Goodbye 2010

If you’re not saying it, you are thinking about it. We are all reflecting on a passing year. Our days were busy, fun and sadly gone. I’ve experienced a lot of change this year, our family growing up and moving on. I got married, and went on numerous trips in this half of the world. I’ve learned more about my husband and our growing relationship, like a tree, from the ground up. We’re becoming more solid everyday. It’s hard to believe I’m another year older, when it feels like we just started 2010.

To recap this year: a marriage (ours), a honeymoon, two sisters graduating and moving out, an amazing and bonding trip to California with said sisters, a sickness involving weeks in the hospital, a death of an elder, and a decade beginning birthday.

I had a lot of fun this year, it’s good to be young, one day I won’t have this freedom. It was nice to learn a little more about who I am and who I want to be. It was nice to feel happiness right down to my toes and warm fuzzy feelings eating me up. I enjoyed my time with family and friends and I especially enjoyed my summer. I enjoyed gaining a year of experiences and a year of experience with all the things I love baking, photography and being outdoors.

I’m anticipating yet another year full of change, life changing decisions to be made, futures to be started. 2011 is my year of realized dreams.

In the coming year I hope I can strike a better balance in my life, here is what I’ll try:

I want to pay more attention to you, whoever you are. If all you do is read this, I want to write to you more. If you are my close family I want to be around you, to give you more of myself. If you are not so close family I definitely want to know you better, wish you a happy birthday ON your birthday, surprise you with treats and show you that I care about you. If you are my dog I want to pay more attention to you, shower you with love and play your slimy game of fetch.

I want to travel more, see more, understand more. I want to make connections to new places and discover that which I overlook, the things around me all the time. I want to experience the rivers and mountains, here, and get outside even more than I do. Picnics in my favourite park, tea parties in my garden, cold water and granola bars at the top of our hikes. Foraging for mushrooms and fiddleheads, my food and outdoors belong together.

I want to stick to a baking budget. An allotment both of money and time. 2010 could be summed up as the year of my kitchen, all be it extremely tiny, but this is where I spent the majority of my time. I need to balance my baking with my needs. I need to be in the kitchen to keep sane, this is where I enjoy myself, but baking more than we could ever dream of eating is consuming the majority of my food budget, we need balance. So this means baking once every other day not a few items everyday. And slowing down once I get there, there is NO rush, no one told me I had to make anything!

And that brings me to my next point, I need to cook myself more dinners, real dinners. Learn the techniques I want for my children, my kids won’t want a bowl full of vegetables every night,or leftovers 6 nights a week! I challenge myself to break out of my safe food and get into the unknown, and hopefully share it with you.

So please, remind me of these things. You are important to me, more important than my hobbies, my pjs and a book, my over planned planning! Good luck to all of us in 2011, I hope it is your year of dreams too.