go and he prefers the kitchen window. In the mornings he turns up on there and we allow him in, but have to be careful, that Max doesn’t jump up! When he wants to leave, we let him out the front door, but when the weather is awful, then he dithers a lot, which is a bit annoying.
What else happened last year?
I was offered to apply for my part-time job at the charity I have been temping for and have now a proper contract. It’s a very busy and demanding job, but also rewarding and I like my colleagues. The job gives me much needed financial stability, something I didn’t have for a long time. The trade-off of course is that I have less time for my business. I work three days a week for the charity, which leaves me the weekend and two extra days. This is very challenging for me as I am not getting any younger and in the evenings after my day-job I am too tired to do anything else, but wind down.
As the charity celebrated its 40th anniversary I have donated my spare time and resources to create a lino print to commemorate the event. You can find a blog post about this here.
Another thing I did last year was making a few changes to my workroom. You can see a before and after video of these changes here.
This brings me to my plans for 2024.
Plans for the business:
- I want to keep growing my YouTube channel and making quality videos. I am hoping to reach the magic number of 1000 subscribers.
- I have to keep sorting through my inventory, which means getting rid of items that don’t sell. It’s a job I hate doing, but needs to be done.
- I haven’t designed any jewellery last year, as I have been focusing on painting and my day-job. So, this year I want to come up with new designs. This also means getting back to working with polymer clay and silver clay, but this depends a little on working around our kittens. My kiln is in the conservatory and that room is also a favourite spot of our kittens. I haven’t tried creating jewellery with the kittens in the same room. I also haven’t used polymer clay for a while and certainly not since the arrival of the kittens. Lucy loves to occupy my chair in the work room! Typical!
- I am sitting on paintings I need to photograph and list on the website, so this is another job for this year.
- I will keep promoting my craft fair e-book and my lino printing course.
- I want to publish notebooks and planners on Amazon and have started creating interiors for these, but need to choose or create artwork for the covers. I am hoping this year I get this done. I am also thinking of using my art in places like Zazzle.
- This year I want to concentrate on learning to paint with watercolours and coloured pencils. I also plan to create more lino prints.
Non-business plans:
- Take more care of my health and be gentler with myself.
- Enjoy lots of time with our beautiful kittens.
- Keep decluttering the home and sorting repairs in the home.
- Learn to play the mandolin. I have a beautiful Eastman mandolin, which I bought a few years ago and despite the best intentions I got side-tracked again and here we are. It’s gathering dust. I have yet to unpack it and see if it terrifies the kittens. I hope not!
- Read a lot. I do that anyway, but need to update my reading list for this year.
And that’s it – I probably get side-tracked again and only get through a fraction of my list, or keep adding on stuff. It will be interesting to see what I have achieved by the end of this year.
How about you? What are your plans for 2024?
Let me know in the comments below.
Helen x