In this episode, I share day three of the Cosy Christmas Plan-Along: sort your hobbies. You can listen to the episode below or keep scrolling to read the key takeaways from today.

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Day Three

• Today we are looking at our hobbies and projects a little bit closer and see if there are any “restrictions” around them such as they can only be done in a certain room in the house or they need x amount of hours to do.
• Here are some examples. One of my hobbies, colouring in, can be done at any time of the day and I can usually dip in and out of it, but it usually has to be done at home because I have so many pens. Another one, baking, is totally different. It’s a hobby that needs planning, I like the kids to be in bed, I need at least 2 hours to do it and it needs to be done near Christmas so the cookies are still good to give as gifts. And, one more of mine, reading. I can read at any time of day no matter where I am because I read books in so many different formats.
• You might find you have hobbies that you can only do at certain points in the day in certain places and ones that you can do whenever and wherever; it’s good to have a mix if you do.
• However, one thing you might find helpful is to put some boundaries around hobbies that don’t have any. For example, even though I read everyday I am planning to have a few reading sessions where I sit and read a paperback next to the Christmas tree so it had a little more routine around it than usual.
• Next to each of your hobbies that you wrote down yesterday, just make some notes next to it in anything applies. For example, if you paint you might only be able to do it in the room where your canvas is set up during the day because you need the light.
• Next, let’s go through your cross stitch projects and do the same for each of them and I will use my own projects as examples so you can see how this works.
• Movie Magic is one project I will be stitching over Christmas and I have a large Q-snap holding the fabric. This means I can only really stitch this at home as it doesn’t fit into any of my project bags and it’s too big and cumbersome to stitch in a car, etc.
• Christmas Coffee Shop is another project I’ll be stitching and unlike Movie Magic this one is very portable and I could stitch it anywhere. But I’m thinking this project is going to be my Friday/Saturday night project to stitch when there is a Christmas film on (we usually do Friday Film Night).
• Secret Garden is a project that has many colours and needs a lot of concentration to stitch it. So this is also not a very portable project.
• Once you have done this with your own projects have a look and decide if you are happy with how they have worked out. For example, are they all projects that you need to be at home for and concentrate on a lot? Is that OK with you or would you like to add an easier project to stitch while you watch a Christmas film? And vice versa, are all of your projects small and easy? Will that bore you? Do you need some variety? Of course this all depends on the kind of stitching you like to do and is completely personal. As you can see, I like to vary the types of projects I stitch.
• Doing this process will help you as we go through the challenge and try to find the time for our hobbies next.

And that is it for today – Happy planning!

Extra episodes and posts

• How to Make a Cross Stitch Routine
• How to have a Christmas Retreat Day
• How to Organise Your WIP Projects
• Why I wrote a cross stitch book
• Hobbies I’m Planning This Christmas