An end to the festivities

Today has finaly seen a return to normality in the Crumpets household. Decorations are down (bah humbug, they were getting in the way) and the bottles and cans marking the annual alcoholic binge-fest have been put out on the street to give the neighbours something to gossip about!
Christmas and New Year have been fun this year and after a frantic run-up with me making, crafting and cooking like mad, it was a relief to be able to sit back and enjoy it all.
I appreciate that with the quantity of posts I made about things I'd made, I came across all Martha Stewart in December. This is not really a fair picture of how my life usually runs and while I like to think my Christmas looked like this,

in reality it looked much more like this.

Lets just say that my pyjamas have seen more wearing than normal.

Still, it's all over and I'm wearing real clothes again today and haven't had a single chocolate or sherry. Go me.

I hope you all had a nice time and got lots of lovely presents - I received stacks of lovely goodies and I'll be posting about some of the books and films I received in a short while as they mostly fall into the craft or 1940s categories, some are both.

Since I've been enjoying reading about everyones New Year resolutions, I thought I'd list mine too. Partly this helps to commit me to doing them and partly I just enjoy making lists. I'm not normally a New Years resolutions person, but 2010 was in parts awful and I spent much of it drifting from interest to interest and don't feel I got much of anything I wanted to do done. I'm hoping if I list general resolutions and things to get done now, I might achieve a bit more in 2011!

1. Sew at least 12 garments in 2011.

I figure I might sew more, but this is an achievable target of around 1 per month. Fortunately, I had nothing to do on New Years day and managed to get a skirt and a dress done then (pictures to follow), so I only have 10 things left to make this year. Easy!

2. Lose weight – any amount!
My target weight is not really achievable in a year, so I'm only going to set myself the task of losing some weight, the aim being to keep losing weight in 2012. I've gone up 2 dress sizes in 18 months and I can't keep putting on at this rate, so this is a pretty serious resolution. Less beer (gasp), fewer chocolates (sigh) and some exercise (faint).
Current weight; 11st 10. Eeek.

3. Learn some German
Enough to survive my planned holiday to Bavaria in the Spring. Michel Thomas will be assisting with this.

4. Redecorate sewing room
Pretty simple as it's only the size of a shoe box. I meant to do this last year but never got around to it. I have all the bits I need so I don't really have an excuse now!

5. Pay off £2000 debt
Sigh. Somehow. If I'm ever going to be out of debt I need to stop shopping, so...

6. Sell clothes on etsy and ebay
They're already photographed and everything. Also...

7. Live with less – set budgets and stick to them!
The first part is really more important than the second. I need to get out of the shopoholic mindset I've been in of late. I should have about £600 spare each month after lunches and bus fares and bills. Usually I have about £50, the rest is going on rubbish. This needs to stop and I have to stop thinking that shopping will make me happy, because I know it doesn't. There's an excellent article here that I might read several times this year to keep me motivated.
 
Lets see how well I do...