Declare your New Year’s resolutions

Making your New Year’s resolutions public encourages you to commit to them more. Or so I’ve read. I’ll give that a whirl in this post by declaring a few of my goals for next year.

Make a baby quilt.
My toddler has outgrown a lot of his infant clothes. Being a sentimental freak, I’ve been holding on to them and they’ve been clogging the closet. I want to transform some of his old onesies into a quilt. I’ve found a lot of patterns online but I’m still a little overwhelmed by what I googled. I just want a simple pattern with no fancy schmancy borders or stitching. I’m envisioning the quilt to be a bunch of squares side by side by side, with the designs doing all the storytelling.

Let me explain why this is a challenge. I don’t like sewing. When I see a hole in my shirt, I stitch it up so badly I end up making the hole larger. My home economics grade back in elementary school was just average, and I needed my Mom’s help (and my grandma’s, our helpers’, a little Elmer’s glue…) to finish my sewing projects then. I plan to stick this one out on my own! I’ll give it to Timmy when he’s older. It’ll be his Mommy’s labor of love. I just hope I don’t take five years to finish it!

Bake a pie from scratch.
So the goal is for us to have turkey come Christmas 2011. We’ve always had either roast chicken or litson manok during Noche Buena. Next holiday season, our family plans to bring in a little more Western punch and serve turkey. Now what’s a turkey dinner without pie right? My sister challenged me to bake a pie. At first I was like “Nooooo.” I hate baking. I don’t like how precise it is. Give me a bunch of veggies and I can stir-fry it to deliciousness (by my easy-to-please-me standards). Give me flour, eggs and a mixer and I have better luck at making semi-clay creations out of it rather than creating a passable crust.

But I changed my mind just as quickly BECAUSE I did dream of baking pies this year. I still do. I have a very cute pie cookbook at home that I read before bedtime but have never used. I also have more free time in 2011 (that’s a story I’ll tell you another time) so practicing pie making will be possible. I’ll start with easy recipes first. I have eleven months to practice, right?

Care to declare yours?
More than declaring, I think that support from friends and family can help you accomplish resolutions more effectively. If there’s a way you can help me with my above resolutions, I welcome tips and tricks. I also encourage you to declare your own resolutions for the new year! Post them in your blog and share the link with me, or post your resolutions in the comments section. Let’s help each other stick to our goals for the coming year.

Images by PinkStock c/o Flickr. Some rights reserved.

Hi! I'm Toni Tiu, and I've been blogging at at Wifely Steps since 2003. This started as a blog to help newly weds adjust to married life. It has evolved into a home and parenting blog. I write about things close to my heart -- good eats, good reads, family, marriage, and the little things that make everyday happy.