2009 came and went.  Let’s take a look at my short list from last year, shall we? What about my 09 resoultuions,  you ask?  Well, I think this is what I want to do this year:

  1. Knit more things for me. Hmm…  I think I completely fail in this.  I don’t think I knit much this year.
  2. Cook more.  I definitely cooked more this year! Especially now we moved and have more room!
  3. Start that Autume Rose sweater!!!! NOPE. Didn’t do that.
  4. Finish the Aspen Top Down Sweater. NOPE.  That is still sitting in the cubby.
  5. Try Thrummed Knitting. NOPE.  But I got a pattern for it!  Baby steps…

I guess I didn’t do so well this past year by sticking to my goals.  So WHAT did I do this year?

On the knitting front – Not bad for not knitting much, huh?

I picked up sewing – Not pictured is the portable crib sheets I made for day care crib.  I’ll post some stats once I am able to take a picture at day care.  Also, I am almost done with a wet bag (to store used cloth diaper while out and about) for day care, but our Little Lady wasn’t cooperating yesterday to let it be a FO for 2009.

Some other things that happened in 2009 -

  • We moved to our bigger apartment.
  • My friendship with few of my fellow “bitches” have really thrived.  I think they are my BBF (Best Bitches Forever).
  • We now have a JennAir dishwasher!  It is A-MAZING!
  • I now have a Nikon D5000!  I’v been wanting a DSLR camera for couple of years now, but I can never bring myself to spend that kind of money.  David surprised me with it for Christmas/Birthday!  I LOOOVE it.  You can definitely tell the quality of the pictures!
  • Lots of new additions in my family – both my cousins are now married to the love of their lives, and of course, the biggest news for my immediate family:

As for the year 2010, I would like to accomplish the following -

  1. Be a good mama to our Little Lady.  She certainly tests my patience, but that’s why David and I are such a good team, since he has way more patience than anyone I know.
  2. Create more!  Whether it be knitting, sewing or photography.
  3. Cook more.  Now we are back to the bigger apartment, I have more room to make yummy things.

And to start this year off on the right foot, I’ve decided to join Money Saving Mom and Life as Mom:

Time frame –  month of January.  Taken directly from the challenge post -

Here are some guidelines to help you think about this challenge and how you can grow in kitchen management this month:

  • Reduce grocery spending. We’re talking about reducinggrocery spending this month, not eliminating it. Set a goal that is lower than your regular food budget and shoot for not exceeding it.
  • Take stock. Take an afternoon and empty your pantry, freezer, and refrigerator. Ditch what’s gone bad and make a list of what’s left. Knowing what you have will make you less likely to buy more.
  • Use what you have. Check your pantry before you meal plan or head off to the store. Develop meals based on what you have rather than buying new.

So our goals for this month -

  1. Only spend $100 this month on grocery. We usually do a big grocery trip about every 6 weeks, and send about $300, and that’s not including the trips for fresh produce, milk and eggs that we get in between.  This is an ambitious goal, but it would be awesome if we can achieve it.
  2. Use up stuff in the freezer. A lot of times, we would get great deals on meats, I break them up and put them away and forgot about them.  And it’s not just meats, we get frozen dinners and forgot about them in the freezer in the garage!  So this goal will help us not waste th good deals we get!  A deal is not a deal when it ends up in the trash!
  3. Be creative. I sometimes rely on recipes too much and therefore gets bog down on making it!  I guess the engineer in me isn’t so good in this case.  This goal will help me speed up the meal making a the end of the day.

This doesn’t mean we won’t eat out at all.  But with this challenge, I hope to reduce the impulse stops at Wendy’s, and convince David to bring lunch to work, instead of buying lunch everyday.

With that, I’m going to go make a list of things I have to do.

Happy New Year.  I hope you all have a peaceful, healthy and fun 2010!