• Holidays,  Life

    2018 Has Been A Rollercoaster

    So 2018 has been a weird year.  It’s been filled with the highest of highs, and yet also somehow has been overwhelmingly not-good as a whole. Even those highest of highs have been undercut by other pressures which have left me feeling at the end of the year just very… tired. I’m wholly ready to leave 2018 behind and start fresh. Which is kind of saying something – because while I always make New Year’s Resolutions and whatnot, I never *really* see it as a fully fresh start. And this year, I’m really hoping it’s gonna be. The Highs: 1) It’s been the first full year in the house. Which…

  • Life,  Lists

    2016 New Years Resolution Postmortem

    Another year, another set of goals not fully met. I know that sounds really pessimistic, but that’s just how these things go – I’m not a resolution maker who actually expects to fully complete each. Instead, I make resolutions with the goal of making progress, and using those goals, however unattainable, to improve myself or particular aspects of myself. So I never really expect to fully fulfill them. If I do? AWESOME. If not? Oh well – the real question is did I TRY? So let’s see how I did this year, shall we? 1) Learn Brush Calligraphy Success Level: High. I think I did pretty well on this one.…

  • Book Love,  Holidays,  Life,  Lists,  Pet Related Posts

    Happy New Year Everyone!

    Well, it’s that time again, blogosphere. It’s a new year. And of course, inevitably that means it’s RESOLUTION TIME. Yes. Once again, as I always do, I’m going to come up with a list of things I want to accomplish/work at in 2016. I haven’t been terribly successful with this kind of goal making in the past, and last year was no different (I’ll have a post next week assessing my successes and not-so-successes from 2015), but I don’t really feel like that’s a huge problem. My general attitude about these things is that it doesn’t hurt to try. I’m a big believer in the process – the idea that…

  • Book Love,  Holidays,  Lists

    12 Books for 2015

    As I said in my New Year’s Goals post, I read a ton throughout the year – but rarely get the opportunity to read a whole book solely for myself. I’ve just slipped out of the habit of using my free time for pleasure reading. And I miss it. So this year I made it a goal to read at least 12 books that I don’t NEED to read. Specifically: The Intimate Lives of the Founding Fathers by Thomas Fleming I picked this book up several years ago when Borders went out of business, and like most of the stuff I picked up during that sale, it’s just kind of…

  • Holidays,  Life

    The Good Things Jar

    I saw a pin on pinterest the other day with a brilliant idea. I don’t have a link to the pin here, because I can’t seem to find the original source of the pin – all the pins simply take me to the image or a pic dump on some buzzfeed-type site (So if anyone knows the originating source, please let me know so I can give credit where credit is due). The idea goes something like this (direct quote from the pin): “Every January start filling an empty jar with notes about good things that happen. Then on New Years Eve, almost 12 months later, empty the jar and…