New Year's Day

2011 began with a bracing rock-hopping walk along the seashore to start the year off right!

I don't make resolutions, but I do have a good long think about the past year, what I can learn from it, and what I want to achieve in the year stretching out before me. I find it's easier to think on a nice long walk in the country or by the sea - it's cleansing. So, a walk on New Year's day is always a good habit.

Last year, I had a few aims: start a blog (tick!), do more exercise (I joined Pilates and Yoga classes - tick!), learn to sew (I joined a sewing class - tick!), make time for relaxation (tick!), travel (Holland, Belgium, Gran Canaria - tick!), meet up with old friends (tick!) and start saving money (hmm...). Overall, I think I managed quite a lot there.

But there's always more to do! This year I want to keep up the good work with exercising, relaxing, travelling and visiting friends, and add in a few more things too:

1) continue learning to sew, moving from alterations to making something from a pattern!
2) be sensible and grown-up with finances - start saving, stop spending.
3) read more, watch less TV.
4) master victory rolls.
5) make a souffle.
6) take my career up a notch in the day-job (one for the alter-ego).

Over the next year then in this blog I'll start to relay some sewing misadventures as well as the home-baking ones, there will be some vintage star biography book reviews, I'll continue my Poirot fashion series, there'll be more charity-shop and boot sale shopping reports as I try to achieve vintage style on a meagre budget, and you can sure as hell expect lots of photos and tips if I do indeed master victory rolls!!

Here are a few pics of what I found on my walk, which was in completely non-vintage attire I'm afraid - I tend to wear high-waist jeans and cowgirl shirts on dress-down days, but I was even wearing trainers(!) on the beach. Cowboy boots aren't practical for scrambling over rocks!