Here we are again.  New year and fresh start and the opportunities that lie in front of us in the next twelve months.  I’ve been thinking a lot about resolutions this past few weeks, and I’ve loved having this journal here to look back on my past resolutions and what stuck and what didn’t.

Remember that one time I resolved to finish at least one craft project a month?  I actually did it.  And that time I resolved to take a photo a day for all of 2012?  That one didn’t happen.  Sometimes they come to fruition and sometimes they don’t.  Nevertheless, it feels good to make goals, and writing them aloud here makes me more accountable, I know.

So first up this year, nutrition.  I have to say that I am really proud of how far I’ve come on this topic and how much healthier my family eats than we used to.  We are more or less purged of processed food, and I feel like I’ve mastered the whole grains quest.  My grain mill has us eating true whole wheat in our muffins and pancakes and breads and cakes and cookies and everything.  Brown rice and quinoa are frequent on our table, too.  And I do feel like that major change has had some really positive effects on our health and well-being.  Where I can improve, however, is my intake of fruit and vegetables.  I’m a creature of habit, and my morning breakfast is almost always one egg and one bread-like thing of some kind … muffin, toast, etc.  And my most often repeated dinner recipes are usually crockpot dinners or some other sort of one-dish meal.  Chicken and potatoes roasted in a skillet.  Fish with a side of bean salad.  Chicken over rice. … You get the point.  Quick and somewhat healthy and easy clean-up and simple to prepare with kids running under your feet.  Lunch is whatever I can grab in a hurry, to be totally honest.  Ham and cheese wrapped in a tortilla or leftover pasta from the night before.  Whatever I can find.  So I’m resolving to eat at least one fruit or vegetable in every meal of the day.  More than one is good and veggie snacks between meals are even better.  I know I probably won’t accomplish this three times a day for the next twelve months straight, but my hope is that it will change the way I think of eating and meal planning.  And making a real rule for myself, one I can count or see clearly, seems to work for my accountability most of the time.

For the past five days (yay, me!) I’ve been doing this, and it’s not that difficult, but it does require thought.  I throw a chopped mushroom and a sun-dried tomato in a tiny omelette in the morning, for instance, and it takes all of forty extra seconds to grab those from the fridge.  Some raw celery on the side for lunch.  Green beans to accompany our chicken and rice for dinner.  They are easy solutions, but they make me feel better about the variety in my diet, and I hope they will shed light on some creativity in the kitchen as well.

The second area I want to work on is my home.  Which I know was on my list of things in 2011, and I do actually think I’ve made strides since then, but I just find that as we add another baby to the mix and the months roll by, routines need re-evaluating and I need to make changes.  The main issue for me is to simplify.  Like simplify a million times over.  We cleaned out a ton of kids toys and old bedding and odds and ends over Christmas break, and I find myself wondering why on Earth we hadn’t done that sooner, or the real recurring question of why do I own this to begin with?  Making a house a home takes time, and you acquire hand-me-downs first and then the cheapest something of your own that you can afford and then maybe years later you get what you really want.  [Or this is how it happened with me.  Am I the only one?] So sometimes I look around my house and think what is that?  Or I find that the corners in my home that make me most happy are the things we’ve carefully chosen and really loved when we decided to buy it or hang it or arrange it or whatever.  I hope I’m making sense here.  All this is just to say that I want to work harder at making my house a home this year.  Whether through some aromatherapy oils or some kitchen cabinet reorganization or some new decorative details or whatever the case may be.  I want to walk in my home and feel that it is ours and full of our flavors and our tastes and our most favorite things and devoid of useless junk that does not serve to make me happy.

And last but not least, I hope to write here more often.  I’m going to try to impose a Wednesday and Sunday schedule for myself, and I’ll hope that it grows from there.  But that will have me checking in at least twice a week.  I miss this space and the journal it gives me to look back on and of course the clarity writing brings.  That’s something I want more of in 2013.

What about you?  Any things you’ve resolved to work on?