2011 - My Goals Just Kind of Set Themselves

2011 is here and I actually didn't make any huge declarations on New Years Day, other than my mantra "I will get healthy, I will lose weight." 

Which I am serious about, by the way.  So how will I do it, you ask?  Well first I'll go back to the living right, eating right theory - fruits and vegies for snacks, 8 glasses of water a day, more chicken and less red meat.  I've been working that angle for a couple of months now, some weeks are better than others.  Second, I've registered my brand-new pedometer which I won in a contest at work last year using my old pedometer.  This one can even hang from your neck, so it's super easy to carry even if you're a girl wearing a dress, lol.  7000 steps a day is the minimum I'm shooting for. Yesterday was 3500 and today was 2000 so that's obviously a work in progress. 

The third way I'm planning to achieve my first goal moves into a second goal that I've set for myself - Hiking Florida.  Ever since Nicole and Dana asked to go to see the manatees while they were here in December, I've been looking into this.  The site where I was gathering information on the manatee visit referenced a book called Hiking Florida by Timothy O'Keefe (yes, it's true, I stole the idea for my goal from a book).  I read book reviews and did my research and decided to buy a book called 50 Hikes in Central Florida by Sandra Friend instead, and lucked into a brand new just released edition of this guide on Amazon.  I chose this book because all the hikes are in easy driving distance of us and each one can be hiked in one day. .  The book finally came today (all that bad weather in Atlanta delayed my shipment by a day, since apparantly all mail coming to Florida goes through Atlanta - nothing like stalking the UPS truck in 30 degree weather, lol). My only disappointment is that one of the hikes I bought the book for (one that is literally 2 miles from where I live) is not included in this edition of the guide.  I'll have to get that info online, and consider my itinerary 51 Hikes in Central Florida.

My last goal for 2011 is my scrapbooking goal - I'm going for 350 layouts again this year.  We're on day 13 and I have 12 layouts done, not a bad average so far.

2011 in a nutshell - if I meet all my goals by the end of the year I'll look good, feel good, have lots of nature pictures and have scrapped a good portion of them.  It's an excellent plan, even if it all came to me in a dream.  :-)

Goals - Past and Present

I don't do New Years Resolutions anymore, but every year I set scrapbooking goals. I'm actually pretty good at accomplishing most, if not all, of them. Last year one of my goals was to create 350 layouts for the year. I came very close, ending up at 349. I've set the same goal for myself again this year, and I'm sure I can meet and beat it this time. I just can't count on December as a scrappy month, that's all.

Katie the Scrapbook Lady has a blog post up on her top 10 favorite layouts that she scrapped in 2009, so I thought I would do that too. The best part about this exercise is realizing I'm really happy with the work I did in 2009. Since I scrap both paper and digital, and since I am really bad about choosing favorites, today we'll focus on my top 10 paper layouts of 2009, presented in the order they were scrapped. In a later post we'll look at my top 10 digital layouts of 2009. Enjoy!

1. August 24 in my August Month of Memories Album (inspired by Katie the Scrapbook Lady's Amazing Month of Memories prompts) highlights my love of exploring volcanoes.


2. Bling Bling - we used to spend every weekend at Universal Studios for their Mardi Gras celebration in the spring, catching beads and enjoying concerts with big names such as Huey Lewis and the News and The Steve Miller Band. I love the layout not only for those precious memories, but also because it's one of the first layouts where I threw caution to the wind and piled on the products (using an entire package of pearl embellishments on the page) and I actually liked the results.


3. 4th of July - a fun and festive celebration at work many years ago, where everyone was invited to dress up in the spirit of the holiday. One of my close friends won the competition. This was an early attempt on my part to use the self-adhesive felt I'd purchased.


4. Post Your Trot - I had fun putting together this "instructional" layout, I was inspired by cute pictures of my niece with her pony to create some layouts in the vein of Thewell's horse & pony books explaining to kids how to ride and care for horses.


5. A Single Step or 4 Big Tires - my nephew, a rough and tough boy, in his "first truck." You have probably noticed by now that most of my favorite paper layouts involve a lot of product, that's because I think my one big improvement in paper scrapping in 2009 was to learn not to be afraid of product and to use it strategically on the page. I love how the button (partial) frame came out here.


6. Beverly Lewis - meeting this author and having her sign my book was a fun experience. Also fun - creating this tree out of patterned paper and embellishing it with buttons, flowers and brads.


7. For Sale by Owner - Lisa told me a funny story about Trinity trying to sell her horse to buy a saddle, and I couldn't resist capturing that in a layout. Of course, now Lisa would like to steal the layout from me, so I'm guessing at some point I should make her one of her own. I made the sign myself from a chipboard shape and popsicle sticks and used some of my very favorite products from 2009, Sassafras Lass paper borders and Coredinations cardstock.


8. 27000 - the picture in this layout came from a political mailing; it was beautiful and I was working with the patriotic Yankee Doodle Dandy line from Piggy Tales and so a layout was born.


9. August 2009 - I had the honor of being named Guest Paper Creative Team Member for ACOT in August 2009. My grand idea was to host a month of challenges - posting one challenge every day and providing examples as many of those days as humanly possible, then giving out prizes to random winners at the end of the month. Lots of work but worth it, as I think those who participated had fun (and I certainly got a rush out of all the creativity I forced upon myself that month). At the end of the month I created a calendar page documenting the journey using this awesome 7Gypsies calendar paper.


10. We're Going Out - last but not least is this colorful layout of my teenage niece and our night on the town when she stayed with me this past summer. Fittingly I had a teenage grunge line from We R Memory Keepers to use for this page.


So there we are - my top 10 paper layouts of 2009. All of the images have been linked to my gallery at A Cherry on Top where product information and more detailed layout descriptions are posted. Thanks for looking.