Happy New Year and Project 365

Happy New Year! We had a really great Christmas around here, and I hope to eventually have time to sort through all the Christmas pictures. But I have some goals for the new year, and if I wait to wade through the Christmas photos, I'll never make it, so I figure I'd better just dive right in somewhere. I have decided to attempt to do Project 365 -- I'm not joining the formal group, but I'm setting a personal goal of taking and posting one photo a day every day in 2011. Seeing as I missed the first day of 2011, I'm not overly optimistic about how it will go, but that is the goal. I did this on a smaller scale when I did Finding the Joy back in June, and I found it to be extremely difficult to keep up with, even just for one month. Still, it was a great way to work on photography skills, and to start thinking about photographs in fresh and interesting ways (because let's face it, picture after picture of your kids sitting next to each other faking smiles at the camera gets really boring after a while, even for their adoring mom). So, we'll see how it goes. I suspect that I will end up cheating a little (taking a week's worth of photos in one day, combining posts, etc. but as far as I know there are not any Project 365 police to stop me). Here is photo #1, my precious nephew Alex, who just left us after an awesome post-Christmas visit:



There are no words for what a joy this boy is. He's happy, charming and very very busy, and he's quite the little talker (I even heard an "Auntie" this weekend!). We loved every minute with him this week!

I am also reevaluating my hobby priorities for the year, and I've come to the conclusion that it's time to say goodbye to my food blog. I have mixed feelings about that -- I've gotten so much enjoyment out of it; I've learned SO much about cooking and baking in the 2+ years that I've had that blog; and I've met some great friends in the food blogging community. But right now I feel like I want to devote my limited hobby time to (1) working on my photography skills, which encompasses the technical and artistic aspects of taking photos; editing the photos; and photo management (i.e., printing family pictures and organizing them by putting them into albums, etc.) -- all of which takes tons of time, and (2) running (which food blogging interferes with by keeping me up late writing posts, which makes it harder for me to get up in the morning and run). I'm not exactly sure what to do with my other blog -- hide it, delete it, just leave it there largely dormant, posting if the spirit moves me? It's really easy to start a blog, but more difficult to stop a blog. I guess I'll figure that out, but for now, I feel like the new year is a logical time to say goodbye to it as I focus on other interests.

Okay, so a picture a day! I'm really excited to do this.