Happy New Year!

Do you make New Years resolutions?

I do. It's a way for me to look back at what the past year has brought and a look forward with a fresh new perspective. I don't make them to stress myself -- more to take a good look at what I'd like to change, improve or even to stay the same. And I don't make resolutions about things I have no control over. I can't take the cancer from Steve's head and I can't determine the gender of Steph's baby -- but I can pray to God about those things.

I make lots of the usual ones: Exercise more (or more specifically, walk 30 minutes 5 days a week). Eat right -- cut the junk out of the diet (this goes good for about a day).

And then I make resolutions about my quilting. These are probably more goals than resolutions, but looking back over the past year it seems that I didn't accomplish as much as I would have liked. I have at least 6 different applique projects going and none of them are close to being finished; so my resolution is to work on only 1 applique project this year until it is finished. The rest will wait their turn. The one I plan on working on is Primitive Garden -- it is now going on 3 years old. I really like it and I really want to finish it.
For the first 6 months of the new year I will be working on projects with Kris -- some are finishing quilt tops that are not finished, some will be starting a few new projects. We have contracted to do the program in July for our former guild and I want to be well prepared for it.

Some of my resolutions pertain to my longarm quilting and also to organizing my sewing areas. I've already started one -- sewing scrap batting pieces together. I'm always surprised at how long it takes to do this -- most of the afternoon, and after piecing 9 new pieces of various sizes, I found a couple of more pieces to add to them, so will finish that project later today or tomorrow. And resolve to do it more often so that it doesn't take all afternoon!
I consider these free battings -- it's just excess batting that I've cut off from quilting tops, or sometimes I've cut the wrong size. I use Warm & Natural almost exclusively, so they're all the same and I have plenty of my own quilt tops to quilt with these.

Some of my resolutions pertain to organizing recipes (I tried that last year, and still have stacks and stacks of recipes to go through); finally doing something with the stacks and stacks of pictures that accumulate, and of course the stacks and stacks of paper - receipts and tax info, etc. I did start a new card file system for paying bills this year that works out really well and reduces the amount of paper to be filed -- I pay most of the bills online anyway and it was getting ridiculous printing off copies all the time. So -- some of my resolutions do get resolved!

I resolve, once again, to take more pictures and post to my blog more often. (If I keep throwing this one at the wall, eventually it will stick!).

Gratitudes:
2009 is almost over! I am looking forward to 2010.