Hi, it has been forever and a day.  November and December are both a blur.  January is time to sit down and take in everything that happened.  The trip to Vancouver was so much fun!  I miss Tom Horton's Gingerbread White Hot Chocolate and how everything was covered in moss.  I have a new realization about how much I love the sun.  We were there for seven days and for six of them there was no sun.  Just clouds and me getting frustrated with getting the correct exposure so I could really capture the trip.  But then I got some perspective and just enjoyed the company and cherished the memories in my mind.  I'm working on my photography workflow + Lightroom so I'll have some Vancouver trip photos up soon.  My little 19-month-old girl has a site of her photos over here.

2013 was a good year overall, can't complain much.  My main goal was to get better with organization and I think I accomplished it.  I learned that organization has a learning curve and I had to just stop and think about how I want to spend my time.  Major things that have been working for us is having a mail center in the kitchen.  It's a vertical filing bin that has a folder for each of us and our mail gets sorted and put in the folders so they stick out.  Then we know those items are unread.  We both handle our own mail and any junk is immediately shredded/tossed.

Next was finishing up organizing the kitchen.  Last year on New Year's Eve, I was organizing the pantry.  I couldn't stand it a second longer so I took everything out, put it in piles of baking, grains, snacks, etc and piled it all back in...neatly.  For the most part we have maintained it so I'm pretty proud about that.  So over the year we kept putting like with like.  IE. The drawer on the left of the stove is all baking utensils.  The bowls and pans are in the lazy susan to the lower left.  All of the tea, coffee and baking cocoa stuff is in the upper left cupboard above the stove, etc.  This has helped out with cooking and baking SO much.  No more sifting through a drawer full of cooking utensils.  At least we have a starting point now, which I love.

For this year my goals are the following:

• to focus - less time shopping, window shopping, etc and more time focusing on true goals and relationships
• photograph - shoot but commit more to taking photos and culling them - be cutthroat
• food - even better choices, eat out less and cook more
• fitness - even more exercise, amp it up
• fun - I think the ratio of work to play was a little higher with work last year and this year I want to have more fun.  Be it with reading, exploring, traveling, etc

Lots of goals but why not?  For focus, I am starting today with focusing on hand lettering.  The word on Illustration Friday was "reflect" so I used that.

I'm excited for this year, I am every year.  What are your plans for this year versus last year?