HAPPY NEW YEAR! Did you make resolutions?

Wow! It is 2011 already! HAPPY NEW YEAR to you!

First, thank you for your support in reading my ramblings here. I appreciate you very much. 🙂

I had intended to post here for Christmas and the New Year, but I got overwhelmed with life and ‘stuff’ and couldn’t fit everything in. I was busy with all the usual things, but since this is the season I fight depression I had a bit of a struggle right around Christmas. Same as last year our two youngest daughters did not get home, and our two oldest daughters didn’t come out either but met us at my dad’s in early afternoon for our combined family dinner – only ten of us this year. It was very quiet here all morning with just my husband and our daughter’s little dog. Very unusual … the first time in all our years together that it has been just the two of us for Christmas. I missed our girls.

A sad time for us was that my aunt (Dad’s sister) was dying, and she passed away December 28, her funeral being January 1. That made for a rather rough end of 2010 and beginning of 2011 for my family. Not much unlike thirteen years ago when Mum passed away December 30, her funeral being January 2. Some years I get through the ‘anniversary’ just fine, but this year was not as easy. I think much of it was that I felt sorrow for my cousins, and it brought everything back more intensely for me.

How was the Christmas season for you? How did you celebrate the ‘holidays’?

On a lighter note … much to-do is made over New Year’s resolutions. Several years ago I gave up making them officially, but each new year I plan and hope to “do better”. This time I determined to ‘go through’ my house one room at a time to ‘fine tune’ things, and I have done one room so far. I also have business goals to achieve, writing aspirations to focus on, continued publishing of Christian newsletter Valley Sunshine and members’ correspondence to answer.

Last year I did resolve to read more, which you know by the page I set up here – My “have read” book list (Dec 1’09 – Dec 31’10) – where I kept track of my progress. Since that fun thing went quite well I set up a page for this year, too. I will finish reading the books of the Bible and add to my list as many more books as I possibly can. For some I will write reviews and I plan to interview authors as well.

All these are things that interest me that I want to do. But — I have to remember not to stress myself out when I can’t keep up. Right?

How is your reading coming along? Have you been inspired to read anything you have seen mentioned here? If so, I would love to know about it. 🙂

So, have you made any New Year’s resolutions/set any goals for 2011?

I wish for you a happy, healthy, accomplished 2011.

Thanks for reading, and .. Creative Musings! 🙂

NaNoWriMo 2010 is over — I WON!

Yes, NaNoWriMo is over for another year. If you have not been following my posts — this is the first NaNo challenge for me and I WON! That means that I met the challenge of writing 50,000 words in 30 days – with a few words over just to be sure – and I now have the certificate to prove it. Yay!

My ‘novel’ is not completed, though. I stopped writing in a place where there are three conflicts set up to be resolved, but I think it was a good place to stop for this challenge. Now I have the personal challenge of completing my ‘novel’ and doing a LOT of editing.

Writing my last post I was SO TIRED, and I had to laugh today when I read it over and saw the typos I made last night. And I don’t know why I didn’t say in that post’s heading that I had won in NaNo. Too tired to think it through, I guess. 🙂

Last night I also signed the pledge to verify that I had completed PiBoIdMo, and now we wait to learn who, of all of its participants, win those great prizes that Tara Lazar gathered to give out on December 3 or 4.

Talking to my husband over supper tonight I realized that I really did accomplish quite a bit of writing last month (November) — 50K words for NaNoWriMo, 30 picture book ideas for PiBoIdMo (I actually got 44), and I completed and mailed out the Autumn issue of Valley Sunshine newsletter.

No wonder I’m tired. I am ending this day early. Hopefully tomorrow I can get more accomplished in my house than I did today.

And it’s now December! Time to get my house in order to start decorating for Christmas!

So, how was your day? Have you started Christmas shopping and decorating?

Thanks for reading, and … Creative Musings! 🙂

Day15: NaNoWriMo & PiBoIdMo

Day 15 of writing challenges has not proven to go well for me. I spent time today (besides doing some household things) working on Valley Sunshine publication, though.

Tonight I was out to the chiropractor and while waiting, and with pleasant classical music playing, I came up with two ideas for PiBoIdMo. I had noticed on the way to my appointment that the town has its lighted decorations up on the poles — snowflakes, angels, doves, stars .. and that was working around in my mind. It turned into a picture book idea. Then I had a second idea, also to do with Christmas. I don’t now if I will actually work those up into picture book manuscripts, but they count for the challenge. Now I have 25 ideas for it in 15 days, which is good since the goal is to come up with at least one a day for the 30 days of November. I like being ahead in that because I certainly am not up to speed for NaNoWriMo!

In NaNoWriMo I am still behind. To make matters worse I am so tired tonight I kept dozing off in my chair so that I only got 541 words written increasing my % by only one point to 39%. I think I could do more but I need sleep! *yawn* Hoping I can do much better tomorrow, although … I almost forgot! Tomorrow is my birthday! but I have nothing planned so I should be able to write, write, write.

Have you seen Christmas decorations up anywhere yet?

Thanks for reading, and … Creative Musings! 🙂