Friday, December 31, 2021

Checking In: New Year Goals

Hey y'all, I haven't gotten to spend too much time in my craft room with the holidays and all, and when I *do* get some stampy time I've been working on design team commitments :)  But for the last couple of years around this time, I've done a reflection post about the previous year and set some goals/intentions for the year to come.  So that's what I'm doing today!

If you so desire, you can see my 2021 goals here; I had to go back and reread them myself.

1.  Scrapbook layouts:  given that I started a new job this year, I never set a specific goal for scrapbook layouts, and in the end I only did 46 pages.  But hey, that's better than a sharp stick in the eye, and slow progress is better than no progress, right?  I got distracted with doing other projects and I need to work on focusing when I DO have a day off so I can actually get things done (besides laundry).  So for 2022, I'm going to set my goal at 50 pages (or 25 two-page layouts) and hopefully I can catch the scrappin' bug again and make some progress.

2.  Organize and pare down pictures:  at long last, I made some good progress on this goal!  I did what I said I was going to, every Sunday (when we weren't traveling), I'd make a fun breakfast and then lock myself in the computer room for a bit to work on photos.  I got through all of China and nearly a year and a half of our Britain photos, which believe me was a LOT.  Plus I've at least got our 2021 photos in the appropriate folders with dates, even if I haven't gone through all of the pictures yet to weed out duplicates.  Unfortunately I fell off the wagon in November with all the holiday craziness and having my parents visit so I haven't done any organizing in nearly two months, but at least I finally made progress on this goal after years of saying I was going to.  Definitely going to work on this more in 2022, making it a Sunday thing.

3.  Reading:  Once again, I'm not doing a specific goal because I am absolute rubbish and shrinking my to-be-read pile (currently at 390 unread books on my Kindle) but I did read 90 books this year.  As it turned out, I did a lot of re-reads of some favorite series (Patricia Briggs' Mercy Thompson and Alpha & Omega, Jodi Taylor's Chronicles of St. Mary's, Kristen Britain's Green Rider, Rick Riordan's Percy Jackson), and it was so lovely to just dive back in to some books I already know and love.  I did read a lot of new-to-me books, the standout being A Woman of No Importance by Sonia Purnell.  So amazing.  As it happens, I am currently reading a book about another of the SOE's agents during WWII, The Spy Who Loved by Clare Mulley.  For 2022, I'll just be tracking what books I read and trying not to worry about how big my TBR pile is.  At least it can't fall on me and crush me to death since it's digital ;)

4.  Stitching:  I have been working all year on finishing The Quarry.  At the end of 2020, I was at 50%, and as of yesterday I just passed 90%!  So excited that I'm nearing the end on this one as it has been a fight (I started it in April of 2011).  I just have one skinny little column of partial pages to go!


I'll finish this sometime this spring I think, and then I'm going to work on a variety of smaller projects before I dive into another huge one like this.  I have the patterns and floss for another NINE Scarlet Quince patterns, so clearly I am still insane for wanting to take on these giant projects.

So yep, that's where I'm at right now.  I'm ready to start creating new things for the New Year.  Cheers!

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