My Week In Review -One-

Hey, everyone! So, normally I try to keep my blogging to something I do during the week so that I can have a couple days off on the weekend to enjoy other things or get caught up on things around the home, but I am going to try to do a weekly installment of these types of posts where I tell you about how my week went in different areas of my life and the blog. I’m going to try to post these each Saturday, so keep an eye out for notifications on facebook, twitter, or Instagram if you want to follow along. :) This is how it’ll go:

LIFE
So, as I mentioned in the intro above, I am going to try to post these on Saturdays…today’s not Saturday? You’re right! I’m already a bit late on this one. I’ve had a tough few weeks with keeping myself on schedule. A couple weekends ago my boyfriend, Victor (aka V), and I went away for a bit of a mini vacation, and on the way home on that Monday our car broke down about 1 hour and half away from home and we had to extend our vacation a couple days while our car was fixed, so that put me behind a bit for that week and the following. Not having caught up at that point and then that following weekend my dad had a wee bit of a heart attack (obviously there’s nothing wee about that even though he's ok), so V and I took a trip to see him on that Monday. This put me just a bit more behind. So, this series is one that was on the agenda to start this weekend (Saturday) and then I began to feel like I’d caught V’s cold/flu that he’s just getting over, and I am just drained of energy now. It’s been hard to get motivated to do much; my poor little body is just trying to fight this off with all its might. :/ So now, the video I needed to have done for Saturday/Sunday won’t be up until tomorrow – sorry, guys! And if I’m sick and coughing and sneezing and not breathing properly, I won’t be filming a video like that – none of you need to be subjected to that, it wouldn't be nice to watch in the least! But, I know I'll get things back on track! Hopefully it’ll come and go by the weekend because it’s going to be my birthday!

WORK
THE BLOG
Things have been going pretty well with the blog. I am pleased with my progress over the past year and I feel pretty good about where it’s headed! Since I re-vamped the design (more still to tweek) and switched over to my own domain name I’ve gained 400 to 500 more viewers per month. Pretty happy about that! There’s always room for more, so if you enjoy coming here and seeing what I’ve got going on, share my blog with your friends! Remember – Sharing Is Caring! ;)

SOCIAL MEDIA
It’s hard not to feel a little blue when I see my likes on Facebook go down even though I know that you can’t force anyone to like, follow, subscribe or remain so if they don’t want to…and I wouldn’t want to, what fun would that be? I don’t often lose likes but on Monday I saw my likes drop by 3!!! It always makes you feel like you need to be doing more to keep people but really you can lose likers for many different reasons; closed or inactive accounts, false likes because people just came for giveaways, etc. But then on Friday, I gained that many back, plus a couple more, so that’s great! I still have to remind myself sometimes that success is never a constant slop but is made up of a lot of dips and peaks along the way. That always makes me feel better and re-focus!

On Instagram I suddenly gained 16 new followers in 1 day. That’s not many compared to the 400+ that some of the bloggers who’ve been doing this for longer gain in a week, but that’s pretty good for me in 1 day, and I’m happy about it! Come follow me to see the weird and crazy things that are happening over there! Twitter has been a consistently difficult place for me to gain followers but I’m sure eventually things will pick up there, too!

YOUTUBE
I had a great, great, GRREAT week on YouTube especially toward the end of the week. I decided to enroll in one of YouTube’s bootcamps for creators and put some of their tips into action. Even though I was doing a lot of them already, for some reason, on that day I had far more success with it and gained a couple of “super fans” as one of them had put it. Puts a HUGE :D on my face and I appreciate them and all of you sooo much!

I also made a Top YouTube Fans circle on Google+, if you didn’t make it on and want to (because there may be exclusive rewards at some point for this circle) you just have to interact with my videos and channel more often and you may get added! :)

One of my videos is only days away from reaching 100,000 views, in less than a year of being uploaded, and I think that’s pretty spectacular! And I’ve noticed a bit more of a spike in my YouTube subscribers over the weekend, which I’m sure is a result of those YouTube tips I’ve put into action! My YouTube subscriber count as of this morning is at 3,491 - I luv ya!

FREELANCE
As some of you may know from reading my About Me section here on the blog, I am a Graphic Designer by profession. I used to work for a company doing all of their print advertisements, signage, promotional material, and email blasts, but after 23 years being in business, some poor decisions were made within the company and the it went bankrupt leaving me without a job, so that’s how I came to be a blogger and YouTube creator, and I also still do freelance Graphic Design work. I recently started working on a blog design for my hair stylist, Amy, and things are going pretty good with that. She and I are both pretty excited about it! The goal is to have it finished by the end of April/1st of May, so you’ll be able to check out the design then, and her launch into beauty blog-dom!

ART
I had been doing a weekly Art Series post here on the blog but have gotten out of the habit which makes me sad. :( I plan on having something to show you all soon!

 I’m working on a non-traditional guest book for my friend’s wedding and I hope to have that done by the end of the month – that’s my goal! I will do an Art Series post on it once I am finished but here is a little peek at the underlying sketch... lots to do still...I mean, they don't even have eyes yet (he he):

I’ve also been involved with a comic book project, some of you may remember me talking about it, and I haven’t made a lot of progress on it, which also makes me sad. The comic book is based on a script written by a friend I graduated high school with, and he’d asked me if I would take a go at illustrating it for him. I love the idea of this project and I love that it’s something that takes me out of my comfort zone when it comes to art, not to mention it is a great story, I just wish I was doing a better job at it. I think part of me is afraid it won’t be good because it is new to me. I plan to get back on that project quite heavily pretty soon, and hope that he doesn’t take me off that project (please forgive me, buddy?).

Well, that’s it for my week! How was your week?

Sam ♡


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