Wednesday, December 31, 2008

Year-End Review/New Year Preview

I'm not a resolutions type person, but on the first day of 2008, I took stock and thought about what I wanted out of the year.

Here is that list with comments in bold:

  • Buy a house. I'm sick of apartments. Fortunately, my cigarette- and pot-smoking, loud-talking, door-banging downstairs landlady and her loud-and-constantly yawning and spitting boyfriend have kicked my need-to-buy-a-house ass into gear. CHECK! DONE!
  • Cook at least one meal a week that uses only locally produced food items. This will be easier when I can grow my own little garden, which means I need a house. CHECK. With Fair Shares, we have many all - or nearly all - local meals.
  • Recommit to recycling at home. Since St. Louis doesn't have curbside recycling pick up for everyone, I've become lazy about recycling. This is my dirty little secret. Fortunately, when it's just me living here, I don't have much recycling waste. But, anyway, we bought a recycling receptacle yesterday, and I looked up the guidelines for the drop-off recycling locations. My biggest waste is vegetable and fruit matter. When I buy a house, I'll be able to start composting. RECYCLING - CHECK! COMPOSTING - NEARLY CHECK. I hate to admit it, but I fell off the worm bin composting. BUT, we will set up an outside compost thingie in the next couple of months.
  • Replace current cleaning products with ecologically sound ones once current products are gone. GOOD PROGRESS. Our laundry detergent is always biodegradable now. In terms of cleaning supplies, we've switched to "greener" ones, but I really want to buy some of the locally made, non-toxic cleaning supplies available at Local Harvest. Sometimes I use borax and a lemon to clean, but not nearly enough. Porkchop didn't like the biodegradable dishwasher detergent, so now we're using one that doesn't contain phosphates (good, but I think it's still bad).
  • Knit garments beyond hats and scarves and hand mitts. On my way with the Tilted Duster. CHECK! Tilted Duster done, and I'm nearly finished with my February Lady Sweater.

These are my ideas for 2009:

  • Plant my own vegetable garden! I shared a garden last year, and while it was fun, I wasn't able to tend it very well and my tomatoes didn't do so hot. But we did have lots of chard. Too much chard. Porkchop and I made a list of plants (no chard) and supplies for our backyard garden, and I'm quite excited.
  • Can my own food! A friend of ours in Massachusetts (yes, you E Buz) has inspired me with her canning. For Christmas, I received the Ball Book of Home Preserving, and I can't wait to start.
  • Figure out my career. Really, I need to formulate some sort of plan for growth.
  • House maintenance: paint inside, paint the foundation, finish the drylocking in the basement, put up that additional downspout, fix up the backyard....this list could get quite long.
  • Learn how to knit Fair Isle-style. It is so time to do this.
  • Do more baking! I've fallen behind this past year sadly.
  • Secret project with Porkchop. Maybe more details later.

My motto for the coming year is "2009: Making it Mine." You can use this, too, if you like.

Happy New Year's Eve!

6 comments:

Porkchop said...

I'm adding some more goals for 2009:

1) Celebrate 30th Birthday at WDW!
2) Turn Garage into Print Studio.
3) Get a real/full time job.
4) Find a way to print again.

Gracie said...

yay carebear! you compleed so many of your goals! i like the new goals for the year! i am excited to see them all happen for you and porkchop. me and beth are sitting down to do our lst right now! xoxox

Carmen Hotvedt said...

Carrie! I think your blog has been a huge gift to me in the past two years--I miss seeing you every week but love that we are able to keep in touch (mostly I read about your life and don't tell you much about mine, though, except that I love pics of Keetah). That said, I am so OVER fair isle knitting. I discovered mosaic knitting, which provides similar results (just in two colors) without so many hanging threads. LOVE it! xoxo

EBuz said...

I am honored to be mentioned in this post! My own goal is to grow and can way more tomatoes this summer.

Carrie said...

CJ - I'm so glad you like reading my blog! But I do wish I could more about you, instead of the sporadic sentence or two on Facebook!

Also, I don't know if mosaic knitting will meet my wants. But I will look into it more. Send me some pics of your mosaic knitting!

EBuz - more tomatoes is always a good thing.

Anonymous said...

I have never been good at setting Goals aloud. I always make my own Goals and then when I accomplish them, I make them known. I think it's because I'm afraid of failure. Either way, Here are some of mine . . .

1. Keep the f***ing Squirrels out of my Tomatoes this Year. Oh, and tone it down on the Cucumbers.

2. Celebrate Dale's ARE Accomplishments with a HUGE Potluck!

3. Pull off a Wedding on a TEENY TINY Budget.

4. Get rid of my Storage Locker and my Room at Mum's by giving at least 50% of the Stuff to Charity.

We should trade help. Mr. RnT is really good with Downspouts. . and I'm great with . . . with Stuff.

For now, I just want to get rid of this .. SICK. Then we'll get to the other stuff. =)