TBT: Baking Cakes Ain’t Like Dusting Crops, Boy!

A cake decorated to look like the Millennium Falcon, resting on a bed of brown sugar and surrounded by Star Wars action figures.
Yes, it is a crappy quality picture. It was 2010 and I took it with my OG Motorola Droid phone. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Out of all the cakes I’ve baked for the kids, this is still my favorite. Originally published April 25, 2010 on my old A Frayed Knot Knits blog. Also, this has been sitting as a draft on this blog since 2015, idk why.  But it’s Thursday, and reading through this I was proud of myself all over again, and it’s still my favorite cake I’ve ever decorated, so:

Somehow, my daughter has become a huge Star Wars fan. I know, right, how could this possibly have happened? She has recently:

  • cried when watching Darth Vader’s body burned on a pyre at the end of Jedi
  • told me that I shouldn’t be watching Fanboys because “We don’t watch other Star Wars movies! Only Star Wars, Empire Strikes Back, and Return of the Jedi!
  • declared that she wants Darth Vader to be her father instead of Luke’s because “Luke is a bad boy and doesn’t deserve him.”
  • announced that she wants to be Han Solo when she grows up
  • requested demanded a Millennium Falcon cake for her 4th birthday, with Han Solo, Darth Vader, Chewbacca, and Princess Leia, but not Luke, “because Luke is too whiny.” Because I’m a sucker for the Millennium Falcon, and a challenge, and my little girl, I said, “Sure! How hard can it be?” And then I found out:

The party was Saturday at 4pm. Giant props to Kit for handling every detail of the party, from scheduling the space (Build-A-Bear) to taking care of the invites to greeting the parents and filming the party, leaving me free to concentrate fully on the cake.

I had originally thought to do gum-paste figures, but the tiny little sane part of my brain said, “Hey, dummy — they make perfectly good action figures, and then the kid will have a bonus birthday present, too!” So I went out and got everything but a Leia (because the Toys’R’Us I was at didn’t have one, but she was not terribly missed, so it’s okay). I had already ordered the most awesomest birthday candle EVAH for her: Darth Vader holding as his lightsaber a red candle.

After some hemming and hawing, Becky settled on both chocolate and vanilla for the actual cake. I do not particularly enjoy actually baking cakes, which means I don’t do it often enough to get really good at it, which means I bought mixes. My mom’s in town (hi, Mom!) and she helped me get the mixes all mixed and into the oven. One large (13×9) chocolate rectangle for the bottom, and two 9″ vanilla circles for the top + accessories. They came out fine, and we were ready to carve them Friday.

Now that I think about it, perhaps “ready” isn’t the right word…I wasn’t quite prepared for the reality of carving cake, and got pretty frustrated, especially with the cockpit. I finally ended up with something I thought would work, but it was clearly unstable and would need to be attached just prior to putting the fondant on, which I had planned for Saturday morning. Here’s what it looked like Friday night when I was done:

Bright and early Saturday, Kit took the kids for a walk, and I started putting it together and getting it ready for frosting. I had done the carving on a board, but wanted to transfer it to the actual presentation board before frosting. This necessitated planning the layout, so we opened up all the action figures and the candle, which promptly broke at the ankles. All attempts to repair it failed, and actually broke the base even further. Lacking the time to panic, I decided to just set it aside and deal with it later.

We decided where the ship should be on the board, and I commenced frosting it (in case you’ve never worked with fondant before, you put a thin layer of regular frosting on to “glue” the fondant). This meant it was time to attach the cockpit, which promptly disintegrated. You can see in the picture above that I had originally carved the cockpit piece out of the vanilla cake, and as it turns out, the chocolate cake holds together a little better. So I quickly re-carved it out of a piece of chocolate cake that was in my big bowl o’ cake scraps, and skewered it on. And then the bottom fell off, and I panicked.

While part of my brain was panicking, the other part was applying frosting and considering the situation. I finally came to the conclusion that the solution was to cheat. So I went upstairs and got some styrofoam and carved my third cockpit. This one didn’t fall apart, and I moved on to the actually fondanting.

There were a couple of tricky things about applying the fondant, mostly because the shape has a lot of nooks and crannys and this is only the second time I’ve ever used fondant, so I’m not particularly well-versed in manupulating it. But I got it on the cake with no real problems, and despite some cutting errors and a little bunching on the back, I thought it looked pretty good. It was, at the very least, the right shape:

Oh! Before I did the big fondanting bit, I decided it would be a good idea to practice a little and remind myself of how the fondant moves and acts. So I built the sensor dish, which ended up being my favorite part of the cake:

Now that I had the fondant on, it was time for the decorating. I cut out the dots that are a recognizable part of the top of the MF, with the plan of spray painting them with the black frosting I’d purchased for the dual purposes of painting said dots and also dirtying up the finished ship. It turns out that the “black” spray frosting is really more of a “light silver gray,” even after several applications. So it was off to Michael’s for emergency black frosting coloring…and where I found food-safe markers, including black. Win!

Back home, I set Mom to the task of coloring the dots, while I began applying the details with white piping. Then I changed my mind and decided most of the lines should be scored, with a very few details sticking up. So I scraped it down and started over, and let the sane part of my brain convince the panicky part that we had plenty of time as long as we didn’t get too carried away. Applying the blue of the engines to the back was considerably less stressful than I had thought it was going to be, and it improved the lines of the back of the cake quite a lot.

Now, Becky had specifically requested that we included the red/rust detailing — it’s on the real thing, and it’s on one of her toys but not the other — so I used the red marker to color that in, and then went back and piped in a few details here and there, using her two MF toys for reference (incidentally, I highly recommend having a 3D model on hand when doing something like this — much better than trying to find pictures with the right angles on the internet). I redid the cockpit a couple of times, and never was quite happy with it, but finally I had to declare it finished. I took it outside and gave it a quick spritzing with the “black” spray frosting, just to scunge it up a little.

I have to say, I was pretty pleased with the end result. It’s not the best looking Millennium Falcon cake I’ve ever seen, but I think I did a pretty good job for someone who doesn’t really decorate cakes:

I was a little annoyed about only having the foil for it to sit on, but then I had an idea while I was in the shower (yes, I finished in enough time that I was able to shower and even iron my skirt before we had to leave for the party!)…on the way I grabbed a couple bags of brown sugar and when we set the cake up, I think it looked a lot like it was parked on the sands at Mos Eisley:

And look! I solved the Darth Vader problem and the gun turret problem (at some point I realized that I should have guns up there and I wasn’t sure what the hell I was going to do) in one fell swoop! Yay me!

Next time, I’m going to make someone else cut the cake — it was a lot harder emotionally than I expected it to be. It took about 5 minutes to go from the above to this, and I really felt like I needed a good lie-down afterwards:

(Incidentally, when you stack cakes on top of one another, don’t forget to put a layer of frosting in there — you’ll thank yourself when it’s time to serve.)

I have to give tremendous thanks to Kit and Grandma Tedi for all their help and encouragement and keeping the kids out of the kitchen/dining room/my way. And especially thank you to Becky, who told me at every stage how awesome her Millennium Falcon cake looked, and made me remember why I was doing this even when I was so frustrated with the cockpit that I was seriously considering sending Kit to the A&P for a plain old sheet cake. Love you all!

Dad’s Christmas Eve Special Venison Chili

When I was a wee one, our big holiday celebration took place on Christmas Eve. Friends and family came over, we exchanged gifts, and generally just hung out and had a good time. When I was old enough (8? 9?) I took over present wrapping, and would spend all day holed up in my dad’s study, wrapping presents for all guests who weren’t me and listening to the local radio station’s holiday musical selections. I didn’t discover until I was an adult that most people do gifting on Christmas Day rather than Christmas Eve, and it still feels weird to me. (For those wondering about Santa, yes, Santa came to my house and there were gifts by the fireplace Christmas morning. He left unwrapped presents, usually gifts that were large or oddly shaped and would have been difficult for my parents to wrap.)

While I was matching up ribbons and paper, my dad was downstairs making his annual venison chili. He wasn’t a hunter, really, but he did go on a deer hunting trip every year with a few friends, and usually one or the other of them would take a deer, and they would share the meat out amongst the group. So most years, there was venison in the chili, which gives it a slightly different flavor profile from just beef and pork.

I loved the chili, and I loved that my dad was so protective of it. It was served with flour tortillas on the side (to cut the heat), and add-ons like cheese and sour cream were strongly discouraged, but might be grudgingly provided to a particularly insistent guest (usually, this would be a +1 – the regulars knew better). Someone asked for ketchup once. No one ever asked for ketchup again, and the incident was spoken of in hushed tones at subsequent Christmas Eve gatherings.

The chili was served in disposable paper bowls, until the year my uncle stumbled on his way to the table, sending his bowl of chili flying onto the dining room’s off-white carpet, installed a mere 6 months earlier. Then we got some nice crockery with handles, and my uncle was served at the table in future years.

I miss my dad a lot, and every time I make any variation of this chili, I am flooded with warm, happy memories. And also delicious chili.

Dad’s Christmas Eve Special Venison Chili
Print Recipe
If you can't find venison (or don't want to eat Bambi), use 1.5lb each of beef and pork. This chili recipe calls for chunked meat, but makes a great base for ground meat as well, if that's your preference. I do recommend using both pork and beef if you do ground, as the pork gives it a little more depth of flavor.
Servings Prep Time
16 bowls 20 minutes
Cook Time
3+ hours
Servings Prep Time
16 bowls 20 minutes
Cook Time
3+ hours
Dad’s Christmas Eve Special Venison Chili
Print Recipe
If you can't find venison (or don't want to eat Bambi), use 1.5lb each of beef and pork. This chili recipe calls for chunked meat, but makes a great base for ground meat as well, if that's your preference. I do recommend using both pork and beef if you do ground, as the pork gives it a little more depth of flavor.
Servings Prep Time
16 bowls 20 minutes
Cook Time
3+ hours
Servings Prep Time
16 bowls 20 minutes
Cook Time
3+ hours
Ingredients
Servings: bowls
Instructions
  1. In a large pan, brown sirloin tips, then pork, then venison (leave the fat in the pan to use when browning the venison).
  2. When finishing up the venison, toss in the garlic & onion to soften.
  3. Drain meat, if needed.
  4. Puree tomatoes - leave them as chunky as you like.
  5. Transfer meat, garlic, and onions to a large stockpot over medium-high heat.
  6. Add beans.
  7. Sprinkle chili powder & paprika over meat and beans.
  8. Add tomatoes, tomato paste, and broth to the pot.
  9. Toss in herbs.
  10. Bring to a boil, then reduce to a slow simmer.
  11. Simmer gently over low heat, stirring occasionally, for at least 3-4 hours (the longer the better). If you need to run out for a few minutes, just turn off the heat under the pot and then start it up again when you get back.
  12. Add water if necessary. You want a nice, thick consistency somewhere between soup and stew.
  13. Serve warm.
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Drawn and Quartered (Skillshare Skills Share Day 6)

 This month, my goal is to do a Skillshare* course (or part of a course) every day, and blog about it.

Looking for something short today…here we go: How to Draw the Head from Every Angle: Part One, with instructor Nina Rycroft. 15 minutes. Perfect.

Horse Clock GIF by Ultimate Tag - Find & Share on GIPHY

Shit. I need a ruler. Wait! I have a ruler. We good.

Bart Simpson Slapping GIF - Find & Share on GIPHY

Basic structure. Yep. Got it. Circle. Shit. I’m crap at circles. Thing I learned on the first day of art school. Utter crap. How the fuck is she at the jaw already??? Hang on. I gotta pause. Okay. It took me three tries but I got it. Stupid circles.

3 very rough, not very good outline sketches of heads

And then we jump right into adding the features. The hell? There are definitely other steps that need to happen here.

One of the not great rough outlines turned into a not half bad rough sketch of a grumpy bald guy

 

An egg?? I NEED AN EGG FOR THIS? No. (Actually, I will probably do this at some point, because it’s kind of genius.) Okay, wait – I think a big part of my problem is I’m not drawing my interior circles big enough.

Rough egg sketches

Okay – once we get into the front and side view parts of the lessons, lots of details about how to properly place them and draw them. It’s a LOT of info. I’m definitely going to be coming back to this class and trying more of these drawings.

Evil Dead Drawing GIF - Find & Share on GIPHY

*”Skillshare is an online learning community with thousands of classes for creative and curious people, on topics including illustration, design, photography, video, freelancing, and more.” They’ve got classes in everything from art to baking to productivity to gardening to trumpet (I will not subject you to my efforts to relearn the trumpet). Classes range from 20m to a few hours, but even the longer ones are broken into bite-sized chunks. It’s pretty cool.

If you decide you want to sign up and you like me enough to give me a free month, too, here’s my referral link

This project is in no way endorsed, sponsored, or paid for by Skillshare (afaik, they don’t even know about it).

Day Trippin’ (Skillshare Skills Share Day 5)

 This month, my goal is to do a Skillshare* course (or part of a course) every day, and blog about it.

Today’s course: Build Your CEO Morning Routine: Goal Setting, Thinking, Ideas, Deep Work, with instructor Colin Stuckert

I didn’t blog yesterday (obviously), because I spent my blogging time fighting with the internet and trying to get the work I get paid to do done. I was so exhausted (and still having connectivity issues) by the time I finished up that I made a conscious decision to delay blogging. That conscious decision part is pretty important to me. If I try to hold on too tightly to routine, I fall back into that perfection-for-perfection’s-sake trap, and then give up completely because it’s not “perfect”. But I also don’t want to just forget to do the thing (in this case, blog/skillshare), which is definitely also a thing that happens to me.

Woman talking to another woman, captioned

ANYWHO, my big plan was to get up and do a quick class this morning to make up for last night. I even chose the class – this class on morning routines – before I went to bed last night. I got up early (for me) this morning and had plenty of time to get to blogging and then I just…didn’t. Morning Lola is not the most productive Lola, tbh. So instead, here I am this evening with the class on morning routines. Maybe the Morning Lola of tomorrow will be better equipped to tackle the day.

Bear laying on the ground
Morning Lola

Okay, first thing – this guy talks so fast I had to slow my viewing speed down to 1.25x! 😆 He’s showing his planning pages, which is great, but I’m not finding it specific enough to be really helpful. Why are you writing that there? What does that mean to you? How does it help you as you work through your day? My problem with journaling and todo lists always comes down to making space to reference it throughout the day so that it’s meaningful and guides me all day long. Setting it up in the morning – or even the night before – is the easy part.

Okay. Made it almost three lessons into this one and I’m bouncing. It’s just not for me – too much focus on broad strokes and not enough on whys and wherefores.

This has been another loooooong work day, so I’m also bouncing off the blog for now, but I’ll be back tomorrow, hopefully to do the next Find Your Style lesson.

Young woman with red hair up in bun, wearing a gray sweatshirt and sitting against wall. Captioned

 

*”Skillshare is an online learning community with thousands of classes for creative and curious people, on topics including illustration, design, photography, video, freelancing, and more.” They’ve got classes in everything from art to baking to productivity to gardening to trumpet (I will not subject you to my efforts to relearn the trumpet). Classes range from 20m to a few hours, but even the longer ones are broken into bite-sized chunks. It’s pretty cool.

If you decide you want to sign up and you like me enough to give me a free month, too, here’s my referral link

This project is in no way endorsed, sponsored, or paid for by Skillshare (afaik, they don’t even know about it).

Mad as a Hatter (Skillshare Skills Share Day 4)

 This month, my goal is to do a Skillshare* course (or part of a course) every day, and blog about it.

SO. Yes, I did not blog yesterday. Nor did I make it out here to watch the next segment of Find Your Style. BUT. I did make a hat to go with my Christmas cowl. And I got mostly done with a hat I found in my WIP/UFO pile (pile, hahahaha, that’s a joke. There are at least 7 WIP/UFO piles in various locations in my house. Not including the ones I’m actively working on. It’s a problem.  But I digress. Also a problem. See, there I go again.)

You may remember from (checks notes) Friday that I was too worn out to be in a Pinteresting/self-reflective place, so I didn’t complete the exercise from Exercise Two: Find Your Patterns. BUT, I was feeling it today, so I’ve done it and I am sure these will just shock you all to the tips of your toes:

  • whimsical
  • bright/colorful
  • tropical
  • vintage

These are the things that I’m finding repeating over and over. Even the punky stuff I like tends to have a whimsical flair to it. The other part of the exercise to to create a “main board” with this stuff on it, but honestly, I really like having the four categories. Maybe going forward I’ll put stuff I can easily categorize in the sections, but then keep other stuff just in the main area. I don’t know yet. I’m going to do it how it feels right, is what I’m going to do.

So, on to Exercise Three: You on a Plate. But also a moment to give a big <3 <3 <3 to the little interlude about just jumping right in and expecting to fail. Accepting and even embracing failure has been a hugely important thing for me. Letting go of striving for perfection is hard, but good enough is, well, good enough.

You on a Plate is a super cool concept, and it’s one I want to give an appropriate amount of time and effort to, so much like the actual doing of Exercise 2, I’m going to save the doing of this until tomorrow (or possibly even later in the week). It looks like a lot of fun, though, and I’m looking forward to it. And if I don’t get to it tomorrow, I will do a different Pinterest class in the meantime to keep this blogsharing? Skillgging? Whatever I’m doing here, I’ll keep it going.

 

*”Skillshare is an online learning community with thousands of classes for creative and curious people, on topics including illustration, design, photography, video, freelancing, and more.” They’ve got classes in everything from art to baking to productivity to gardening to trumpet (I will not subject you to my efforts to relearn the trumpet). Classes range from 20m to a few hours, but even the longer ones are broken into bite-sized chunks. It’s pretty cool.

If you decide you want to sign up and you like me enough to give me a free month, too, here’s my referral link

This project is in no way endorsed, sponsored, or paid for by Skillshare (afaik, they don’t even know about it).

Christmas Cowl!

I did not get out to my computer to watch my next Skillshare lesson today. Instead, I stayed in and knitted a cowl with this stash yarn I ran across the other day. Its a black base with red and green sparkle threads, so naturally it screamed Christmas at me. I didn’t feel like working up my own pattern,  and Spidey’s Spiral Cowl by Abi Gregorio was exactly what I wanted, so off I went.

Cowl, as worn. I’ll try to get a pic that shows off the sparkles, but they’re pretty subtle.
A better look at the stitch pattern.

It’s not often I start and finish a project the same day- this was a nice, low-pressure interlude.

Stylin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo! (Skillshare Skills Share Day 3)

 This month, my goal is to do a Skillshare* course (or part of a course) every day, and blog about it.

Today’s course: continuing Find Your Style: Five Exercises to Unlock Your Creative Identity, taught by Andy J. Pizza

Exercise two: finding my patterns. We’re gonna analyze my Pinterest boards. Yikes.

Wait – so I kind of did this already while I was making the boards. Like, this is just being thoughtful. Was I not supposed to make thoughtful choices – was it supposed to be more brainstorm-y? Confused. But let’s see where this goes.

“Style is making work that makes you feel like you’re at home.”

Oh, now I gotta make a master board. Hmmm. I’m at the end of a long work week and not sure I’m in the right headspace for Pinteresting right now. So I’m going to put in a pin in that and noodle around with it in the morning.

Put a pin in it.

Because Pinterest.

A pin.

Young woman chewing gum and wearing headphones with topknot ponytail captioned

That’s it for today. Back to tomorrow for exercise three and maybe more!

*”Skillshare is an online learning community with thousands of classes for creative and curious people, on topics including illustration, design, photography, video, freelancing, and more.” They’ve got classes in everything from art to baking to productivity to gardening to trumpet (I will not subject you to my efforts to relearn the trumpet). Classes range from 20m to a few hours, but even the longer ones are broken into bite-sized chunks. It’s pretty cool.

If you decide you want to sign up and you like me enough to give me a free month, too, here’s my referral link

This project is in no way endorsed, sponsored, or paid for by Skillshare (afaik, they don’t even know about it).

Intermission!

Well, I made it all of two days. But at least I’m still blogging today, right? Right??

Cringe Reaction GIF - Find & Share on GIPHY

Today was just long and not terribly productive and if I’m being completely honest, I legit just forgot to watch and blog until I’d already left my workspace for the day (I’m writing this on my phone). I had thought about it- and even done the initial setup for todays post! Then I got busy and just plain forgot about it. Planning to jump right back on the horse tomorrow, though – see you then!

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Stylin’! (Skillshare Skills Share Day 2)

 This month, my goal is to do a Skillshare* course (or part of a course) every day, and blog about it.
Today’s course: Find Your Style: Five Exercises to Unlock Your Creative Identity, taught by Andy J. Pizza
I’m really excited about this one. Locking down my personal style has always been hard for me, whether it’s related to my art/crafting or the way I dress. I have lots of ideas about what I would like my style to be, but I’ve had limited success making personal style happen. I often feel like the styles I like – the ones I like for me, not just “things I like” – are not super compatible (think Betsey Johnson v boxy linen slacks and a flowy silk blouse or the clean lines and symmetry of a mandala vs a surrealist tangle of shape and color creating fantastical creatures and objects).
A kitten bouncing around, captioned "so many choices..."
Loving the idea of “creative DNA” consisting of identity, experience, taste, and experiments. Taste is “…not about skill, but what you can receive” – this might be a game changer for me.
Okay, made it through Exercise One: Your Creative DNA today. The exercise (SPOILER) is to create a wee mood board (6-12 images) for each of the creative DNA components. I don’t have a lot on my “experiments” board, but the rest feel like I’m off to a good start, and I feel like these boards are something I’ll keep adding to. Even just a half hour or so of fleshing them out felt pretty good.
I did these as a Pinterest board with four sections. You can have a look at mine here.
Tomorrow, I’ll start back up again with Exercise Two: Find Your Patterns. So far, I’m really enjoying this course, and I have no idea where I’m going to end up on my creative journey, which is kind of cool.
Cat in convertible cruising past drawings of palm trees, a sun, and a traffic light.
Me in this class, just enjoying the ride and seeing what happens along the way.
(As a sidenote, all of these instructors feel really manic to me, and I finally realized that it’s because I’m watching them at 1.5x speed. I like the condensed speed, but also I’m glad I figured out that this “manic” vibe is not necessarily accurate.)
Ferris Bueller: Life moves pretty fast If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.
*”Skillshare is an online learning community with thousands of classes for creative and curious people, on topics including illustration, design, photography, video, freelancing, and more.” They’ve got classes in everything from art to baking to productivity to gardening to trumpet (I will not subject you to my efforts to relearn the trumpet). Classes range from 20m to a few hours, but even the longer ones are broken into bite-sized chunks. It’s pretty cool.
If you decide you want to sign up and you like me enough to give me a free month, too, here’s my referral link
This project is in no way endorsed, sponsored, or paid for by Skillshare (afaik, they don’t even know about it).

Sharing Skillshare Skills…or Something

Listen, I know I keep posting that I’m going to post and then not posting, so I’m not going to do that. I’m just going to post when I post.  Okay? Okay.

That said, I’m going to try a thing this month. I got a great deal on a Skillshare membership, and though I’ve tried them out a few times in the past and really found the courses inspiring and useful, I’ve had trouble making time to, you know, actually do the courses. As you know, I’ve also had trouble making time to blog. SO. This month, my goal is to do a Skillshare* course (or part of a course) every day, and blog about it (live-blog style, it turns out).

(It’s probably not that high, tbh. But I’m gonna try!)

There may not be pictures (but there might be). I will let you know which courses I try, what I like about them, and whether I’d recommend them to a friend (that’s you. You’re the friend in this scenario.). If I really bounce hard off something in the first lesson, I’m going to choose something else to do and you’ll never hear about it – this isn’t about being negative or hating on courses. There are definitely some courses that I’ve found more useful than others – you’re going to hear about the useful ones. I’m likely going to be doing mostly productivity/lifehacks and art courses, just because that’s my jam right now. But I’m also planning to mix it up a bit with some gardening and baking, too.

No, dammit! One at a time!

So, without further ado, I’m going to kick it off with MEANINGFUL PRODUCTIVITY | Create Sustainable Habits, taught by Julian Merten:

Okay. This is basically a breakdown of the principles from the book Atomic Habits by James Clear. Merten is very upfront about this. I’m not learning a ton of new stuff, but these are definitely good tips on how to actually Do The Things.

I knew this going in but it’s really being reinforced by this course (in a good way!): productivity and habit-building are like healthy eating, in that lots of different things that actually work if you are good at implementing them and stick to them, but you gotta actually do it. There’s no magic pill that will make me more productive.

Ah, the Rewards step. My favorite part. I need to find something that’s not food or shopping to reward myself with, though. Fun story: last time I was job hunting, I used to reward myself with buying a little something for my Future Office whenever I sent off a bunch of applications or had an interview. So I had this whole bag of things like a new mug, a fun tape dispenser, unicorn paperclips, cool sticky notes (yeah, I said cool! Don’t @ me!), a hedgehog planter, etc. Then I got an amazing remote position, so I get to work from my home office, which is already fully stocked with things I love.

Sloth tape dispenser
It’s a sloth tape dispenser! With a headband for some reason!

Anywho, this was a decent class. I didn’t really learn anything new, but it did reinforce the things I already knew about habit-building, so that’s nice. Kind of a refresher. I didn’t feel like it really tied in the productivity angle effectively, but if you’re looking for some habit-building tips, this is a decent place to start.

That’s one down, y’all!

*”Skillshare is an online learning community with thousands of classes for creative and curious people, on topics including illustration, design, photography, video, freelancing, and more.” They’ve got classes in everything from art to baking to productivity to gardening to trumpet (I will not subject you to my efforts to relearn the trumpet). Classes range from 20m to a few hours, but even the longer ones are broken into bite-sized chunks. It’s pretty cool.

If you decide you want to sign up and you like me enough to give me a free month, too, here’s my referral link

This project is in no way endorsed, sponsored, or paid for by Skillshare (afaik, they don’t even know about it).