Next in our year of organizing was the library.
First of all, we looked through the house and found the books that were ‘living’ elsewhere and brought them into the room. Then we went through our books, shelf by shelf and decided to keep (or not). This took most of Saturday, and resulted in three large bags of books going out to be sold. ($45!)
Our first organizing project of the year was the garage. It seemed especially appropriate after the extra special mess created by the holidays.
Woven into our year of organizing are some very specific projects.
Each year I like to look back over the previous year, and then set goals for the coming year. Many people do this on Jan 1st; I prefer to do it on my birthday. I often refine the accomplishments and goals until my new year, Samhain, but the bulk of the work is done on or around my birthday. I also like to do a tarot reading.
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I recently had the joy of creating a gift for my niece — a set of wooden blocks for her to play with. I’ll confess it wasn’t my first time, having made a set for my nephew, Connor, when he was about the same age.
I start with wooden blocks (of course) and then choose images from childhood ‘fairy tales’. I grew up on these tales, as did my sisters, and I think we all have fond memories around them. (Family legend includes stories of how the three of us would put on plays based on the tales, with me as the director frantically attempting to make my recalcitrant sisters do what we planned to do. Yes, I was bossy even then, and controlling. I like to think we laugh now, at least as much as the adults did back then.)
Several years ago, J. gave me a lovely new camera — a real one, one that adults might use – as a gift. It’s a bit intimidating, because while I love to take photographs, and I am proud of the work I do, this is a camera that requires a bit of effort to master.
I haven’t really,
But I have picked up a few tricks and I think you’ll see that in the next book I gave him for the holidays — one that documented our honeymoon.
This link will open a PDF of the book. (The .pdf is nearly 30mb, so it may take awhile.)
One of the main holiday gifts I gave my husband, J. last year was a couple of books through a company called Blurb. The first was from one from our trip to London back in 2007. What I learned more than anything? I needed a better camera (see an upcoming post). But I had a lot of fun culling through the 1000+ pictures we took (yay for digital pictures) and choosing the ones that meant something special to us, as well as being particularly interesting.
I thought you might enjoy it as well.
This link — London 2007 — will open a pdf of the book.
Each year I like to look back over the previous year, and then set goals for the coming year. Many people do this on Jan 1st; I prefer to do it on my birthday. I often refine the accomplishments and goals until my new year, Samhain, but the bulk of the work is done on or around my birthday. I also like to do a tarot reading.
(I apparently didn’t blog for 2013, another indication of the deep introspection I was feeling at the time. I’ll have to see what I did on paper (I keep a journal, sporadically). One reason for doing this, btw, is that time seems to be speeding up, and things I thought I did last month actually happened a year ago – I’m beginning to lose my perspective. Or gain it, depending.)
Each year I like to look back over the previous year, and then set goals for the coming year. Many people do this on Jan 1st; I prefer to do it on my birthday. I often refine the accomplishments and goals until my new year, Samhain, but the bulk of the work is done on or around my birthday. I also like to do a tarot reading (and other’s readings of me are ALWAYS welcomed).
Sorry, didn’t mean to get y’all excited. I’m not writing one — I’m making one. A hobby of mine is to bind books — usually just quick hand sewn ones, made of scrap paper with a nice (soft) cover. I use them for temporary journals or lists.