New year, new plans?

I'm back! at last! it's been a busy old time over the holidays and despite all my good intentions I just did not find time for blogging. My Nana is still in hospital and not well at all, but she is being looked after in the best place. We have spent a lot of the holidays visiting her as she was here in Blyth community hospital for a while before being taken back to Wansbeck, and then to North Tyneside for more intensive treatment as she developed a chest infection in the other lung to the pneumonia. I'm hoping by the end of this week she might be well enough to be moved back to Blyth again. Good news is we did manage to get her out for her Christmas lunch!

I've a few holiday projects to share in the next week or so, as well as some photos from over the Christmas break, but today I want to start 2011 as I mean to go on, and share my craft plans for this new year. I have of course set myself some personal goals (not 'resolutions', just goals - way more achievable!) you know the stuff we say we want to 'do' this year and try and to stick to. I set a whole load last year and to be fair I did manage most of them, and if not manage totally, I did at least make a good start, only a couple were unachievable mostly due to being ill for a large chunk of the year. This year I have mostly expanded on the 2010 goals - lose more weight, get more of the house decorated and in order, learn to drive, complete my level 3 qualification for work..... that sort of thing and more.

Well - I am also going to set some crafting aims for 2011. These are 'aims' because I don't want them to be pressured, I want them to be more enjoyable, more stress free - aims and not resolutions, aims.... but if perhaps I can't manage to keep it up for a week I wont feel like pulling my arm off and beating myself up with the soggy end because I've 'failed'.

So - my crafting aims for 2011 are:

50 in 52
I aim to complete 50 layouts this year, any size, single or double, any subject - but at least 25 of these 50 layouts MUST be about things we have done THIS YEAR. I'm setting the number at 50 and not 52 as I am aware we are away for 2 weeks of the year - and that then leaves 50 weeks, so 1 layout per week on average. I'm hoping this will do two things 1) help stop the backlog of photos increasing by getting the NOW photos scrapped as they happen and 2) reduce the backlog of photos waiting to be put on a page! If I am successful at this, I would like to continue it on into future years, hopefully working my way through the hundreds of photos that I have waiting to be scrapped. I am going to make a gallery just for the 50 layouts so I can see then all together and see the progress I'm making.

UKStampers Art Journal weekly challenge
I am notoriously bad at keeping up with long term projects. Efemera on UKStampers forum is posting a year long art journal challenge which I really want to do - so I am committing myself to it right now! week 1 is already posted and I'm going to have a go at that tomorrow.

Preparation for Christmas 2011
Yes you did read that correctly. I aim to make 5 cards per month over the course of the year so by November I will have 55 beautiful hand made Christmas cards ready to send - and will only need to make a few more if needed rather than have to sit and create them all in one go!


Recipes
Not strictly crafting but I do love to cook, and my challenge to myself this year is to try out a new family recipe at least once a month. I also need to write up all the favourite recipes that I use, and make my own recipe binder/box - which is the crafty bit. Who knows - Pete might even attempt to make the dinner once in a while if he has the recipe to follow.... hehe!

Chicken Soup
I am continuing as a cook at Chicken Soup.

Blogging
I am back at work now and from the week after next I will be working 4 days a week which means I need to organise my time better to fit in all the things I want to achieve. This does sadly mean I will be discontinuing 5 on a Friday, as I want to use all my free time for crafting. I will commit to update my blog at least once a week with my craft projects, but will aim for 2 or 3 updates per week to include other general stuff as well.

so..... that's my aims for 2011. I will review how I'm faring with these once a month, just to keep me on track.