A standard New Years Eve post

This is where I'm supposed to recap what I did last year and look forward to the next. If I were to continue a tradition I quite like, one I started two years ago and continued last year, I would pick a word for the year and tell you why. I would talk about the word I chose last year and how I embraced it.

I'm not going to pick a word of the year. I've also decided that I will try and recap last year, since I barely posted about it, in a once a week post throughout January. I promised Amy that I would edit and post pictures on here and I haven't. I still need to finish my book that isn't a novel and post the rest of that on here. Again, I plan on that being a once a week post until it's done.

December kind of ran away with me a little. It started off as I expected it to, then Corey proposed and, instead of my evenings being spent editing photo's, crocheting and writing blog posts, it was spent catching up on things I couldn't do during the weekend. Weekends were filled with meeting family and friends. The first week after the proposal was spent calling people to tell them the news. It became rather busy, but not in the way that I expected, although it was all very lovely.

Through December I've discovered we have some very lovely people in our lives. Our wall is filled with well wishes and congratulations. We've had offers of help, offers to contribute to our wedding by paying for certain things, organising others and doing things on the day. Vouchers, cheques and money have fallen out of cards as we've opened them, leaving us bewildered but very grateful. Others have given me so much support already on Twitter. The generosity of people has been completely overwhelming at times in the best possible way. People who know we don't have much to spend on this are trying their very best to help us pull together a day that will be special.

Next year is going to be an interesting one. We've got a holiday to South Africa in March, a friends wedding in April, followed by ours in May and two on the same day in July. I'll be going to one, Corey to the other. It's going to be busy. It's going to be exciting, I hope. But it's also looking to be very difficult in many ways.

I'm currently not excited about our wedding. I'm not enjoying many aspects of the planning process. We have a small budget, but are expected to invite around 200 people, although only around 160 - 180 will be able to attend. So we are stuck with a conundrum: how to you get a reception venue that's cheap and will take up to 200 people? How will we feed these people? The place must be within a 15 minute drive of the church, for reasons I can't go into on here. It needs to have disabled access and level floors. If possible, I would like it to look vaguely nice and be easily decorated.

As you can tell, the venue is the biggest worry at the moment. Once we have that sorted we can get the food sorted. I can then sit down with my crochet hook and knitting needles and hopefully enjoy the rest of the time before the wedding.

I know I used the word hopefully there. Just to make it clear, I do very much want to marry Corey. However, there are things going on behind the scenes, things I wish I could talk about on here, but can't, that are stopping me from looking forward to our wedding day. This is unlikely to go away, but I hope will be not as full on than they have been in recent days.

And so, I cannot chose a word for 2015. There are so many to choose from, how can one reflect what I hope to achieve, what I want to focus on and the challenges that I may face along the way? All I'm going to do is try and not neglect this blog as much as I did last year, improve upon the skills I want to focus on, learn new things and try and enjoy the process as much as possible. I have promised myself that I am going to dip my toes into something new next year, in order to see if I'm good enough to take the leap into the unknown in 2016.

Cryptic, I know.

Most importantly, though, I'm going to learn to spend more time on myself this year. I'm going to learn to say no a bit more often, to step aside for a bit when I've taken on too much, just in order to take a few deep breaths, as and when I need it.

I shall end this rather rambling, cryptic, not all that optimistic post now. To those to whom 2014 wasn't kind to, I hope you have a much better 2015. And to everyone else,  I hope the next year brings you plenty of joy and minimal sorrow.

Happy New Year, everyone.