Completing Those Pesky New Year's Resolutions

At the start of this year I made a list of resolutions for the New Year. My intention was to complete many projects that I had started years ago and never finished and to include some things that had been recommended to me by my doctor. I even made a list of things to do in January that were of special importance to me to do. I listed out 10 items on the list for the year and so far have completed half of them.

One of my major goals was to finish the NGS Home Study Genealogy course that I had begun back in August of 2009. By the beginning of this year I had only one lesson to complete on the second of the three CDs that make up the course. My goal was to finish the course in 2011. Finishing the last lesson on CD 2 was my top goal in January 2011. In August of this year I completed the course.

Years ago I had started crocheting an afghan. In 2010, I finished crocheting the strips of the afghan, and had started embroidering them. I wasn't making much progress because of the many other irons that I had in the fire. My goal had been to finish the afghan by the 10th anniversary of 9/11. I joined a knitting group that met once a week where I could work on the afghan at least once a week. Attending their weekly knit-ins really helped keep me on track with my goal. However I didn't finish it by my goal date, I did complete it in early October.

With the afghan complete, I could start finishing up my next project-tiling the bathroom floor of one of my dollhouses. I don't know of any miniature groups in my area, so I couldn't turn to really anyone else but myself in staying motivated. Thankfully, I had progressed enough with making the tiles that I just needed to finish cutting a slew of paint sample cards into tiny squares. I had started by cutting them into 1/4" strips and was in the process of cutting those strips into 1/4" squares. I spent a couple of weeks listening to music on my iPod while cutting the 'tile' strips into squares. As I got closer to finishing with the cutting, I got more and more motivated by the project. Once I had all the paint sample cards cut into tiny squares I began gluing each one to the floor that I had made for the bathroom of the house. It took me a week to complete the gluing process and in a couple more days I installed the floor in the dollhouse.

At the end of 2010 my former boss at Once Upon A Time, Aniene Porter passed away and all I could think about when I heard the news was all of the wonderful stories that she used to tell me about her life. Writing down all of the stories is still a goal for me and hopefully I'll get to it before the close of 2011. If not, this will be put on next years resolutions list.

Aside from my miniature, genealogy, and knitting hobbies, I also do embroidery. I had worked at organizing my embroidery materials. It's fairly organized, because there are no longer skeins of embroidery floss in bags in my closet. Now these are mostly organized into binders. I wish that I could've come up with something better, but I wanted a fairly inexpensive solution to my problem. Organizing my floss, fabric, and patterns is still an ongoing project and will hopefully be soon finished.

I've already started on a list for next year and so far have 6 items. Hopefully, these will be completed in a timelier manner than this year's resolutions.