It's a New Year, All Right

Happy New Year everyone. After a little break from blogging and a longer break from my little kitchen office at home in Belgium, I am back, refreshed, renewed and reinvigorated. I hope everyone else is feeling positive and looking forward with the same vigour.

Now, I'm not normally one for resolutions, but 2011 is going to be a big year for us. We'll need to be on the ball all the time, be very well-organised, stay calm under pressure, and not lose sight of the end results. So it seems to me that resolutions are in order, if only to keep the necessary edges sharply in focus.

My resolutions:

Me: 1) Get healthy. 2) Stop worrying so much about the passing of time. 3) Continue to sand down my rough edges.
Challenges: 1) Co-organise our wedding. 2) Increase the amount of freelance work I'm doing. 3) Craft in a more focused way - plan ahead, keep lists, tone down the spending.
Blog: 1) Write more narrative. 2) Make cards (except those which are made to be sold) from paper and materials I no longer like and will never use in other crafting. 3) Sit down on every 25th of the month and make at least 10 Christmassy things. 4) Make a postcard a week, to chart 2011, and send them (more on this below).

 

This is a postcard I made last night. I read one chapter of Good Mail Day, a book I asked for for Christmas after reading about it on Sian's blog, and was so inspired that I had to cut my bath short and go and make something. And with so many ideas fizzing around in my head, I found it very difficult to get to sleep.

Week 1's postcard is a thank you to my mum and dad for putting us up, and putting up with us, in their little house. It's a thank you for letting us bring our dog, and not getting angry at him for making himself comfortable on the sofa when no one was looking. It's a thank you for making Christmas so special, and so homely. And it's a thank you for all the amazing lengths they went to, and the amazing presents they gave to us.

My 2011 challenge is this: to make a postcard a week, at the end of each week (except for this first one and when holidays and other commitments get in the way), and put something of that week into the postcard. That's 52 postcards, 52 little squares of inspiration, 52 miniature records of what I'm doing. I'll pop them in the post on Sundays, post them on my blog on Tuesdays, and hope to spark a little inspiration in everyone who sees them.

Here's looking at 2011. May everyone's year be happy, prosperous and enjoyable.