Secret OWL Society

Hello June Printable + Wallpaper

Have you ever found yourself working like crazy only to find that you're going in circles? I think this happens when we forget to give ourself a target to focus on. Without a clear idea of what we want to achieve, we're just spinning our wheels - we're keeping our head above water, we're "surviving," but we're not moving any closer to the shore.

What is your shore? What does it look like? How long will it take you to get there?

When you know what you want, you can hold a picture of it in your mind. You always get what you picture in your mind. How clear is your picture? Having a clear idea of what you want means that you can stop treading water in the middle of nowhere and start swimming toward your target because now you can actually SEE it.

I hope these HELLO MONTH printables help you see your target a little more clearly every month...

5 Ways to Start Practicing Minimalism

1. RAISE YOUR STANDARDS

When you buy a new pair of shoes, is there an old pair that you can remove? When you bring home 5 new items of clothing, can you admit that there are probably 5 items in your wardrobe that you just never wear? When you buy a stapler that works so much better than your old one, do you actually pick up the old one and donate it? Or does it stay on your desk collecting dust because it's "still useful"?

Raise your standards on what deserves to be deemed "useful" or "valuable" when it comes to your space and start subtracting whatever doesn't meet YOUR standard.

(Hi, would you mind hovering over the pretty image above and pinning it on Pinterest for me?

Thank you for being awesome.)

Before I start talking about this printable for May, let's take a look at April. How are things looking for you now that April is over? Have you gone back and looked at your answers for the Hello April printable yet? Do you feel like your life and mindset are more aligned with those answers than they were 30 days ago?

Here are my answers to some of April's questions...

If you are a Dr. Who fan, you're going to love these printables featuring Doctors 9, 10, and 11. I made this set for Michelle Turner from Geeked Out Girl and she's made them available for free to subscribers on her site.

We both hope you'll thoroughly enjoy them.

My favourite Doctor is 11. Which one is yours?

If you would like your free set of Doctor Who Printables, click here. :)

Hello April Printable + Wallpaper

Whoa, April is here already. The theme for this month's printable is...ALIGNMENT.

It's something I've been working on a lot lately. My bedroom walls are covered with papers of plans, goals, mind-maps, ideas, brainstorms. Little by little, I'm refining my focus, aligning more and more with what I really want to create and work on.

The most interesting part of this project is that I am scratching out ideas and deleting them almost as much as I am adding them. It's weird that I find myself still setting goals that I think that I should have, but after a couple of days of looking at a particular goal and "trying it on for size," I'll realize that I don't really want to go in that direction.

So I've started to discover that being able to take a big black marker and scratch out a goal that I don't actually want is pretty powerful and affirming. It reminds me of Jim Rohn's teaching on "setting a better sail."

So often we're adding, adding, adding stuff into our lives and onto our plates, but to get to where life really works well, I think we have to learn how to edit and subtract.

I hope this printable helps you define what you want and from there begin the process of cutting out whatever doesn't align with that picture.

Click HERE to download your free printable + wallpaper.

Picmonkey Tutorial - How to Create Beautiful Banners

2 or 3 years ago, I stumbled upon PicMonkey - an easy-to-use graphic design / photo-editing tool. I was in the middle of babysitting my godbrother and while he was taking a nap, I tuned into a live webinar that Carrie, founder of the Female Entrepreneur Association, was hosting with Melanie Duncan. The webinar was about how + why to use Pinterest and when Melanie got to the part of how she actually creates the images for her Pinterest board, she introduced a tool that makes it super easy for her to do so - PICMONKEY!

I think that was the day when I actually wrote down, "I want to get paid to design pretty images for people on social media." Finding out about Picmonkey opened the door to that dream and now I have a nice, little freelance career on the side doing just that. :)

Now, in addition to using Picmonkey for myself and my clients, little by little I'm starting to teach people how to use it to create BEAUTIFUL images as well. I don't think many people know just how easy it is to create professional, original looking images using Picmonkey.

So, once a week, I'll be sharing a tip on how I use this tool and hopefully it helps you make your own beautiful images too. :)

Here is my creative process in creating this beautiful banner...

I opened up a custom canvas on Picmonkey and resized it to the size I need - 966 x 300

I got inspiration for the design by typing in "Paris, France" on Google (Pinterest works great too) and finding an image that caught my eye. It had a scrapbook look and feel that caught my eye. (see the screenshot of the image I found on google below)

I went to dollarphotoclub.com and found a picture of Paris that I liked, downloaded it and opened it up on Picmonkey and laid it over my canvas.

Then I opened a printable that I created using Picmonkey and Google docs a couple weeks ago and placed it in the corner with a bit of canvas textured background behind the printable. (I got the canvas backround from www.creativemarket.com - it ties in with elements from my brand/blog)

Then piece by piece, I put together the text "Planning a trip to the city of love" using white rectangles and the font "American Typewriter". This part took a little bit of time because I wanted an off-kilter, scrapbook-y look and that meant using multiple boxes of text and tilting each one slightly.

Lastly I threw in some little hearts.

Hope this helps spark some more creative ideas for you.

smile

Hello March! Free Printable + Desktop Wallpaper

As promised, I have the Hello March printable for you. The theme for this month is manifestation. What do you want to manifest this month?

Just by having clarity around what you want, you set in motion the process of making things happen.

I received this lovely email from Diana who filled out the Hello February printable last month that I think illustrates this point quite well:

Michelle,

I don't do this, but I had to share. I was turned onto SOS by a friend of mine, Amanda. I filled it out and after a day or so, forgot about it. I pulled it out today and read it over.

Whoa!! Wait a minute!! I did 90% of what I wrote down! How did that happen? I didn't reference every day. I didn't "work" on it. I just stumbled along the way I do and yet.... 90%!

Thanks Michelle! It seems there is much magic in words, more in writing, and when our subconscious gets hold of an idea logically organized and attractively presented it doesn't really matter what we perceive ourselves having done or not done, PROGRESS IS MADE!!!

I'm an OWLER for LIFE!!!!

Totally committed,

~Diana

How exciting is that? I hope Diana's experience inspires you to take the time to fill out this printable and see what happens with just a little bit of action + intention.

Like these printables? What do you think the theme should be for April? Leave a comment and let me know. :)