Looking Back and Looking Forward

It is kind of hard to write a retrospect of 2017.  It has been a year of extremes...some good, some bad.

As Jimmy Buffet said, “Breath in, breath out ~ move on.” 

As some might remember, I started the year with two different groups doing a year of monthly challenges.  There was the homestead skills group.  First third of the year was great fun.  However by May the leader was getting tired of it and by June she went bye-bye.  The other was the food preservation group.  Being ‘pressure canning’ was in the late fall, everything to that point was hot water bath... which means pickles basically.  I left both groups by late summer out of sheer boredom.  It wasn’t all for nothing... I found some things I really liked in the food preservation challenge that I will continue to make.  And I came away with a few tid-bits from the homestead skills group... one of those being I do not like to garden in the bug infested South.  The Amish produce auction is where it is at!  (BTW, the Worm Guys are doing great).

However I did find that I really liked the ‘yearlong challenge’ thing.  It was really fun exploring each month’s topic and experimenting with the activity. 

So this 2018 will be my year of challenges.  I am going to focus on my world and less on what’s going on ‘out there’.  Because frankly I am completely sick of the idiots out there.  I’m cocooning to take care of myself and my own.

Each month I’ll challenge myself in 12 different areas:

1.  Home - Thing to make my home 'sparkle'.

2.  Yard - Gotta get that curb appeal going.

3.  Kit - Making a ‘kit’ to make life more simple.

4.  Fitness - Adding each month something physical in my life.

5.  Appearance - Being more mindful every day.

6.  Spiritual - Getting back to my core.

7.  Assemblage/Mixed Media - My favorite creative expression method. 

8.  Creative Focus Project - Working on a creative outlet other than the above.

9.  Writing - Study and practice.

10.  My photos - Time to cull and organize.

11.  Photo albums - Getting the printed photos into finished albums.

12.  Photo books - Getting the digital into books published on Blurb.

An additional challenge is to simplify down/declutter 2018 things during 2018 (more on that later).

There’s going to be more cooking as we both enjoyed doing the country cuisine explorations.  But instead of being rigid about the whole thing, cooking will be spontaneous. 

To be able to do this means I will be spending a lot less time on the computer. 

Let the cocooning begin!!!