From “In Memoriam [Ring Out Wild Bells]” by Lord Alfred Tennyson:
Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,
The flying cloud, the frosty light:
The year is dying in the night;
Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.
I can’t believe we’ve already reached the last day of 2013. I feel like I was just making this list! I did an update back in July, but I have made more progress since then. Here are my resolutions from last January, and the progress I made toward completing them:
1. Paint the basement and put up the curtain walls.
✓Completed! There’s still more work to be done down there, but I am really happy with the progress I’ve made so far. I’ve also blogged about this project here and here. Here’s a before & after picture:
2. Work on creating my “mom cave” so I can be creative without distractions.
✓I’m checking this off even though the plans changed quite a bit. After doing a lot of thinking, I decided that I would rather have my stuff upstairs (since I am kind of scared of being in the basement alone — don’t laugh!). So, my “mom cave” turned into a “cloffice” which is in our bedroom. I blogged about it here.
3. Finally finish college and have a graduation party!
✓I DID IT!!! I’M SO PROUD!!!
4. Read all of the books that I got for Christmas, before next Christmas.
✓I’m pleased to say that I finished this goal! I know that reading four books in a year isn’t much of an accomplishment, but when you have two kids (1 toddler, 1 homeschooler) and you’re going to school and doing lots of reading for that, it’s difficult to find time to read for pleasure. Here are the books I read for my goal:
The Courtiers, by Lucy Worsley
Giants in the Earth, by O.E. Rølvaag
Kristin Lavransdatter, by Sigrid Undset (by far one of my top ten most favorite books of all time!)
Bury Me Standing: The Gypsies and their Journey, by Isabel Fonseca
5. Write letters to my grandmother once a month.
✓I think I’ve done pretty well at this. I never wanted to make it compulsory; I just wanted to be better at communicating.
6. Stick to the budget I created last fall, which was completely disregarded in December…
☹Sadly, I wasn’t very good about sticking to a budget. Maybe someone has software suggestions?
7. Schedule time to be alone, time to be with my kids (individually), and time to be with my husband.
☹It just didn’t happen.
8. Put up pictures in the hallway.
☹I haven’t done this yet, but I have sort of changed my mind about what I want to put there, so…
9. Work on Lillia’s ballet performance scrapbook.
☹☹☹ Still need to do this!
10. Grow some stuff! (Vegetables, flowers, whatever strikes my fancy).
✓I grew about 4 or 5 sickly tomatoes on some hand-me-down plants I got from my parents — it still counts! I also experimented with moving some of my perennials around. Nothing died, and I learned more about transplanting. PLUS, I discovered that we have a crabapple tree growing just over the fence in our yard. When the crabapples were ripe, I harvested them and then kindly asked my mom to make jelly out of them (which she did — thanks, Mom). While I didn’t technically “grow” the tree, I did take care of it and harvest its fruit — it counts!
11. See my friends at least once this year. I miss them.
1/2 ✓I did see one of my friends this year on Halloween, but that was only 1/2 of the friends I wanted to see LOL. I am going to see them this coming year. It’s a must.
12. Learn how to use my new camera — techniques and composition.
✓I think I learned a lot this year. Plus, I got a new lens — a Nikkor 50mm 1.8G. It.is.awesome. I recently subscribed to Kelby Training so that I could start watching instructional videos. Plus, my mother-in-law got me an awesome book about composition, so I’m going to work my through that.
13. Work on the Anna Maria Horner feather quilt (the only craft on this list, for a good reason).
☹Ha! Never gonna happen.
Hmmm…7.5 out of 13 isn’t terrible — it’s 50%. I completed half of my resolutions. Well, there’s always room for improvement, isn’t there? And, while it may seem like I’m a bit of a slacker in the “getting things done” department, there’s a lot of things I accomplished this year that weren’t part of my list of resolutions: I homeschooled my daughter; I lost about 15 pounds (I never make losing weight a resolution, but it’s nice when it happens anyway); I found a ton of new-to-me relatives (love you all, cousins!), and started a Facebook group and website all about my Copeland family; I had my DNA tested and analyzed and learned that I was not 100% European; I blogged; I took 11,694 pictures (holy moly!); I parented the heck out of my kids. I’ll be back tomorrow with my resolutions for 2014!
Hope you all have a wonderful New Year’s Eve!
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