2012 - A Look Ahead

You know when I was younger New Year's was the most depressing time of the year. I dreaded the new year. I'm not sure why. But I got over that in my 30s. Now, New Year's is not my favorite time of the year. But it is a change that I look forward to as the old year winds down. (Actually, I think New Year's is a silly holiday. The new year should start when the new school year starts, it would make life so much easier.) As 2012 is upon us, I'm excited to look into the new year to see what it will may can bring.

For my Quiet Time, I plan to read the One Year Chronological Bible again. I've said it time and time again. If you want to read the Bible in context, get a Chronological version. It's like reading a story. It somehow makes all the stories in the Bible fall into place. They make more sense historically. My favorite part of the chronological Bible is seeing when the Psalms were written. The first Psalm to show up is Psalm 91. It's in the middle of Deuteronomy on March 24. You know how easy it is to get bogged down in the Old Testament? Those Psalms are like a little oasis to me when they show up in the middle of a particularly difficult OT book. The last Psalm is Psalm 147. It's on September 23. Then I only have to make it to September 28 and I'm in the New Testament (whew!)

I'm not sure that I'll continue the $5 Savings Plan. I kind of fell off the wagon last year. We want to buy a house in 2012, so basically every spare dollar that we have is going to that project. I am planning to fill a Christmas Jar in 2012. I will also buy Angel Tree gifts again next Christmas. I love doing that. I will participate in at least two charitable projects in 2012. One of them will take place in February. Katie works for a company that manages 20 group homes for CPS. At Christmas this year she mentioned that the teenage boys homes never get donations or gifts from people voluntarily. So I baked cookies and made candy for those two houses. In February, I'm going to make candy and bake Valentine sugar cookies for those boys.

I have an ambitious goal for x-stitching this year. I'm going to participate in a 2012 Crazy January Challenge, but I'm making my own rules. I will work on a project each day for the first 15 days in January, but some of them will be new starts, and most of them will be WIPs (works in progress). If you're interested, you can check out my projects on the 2012 Crazy January Challenge tab at the top of the blog.

I want to be more disciplined about my health this year. My cholesterol is a little high. Of course, as is typical in this day and age the Dr. wants me to take a pill for it. I'm not big on pills. So I'm trying to get it back down in the next three months. I also STILL want to lose 30 pounds. And I need to stay on top of controlling my blood sugar with diet and exercise.

I failed to meet my goal of reading 100 books in 2011. I'll try again in 2012. I will also keep plugging away at my 101 in 1001 list. I have completed 16 of the 101 items. I have 27 items in progress. My end date is 8/29/13, so I need to get going on this list! If you're interested in my progress you can click on the tab at the top of the blog to see how I'm doing (or not doing!).

And last, but not least there's my blogs. I love blogging. I have stalled out on my political blog and the recipe blog. I hope to do much better in 2012. I'm sure it will be easy to get back to the political blog since it's an election year. Any one that knows me knows that I'm passionate about politics. I want to be passionate about cooking. I think maybe it requires a measure of patience that I don't have. I'm more than half-way through my 365 photo blog. When it's complete I want to print it as a book. Actually, I want to print all of them as books. I just haven't checked into the details of that yet. Maybe this year. I have "met" so many great people as a result of blogging. I enjoy reading other blogs and get a lot of great ideas and information from them. I hope my blog(s) encourage and interest my readers as theirs do me.

So friends, there you have it. A new year is upon us. I'm ready for it. I'm excited for it. We have a lot of exciting family events coming up in 2012. And of course, there will be lots of unexpected joys and challenges in the year. All I can say is... bring it on!

Two Weeks From Today...

Christmas is two weeks from today… I feel like I have a hundred and one things left to do, how did that happen?

Don’t get me wrong, I finished my shopping and wrapping on time, but this year I took on some extra projects and I didn’t prioritize my time properly. (sigh)

I finished the “Twelve Days of Christmas” baskets and they’re ready for delivery this weekend. This year I used Christmas song lyrics as the clue to what the present is. I printed out the lyrics, with the appropriate clue words highlighted by red ink. I hope my folks enjoy this as much as they did last year, and that my brother and sister-in-law enjoy it for the first time. If you want to know how I did the “12 days” last year, look back at my blog list for the December 2009 post entitled “The Twelve Days of Christmas”.

This week Dan & I picked nine angels from the Salvation Army Angel Tree at our local Cracker Barrel restaurant. We shopped for the angels on Thursday and delivered the gifts back to the SA on Friday. I picked nine angels because I wanted one to represent each one of my eight(!) kids and my granddaughter. Before delivering the gifts, I laid each individual child’s presents out on the table along with the angel tag and took a picture. I assigned an angel to each of my kids and will email them the details of their angel along with the photo of what the angel received from us. We had so much fun doing this and I’m hoping this is a tradition we can continue.

Today I’m going to start baking. Since I feel so frenzied this year, I’m only going to make sugar cookies and M&M cookies. If I feel like I have time I might make snowball cookies. I’ve already made two batches of peanut cluster and have the ingredients for two more batches. They are so easy though, that I never feel stressed about making them.

Dan is super busy. Between Sam’s Club full-time and the increase in appraisal orders, we literally never see each other! And when we do, we’re too tired to talk. Thank goodness he’s taking some vacation days in early January, so we can catch up with each other then.