In April 2008, inspired by Vanessa, I made my own list of things I wanted to accomplish in 2008. Many successes, some fell through the cracks. Here's the list and what happened! Bolded items are completed. I don't feel too bad that I didn't finish all of it, as I didn't start at the beginning of the year.
- Read all of Jane Austen's books — Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park, Emma, Northanger Abbey, Persuasion, Lady Susan.
- Attempt all the recipes from mom, at least once. — barbecue meatballs, biko, eclairs, beef brisket.
- Finish Mere Christianity.
- Read Velvet Elvis, Soul Cravings, and The Barbarian Way.
- Decorate my canvas bag. The bag I intended to decorate I ended up not using because I got a couple other free bags. However, I'd still like to decorate it. This will go onto my 2009 list!
- Finish our wedding thank-yous. — just need to sleuth out 1 more address. The person in question moved, so we're a little stymied. I think that we could consider this one basically completed.
- Catch up scrapbooking. I failed to order photos, because I don't want to use Wal-Mart, but I want matte finish... Again, this will go onto my 2009 list.
- Watch all of The Godfather movies with Ian.
- With Ian, complete, in order written, the Chronicles of Narnia. — finished The Silver Chair. We started C.S. Lewis's space trilogy, so we put Chronicles of Narnia on hold temporarily. I'm hoping to finish both book sets in 2009!
- Whittle down our collection of stuff.
- Write Grandma every month.
- Re-start our potted herb garden when we get back to Kansas in August. — herbs are (hopefully) in winter hibernation! I think, after discovering some information, that they dried out because the air wasn't humid enough, so I think they are dead. But I'm going to try again, for the third year, to find success in container gardening!
- Finish the process of changing my name at necessary institutions.
- Attempt to do a folded-book art sculpture.
- Back up my photos to Picasa or Flickr (decide which one!). My indecisive nature worked against me on this one, and I've discovered that Shutterfly has cool sharing sites for the photos you upload to order from them, so I'm going to do more research as I order photos for scrapbooking.
- Learn Tagalog. We're going to continue these lessons in 2009 and our trip to the Philippines in the summer will help too!
- Catch up in my journal.
- Keep up the habit of weekly meal planning.
- Clean the apartment at least bi-weekly.
- Improve my athletic skills (a.k.a. things like play catch with Ian).
- Exercise at least 3 times a week. — yay for Wii Fit!
- Get up in time to put on makeup and do my hair for work, if I want to. It's been hit or miss. I'm going to be even more ambitious in 2009 in this department though!
- Work on my creative writing 2 times a week. — signed up for NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month: 50,000 words in November).
- Finish knitting the scarves/hats I bought yarn to make.
- Pick out the wedding photos to order/have in an album and relay to Gina. We had to wait until we spent time with family, so they could pick out their images. We'll be ordering in January! (Finished June 2009!)
- Plan a creative, fun, inexpensive date once a month.
- Learn a really good bring-to-share homemade side dish recipe and dessert recipe.
- Hone in our budget and really stick to it. I'd like to note, this happened twice as we had to adjust the budget when Ian went back to school!
