Today we fly...

From our first ever flight together, to Tasmania last month!

While I have been travelling overseas before, today Wade and I take off on our first overseas adventure as husband and wife! Our first overseas trip together at all and, most exciting of all, Wade’s first trip overseas! We are both so very excited! Not only because we are going to have fun and explore new lands together, but also because this will be the first real experiment in our dream of obtaining the ultimate freedom.

In the past when I travelled, I did it the ‘normal’ way, Normal for me, at least. I worked 3 part-time jobs for a year (usually bartending, waitressing and the like), saved everything I could, then went travelling til the money ran out. Come home. Repeat. This is all well and good. But I am well into my thirties now and, to put it mildly, my priorities have changed. I still have a healthy case of wanderlust, but I also have an aversion to work (in the traditional sense of the word) and a desire for more financial security and to start a family. This is where wanderlust and maturity tend to collide for most people. But we are hoping to buck the trend and today it all begins.

Our little business is still in the very early stages of being truly mobile, but we are taking the laptop and will be checking in periodically to do some ‘work’ whilst travelling. I’ll be updating the blog on working while travelling, all the interesting art and design we discover and the odd travel tale as well I’m sure. Additionally, we’ll be looking for some ideas for our new business idea (a blog post to come on this) and working on our plan for this idea so we can launch it once we return in September. I have also packed my sketch books and favourite pens to continue with my ‘one drawing a day’ project, although I expect many days it will be more!

The Red Parka shop will be closed as we have no way to ship whilst away, but this is something we will work on for the future as if we are to pursue our idea of longer-term travel one day, then this will be necessary.

For now, the full mobile business is a dream but one that this trip will bring closer to reality. But for now, I need to finish packing!

Tonight, we’ll be having dinner in Kuala Lumpur! Yay!

Being an artist, every day...

Drawing No. 1 - My wine glass, half drunk...

Lately I’ve been frustrated with myself, artistically. I am supposed to be an artist. An illustrator. Yet it’s been ages since I came up with something new that I really liked. I spend hours everyday on my computer, on my website, my blog, my facebook page, browsing other websites, blogs and facebook pages, waiting for inspiration to strike. Yet (surprise, surprise), very few drawings are being done.

The fact is, I get so lost in the extraneous world of my business that I don’t actually get much done of what is supposed to be the core of my business. I work hard at making stock, packaging, fulfilling orders, going to markets, keeping up with my online presence, book keeping. All this keeps me busy. But where is the essence of what I do? Where is the drawing?? I’m so busy but seem to be missing out on what it’s all about!

How many of you have this problem? We get so busy being busy that what really matters, the basic core of our work/life/existence, seems to fade into the background.

I think this can happen in all aspects of life, not just work. How often do we find ourselves so busy with our income producing work, our housework, driving places, shopping, keeping up with social networking sites, going to the gym, watching TV and keeping abreast of current affairs, that we run out of time to do the things that matter like pursuing our passions and dreams, or spending quality time with loved ones.

I decided today that in my attempts to get back to the heart of the matter (for me, in this instance, drawing), I am going to make a commitment to do a drawing every day. Every single day. Without fail. No matter what. If I feel uninspired, I will draw what’s in front of me (I just practiced this by drawing my wine glass, half full of red!). The idea is that this will develop some consistency in my work patterns, practice my skills on a daily basis, and allow new ideas, methods and inspiration to come into my life. I fully expect some of these drawings to be bad! But that’s half the fun!

I like to call myself an artist although sometimes I feel like a fake. So today, I commit to being an artist every single day for 100 days. I’ll post on my progress from time to time. And lets see where I’m at after day 100 - I hope to feel far more vibrant as an artist then than I do today, that’s for sure.

Think about what you can do today to get back to the core of things... life is too short to be too busy being busy without getting the real and meaningful things done!

Positive Art!

Lately, things in our little world have been a tad dark. Nothing major, nothing bad, just further on the darker side of light than I would like. I mean, everything is amazing right now, really. But sometimes it's just hard to really and truly live that truth.

I am an artist. I am also a big believer in positive thinking. And so, I set about drawing some inspirational goodness. A little drawing to put by the coffee machine to remind us how blessed we really are each morning. But you know those days where nothing you do works.... when you have an image in your head and on paper it just looks silly? Well, it's been a few of those in a row now. And so, in desperation for my 'positive art' fix, I went to Etsy. And lo and behold, I found the wonderfully quirky and gorgeous Freya!

I urge any of you that need a sparkle in your day to head over to Freya's Etsy store and take a look around. Freya is based in London but also has a little studio on Phillip Island right here in Victoria!

Meanwhile, in my dark, dank little flat in Melbourne, I am going to pick up my paper and pen and try once again to create some positive art, because really, my life is amazing and I am so happy and grateful to be here!

Update: War on Debt!

So, the month of June is over and although we did not achieve our goal of getting out of debt in a month (lofty, to say the least!), we did make some excellent progress and had some fun along the way! 

However, we will be achieving our goal by the end of July!! For real! The key to our success or failure really lay in the selling of our investment flat... and we sold it! But it's yet to settle. So assuming nothing goes wrong in these final days of the sale, we expect the settlement through in a couple of weeks. Then we can dance our way into the bank, throw some money around, and then waltz out again into FREEDOM!!

Ok, so that's the short story. We knew that the flat might not sell and we would have to tackle our debt in more arduous ways. So the rest of this post, for those of you interested, is a run down of our debt-reduction-in-a-month activities. 

Here is what we did:

1. Selling our stuff

Through a combination of Ebay, Gumtree, secondhand markets, a garage sale and second hand bookshops, we made a total of $1328. All through selling possessions we did not need to possess! We made some money and cleared out the house, helping us toward the more simplified life we are after. We also donated a few bags of unwanted items that we were unable to sell to our local charity store.

2. Selling Hand Cream

We have scoured Gumtree for suitable money making opportunities and amid all the dodgy ones, we spied this! And thus spent an interesting few days demonstrating and selling hand cream and other products at the Mind Body Spirit Festival! Between the two of us, we made $700 over the long weekend. Not bad really! And it was lovely stuff too... 

3. Online Surveys

This is a dicey one. I figured seeing as we were attempting a full-blown, all angles covered attack on our debt that I'd do a little experiment and just see if it's possible to make any money doing this. For a start, I ruled out any company that asked for up front payment (sounds dodgy to me). Then I did surveys. Now, in one month of doing this (which probably equates to about 5 - 6 hours of my time all up) I earned $57. Not a great return really. And not a whole lotta fun. But still, it was easy, free, done in my spare moments and it all adds up! 

4. Red Parka Sales

By far the biggest return, as expected. We took a few approaches to optimising our sales through the business in June, a traditionally slow month for retail. We did as many markets as we could and made some funky signs to promote our sale - everything was discounted and we had lots of happy customers! We did a sale online at our website promoted through facebook, and we discounted some wholesale products to encourage our retailers to stock up. All three approaches appeared to work for us, although it's impossible to put a figure on how much we managed to make on top of what our regular sales would have been. We can say, however, that for a slow, cold June we had an exceptional month of sales!

So that was the money we made. All up, we managed to put $5600 off the credit card debt in one month. Which is not bad, even though it leaves us with a fair bit to go. If we had kept this up for a few months, we could have cleared the debt without selling the flat, however, selling the flat gives us far more benefit than just clearing our debt. We were lucky enough to make a small profit on the sale, enough to pay the remaining debt, put a small amount aside for the future AND take the little holiday we have been dreaming of... yes, the travelling days of Jen and Wade are set to begin (stay tuned....). And best of all, we have no more mortgage to worry about! In short, the flat bought us our freedom. It's an amazing feeling to wipe the slate clean and start afresh.

With the house settlement and tax returns on their way in July, we are hoping that if all goes well, by the end of this month we will be completely debt free! So as our month long war on debt turns into two months, keep tuned for the final update later this month....

Thanks for reading! And thanks for the encouragement as well - I love feedback on the blog, especially regarding a challenge like this, so keep it coming!

Now it's a cold, wet Tuesday here in Melbourne and we are off to a particular country's consulate to get visas! How exciting.... guess where we are going!!!

Jen x