2010 – Looking Back

Well here we are.

It’s the last day of 2010 and tomorrow a fresh, new year starts. And despite how I feel, I know that I am totally ready! Since I spend the last few weeks of the year thinking about my projects, I also begin working on them slowly so that it’s not a harsh cutoff as the year begins. So I’ve already been drawing and painting faces and reading to david and reading books from my 2011 list, and sketching, and exercising of course. this way when tomorrow comes it’s not like I am beginning 17 new things. or so I hope 🙂

The first thing I wanted to do when I look back was to review the projects I’d picked for 2010, so here we go in no particular order:

Weekly Gratitude
I think this one was a huge personal success. Not only did I fulfill the intent of posting thoughts once a week and art once a week but I also wrote down 3 things every day. And then in a wonderful spin-off, so did my son David. And then he started keeping a gratitude journal. This project is easily one of my all-time favorite things I did. Ever. You can find all of my weekly gratitude posts here.

Daily Diary
This, too, was successful. I managed to post diary entires for every day in 2010 (assuming I manage to post one tonight.) And I had a non-family photo for every day as well. According to my computer that’s 2,247 photos for this year for this project. I did do my gratitudes but I originally had also intended on writing some thoughts for each day and that got dropped somewhere along the way and I was all-too-happy not to pick it up again. It was hard for me to think of things to write and instead this year I decided to do longer, thought-out posts once a week. Let’s see if that works out.

Here’s a favorite shot from 2010 (it won’t come as a surprise of course)

and here’s a favorite shot for nathaniel (though I have many many):

and one for david:

and one for the love of my life:

As for me, I took this photo of me last night as I got dressed for company. It’s nothing special but just a visual reminder of all the hard work I’ve been doing lately:

You can find all of the daily diary posts here.

Crafting with David
This was one of those projects that got abandoned somewhere in the middle of the year. To be fair, we made quite a few projects together and we abandoned it because I started to teach David how to read. We did workbooks. And then we read together. And then he started the gratitude journal. So we did continue to spend time together but we didn’t craft as much. I do hope to make sure I do at least a few crafting projects with David all throughout 2011 because I still love the fact that he enjoys crafting. You can see all of crafting with David posts here.

A Book a Week
This one worked out perfectly. I read a lot. I read different genres. I went outside my list a lot but also read quite a few of the ones on my list. I made a new list for 2011. Transferred some over and I am still reading like crazy. I joined three different book clubs and my love of reading is going strong and possibly even flourishing. I’ve considered writing longer, more thought out reviews in 2011 but it’s just not interesting to me for some reason. I am more interested in reading the books. You can see all the books I read in 2010 here.

52 Things
I loved making this list and I loved even more that I worked on so many of these. Somewhere in November, I stopped working as hard. Partly because the things that were left didn’t inspire me and partly because I got tired. I am still very happy with what I did finish, especially since I would likely not have done most of those if it weren’t for my list. You can read all of the things I did here.

Then there were those things that I didn’t originally plan for 2010 but they happened and they were wonderful:

Layout a Day in May
This project was done without any planning and it completely changed my life. It helped me find my personal, unique voice. And I truly believe it brought me the amazing opportunities I have like designing for The Girls’ Paperie, Tim Holtz, and Pink Paislee. It made scrapping hugely fun for me and brought my hobby to another level. It also encouraged me write a brand new workshop so I could help others discover their own voice. I also got published in a wonderful Swedish magazine (more detail with photos coming soon.) You can see all my layouts from that month here.

I also did a few other projects and realized that focusing on something for a month works really well. (Except for the happiness one I did which didn’t work well and I had to abandon it.) Even the ones I did only halfway were worth it very very much. I can go on and on but to be honest I am pretty much done with this year.

My word for 2010 was loved. And I must say it was a good one. I feel very loved. Doing the gratitude project has allowed me to see how amazing my life is. How I get to be loved by my husband, children, sister, nephews, parents, good friends online and offline. I am a very very blessed person.

and now ready for 2011!

onward and upward!