As for what I learned in 2011...apparently the girls in our family tend to hit the bottle rather hard and have a small Martinelli's addiction...
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| Miss Marley at Thanksgiving. |
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| Miss Abigail at Christmas. |
Anyway...it's a new year, which means a new set of goals...but first, let's summarize how 2011 went...
Back in June I revealed the resolutions that I had been working on.
Resolution 1 : Read 52 books during the year.
Resolution 2 : Try 33 new things.
Resolution 3 : Make 52 scrapbook pages during the year.
Resolution 4 : Take a picture a day for the entire year.
As with all resolutions, I admit that my results were a bit hit and miss.
Resolution 1 : I actually completed this one successfully! I finished my 52nd book on New Year's Eve with more than 6 hours to spare. I'll take it! As a result, the brackets have been filled in for the 2011 Favorite Book of the Year and the results will be revealed tomorrow. I'm kind of excited to see where I end up. There are some pretty good contenders.
Resolution 2 : I made my goal of 33 new things without a hitch. In fact, I made this resolution based on recipes alone...but I was also able to pick up some new crafting skills - which came in handy for my Christmas Project Countdown.
Resolution 3 : This is where things start to go downhill. I didn't make my scrapbooking goal, I am sad to say. Instead of 52 pages, I stopped counting once I knew I wasn't going to make it and wound up somewhere around 30. Sad, but true. But I learned something from this resolution that I'm putting to work for 2012.
Resolution 4 : Ya...right. You'd think I'd be great at this one. I pretty much have a camera on me all the time. However, I kept finding that I'd get to the end of my day and forget to take a picture. I guess my life just got busy. I made it until late July before I just flat gave up. I know myself well enough now not to attempt that goal this year.
So...now what am I going to do for 2012? I'm pretty happy about the ideas I've come up with.
Resolution 1 :
Reading went pretty well last year, but 52 books made for a challenging distribution on the bracket and necessitated the institution of the "wild card" slots. I wasn't super happy with that situation. So...this year I've upped the goal to 64. Here's how it will work: Instead of posting reviews of 5 books at a time and having a winner come out of those 5, each book will get its own review and automatically be entered into the bracket. This way everyone has a fair shake at the win.
I'll be filling the bracket differently this year so I can mix up the books a little better. Here's an idea of the order for the fill in.
See...not a bad system right?
Darian has also decided to join in on this resolution with me. His goal is 32 books and we'll be setting up his Goodreads account this week to help him track it. He will be guest posting as he finishes books to give his reviews and then breaking down his bracket to decide his very own Favorite Book of 2012.
Resolution 2 : This is actually 3 resolutions rolled into one so I'm breaking it up into three parts.
Part A : Designated Scrapbook Time. Based on the failure of last year's scrap endeavor, I have learned that I can easily get distracted by other projects and not spend my time scrapping. So...this year, I will be making it happen. Each week I will be setting aside a block of 3 hours specifically for scrapbooking. I won't be setting a specific day or time that will be happening each week since our schedules get a little messy, but I'll be deciding every Monday where the time will be allotted for the week.
Part B : Project Life. This was one of my Christmas gifts (by request). I will be using my new Becky Higgins Project Life scrapbook to help me track our family in 2012. I will be finishing a minimum of 2 pages for each week dedicated to what happened in our lives over those 7 days. Weeks for this project will go from Sunday - Saturday. I'll be showing the pages as I complete them each week. I figure that will force me to get them done on time and not get a huge backlog. Essential to this task...I have to hit Archiver's tomorrow and spend my gift card so that I can get my page protectors - which I mistakenly forgot to ask for. That'll teach me.
Part C : Smash. A Smash book is a neat little notebook made by K & Company. It's designed to hold anything you want to scrap. Since I tend to have a nice mess of memorabilia and ephemera hanging about, that's what I'm using my Smash for. I'm not setting a specific page goal right now, but a minimum of one page per week is where I'm starting. For the Smash I'll be putting in any programs, ticket stubs and other travel/event memorabilia through the year. I'll also be using my brand new super cute Instax camera to add pictures to the book.
Resolution 3 :
Finally...I knew I had to give myself a goal for the blog. So this year, my goal is to continuously produce a minimum of three posts per week (including a weekly Summary Sunday). In order to do this I'll need some more project ideas as the year goes on so I'll be spending some time on Pinterest and also looking to my readers for some suggestions. So if you have anything you want me to try - let me know.
Also to help me with this project, I have designed a Blog Post Planner. I'm now able to write down posts I want to do in the future as well as remind myself what photos and links I want to use...I tend to be slightly forgetful on occasion.
I'll be doing some revisions on it during the month of January, but then I'll be happy to share it with anyone who wants to do something similar.
And that's it! Off we go with 2012!
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