Looking back and forwards (part 2)

Happy New Year!!!!

I hope your hangovers aren’t too bad, and that you have lovely/exciting/chilled out/hangover-curing plans [delete as appropriate] for the rest of the day. Thanks to my man 'flu I don't have a hangover... but I do feel rough. Thankfully not as rough as I did this time last year. Yeuch!

Following on from my NYE post about what a great year 2011 was (apart from NYD - obvs!) and how I have high hopes for 2012 I thought I’d make some new year resolutions and reflect on the ones I made last year.

And seeing as they’ll now be posted here in cyber space, rather than hidden away in the back of my diary, I can be held accountable for ever more. Well, until New Year’s day 2013, that is.

2011 Resolutions

1. Eat “clean” healthier food (always good after a month of over-indulgence, train-home fast food and morning after hangover-curing junk).This one gets a tick, if you exclude December, and the nine days I spent in Rio
2. Drink less alcohol (again, always included, but particularly applicable after my painfully embarrassing NYE antics last year!). This one also gets a tick, seeing as I abstained for about two months, and reined it in significantly thereafter, with only a few minor slips. I also lost a stone in de-bloating! Score!
3. Live tidy and de-clutter my life/home/mind. I think I get to tick this one too, I removed about 80% of the cr*p in my bedroom when we re-decorated it. I gave about six bags of stuff to charity shops, sold a lot at a boot fair and set up an eBay account. Go me!
4. Make plans happen. I think I get a half tick. I started renting out my vintage china, I set up this blog and I did lots of research in to possible plans and business ideas with my Vision Buddy, Laura. Watch this space in 2012!
5. Save money. Save money. Save money. Again I think I get a half tick. I didn’t pay off all of my debt, but I cleared my student loan, I cleared more than half of my other debts and I managed to pull together a respectable savings pot, despite spending about half of it on holidays! Well… if I can’t have a holiday, what’s the point in saving…….
6. Exercise more. Yip. I think I get a tick for this. I may have stopped going to yoga at the work gym, but I got well in to the Zumba game. It tailed off toward the end of the year with all the events going on that clashed with classes. But I do intend to get back in to it
7. Be nicer to people and rise above rudeness/bad service/commuter attitude. By this I meant less snarling at below-standard service industry staff and walking away when they slap me in the face with their incompetence. I’m not going to lie. I did not achieve this. I may have yelled at a bus driver the other day, when, in the pouring rain he was incapable of grasping my desired destination, over charged me for the pleasure of half a trip and then told me I was in the wrong for not announcing my required stop in Polish
8. Make some career plans. Erm… well. Let’s talk again next year
9. Learn a new skill. Well – I learned to blog, I learned to Zumba and I learned to make cake pops. Are they skills? If so, I get a tick. If not, whoops!
10. Get glasses. Hmmmmm. My bad!

2012 Resolutions

1. Drink less (and when I do drink – keep it classy. Bubbles and high-end cocktails only!)
2. Eat healthier food
3. Spend more time at the gym
4. Take up yoga
5. Save money
6. Clear the last of my debts
7. Create a lovely family home (after buying a new one that is)
8. Throw lots of parties (in above mentioned family home) and be the Hostess with the Mostess* 
9. Be creative: make things, design things and (god forbid) cook things
10. Travel more, including within the UK and Ireland (at Christmas we get a new geography puzzle every year and it took me seconds to put together the world one and the one of the states of the USA - the counties of GB? well over three hours and even then it was mainly due to space and shape, not geographical knowledge!)
11. Aim to achieve a higher level of domestic goddessness (i.e. the lowest level there is!)
12. Spend more QT with my loved ones
13. Grow my hair (is this a resolution or a goal?)
14. Learn to Tweet
15. Say “no” more
16. Donate blood again (or attempt to. The last few times they turned me away due to anaemia)
17. Be ruthless with my wardrobe editing (I do not need everything I own)
18. Make better career plans and decisions
19. Be generally happy, grateful and more positive
20. Endeavour to make those around me happy, grateful and more positive

Ten more than last year. Let’s chat in 366 days (2012 is a leap year, yes?) and see how I did

* surely it’s not possible to be this hostessy with the mostessy in real life, with real life money, and real life time? But if it is, I shall undertake to be so. What an amazing blog!