WIW: Week 2

That.s right. I finally saw my bestie this past week and met her dog child Ryker (who is now my best bud, by the way). Never mind that our visit was for roughly a half hour hanging out in her car in a Subway parking lot while they were on their way down to catch a flight back to North Carolina. Didn't really matter because that half hour was glorious anyways. Harry and Ryker became good friends, we laughed, AND Katie even bought me a cookie. This is why we're friends, folks. Until our next random meeting, Ka-Tee!

Where I Was: Week 1

That's right. We actually went to a New Year's Eve party this year, and brought Harry along. So what if it the party was the regional youth New Year's Eve bash and we were chaperons? It was actually pretty fun. Our ward needed to provide some people to come, and since we don't have kids and probably would have just gone to bed at 10 anyways, we decided to help out. You really can't pass up an opportunity for free pizza and candy and wandering around giving the stink eye to kids who were acting unruly. (Unfortunately the stink eye opportunity didn't really present itself. But I did try to give off the impression that I was NOT a youth. I think I was taken as one of the kids to a lot of people there.) I will have to say this, I am SO thankful that my awkward years of adolescence are behind me. . . well, I think they are, at least. 

Some resolutions, if you will

It just so happens that January first is rolling around right when I'm deciding to do some changes for my life. Perfect timing, if you ask me.

It is really nice to have a new year as a reason to really get going on some of these goals of mine. I think sharing them helps me feel more accountable to actually stick to them. So, the following are a couple things I really plan on working on this year:

1. Read more. I used to be such a lover of reading, but throughout the past few years I've fallen out of the habit. I've really become lame. I think last year I read a total of maybe 3 books. That is NOT the Tara I used to be. I really miss it and so I decided to sit down and make a list of 15 books I plan to read this year. At first it was 20, but when I did the math that only gave me about 18 days to read a book, which for some people wouldn't be hard, but since I work full time and most of the books I want to read are 300+ pages, I needed to give myself some room. Besides, I don't want to stress over reading, I want to get back into the habit of loving it. And having it be a priority over other pointless things like facebook or pinterest. So I have my list. And as soon as the library opens back up tomorrow, I plan on going and getting me a book! Time to get back to it Tara!

2. Start a Project 52 on my blog. Last year I really enjoyed reading every week about my amazing friend/photographer Kristin Brown. I really wanted to do something like this for a long time, but never really knew what inspiration I could use to get going. I'm not a professional photographer by any means, but I wanted some sort of weekly motivation that was a little bit different than your average update post. So after some looking around, I found this site that gave ideas for personal photography projects, and I tweaked some of the ideas for my own personal "blog project".

The idea I came up with is to take a small object and take a picture of it somewhere I am every week. Whether it's at home, in the car, at a restaurant, whatever. Some place I find myself that week. I hope it will be cool to look back and see all the various little places I found myself at the end of the year. I brought this all up to Paul and he really likes the idea too. We just now had to figure out what object to use. Something that was small enough to carry with us and to take a picture of without looking too weird. So, here's the little guy we came up with:

  

Ha! I know, right? I bought as a joke for Paul for his birthday a couple years ago a little set of Harry Potter quidditch players. We figured those would be perfect. It's weird, which is us, and it's Harry Potter, which is me. And they are tiny so it won't be hard to bring them around to places. So, I'm really hoping that I can stick to this challenge and keep a weekly update on where I was. Stay tuned in the next couple of days for the first post. . . .

And there you have it. My two "resolutions" that I really want to stick with. Everyone who knows me well knows I have a hard time sticking to goals. I just get bored and lose interest most of the time. But putting these up and only giving myself 2 goals to really focus on I think is very doable for me. Anyone out there want to share some goals they have?

Happy New Year!