12 in 12 Review

Remember my 12 in 12?  Yeah, me neither...I kid!  I thought being the new year I thought I would check in on last year's 12 in 12 and see how I did.  So without further ado....

1) Try and new cut and color...done and sort of done.
I went darker in the fall and decided to commit to growing it out long.  I found a great stylist that gave my long hair some shape.

2) Learn how to wear lipstick.  Done and if I could revise this intention I would have said "learn to wear lipstick AND actually wear it."  I found a gloss based lipstick in a red that I love for my everyday look.

3) Decided on a paint color of the formal living/dining and paint it. DONE!  And I freaking LOVE it!  But truthfully I got this one barely under the wire.  We had swatches painted all over the walls for the better part of the year.  It was so bad that one of my sister's friends asked "are you going for an abstract look?" and my poor color bling hubby was like "um, can we pick something? This is driving me crazy." His request was in August and I decided on a paint in October....eek!  Then I did my normal thing where I trim in my spare time at night and then roller one Saturday.  My goal was to have it done before we decorated for the holidays and let's say I was rollering the last coat as the mister was dragging the boxes out of the attic.  I will post pictures soon, promise.

4) Run in a race. Check.  I did the Jingle Bell Run in Fort Worth with my sister and T.  Little A tagged along and it was fun.  I might try another one this year

5) Refinish the bed frame I bought at the flea market.  Fail.  Well, not really, it's taken me a while to decide on painting versus refinishing and then there are only so many hours in the day...and I did that little thing called going back to work.  I am not feeling too bad about this one.

6) Begin building our food garden in the back yard.  Nope, we didn't work on this one.  Instead we focused our time and money on fixing up the existing landscaping and put in a new bed.  It's a process.

7) Get the creative room pulled together.  I got that one done first thing this year and we have really enjoyed it.  We have a few more plans to tweak the room this year but we have a great base.

8) Visit the Oklahoma City National Memorial and Museum.  No, but this one is going straight to my list this year!

9) Take Adelaide to the place T and I got engaged. We accomplished this in a pretty special way.  You can read more about it here.

10) Visit two art museums that are not in my city.  I didn't get this done, but I am at peace.  We used the heck out of our DMA membership.  Adelaide and I spent much of the summer going in the morning to look at the collection, gabbing lunch at the cafe and heading home.  But I would like to continue to seek out opportunities to soak up art with my little family.

11) Finish a sewing project from a pattern.  That's another big, fat no.  I am starting to think that I have a real problem with patterns, because I have done several sewing projects but I have drafted the pattern myself or just free handed it (Adelaide's nap mat cover for school and a stole for worship).  Oops.

12) Attend at least one concert.  Ha!  This one is the biggest yes of the bunch.  I joked to someone that if you followed me on Instagram, you would think that my life was all food, cute baby raising and concerts.  This year I got to see the Old 97s, Florence and the Machine, Bob Dylan, A Fine Frenzy, and several DSO concerts.

All in all it was a great year.

2012 A Look Back

I did a recap of 2011 and really enjoyed it, so thought I would do the same for 2012, with a slightly different twist. I think every year is full of surprise--some good and some not so good and this year was no exception, but on the whole I think this year was all about finding our grounding here in Texas.

Top 6 Moments of 2012*:

1) Adelaide celebrated her first birthday with a special trip and then a party with our friends and family

2) T celebrated his 30th birthday

4) I went back to work

5) We went on vacation to the beach

6) We continued to enjoy living near our family

*Because I couldn't narrow it down to 5!

What were your top moments of 2011?

The Peace of Wild Things

My friend, colleague and poet, Thom Dawkins, asked on Facebook a few weeks ago if poetry still mattered.  I believe his question was directed at his fellow poet community, but I answered, of course it matters, poetry speaks truth through simplicity and grace and communicates things about the human heart that the heart can only identify. 

 

As I have mentioned here before I work with a school in my building, where my daughter attends.  So in the days following the incident in Newtown, I have waded though my own family's grief and processing, as well the community of teachers and staff here at the church.  And I know that poetry still matters because what has brought me comfort has been the words of author, poet and theologian Wendell Berry.  It is a poem I memorized years ago and committed to heart and so I leave it here with you:

THE PEACE OF WILD THINGS

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,
I go and lie down where the week drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come in the peace of wild things
who do not tax thier lives with forthought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with thier light.  For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and I am free.

Currently Reading

I am a bit of a book evangelist.  If I am currently reading something that I am totally into I tell everyone I see about it!  I guess I just get caught up in the power of books to illumenate new ideas or tell a story or articulate the complexities and simplicity of the human soul.  Anyhow, this holiday season I have been reading Tinsel by Hank Stuever and I LOVE it.  It provides an honest, provocative and yet tender look at what Christmas has come to mean in the subburbs--not just any subburb but in our neighboring subburb--by following three families through thier Christmas festivities for three years. 

Good Help is Hard to Find

I pack my lunch everyday that I go to work. This little peice of information is part fact and part brag because I enjoy being able to eat healthy, fresh, homemade foods.  Three days a week I pack Adelaide's lunch for school and I enjoy providing the same for her.

 

In the past month or so we have discovered the double meaning of the word "help" or as we most often pronounce it "hep." At first we taught Adelaide the word "help" to curb some of the fits when she would get frustrated trying to do something--they didn't come very often but we wanted to equipt her with words not yelling, not frustration.  But probably three weeks ago she discoved that help can be something you do for someone else, as well.  And so about half of the time now she will say "hep mama" to offer her services on whatever project I might be working on. 

 

One of her favorite things to "hep" with lately is cooking and packing lunches.  She will sit on the counter (she is still very tiny and takes up almost no room) and I will stand in front of her (for safety) and we will put together salads, fill containers with fruit, stir ingredients and her favorite thing--shake spices into whatever we are cooking!  Sometimes when I go to zip up my lunch box I have to remove the small porceline bowl she piled on top of my sandwich along with a lid from an unused tupperware container, sometimes I have to slice a few extra apples slices because my helper wants to sample the goods, but good help is hard to find.  And cute, sweet, smiley help is even harder!