Goodbye 2009...

So much has happened in this month of December...I have not taken many pictures or felt like blogging...in fact I have felt like the world has continued on as my world turned in upon itself...This month I lived through caring for my sister in her last weeks...This month I became closer to her and her children than I ever could imagine...This month I have become closer to my own children and husband as they support me...This month I turned 59 three days before my sister's death and received a card with her last words to me...This month I watched "White Christmas" with my sister and sang our theme song, "Sisters", for the last time...This month our family and friends got together not for a Christmas party but for a memorial service...This month our families started new traditions for the holidays...This month I tried to do shopping, and wrapping, and cooking to keep myself busy and to keep the family together...This month I took joy in receiving this beautiful "gingerbread" house made by my grandson so painstakingly...

The Meaning of it All...

Today being the first anniversary of this blog I have been giving some thought about it and it's existence.  Also, about a month ago, I made a commitment to Ruth of  synch-ro-ni-zing to write about the name of this blog. ..

I started it with a few thoughts in mind...

Perhaps the initial reason for starting this blog was to encourage myself to take more photos and to improve my photography skills...I had a new camera and a renewed interest in photography.  I took a photography class and enjoyed challenging myself through DPS assignments, Canon forum mini-challenges, and Shutter Sisters.  I enjoyed looking at  photographs online and realized that most of my favorites were of everyday objects and activities.

Somehow  I hoped to incorporate this into a photo journal and a kind of almanac of the year.   I have always been enamored of artists' journals and old fashioned almanac style books but I'm not artistically inclined and the few times I did start I wrote and drew only about three entries before quitting.  This developed into an idea of a simple photo  journal that I could document the little things that happened in a year that one tends to forget.  Later I also thought I might use this photo journal to start writing down some family and personal memories that I would like to save and pass down...it seemed that as I read other blogs it would often trigger a memory that I hadn't thought of in years...I should write it down!   Other reasons for saving a memory developed...I wanted to remember some favorite recipes and reviews of books I've read and movies I've seen.  I also started saving poems I enjoyed and quotes that touched me...

All in all I put very little thought into the name of the blog...just expressed my goal really and hoped that the title wasn't already taken...

So how do I think I did?  I do think I never would have taken so many photos of  my everyday life if it weren't for this blog...so that goal was definitely accomplished.  During the year I took two photography classes which I enjoyed too.  In the future I would like to learn more about Photoshop and processing my digital photos...and I still have to make a decision about whether or not I need a better camera than my nice lightweight point and shoot.  What I was pained to discover through this blog was how terrible a writer I am...how difficult I find it to express myself with the written word.   To think that as a child I wanted to be a writer and a poet!  So many memories I started to write about but gave up when I couldn't find the words...so many opinions that I couldn't communicate...I felt that my blog was best if I kept my writing simple although my favorite blogs to read incorporate both beautiful images with well written, descriptive words...like synch-ro-ni-zing and ramblins and Soul Aperture  among many others.  I guess my goal for this part of my blog would be to just keep on trying...