Episode 20: 20 in 2020

Welcome to the ScrapHappier Podcast, where we share quick tips, tricks, and techniques to help you create scrapbooks you love and be happier while doing it. I’m your host, Alice Boll.

I’m so glad you’re joining us for episode number 20. I just feel that this is such an accomplishment to have reached this point in the podcast, 20 episodes. It feels really big and it’s 20 episodes in the year 2020. And so thanks to one of my wonderful ScrapHappy members. She had a fantastic idea about doing a special 20 in 20 episode, and so that’s what we have for you today. So shout out to Theresa Martinez. That was a wonderful idea.

Before we dive into our topic, I’m going to invite you to a special event that I have going on this Saturday. That’s December the 12th. So make sure that you get the information about that at the end of the episode. Let’s go.

2020 has been quite the year. And in some ways it’s a massive train wreck, but in other ways, in small ways, we have these moments where we found things that we really loved. And hopefully that’s the same for you. I just thought today, I would talk about the 20 things that I really enjoyed in 2020. And to be honest, some of these things I’ve already scrapbooked, but some of them, I haven’t. So my plan after this is to find a way to remedy that.

Number one, I think anybody that knows me knows by now that I became the crazy chicken lady during quarantine this year. We got some chickens from my mother-in-law. We hatched some chicks from the eggs. We built our new chicken coop. My dad made me a chicknic table. Look it up. It’s super cute. It’s a total thing. My chicken started laying eggs for me, which was super exciting. And I even dressed like a chicken for Halloween this year.

Number two, this one is also related to chickens, except this one is about automating our chickens. My son, Joe is like a genius with tech and he set up the coolest technology to help us run our whole chicken empire. He set up an automated chicken feeder, automated chicken doors that we get open and close to make sure that our chickens were safe and tucked in at night time, but had the opportunity to go out and find bugs during the day. We even have security cameras so that we can check on our chickens from our phones. It’s pretty awesome. And yeah, it’s a little over the top, but that’s what happens when you have a techie kid. I always say kid, and he’s actually a young man that runs his own business. Once he’s your kid, he’s always your kid. Right?

Number three, I absolutely loved getting onto Zoom and FaceTime with family and friends, especially near the beginning of the pandemic. My nieces and nephews had the most fun playing with the different filters and effects that you could create. And I just had such a good time hanging out with them on there.

Number four, going on walks. Jonas and I took a lot of walks in the spring and often our boys would come with us. And along the way, we would run into our neighbours. Everybody was walking. It was like, we were just trapped in the house and we’re like, “No way we’re going outside.” And so everyone was out taking a walk out in nature and staying like at least six feet apart, but it was really great to see everybody out enjoying nature together.

Number five, we were those people. We started a garden this year. We grew tomatoes, potatoes, and a ton of weeds. Not weed, weeds. It turns out that even this year, I couldn’t manage to stay on top of all of the weeds that were getting into my flower beds and my vegetable garden. But even though my garden wasn’t perfectly weeded, the deer still thought that my carrots and my beats were totally delicious. They also enjoyed my lettuce and I couldn’t even find the peas and beans. We did however, get a really bumper crop of tomatoes, which my husband was not excited about because he doesn’t like tomatoes. And we had a ton of potatoes and they were delicious.

Number six, one of the biggest highlights of our whole summer was camping. We had an RV that we bought last year and we put that baby to good use. We went down and we camped in my brother’s backyard. And then we camped in my mom and dad’s backyard. And then we were back to my brothers and it was just back and forth like that all summer long. We even got really excited when gasoline prices went down to 50 cents per litre, which I haven’t seen since I was actually a teenager. And we thought, “Wow, this is amazing, except we’re not really going anywhere. That’s too bad.” Last summer when we bought our RV, gas prices were $1.35, $1.40 even. It was really high. It was crazy.

Number seven is definitely the smoker. My husband bought a smoker this year and he started making brisket, roast steak. He took those potatoes from our garden and popped them into the smoker. And, oh my gosh, that might’ve been our very favourite thing. Although that brisket was pretty good. I even tried making a mac and cheese and we cooked some chicken on the barbecue too.

Number eight, we have a hot tub and we almost never use it in the summer because we end up having too many mosquitoes. This year, I got smart and I bought a tent that goes over top of the hot tub that we could use in the summer and it made all the difference. We enjoyed our hot tubs so much this year. It was just such a pleasure to sit outside and enjoy sitting in the hot tub and not being devoured by nature’s little bloodsuckers.

Number nine. This one was really fun for me, although I think some people were a little bit stressed. We did some Corona haircuts around here. I actually got to cut my boys’ hair again. I don’t always get to cut their hair, but I was so excited. It just brought me back to those days when they were little boys and it was kind of fun for me. And then recently my mom cut my hair, which… Oh my gosh, that took me back.

Number 10, Jonas started doing all of our grocery shopping and [inaudible 00:07:28] running, which means that I don’t have to go to town. I don’t have to do any of those things. I don’t like grocery shopping, I don’t like going to the post office to get the mail, and he just goes and does it all. It doesn’t bother him at all, but oh my gosh, it’s so much better for me. So definite perk.

Number 11, I delved into a few of the pandemic activities this year. I did some of the baking. I didn’t actually make sourdough bread. I did miss out on that. I did some crochet. Actually I started learning how to do crochet. I started learning languages. I studied French for a while, then I switched to Welsh. Now I’m working on some Spanish. And then recently I started doing some organizing. I don’t know why that did not hit in the spring, but I’m so glad that I’m getting it done now.

Number 12, I launched this podcast. The ScrapHappier Podcast went from a dream to actually being a real thing. I’m so grateful that you’re here and listening. My goal is to inspire you, to tell your stories and to make scrapbook pages that you love. And hopefully as we get to the end of this one, you’ll see where I’m going with this flashback from 2020.

Number 13, the ScrapSmarter Experience became a thing. I was overjoyed with how much fun and how much learning we did during the first ScrapSmarter Experience in August. And so now we’re going to host another one in January. I’ll make sure that there’s more details and the coupon codes, you can save $30. It’s good until December 15th. That’s going to be on the show note page.

Number 14, my son Ryan moved away. That’s right. He finally had the chance to go off and start his life as a grown-up living on his own. And I was so excited that he got to do that. Well, okay, I’ll confess. There was a few tears. They were my own. I was excited that he could go, but he went and he’s my baby boy… I don’t know. I was sad.

Number 15, Ryan is on his way home and he will be here before Christmas. So this is one happy mommy.

Number 16, Joe started to apprentice with my husband to become a refrigeration mechanic, which will make him a fourth generation refrigeration mechanic. And that’s pretty cool.

And number 17, Joe also became my tech guy for all of my online stuff and that has just been amazing. His understanding of how to put all of the technology together so that everything communicates and everything just works has been a game changer. If you need help putting your tech together, I can highly recommend Joe, just pop over to Blue Network Technology Corporation at bnt.blue. He makes the tech easy so that you can build your business.

Number 18, 2020 was definitely made better by being able to hang out with my scrappy friends online this year. We had such a variety of live interactions, happy-at-home sessions, some of our member Hangouts, and our ScrapHappy sisters even hosted birthday parties for each other online. It was just so much fun and definitely brought me a lot of happiness.

Number 19. Another thing I really enjoyed this year was people’s sense of humor. All of the memes that came out during this pandemic year, really put a lighter spin on things. The toilet paper memes, the hey you’re on mute memes. And even the hey, your camera is on. Oh, it just reminded me of so many things that came up during this pandemic and it was so nice to be able to laugh and smile about some of it.

And finally, number 20. One of the things that I really enjoyed was actually spending time by myself, doing things that I love and rediscovering my own priorities. I know I couldn’t spend as much time with other people this year, and that really allowed me to look at what I want my life to look like. I definitely needed some time for some introspection, and I guess this year was the time to get plenty of that.

The great news is that I feel that I’m in the right place and I’m on the right path. I’m moving forward in directions that I want to go. But that doesn’t mean that I’m making all the layouts that I want to create and telling all the stories about my life that I want to tell. So I need to catch up on some of my stories from 2020, and what I’m going to do is have a crop. This coming up weekend, December the 12th, I’ll be live on the ScrapHappy YouTube channel at 9:00 AM Pacific, 12:00 PM Eastern time. I’d love to have you join me.

Now, if you’re catching this after the fact, you can actually watch the replay. I’ll have it posted on the show notes at ScrapHappy.org/episode20.

And here’s the prompt of the day, or you can come and join me on Saturday, which is when I’ll be working on this prompt. I’m going to take these 20 things. My 20 favorite things from 2020, and I’m going to put them together on a scrapbook page. It’ll be like having a highlight reel from my 2020 year. And I really want to start 2021 on a positive note. I want to leave most of this pandemic behind, whether we actually can or not. I want to start fresh. And so I want to look at this year and find something positive that’s going to help me set my intention for next year.

And here’s the tip of the day. What are your top moments from 2020? Whether you have 20 of them or you have a lot more or a lot less, find some moments that you really enjoyed this year and let’s create a page together. Join me on December 12th for the online crop on YouTube.

If you want to see some of the layouts that I’ve already created about some of these activities from the 2020 year, and yes, there’s a lot of chicken pages. I’ll be posting them on the show notes for this episode at ScrapHappy.org/episode 20. If you make a page that was inspired by the best moments from this year, I would love to see it. If you’re sharing it on social media, use the hashtag, ScrapHappier Podcast.

I hope that this conversation will help you look at this year and wrap it up so that we can all start fresh in 2021. And if you’d like to hang out, you can come and find out all the things that I have going on at ScrapHappy.org. Let’s scrapbook together and make pages that we love. Happy scrapping.