My word for the Year - COMPLETE

I have had a word for the year for quite a few years now.  I have chosen words that help me approach and focus my goals.  Way back in 2009, I picked the word 'Simplify'.  I wanted to simplify areas of my life to give me more time to do things I love to do, such as spending time with my family and creating things.  I spent the year tidying away clutter and trying to get into routines each week. As I do not have a job, I have a lot of time to myself, and I like to use it productively.  I have found a way of  using my time intentionally that works for me.

Half way through that year I found a wonderful website 'Simplify101'.  Aby Garvey was running online courses to help with organising, and I straight away signed up for the 'paper clutter' course.  Sadly, Aby's business is not running anymore, but 10 years later, I am still in touch with the friends I made along the way.  Aby was kind enough to host our little forum until she closed the website last year, and we posted every day about our goals and how we were doing.  I have been lucky enough to meet my friends from around the world in real life!  I have met Shari in New Zealand, Cynthia in San Francisco, Lau in France, Nancy in Oregon, USA, and Kathryn from Australia (we met in London).  Now the forum has closed we are not in touch every day, but I am sure we will still keep in touch regularly.

Other words that I have chosen in the past include LIGHT, SLOW, BREATHE, and GROW.  See this post from last January about my word LIGHT for 2018.

I have written goals each year for a while now, and basically they are very similar every year, and are centred around my health and fitness, my family, my home and garden and my crafting.  This year I have decided not to write goals as such, but to use a word to help me focus, and I am partaking in an online class run by Ali Edwards, One Little Word.  Ali provides regular prompts and discussions to keep the word in mind, and to explore how the word's different meanings can be incorporated into everyday life.

So for this year I have chosen COMPLETE.

I first decided on this word as I do have some projects to finish, including completing the quilt tops I made last year.  With the help of Ali's prompts and worksheets I have some other ideas:

*Completely use up stuff around the house - eg fabric scraps, paper craft stuff
*Feeling complete - when my family is around me, feeling healthy in body and mind
*giving things my complete attention - less distraction, eg from social media!
*how well I complete things - perfectly complete or completely perfect
*complete rest - I could definitely do with resting more.
*working on 1 project until I complete it - 1 project at a time

A word about perfection.  I tend to finish things off quickly, tick them off  and move onto the next thing.  Sometimes this is at the expense of perfection.  I am not saying that I want to be a perfectionist as such, but I think I need to keep it in mind, especially when sewing. 

I am looking forward to this year and how my word pans out!  I am keeping a journal to see which aspects of COMPLETE will inspire me the most.  I will keep you posted.

5 things we did in December

After a wonderful Christmas and New Year, we really are back in the swing of things and back to normal routines!  All the decorations are down and packed away, and the house is clean and tidy.  Time to sit down and think about my intentions/goals for 2020 and the new decade.  But more about that in a later post.

First I want to tell you about some of the lovely things we did in December:

Concerts and film:
Early in December, we went to the Christmas Concert at Chichester Festival Theatre which featured the Royal Marines Band and the choir of Chichester Cathedral. 

It was a change from our normal routine of going to the Christmas Concert in Brighton, which we had been to for several years, and the change did us good!  The Royal Marines Band was fabulous, I was thrilled that they included some drummers!  Here's a little video of them:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zkPDxy32ANg 

Chichester cathedral choir were lovely too, the choir boys singing like angels in the first half of the show, then just the adults in an acapella group in the second half.


Much nearer Christmas we saw our local amateur orchestra the Worthing Philharmonic, playing it's Christmas concert.  It was a lively concert with lots of Christmas classics including some of Tchaikovsky's  Nutcracker Suite.  Mum came with us and she was particularly thrilled when they played 'sleigh ride' as the encore piece!  I didn't take any photos this year, so here's one from last year.

Our local cinema showed the film of Nutcracker Ballet performed by the Royal Ballet at Covent Garden in 2016.  What a magical ballet this is!  The music and staging were so Christmassy!  I am always amazed at the things those ballet dancers can do with their bodies!!  Of course I would rather be at the live event for the atmosphere but these live screening events do let us see these eminent ballets/operas and plays at our local cinema.  None of the hassle of getting to London and back!

Party:
We invited our neighbours in for drinks and mince pies in the week before Christmas.  It went really well with about 20 neighbours turning up.  There was lots of chatter and catching up with each other.  Many of us have lived here since our children were little and now they are all grown up, we don't see each other so much.

Visited a stately home:
Mum and I drove to Standen, a National Trust property in East Sussex just before Christmas to see the house dressed for Christmas.  Standen is a lovely homely property decorated by William Morris.  The house was presented as though it was Christmas Day, and the family had just gone out for walk.  So there were half opened presents, and the dining room  table was as though they had just finished dinner.  It was really good!  Sadly my phone ran out of charge so I don't have many photos, but here's the main Christmas tree and the stairway:

Didn't cook Christmas Dinner:
Our daughter Lucy and her fiance Danny invited us to their house for Christmas Day.  With our son Nicholas and his girlfriend Natalie, plus my Mum, there were 7 of us, plus Barney the dog.  Lucy and Danny cooked a wonderful  turkey with all the trimmings.  Food, drink, and presents were plentiful, and we went for a walk and played games too.  We didn't get home until really late!

New Years Eve:
Some lovely neighbours who we have dinner with from time to time invited us with another couple to their house for dinner and games on New Years Eve.  It was lovely to be invited out as we have spent most NYEs at home on our own recently!  Here's a photo of our very tall Jenga tower, that's 31 layers!  And we did that after midnight after several glasses of wine!