Saturday, December 31, 2005

Thoughts for New Year's Eve

I won't say "resolutions" because I think calling them that just sets a person up for disappointment. After all, we may set out with great intentions, but you know what they say is paved with those! Still, I think it is a good time of the year to take a stock of where we are and where we would like to aim for, if not actually reach. I want to continue to eat more and more sensibly, keeping down fat and too many empty carbs, but I won't restrict myself so much that I feel deprived of all good things. Much as I like salads, we can't live on them alone, so I'll aim for a good diet, with the occasional close encounter of the french-fry kind. Can't be helped! Somewhere in there I hope to lose a little (or a lot of) weight.

I also want to try more ethnic cooking, especially Indian and other Asian, as well as Mexican/Southwest. I have the cookbooks, I even have some of the ingredients, now all I have to do is cook them and convince other family members to eat them. Wish me luck on that last part! My dd Renee gave us a lovely basket filled with all kinds of goodies including kits to make chicken tikka and butter chicken, so that will be my starting point I think. Dd Nicole gave me a great flat-bottomed wok, which will work on my new stove (the old one wouldn't), so that will be great for my Asian cooking.

Okay, so that was all about food! I also want to do more scrapbooking and especially to do more work on my old pictures (those of my childhood and the even older ones of various ancesters and mystery people). I want to also keep up with the current batch of photos and stories to tell., the trips, the day to day stuff... ooo, there's a lot of it! I have made a check-sheet with weeks down the side and various albums listed across the top, and I hope to do a little on each album every week. We'll see how that goes, but I have done the check-sheet thing before and it's great to see the accumulating marks as pages are done. Luckily I don't do a lot of techniquie, complicated scrapping. And here is where I thank Becky Higgins, Becky Fleck, the people at Simple Scrapbooks, and Scrap Maps, and all the other wonderful designers of sketches so that people like me have a starting point to work from for at least some of our layouts. What would I do without them!

What else? Well I hope I can keep up writing in this blog as well as keep up with my friends from CKMB and in their blogs. I hope I will find the time and energy to post a few of the layouts I want to make, on my "sister" blog ("My Layouts", which is currently layout-less) or elsewhere, something I find immensely time-consuming, I'm afraid. I'm looking forward to seeing some friends on a scrapbook cruise in April, at a scrapbook convention in Machester, NH in May and hopefully at CKU-M in Boston in August. There will no doubt be trips with my husband, and maybe with one or more of my daughters, but they haven't been planned yet. There will be lots of hockey games to attend, lots of choir practices and church services, and lots of unknown things to come. Hope this year brings each of you new challenges and joys. Happy New Year!
Pam

2 comments:

Ruth.E said...

Pam, I am seeing a recurring theme here across blogged 2006 commitments to ourselves - less weight gain, more health and more LOs. It seems a scrapbooker may find herself (or himself) sitting nibbling while pondering the next LO that never quite gets finished. Heres to 2006, glass of water in one hand, carrot sticks in the other and a pencil in the other, oh and a pair of scissors in the other, and a head on the house work, and a willing body but a mind that is full of life. LOL. No truthfully I am right there with you.

madcow said...

Kept promising myself a trip over here yesterday but those dammed cupboards got in the way!
I think I may have to "lift" your list idea for scrapping. I suppose if I were to make a resolution this year it would be to dig myself out of this chaotic mire I live in and I think a list or two may just do the trick! Not those lists you unearth when you clean out your handbag, but some "in your face, on the wall" type ones! LOL
Whatever this year brings I can guarantee it will bring friendship and love in huge doses. I am continually amazed and thankful that the MB & now blogging has brought a group of women into my life who I now consider to be family, and you are one of them. Wishing you everything you need for this year and a few of the things you want! love & hugs Clare