New Years Resolutions 2013

I always make a bunch of resolutions for the New Year. Sometimes I make the same resolution year after year, only to fail every time. Still, I always make a bunch, and try my best to stick to them. Most of them are really just goals, not true resolutions, but the point is always the same: to improve myself and my life. This year I broke them down by category: Health, Home, Financial, and Personal

Health
1. Eat veggies with dinner every night. (I usually do this any way, but there is power in making conscious decisions.)

2. Only drink medium or small coffees. No more ventis!

3. Fit some exercise into my day by doing 1 crunch and 1 squat for whatever day of the year it is. (As in January 1, you do 1 of each exercise and January 2nd you do 2, then 3 and so on.)

Home
1. I want to make cooking fun again by trying new things and taking pride in what I make. I want to learn to make pizza dough, fettuccine alfredo, rice pudding, lasagna, English Muffins, peanut butter pancakes, fresh pasta, whole chicken, goulash, mozzarella cheese, and stir fry sauce.

2. Keep the front of the apartment (living room, dining room, and kitchen) clean enough that I can have company over without worrying about "the mess."

3. Do the laundry when it needs to be done. Just do it. I tend to procrastinate on the laundry, and there's no reason for it.

Financial
1. This is a big one. This year I pledge to refrain from buying anything that I do not absolutely need. This means I have to question anything I'm about to purchase, and be sure that I do indeed need it. I've already not bought a bunch of items that normally I might have. 

2. Pay off my car, and then pay down as much as my other debt as I can.

Personal
1. Learn how to crochet better by learning how to gauge and how to attach pieces more nicely. 

2. Try to get through some of the old reading pile.

3. Blog it up, just for me.

This is really just the beginning. I make resolutions all year around, and although I am rarely ever successful, I continue to do it because there's no point in giving up. Plus, I'm so goal oriented, I don't think I could stop myself. :)

I've Been Here Before

I've been here before. I've started blogs, I've deleted blogs, I've left them alone for very long times and then came back to them with a fierce passion. But so far I've not been able to keep up with a blog because I've not been able to keep up with my projects and goals. My writing blog sits dusty. My weight loss blog didn't make it a week. So, I'm starting fresh. A blog without projects, without goals, or deadlines. A blog about me, for me, to make a dent in the world, even a small one.

It is called Thread by Thread: A Life because of this, because a life isn't one project, one goal. It is full of ups and downs, knots and tangles. You add threads, you run out of thread, you cut one thread out completely, but at the end you have created something even if it is lopsided and gaudy.

In this blog I'm just going to be myself... crocheting more stuff than I know what to do with, losing weight, gaining weight, trying new recipes, trying to keep my house clean, being a wife, reading good books, writing bad ones, playing video games, and working hard. Thread by thread I will share with you my life.

I can here the skeptics out there saying that I won't stay on top of this blog any more than I did any of the others, and who wants to read about my boring life? And I have say that I'm one of these skeptics, but the success of this blog does not reside in the number of people that read it and like it or the number of posts I write in a week. It resides only in my ability to create a whole out of threads I weave together here.