Happy 2008! Thomas and I celebrated with some of our friends at a party last night. The photos in this entry are from there. I’ve been thinking about my New Year’s resolutions and I’ve come up with 4 things I want to work on this year.
Improving My Hobby Skills
My main hobbies right now are sewing and photography, and I plan on improving them by doing them more and trying some new techniques. I have four new pattern books and a ton of blogs to encourage me to sew, but I have only found a couple of blogs that talk about photography tips. If you have any to share, please do. We also just got Adobe Lightroom and have been learning to use that to process our photos.
Managing Our Finances
Thomas and I are doing okay financially, but I would like to have a clearer understanding of our financial future. We’re going to try and beef up our savings this year, and we’re researching high-end savings accounts. I’ve been looking for a financial management class, but in the meantime, we’re going to go through the exercises in this book: The Young Couple’s Guide to Growing Rich Together
Build Our Community
We’re not always the most social people. We get home late; we live in a really spread out area; and we don’t have a big social circles. I want to check out a few local groups – the North Fulton Jaycees, the UUMAN Potluck group, and maybe a birding group too. I would also like to try get together more often with our friends, and hopefully do some volunteer work too.
Settling Down
Right after our wedding last year, Thomas and I looked into moving. I went into an uneasy state where I didn’t want to join new groups, I didn’t want to purchase anything, and I felt like I had to put my life on hold in case we did move. We didn’t, and I think we’re staying put for a while, but now I would like to work on feeling settled. To me, this means feeling comfortable with where we are – enjoying the area around us, finishing up some projects in our house, and establishing a little bit of a routine.
I tried to keep these simple, but still challenging enough to help me grow. I’m looking forward to a great year of exploring the world around me and hopefully sharing some of it on here. Anyone else post their resolutions?
The rest of the party photos are on Flickr, if you’d like to see them.
- New Year’s Eve Party (57 photos)
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Beautiful Pictures!!!
I love the sparkler photos! Your resolutions sound really well founded. Have some similar ones myself! Happy New Year!!!
I love your pictures – those sparkler photos are great! Thanks for including my tips…I hope they help you reach your goals this year.
Have fun sewing, too! Those books look like they have some fun projects in them.
For the finances, the best thing we did was engage a financial planner. It is expensive, but worth it! They really push you to put money into savings and watch your spending. It gives you a certain amount of accountability. When we first got the plan, I didn’t know how we could put that much each month into savings, but we did and we are hoping to retire in our early fifties, if all goes well.
Your photos are great!
It’s not strictly a photo blog, but have you checked out Pioneer Woman? She gives Photo Shop tips from time to time.
Those sound like great ideas! Sounds like you had a fun New Year’s. :)
I don’t know about a financial planner. I always thought I could budget and manage my money on my own. I do believe in a plan to withhold a part of one’s salary in an annuity monthly. The financial planner that I know did not do so well for himself.
Hi Dallas, thank you for the wonderful shots you are a great hobbiest! Hope you had a good time that night, we sure did. It was good to see you, I really love your website!
TC
Azizi