Happy Birthday Creation Halt!

Year One

Today is my blog's birthday. Creation Halt is O-N-E. How do you celebrate the birthday of a blog? I created this blog around the holidays last year in order to come to terms with all the stuff in my life and stuff that was likely going to come into my life (and my kid's lives). During this past year, I have worked hard to get my "stuff" into some sort of reasonable order. I have given lots away to friends, given some away to Goodwill, recycled a lot of paper, and the list goes on. This blog has provided me with a "non-stuff creating" creative outlet, a place to bounce ideas off my readers and a way to keep me honest. It has also been a vehicle for me to learn a new skill (blogging) and to participate in NaBloPoMo.


A big thank you goes out to all my readers (all 3 or 4 of you). :)
A special thanks goes out to anyone who has ever posted a comment or linked to me. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Year Two
As I move into year two of this blog, I need to think about what my focus will be. I know I enjoy reading blogs that have a focus. Here is a question for all of you readers...what do you want to read about? I know that M has requested more "dooce-esque" type stories and I will try to capture those when they happen (but they don't happen every day). More sustainability? More novel writing? How about the novel editing process? What else? I'd love to hear from all of you. You can help guide this second year.

Thanks again!

Taking stock

The holiday season has come and gone which included 3 family birthdays, Christmas and the New Year. Even with the best of intentions on everyone's part, the amount of stuff given and received was overwhelming. To the left is a photo of the tree on Christmas morning (please note that this did not include any of the birthday gifts!). The number of toys which migrated to our living room was so incredible that I actually did a selective reduction of all the toys. Some of them are baby toys and are not longer needed while others will be set aside and pulled out on an "as needed basis". While on one hand we appreciate all the wonderful generosity, we are very aware of each and everything that has come into the house. We are needing to do some subtraction to make up for all that addition.

But that is just a rant about the "stuff". The rest of the holiday season was wonderful. We got to spend time with family and friends and that is the best gift of all. I love that my kids are getting to know their family even though we all live so far away. We had fun cooking and hanging out. We collectively took an astounding number of photos. The bad news was that several family members got sick. This has been a hard year in terms of illness. It seems as though our family has gotten and given many illnesses this past fall / winter season. I am hoping it was just a fluke and that we all be very healthy this year.