Crazy January Challenge- Day 1!

Let's start with the Crazy January Challenge portion of this post....

Project #1: Catch the Wind- Butternut Road

Holly found this pattern for me while we were digging through bins at a stitch shop a couple of weeks ago. She held it up and said "oh my gosh, this one's just beautiful." I agreed, and fell in love with it. I started stitiching it first because it's my favourite of my 15.

I actually had a pretty big chunk of time today to work on this, so I ended up getting quite a bit done...by my standards anyways! I'm so excited about this challenge...but I'm already starting to re-think my choices, as usual. Some were chosen for a specific reason or person in mind. Some were chosen just because I thought they were cool, yet some were chosen because I was in a hurry and they looked okay at the time. Now I'm thinking maybe I can find something better....something that I actually love. So I'm going to start with my favourites that I know I definately want to do, and see what happens in the meantime. With the craziness of the holidays over I finally have some time to look around online and in town, so maybe I'll find some replacements!

Moving along.....

Happy New Year everyone!! I had a pretty low-key night, and to be honest, I've never been a fan of New Year's. It's my least favourite holiday and I generally avoid it by hibernating in my parents' basement with a book. I've been dragged out to parties with friends in the past but I'm kind of over that.

This year Erin came to celebrate with me, so it ended up being enjoyable. I had to work 12-9pm Thursday, then 5am-2pm yesterday....so I was pretty much exhausted and not into going out. So we took a drive downtown to see if the cross stitch store was open (it wasn't), then we went to Starbucks, treated ourselves to a fancy drink, and then went to Chapters to read magazines, which is one of our favourite things to do together. We hung out there until they kicked us out because they were closing, and then decided just to come back to my house to have dinner.

We finished off our evening by cross stitching and watching movies. We watched The Young Victoria, Precious, and Knocked Up. I'm not entirely sure what went in in The Young Victoria because I was too into my stitching, then fell asleep for a while. I read the book Precious last year and saw the movie when it came out, so it wasn't new to me. It was Erin's first time seeing it, and she hadn't read the book, and she found it quite difficult. It's a very depressing, disturbing, difficult movie to watch, but it's also very important to be aware that these things happen. It was a good idea to lighten things up with Knocked Up afterwards...would it have been a bad omen to wrap up 2010 with a movie like Precious? Through some miracle I made it to midnight...and that was that.

Goals For 2011...

I've been thinking a lot lately about setting some goals for the upcoming year. 2010 was a really difficult and challenging year for me and for most people I know actually, so I wanted to try to make some positive changes and try to keep things in perspective, and also to have some goals to work towards regardless of what else is going on in my life throughout the year. I think I came up with a pretty good, solid list.....

1. Complete the Crazy January Challenge

2. Work on being grateful for what I have rather than jealous and resentful of what others have (this is a big one for me)

3. Run a half marathon

4. Be more organized

5. Wash my car more often

What about you? Do you have any goals or resolutions for 2011?