Way back at the beginning of the month, I made some res…er…to-do lists and as part of this list promised a monthly review on my progress. Now we are in the final week of the month, I’ve decided it is time to see how it’s all going. So is all good or a total disaster going the way of most January resolutions to-do lists? See for yourself. Here’s how I’ve got on so far:

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I haven’t got off to a roaring start on my resolution  to-do list item regarding writing more, at least not as far as this blog is concerned, though after the daily Advent calendar posts, I imagine that’s something of a relief. I am doing rather better on most of the rest of the list though and will be posting an update about that soon 🙂

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We went to see the Gothic Exhibition at the British Library on the last Friday of the Christmas hols – myself and the sprogs with my US cousin and his son, who were over for a couple weeks. I love a bit of Gothery and if you do too and want to catch the exhibition, you’d best be quick as it finishes in a couple of weeks. Gothic was nicely summed up by a Victorian poster (below), which has moonlight, bats, a swooning heroine and lurking terrors.

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I don’t really do New Year resolutions. It just seems like a good way to set yourself up for failure and disappointment. All the usual ones about losing weight, exercising more, drinking less and generally being healthier are usually just a distant memory by February. That said, I do have some things that I want to do this year, so here they are in black and white as a reminder/target/measurable achievement, in short, a to-do list. Since New Year’s Day turned out to be a bit of a pyjama and movie day, I thought I’d squeeze in some list making as well 🙂

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So 2014 is drawing to a close and I know that many people will be glad to see the back of it, but then every year will be a challenge for someone and the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse are always out and about, which is probably why they ride rather than walking. That’s Life…and Death.

Personally, it hasn’t been that bad a year for me. We had a lot of stress trying to get DD a place at the same Secondary school as DS and ultimately failed, but she aced her SATs and has settled into the other school quite happily, coming top of her class in every subject in the assessment tests. DS also had a good year, winning a photography competition and making a good start on his GCSE courses.

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I hope you all had a lovely Christmas. I could write volumes about mine, but that would probably bore you rigid, so I’ll just do my top hits and misses (in no particular order) 🙂

Top Ten Hits: (more…)

This is it, the last post of the Advent Calendar! There won’t be a post tomorrow on this theme since, for us, Christmas starts this evening, though I will be posting again soon, if only to review the reality vs prediction of my Advent series 🙂

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Eek! It’s almost Christmas and I still have so much to do! Yesterday’s bugger-it-and-drink-Champagne-instead just didn’t happen. DD and I were hacking away at the cooking rock-face for the whole afternoon.

The final tally was 101 pierogi, a dozen mince pies (more to do today, but there’s only so much dough you can roll in one day) and an orange and almond cake, which was almost burnt because I forgot all about it in utter exhaustion and the smell* was masked by the rather good chicken and butternut curry I’d dragged myself back into the kitchen to make for dinner. (more…)

It’s beginning to smell a lot like Christmas. The fridges are groaning with food and we have enough food to withstand a fairly lengthy siege. Early this morning was my final foray to the supermarket to buy a whole salmon* for Christmas Eve. This is my contribution to the family gathering is a whole salmon, but this forms only one small course in the feast.

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Nothing much to say today. Only a few more days to go and this is getting to be a challenge, especially today.

Today’s deck is RWS. It was going to be Joie de Vivre, but I haven’t got any today so the card is 10 of Wands. That’s all.

Normal service will be resumed tomorrow.