2011 New Year Resolutions Review

Via

I know it’s a little in the game to be reviewing last year’s resolutions, but it seems like it’s the trendy thing for people to do every January, and since I’ve just jumped back into blog-land why not start out with it?

Without further adieu:

1)      Let Oakland Avenue "dissolve or evolve into whatever it should be.” Boy did I let it dissolve! I took a much needed seven month break (okay, so maybe a full seven months wasn’t technically needed) but I’m now ready to get back to the keyboard. I think I’ll keep this goal for next year, as I never want to feel that I have to blog -- it loses its luster pretty fast with that attitude.

2)      Learn to take better photos. Uhhh, didn’t happen. If anything got better it was my ability and speed to delete blurry and dark photos.

3)      Grow an herb garden. YES! Check, check, check. In fact, Mike and I grew an entire garden, and harvested an insane amount of vegetables and herbs all year long. Seriously, we could have started a farmer’s market out of our garage.We plan to double the size of our garden next year and I can’t wait to get started. Learning that I love to garden is probably one of the most surprising things that’s I've even found out about myself. (Besides the time I learned I loved olives - that was quite the revelation too.)

4)      Learn how to wrangle in our beast of a grape vine. Welllllll, we can sorta check this off the list. We trimmed that puppy waaaaay back last year, like painfully back. I seriously thought we were killing it – Mike was being ruthless and kept telling me it would be worth it when we had big, juicy grapes in the fall. Well, we got a bunch more grapes than the year before, but they were still very little and very sour. This year we plan to trim it back even further (I’m not watching) and build a trellis for it to grow on. Hopefully that will help? If there are any grape-growing experts out there – please, lend your advice – all we’ve got is YouTube.

5)      Attempt at least two major DIY projects. Check this off my list as well – I’m a DIYing machine! Well, not really a machine, because if I was a machine my stuff would turn out perfect and professional looking, but it never does. It’s typically a somewhat, sad, wonky version of the real thing. Unlike Mike, I’m pretty much the furthest thing from a perfectionist there is. He does everything exactly as the instructions say, triple checking to be sure he read it right the last five times. I, on the other hand, like to zip through a tutorial, read a few others and follow a combination of the steps – typically what’s cheapest and fastest.

Which doesn’t always mean bestest.

Anyway, I’m going to try to go back through the last seven months or show to show you proof of my DIY savviness, but for now I’ll just use the DIY Mooi Random Light (awesome follow-up story there – another day, another day) and these DIY flower pins.

6)      Learn how to use the thermostat. Drrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr….no comment.

7)      Read one book a month. Check!

That’s it! I still haven’t written any 2012 goals and I’m still not sure if I’m going to. But if they ever get put down on paper I'll make sure to post them here too!