I often begin the New Year with a few lofty goals and, like most everyone else, they fall away by the time the calendar page turns to February. This year, I tried something a little different. I spent a couple of hours assessing the past year and planning for the coming year. To do so, I downloaded a small printable booklet from YearCompass and worked through the steps laid out in the booklet. I didn’t answer every question, but most of them, and it was rather interesting and even enlightening in a few areas.
One of the exercises for ending the old year was to go through your 2018 calendar/planner/bullet journal and note down the highlights of the year – places you visited, events with family and friends, projects completed, and accomplishments you were proud of. Create a record of what made 2018 a good year. You know how the year just whizzes by and you feel like you didn’t do anything, accomplish anything – it was all just mundane day-to-day routine stuff? When in actuality you did a lot!
So here’s my list of 2018 Highlights:
- 2 square dance weekends (January in Waco,Texas, and February in Paris, Texas)
- Bonus Room Project – put up dry wall and all that entailed, painted the entire room & ceiling plus the hallway wall, and acquired the oak trim needed to finish off the room.
- 3 weekend trips (San Antonio, Texas, to see The Alamo in January; Hot Springs, Arkansas, in July; Fall Foliage in Oklahoma in October)
- Took on the job of DCMGA Newsletter Editor and successfully published 9 issues that were extremely well received by the membership.
- Rain Barrel Project – completed the installation of 7 rain barrels around the house, along with drip line along the foundation and in several flower beds.
- Veggie Bed Project – completed the building of a large vegetable bed in the side yard and have been harvesting greens all winter.
- DCMGA – successfully volunteered for several projects, including the annual Plant Sale and Fall Festival, the Jr. Master Naturalist camp in June, and monthly Preschool Master Naturalist classes.
- Several local day trips (the DCMGA Garden Tour in May with friends; the Dallas Arboretum to see the Kinetic Sculpture exhibit in July; the Perot Natural Science Museum in Dallas in August; the Fort Worth Botanical Gardens & Japanese Gardens in November to see the spectacular fall foliage).
- Hosted family & friends here in May, June, July, September, October, and November, including Liana’s first ever visit on her own to Grandma & Grandpa’s.
- Bought new mattresses for our bed and the guest room bed.
- Settled up the auction part of my Dad’s estate and closed out the bank account.
- Kept Quicken up to date until August.
- Got new life insurance policies in place for both Bill & myself.
- Made a 17 day road trip in September to visit family in New York and Alabama, and also take care https://www.landbetweenthelakes.us/of leftover auction items in Alabama. Also made a side trip to the Land Between the Lakes in Tennessee/Kentucky, which was pretty nice.
- Created a photo book on Shutterfly chronicling my mom’s 75th year, 2017, and all the milestones of that year.
I also completed several crochet projects:
- 2 60th birthday afghans for cousins
- 2 doggie afghans
- Blocked & starched the 2017 granddaughter snowflakes
- 6 small doilies for Christmas gifts
- A filet crochet panel for myself of a mother cat and three kittens
- A large afghan for myself in reds & golds (almost completed, not quite)
- 2 granny square lapghans for Christmas gifts
- One wedding afghan for a cousin
And best of all, for myself, I lost 22 pounds! I still have 11 more to go to reach my goal, but I’m very pleased with my progress.
Completing this booklet is going to be an annual New Year’s Day project from now on. If you are interested and would like to see what the YearCompass is all about, visit their website and download the free pdf booklet.