In January ... it's a wrap

I expect to be ...

1. Watching Nippers ... yes

2. Spending time with my sister and her kids who are visiting from Singapore ... yes

3. Going to a couple of sessions of the Australian Open ... yes

I plan to move forward on my list by ...

4. Beginning the Romans Project.  Romans 1:1-12 memorised.

5. Go on a date night (done with a lovely dinner at Oakdene Winery)

6. Talk to the kids about their expectations for the coming year - talked but need to follow up with each of the kids to write something down.

7. Read books  - finished ...

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer                              My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Caleb's Crossing by Geraldine Brooks
My rating: 5 of 5 stars







 A Visit From The Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan
My rating: 3 of 5 stars







 Picnic at Hanging Rock by Joan Lindsay
My rating: 2 of 5 stars







Juno Of Taris by Fleur Beale
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The last two are The Big Girl's books for school.

8. Finish my December PL layouts - not quite, I have Christmas day to finish.

9. Work out exactly what I'm going to do for our family album this year - I think so, will need it's own blog post.

10. Enrol in my subjects for this year and put all the dates in my calendar - done

And I tried a new bread recipe, which I'll make again and bottled jam. (#9)

And, as you can see above we played board games and also walked around the point (more successfully than last time ... I made sure the tide was going out this time) (#5)

I also need to ...

11. Set up the study as a guest room ready for the exchange student that is expected at our house on the first weekend in February.  - done

12. Start getting our financials up to date  - new budget done.

13. Get the kids ready for school - almost, the girls still need to label their stuff and I need to check the Big Girl's hem length. The Boy starts tomorrow and he's ready.

The Five of Us :: 1

Two days before Christmas last year I was putting together our yearly slideshow to email out to friends and family (I gave up on actual Christmas cards a couple of years ago) and I realised there was hardly any photos of the five of us together. I did intentionally hand over the camera at times to Hubby or one of the kids and get them to get a specific shot with me in it but I think I may have only done it once or twice all year to someone else so we could all be in the shot. In the one photo with just the five of us The Little Girl has her eyes shut. I was so disappointed because apart from that it was a good shot.

I really want photos of the five of us so this year I'm embarking on a mission to get one photo per month of the five of us together. Tara Whitney did a similar project a few years ago. In January I got my sister to take the photo on the pier at Pt Lonsdale while we were out for a walk one Saturday afternoon.

Do you manage to get many photos with the whole family? Any tricks or tips?

This week's links ...

Celebrating Australia Day today with some strawberry picking and jam making. Believe me they tasted as good as they look. We picked about 5kg and as I write this The Big Girl is using the last of them to make strawberry danishes. 

The weather isn't that flash for our long weekend, although apart from the berry picking we did have a hit of tennis today but you could not describe the weather as warm. Well, you might describe it as warm if you are shivering through blizzards. Whatever your weather here's a little reading for your weekend ...

1. Lunch Box Planning. It's nearly that time of year again.

2. Planning Next Year's Garden

3. This is so simple but it looks fabulous ... I guess great images would help here ... Photo Inspiration Corkboard.

4. Project Life Filler Cards

5. Self-portraits

6. Tin Message Board

7. How to Change the World

Book Covers

What to put on the cover of a photobook is always a bit of a dilemma. One photo? Lots of photos? Repeat photos that are in the book? Stick with just text? I've been doing some ordinary scrapping this month, joining in some of the month of challenges over at TLP. Challenges can provide the impetus to break me out of a non-scrapping rut. While I breaking out I decided to tackle some covers. The first was inspired by a movie poster and it has one photo but mainly is about the text.

I also did one for our 2012 album. I don't know about you, but I love the geometric trend, especially the use of hexagons so I decided to give it a shot and this is what I came up with ...

Edited to add: Credits HERE and HERE.

Peaches

 from our garden

This week's links ...

1. Winter PL Cards

2. Really cool printable calendar

3. For those of you who are handy or have a Mr. Handy an outdoor sectional.

4. For those of you who like your DIY to require a little less exertion what about OK string art.

5. We went berry picking down at Gentle Annie's yesterday ...

 
and picked 3.7kg of berries which we turned into jam. Blackberries and silvan berries. I'd never heard of silvan berries but they were yummy ... a bit like a raspberry.

 Here's an article on growing your own berries.

6. We also picked strawberries and I made strawberry summer cake.

7. Also New Year's Eve I made this rice noodle salad with asian BBQ prawns - YUM!

This week's links ...

1. Four steps to a gallery wall. This one includes more than just pictures.

2. Putting the Web to Work: Best Apps for Managing a family Schedule

3. If you use instagram here's a cheat sheet with 14 tips for using the app.

4. DIY Bulletin Boards using a cork board and tea towel.

In January ...

I expect to be ...

1. Watching Nippers

2. Spending time with my sister who's visiting from Singapore.

3. Going to a couple of sessions of the Australian Open.


I plan to move forward on my list by ...

4. Beginning the Romans Project. Two years ago I started the church bible reading plan (although I'm having to do my own thing while I wait for this year's to be posted), last year I counted 1000 gifts and this year I'm going to continue with these get serious about bible memorisation.

5. Go on a date night (done with a lovely dinner at Oakdene Winery)

6. Talk to the kids about their expectations for the coming year.

7. Read books.

8. Finish my December PL layouts.

9. Work out exactly what I'm going to do for our family album this year.

10. Enrol in my subjects for this year and put all the dates in my calendar.

I also need to ...

11. Set up the study as a guest room ready for the exchange student that is expected at our house on the first weekend in February.

12. Start getting our financials up to date. 

13. Get the kids ready for school.

 

This week's links ...

1. Fruits of the Spirit Free Printable.

2. How to Hang a Gallery Wall. I know I've posted something like this previously but we did have a few issues doing the small wall in the Big Girl's room which may or may not have been due to a failure to follow instructions exactly. Anyway this year I'll probably be tackling a much more ambitious gallery wall project ... well that is if I do #12 on my list.

3. How to Organise and Print Years worth of photos.

4. Cathy Zeiske Project Life cards for 2013 (free download)

5. Books that made the most best-of lists in 2012. Should be able to find some reading material in here.

6. Recycled Melodies @ Wondering Fair

A list for 2013

A list of the things I want to do, are important to do, had a whim to do for 2013. If you've been popping in here for a while you'll know that none of my lists are hard and fast must do types of lists. There's no beating up if I don't do everything but I've found that even though it's unlikely I'll tick everything off the list I do more than I would have without it.

• Keep going wider and deeper.
• Read at least one book per month and at least 18 for the year. Make 5 of them from my lists.
• Finish two photobooks
• Achieve HD's for my two subjects this year.
• More simple family fun. Night swims, board games, family movie night, family feast, games in the backyard, adventures in the neighborhood.
• Learn to cook some Korean.
• Go on more dates with Hubby. Let's say 6 which would be 4 more than this year.
• Better encourage the kids in their passions and studies.
• Find the best homemade bread recipes ... maybe bottle stuff too.
• Encourage the family and small group to keep going wider and deeper too.
• Play more consistently good tennis in my matches.
• Decorate ... pictures on walls, house plants and all that stuff.
• Keep current putting together our family album for 2013.

Hello 2013

2012 was a good year for us. We had some really good times as a family but also hit goals in our individual endeavours. The Big Girl transitioned from junior to senior school and kids church to youth group successfully, won a basketball grand final in her first season playing and built up her friendship with a lovely group of girls at school.  The Little Girl had firsthand experience of how practice and training pay off in results in both music and swimming and left both myself and her teacher completely surprised by gaining the job of Social Service Captain for her school next year. The Boy has had a fantastic year as well, achieving well academically and progressing enough that he will not be needing regular speech therapy next year. I successfully completed two units of my GradDip, got a handle on the part-time work with Hubby's business that I started doing late last year and managed to pull myself together enough in fourth term to finish the year well in our small group. Hubby is continuing to expand the business in a difficult climate and has finished up one volunteer role to take up another. 

Lots of really good stuff but also very busy, so much so that at times I felt like I was only holding everything together by the fingernails and the bulk of my interaction with Hubby was around the logistics of making sure everyone was where they were meant to be. Last time I chose a word for the year was in 2010 and before that it was 2007  and I'm thinking it's time again. In the last few weeks I'd tossed around a couple of possibilities but while I was doing the ironing this afternoon it finally hit me, I knew that this year would be the year of INTENTION.