It was also our first Christmas at our flat instead of a parents’. Lunch was good and not as much hard work as I thought, but that may be to do with not cooking a whole turkey… I also managed to watch every single Wallace and Gromit short & film over the festive period.

For our Xmassy pics complete with snow, Snoopy, Playmobil advent calendars, check them out on Facebook here.

There’s a slew of 2009 review & 2010 promises in my Google Reader today, but what’s one more eh?

2009

Design

I will pick up some files from work on Monday so I can do a review of my work from the year. Includes the designs and associated work for smtrac and StationeryWise.

Photography

I’d briefly considered 365 again but didn’t get very far this year. You can see the photography I uploaded this year here.

Life in General

Work and home life are pretty much the same. I got a raise which I was pretty pleased with. We’re decorating the bathroom at the moment (same colours, just needed a few things sorting out, it already looks miles better). Love-wise we celebrated 3 very happy years together. Familywise, long story, but I just went from being an only child with one parent for 22 years to having two parents, two (half) sisters and a (half) brother. So that’s been good and interesting.

2010

I am yet again attempting Project 365, you can track my progress on my flickr here. This is my big resolution for the year on a creative level. On a personal level it’s health and eating real food, not just chocolate/caek.

There are plenty of posts about keeping resolutions and such out there, and I’ve read a lot of them over the years. The things that stick out most seem to be about taking small steps so as not to overwhelm yourself and creating new habits so as to make real changes. It’s also good to write these things down, review them regularly and have ways to hold yourself accountable.

I liked Gretchen’s post at the Happiness Project about taking each month for a different “thing”. So I’ve done something similar:

Jan – Work/Money
Feb – Love/Relationships
Mar – Mindfulness/Happiness
Apr – Skin/Teeth (yes that sounds weird, it’s not, I’m rubbish at these routines)
May – Cleaning/Tidying
Jun – Exercise
Jul – Photography
Aug – Social
Sept – Art
Oct – Spirituality
Nov – Writing
Dec – Family

Each month has some kind of event, end goal and reward. I’ll be updating my blog from time to time about these because I think it’s good to check in and talk about what I’ve learnt.

Lastly

Eddyb has redesigned his site and blog, go check it out!

Now please don’t switch off just yet.

Whether “global warming”, or “climate change” is actually happening, or would happen regardless of us makes no odds. It is no excuse for being wasteful. There’s little to no effort to recycling, so why set such a bad example of values to your kids etc? It’s not good to waste things, just because you can! Odds are, that wastefulness is hurting someone or something somewhere. Like the ocean and it’s inhabitants for example.

So, where does our plastic end up?

Photograph belongs to Chris Jordan - http://www.chrisjordan.com/ It has not been Photoshopped.

Yes folks, that is an albatross. A dead albatross showing the contents of it’s stomach. 2000 miles away from the nearest continent – and there’s many more. Plastic now outweighs plankton 6 to 1 in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch (more info).

Taken from Journey to Midway website:

Midway Atoll, one of the remotest islands on earth, is a kaleidoscope of geography, culture, human history, and natural wonder. It also serves as a lens into one of the most profound and symbolic environmental tragedies of our time: the deaths by starvation of thousands of albatrosses who mistake floating plastic trash for food.

See Journey to Midway and Chris Jordan’s photography for more information about this horror.

But, I recycle, I’m not responsible

I find this film particularly striking (check out from about 5:00 onwards) – a collection of objects found in rotting albatross carcasses. If you were thinking “oh this isn’t my doing”, check out how many toothbrushes, pens and lighters there are there and think again.

Now you “they’re just animals” folk can sing and dance all you want, you can’t think this is right, expecting birds and fish to eat our waste and then die, only to put it back in the sea. No one deserves that. No one deserves to swallow an ink cartridge or golf ball thinking it’s food! Especially just so we can continue this “throw-away society”. It’s not worth it.

What can I do?

Recycling is important, but with plastic it’s called “downcycling” and in the end the plastic still isn’t going to biodegrade for a very very long time and may well end up in the sea. I’m not saying don’t recycle. I’m saying use less plastic!

Buying throw-away products costs more in the long run, matches are just as good as lighters, use pencils when you can? I’ve vowed to never buy biros again. The few pens I have can have refills and the rest of the time I’m going to be using pencils. I’ve also given up Kinder Eggs…

Well if you’re so perfect…

Yes, I’m responsible too. Everyone is to some extent. No one can be completely “green”, that’s not a realistic expectation and it’s not about that. It’s doing what you can and it’s NOT hard. Here in Woking the council has actually upped the types of items we can recycle in our bins. In the new year we’ll have food collections too!

When I feel my efforts slipping I find myself checking out Chris’ work.

I’m almost done, I swear

Remember to do what you can with your recycling, and when buying something, ask yourself, do you really REALLY need it? And if so, buy something that’s built to last you, not for you to throw away.

The Links

http://www.midwayjourney.com/
http://www.chrisjordan.com/
http://www.bbc.co.uk/lastchancetosee/ – Worth watching while it’s still on the iPlayer! Beautiful imagery and very interesting information about good being done in the world, and of course showing the effects of our existance. And it has Stephen Fry. Are you not sold with that alone?

I’m a sucker for impulse buys – as the picture of a Shaun the Sheep bath poof will tell you, though to be honest I could be a lot worse. For the record, I’ve had the big Shaun since I was a kid It was just the bath sponge thing that grabbed my eye in Morisons.

When I finished university I dutifully figured out my money, had a heart attack, and then went about my business. I looked at my spreadsheet a couple of times over the last year or so, but things changed drastically when the Mister was able to move down and I’d never figured in that things cost half as much as before, so it was time for a new budget and I decided to refresh my knowledge of budgeting.

Useful Links

• 42 Ways to Radically Simplify Your Financial Life
• Building Your First Budget
• How to Budget Effectively and Also How to Stick to it
• 8 Ways to Make Huge Savings in your Budget
• 10 Ways to Simplify your Budget

My Top Tips

If you’ve figured out a budget, great! If you’re having trouble sticking to it however, I’ve got a few tips which I use myself to prevent “wasted” money.

Put it on a wishlist – I try and hold out for Christmas and birthdays with things that aren’t a true need. Plus putting things on a wishlist means you can go back and delete them when you realise you don’t really need them in the first place. It’s all about priorities, which sounds scary and grown up, but it’s really not that bad.

Show it to the other half/a (frugal) friend - I tend to find that when the Mister asks me “why do you want that?” and I not only have to justify it to myself, but someone else as well, if I struggle, I put it back.

Track your spending – I use an iPhone application called Balance which is free and very simple to use. A lot of people are using Mint which interacts directly with accounts and thing. The act of tracking every purchase as I make it means I’m more likely to rethink it – especially when I see what I’ve already spent that month.

I’ve only just started doing this again, but I did track my spending every day for a month a couple of years ago and the results were astonishing (HOW MUCH on chocolate?!). I cannot for the life of me find the post where I added it all up, so you’ll just have to take my word on the chocolate.

De-clutter regularly – we have a comfortably small flat, with acres of storage, but even with this, I find I’m constantly de-cluttering. This in itself makes it more likely for me to think twice about buying something and the de-cluttering means I really see how much I’ve bought. I guess the real tip here is to live somewhere comfortable but not bigger than what you truly need, people fill the space they live in, it’s just natural.

Wait a week – similar to the wishlist tip, waiting a week can be particularly useful for figuring out if you really need something. When I was trying to decide which phone to get, I waited a month to commit to my iPhone – and yes, it was an extravagance, but that level of deliberation meant it was a carefully considered extravagance that I could have backed out of should something more important/better come along.

There are plenty of other tips out there, these are just what I find works for me!

The view from my balcony, with a very very long lens. You wouldn't know I was in a busy commuter town centre would you?

As it is, our apartment just overlooks the central park, so I see trees from my balcony, and the hills during winter (see photo). There’s still flats directly opposite, but the nature’s there. And, we have a balcony. I was lucky enough to be given some plants, some grown from seed and so all very young. This terrified me somewhat, but I was amazed at how much I enjoy looking after them. I’m not doing brilliantly, but I really enjoy going out to the balcony, watering the plants, checking them, not knowing what to do when I find something wrong… ahem.

If you’re living in a small apartment, don’t have a garden etc I highly recommend just getting one little plant, herbs will gladly live on your windowsil and you can use them! I find tending to my plants very grounding and enjoyable, and I know very little about it.

More pictures of my little plant family, and Fuzz Lightyear (because he’s amazing) after the jump! To note, some of the photos are also on my flickr and you can visit them by clicking on them!

Ignore the dead ones behind, I did “dead head” those, though being a gardening spaz I didn’t really know what that meant…

My boss gave me these a year ago when I moved into the apartment. I really didn’t think this was going to survive – but it did and flowered a second time, though there were three in there before, and whilst those did come up, only one of them truly made it. I’ve since put them in a bigger pot in the hope they’ll keep going. I’m also curious as to where my pictures of it flowering have gone…

This was so exciting, my first tomatoes on my little pearl(?) tomato plant! I hadn’t expected any of them to really do anything…

And then even more appeared!

A tiny cucumber? I must admit this is the one plant I’m having the most trouble with. The leafs are all covered with a white moldish looking fuzz, and from what I’ve read that’s ok. It looks pretty strange though. I also don’t know when to pick the cucumbers, the biggest one is green and yellowy green and doesn’t look how I imagined one to look, so it’s just been sitting there for ages. I’m guessing it’s done? There’s a pic on my twitpic here. This is the plant I was most excited about, so it figures it’s the one doing worst!

More pearls.

They’re so tiny! But ripe. Too ripe in fact, a couple of them split, I don’t know if that’s hugely bad? If I didn’t water them enough? Didn’t pick them soon enough? But I’m trying not to let it happen again. I’ve got a couple of unsplit ones to eat tomorrow

More tiny cucumbers, before the great molding of July.

My trough of various herbs! Thyme, basil, sage or mint (we can’t figure it out), angelica and parsley.

The tiny tomatoes that had split. I’m really clueless, really!

My bigger tomato plants. These were the first tomatoes to appear, now I’ve got quite a lot and am just waiting for them to ripen off. Apparently if I’d cut the plants I would have had more, but I really don’t know which bit of it I was supposed to cut…

They keep going through phases of being really green and happy to really wilted and unhappy. I figure it’s because they’re in their teenage years…

Like someone else I know who never gets out of bed!

We also likened it to what they do in the weightloss TV shows, where they take all the food a person has eaten in a week and dump it on a table. I imagine looking through my photographs is going to be something like that!

My CC blog for yesterday is up here: http://caloriecount.about.com/users/jaz_desig n/307162.html

I don’t know how successful it will be, but it can’t hurt. More awareness of what one is eating can only be a good thing. I know I tend to mindlessly eat, not enjoy my food and not realise how much I’ve actually eaten. Seeing is believing they say!