Happy New Year Everyone!
In catching up on so many wonderful blogs these past few days after a two week hiatus, I've noticed that many people do not like to make resolutions. I do. And I keep them... well, most of them anyway. And I think it might be the kinds of resolutions that I make that help me to keep them. So this year, I'm sharing some of them with you-- my 2008 promises to myself and the why's behind them. 
#1- This pic is of me yesterday. Note my tiara-- a leftover from treating myself like a Queen at Camp GetAway. In my hand is a giant cup of my favorite mint tea. And on my feet are softening socks and warm booties. The babies are playing in their rooms for a bit and I'm giving myself a mask and listening to music. I never put myself first. I do everything for everyone else (lovingly!) and never take time for me. So this year, I am!
#2- Stop buying magazines. This is a resolution I made many years ago and I actually did not buy a single magazine throughout the entire year. That time, it was for clutter sake that I stopped. This year, it's for the environment. Besides, anything I'd get from a magazine I can find online anyway.
#3- Start a crafting business. In making gifts for everyone this year (over 40 gifts), I realized how much I like sewing, crocheting, painting, photographing and just creating in general. And, with each project, I get better and better. So, sometime in the first 6 months of this year, I'll be up on Etsy or some other site with my own little shop. My mom has her own shop, and makes these amazing works of art, so I am going to try to follow in her footsteps. I already craft every day with my children... so why not give it a go?!?!
#4- Read, read-to and be read-to more! Both munchkins are finding their love of books and I want that love to flourish. There are books all over this house... in every room (including bathtime reading!) except the closet, and I want to promote this lifelong learning and enjoying activity. It's as simple as that.
#5- Two new recipes a week. This is another old resolution that I'm bringing back. As a self-proclaimed intermediate chef and baker, I once racked up a collection of about 350 cookbooks. While I could happily say I've made something from every single one, I knew I didn't need them all. The first time I made this resolution, I either gave to friends, donated and/or sold half my collection! Some were just not my kind of book... some I had a better version of a recipe, some I knew I would never use past that one recipe. And, they went to good places and I don't miss them. But, after becoming a mommy and not having time to research recipes, I've become a little dolldrummish in my cooking. I make the same 20 or so things... and I'm bored, so this will spice things up for me and us at the dinner table.
#6- The last but most certainly not the least is cleaning up. Not in the way you're most-likely thinking though. Cleaning up to me means:
- Taking a bag to the park and picking up trash while I'm there.
- Freecycling and donating away the things I no longer "must have" for the sake of having. (And promoting this concept to receptive others.)
- Watching my water and energy and waste so that the earth gets a little recovery from our family. (All the Xmas wrapping you see in that pic above is recycled = less footprint)
- Stopping every awful piece of unwanted mail I can! Catalog stoppage, Direct Marketing Junk, Val-Paks I'll never use...
Sure, I also want to lose weight and all that... but these 6 are pretty good for me. They're on pretty pieces of paper in a few places throughout the house so I see them daily. By February, they'll become habit and easier to just keep and not resolve to do like a chore.
Do you have resolutions? What are they??
