Ruminations on New Year's Eve

  Ah, the joys of the holiday season.  I had to go pick up a prescription today.  The pharmacy we use is in a little center that has a Whole Foods on one end and a double-decker area with the pharmacy on the lower level and a bike store, State Store and phone store on the upper level.
   Between the Whole Foods and the State Store, the parking lot was packed.  You'd think someone had announced a moratorium on food and booze sales for the next month or so!
   I did, eventually, manage to find a parking space and pick up my prescription.

  It's snowing now.  This is the third snowfall in 7 days. The previous accumulation is about 7" deep and we could get another inch or so from the current fall.  The Hub and I shall be staying in tonight and leaving the slick roads to braver souls. Our journey home from the Philadelphia area on the 26th satisfied every longing either of us might have had for winter weather driving!  We ran into flurries about a half hour west and by the time we'd hit the 3rd service area there was a lot of accumulation and more coming down at the rate of about 1.25" per hour!  [It took us about 8.5 hours to do the trip that usually takes us 5.5.)

  I don't make New Year's resolutions.  I find them too stressful, and most of the time mine are things that should be ongoing commitments anyway.  Instead, I think about goals: goals I met in the outgoing year and those I'd like to achieve in the coming one.
   This past year I managed to get to the gym for a training session twice a week most weeks.  The weeks I didn't get there I was either out-of-town and doing a lot of walking or I was ill and made up the session when I felt better.  I've managed to drop a few pounds and tone up enough to wear a size smaller jeans.  The training sessions will continue for 2013 with an intention to make it into the gym at least 3 times each week.  I'm hopeful that LAFitness will manage to get the pool heater working consistently so I can do a pool workout every week.
    Not enough sewing was completed in 2012.  In fact, I'm not sure I actually finished a single project!
This must change.  I have so much fabric, so many patterns and so many partially-finished projects in the sewing room that it's ridiculous.  This didn't stop me from adding to my fabric/project stash while I was in San Francisco a couple weeks ago, though.  Ooooh, no.  I shopped at Britex (twice!) and came home with some really nice cotton lengths to be transformed into baby clothes (I have a new great-great nephew and a great-great-niece/nephew on the way) and enough purple dupioni with a coordinating dupioni print to make another Beverley Sheldrick designed sewing reticule.  Before I start that, though, I need to clear out a couple of convention projects.
I'm trying to decide if one older project per week is too ambitious a goal.  I suppose it will depend on what it is- a daygown goes together pretty fast, but my embroidery projects could take hundreds of hours.  I see a schedule in my future.
   Catching up with housework and then keeping on top of it is another recurring goal.  I've never been Susie Homemaker and this larger home is kicking my butt!  I've decided that one thing that would help is to streamline the amount of "stuff" in each room.  My new mantra for household shopping is "are you willing to pack that up and move it?"  If the answer is no, I pass by.  I saved about $500 just today doing that as I decided that rather than buy a couple of chests of drawers for the sewing room, I'd be better served by sewing up projects so they can go on hangers or on display on a shelf.  Quite a bit of fabric will just go away, as it is destined to become wee-care items for the next Smocking Arts convention or garments for my granddaughter.
   There will be more blogging and more photos in 2013.  I promise!  After all, I'll need photo evidence of all these things I'll be sewing, right?  There will also be some garden work to share when spring comes.  (I'm enchanted by the idea of Burpee's new container corn.  I may just grow my own Halloween decorations this year.)

May all your goals be achievable and your new year be a happy one!