I’m looking forward to 2015. This last year has been a complete slog, personally and professionally. I couldn’t count the number of times we’ve been sick (although none of the illnesses have been serious – we’re lucky for that). I broke my toe and it still hurts.

Most of the time it seemed like it all was happening at once, with illness and stressful events popping up, seemingly back-to-back. I returned to work in January, which changed the way our family ticked. A lot. The children are much bigger and brighter. We love them to bits.

I am desperately hoping 2015 will be kinder to our family. I don’t think I could do 2014 again. I held it together, but only just.

I had some goals last new year. I’m happy to say that I achieved a good few of them. I was easier on myself – I stopped stressing about the house and got a cleaner. I am slowly sorting through stuff and decluttering.

We got our chicken coop and chickens,  although we lost our first three girls to illness and predator attack. I’ve learned a lot about keeping chooks.

The garden has ticked along, and there’s less vinca in our yard than there was at the beginning of the year. I’ll call that a win. We had a heavy berry crop coming on when we left for our holidays. I hope there are some left when we return.

I did a lot of sewing and a bit less knitting. I knitted myself a cowl but didn’t end up blogging it. I’m still not sure if I like it. A year later and I still haven’t finished sewing our curtains.

I failed dismally on the exercise front. I was accurate in my assessment that returning to work part time would result in less craft and more juggling. Elena dropping her day sleep didn’t help (and now Hugo’s followed in her footsteps)!

Blogging definitely suffered, and so did my yarn dyeing. There was much, much less baking.

And what for 2015? Well, I’m hoping there’ll be more sleep, sewing, knitting, dyeing and blogging. I’d like to get a little more serious about my etsy store. I’m going to start keeping track of works in progress and finished objects. I need to finish more of the craft projects I start.

Hopefully we’ll have more holidays. We have our chicks in the brooder growing bigger by the day (kindly cared for by family and friends over our break – thank you!), and I’m looking forward to finding out how many girls are in the group.

I’m hoping to take some sewing lessons and get serious about sewing for myself with the help of a talented friend. I’d like the garden to stop looking so messy, and get out of it’s teenager-like transition from overgrown mess to what I want it to become. I’m planning to enrol in a Masters degree program. I’m considering joining a gym with a creche….maybe. Shock. Horror. No really, that’s a massive step for me.

So there we have it.

We survived 2014 and are looking forward to sinking our teeth into 2105.

Happy New Year!

The WordPress.com stats folk put together a year in review for each WordPress blog. It’s an interesting snapshot of my very slow blogging year. I’m going to challenge myself to hop back on here more often this year.

Thank you for reading along! You lot are the people I chat to when I can’t get out of the house…which is often.  I can talk to you about sewing and knitting and baking and my garden ad nauseam without boring you to tears. It’s nice to know someone’s reading.

Click here to see the complete report.