year in review: 2010

it wasn't for nothing that i did a 365 photo project in 2010. i realized rather early on in the project that it was more about memory than about taking dazzling daily photos. tho' i also wanted to improve my photos and the constructive criticism in the blog camp 365 group helped a great deal with that. what i truly love is looking back on the photos and seeing all that happened over the past year. and it seems that it was indeed an eventful one - full of changes - of house, job, scenery, lifestyle - all of it chosen, tho' not all of it easy. so i used my mosaics to take a stroll down memory lane.

january 2010

january was cold and unusually snowy.  sabin turned 9. the last blog camp was held in the blue room, since the house was for sale and new jobs were already on the horizon for both husband and me. riding lessons were cold, but we persevered. i began weaving lessons, which made me feel like i'd found a place to rest my soul. i enthusiastically began a daily art journal. i noticed already in january that the 365 project made me so much more aware of my immediate surroundings - as i wandered the house, camera in hand, looking for interesting objects and light, i found myself really noticing where i was and enjoying it so much more. and i hit 1000 posts right here on MPC. (35 blog posts)

february 2010

february saw an awful lot of creativity happening in the blue room. we shopped for old farm houses on the other side of the country. i continued my daily art journal. i bought a loom. we celebrated husband's birthday and our 11th anniversary. i kept rather faithfully to my avowed desire not to buy anything unnecessary in 2010. and i started making clarity birds. (31 blog posts)

march 2010

in march the house-hunting began in earnest. my weaving class ended. i got new multi-strength contacts since i'm getting old.  i knitted my first scarf and started a second one and spring began to appear in earnest, which was much appreciated after the snowy winter we had.  but mostly, march felt a bit like being in the liminal space...waiting in between for one thing to end and another to begin. (36 blog posts)

april 2010

in april i started my new job. it was a pretty good start, since it began with three holidays. and i can tell you from the safe vantage point of retrospect, it went downhill from there. i actually wrote a fairly funny post about the whole stress of moving (sadly, it may have been the last time i was funny). we said goodbye to living in the house we'd lived in for nearly a decade. my daily art journal practice fell completely by the wayside and despite my best intentions, i never did get back to it.  but it wasn't all negative in april - we did shop for a horse. (22 blog posts)

may 2010

may saw our official moving date. we went nearly two weeks without internet at home (oh the horror). sabin started at her new school and husband started his new job. i got acquainted with the new house and i shared both inside and outside of it. we discovered rhubarb in our garden and i invented my cocktail of the year - the rhubarb gin fizz. we also discovered a wonderful little viking harbor museum about an hour away from us. and i even indulged in a bit of creativity (funny, looking back, i thought that had pretty much stopped when we left our old house). our horse arrived! (25 blog posts)

june 2010

at the beginning of june, i had no voice whatsoever after coughing for a week straight. some people thought that was just fine. with my camera, i chased light and lilypads and rain.  i celebrated the summer solstice with a list. i was already pretty miserable in my job, but didn't really know what to do about it. i attempted to crochet granny squares, but can't say i was very successful, maybe because i didn't really keep it up. we headed to the US for our holiday - our first trip there in three and a half years! and an impromptu blog camp in minnesota. (26 blog posts)

july 2010

in july, my own blogging mojo at a low, i did interviews of you, my readers. i sent out individual questions and posted the interviews. but i also antiqued in the US - which makes me very, very happy, tho' it does make it hard to get the suitcases closed. there was the blog camp of the zombie flies (thank you farmer guy for spraying the field across the road with pig poo at the height of fly season and exactly when i was having guests). my favorite professor from the university of iowa died after a long and full life. and we finally sold our house. (21 blog posts)

august 2010

august was mostly about the interviews that i started in july (there was a rather overwhelming response to that idea). it rained so much our broadband cable drowned.  i began obsessively painting feathers on stones in a desperate grasp at finding balance in my life, which felt pretty unbalanced and unhappy during that rainy month. i wrote a pretty controversial post about the changes i saw in the US after three years away. and i met someone who was very enthusiastic about the wind and that helped. (41 blog posts)

september 2010

september largely lacked flow, but there were moments of it and i was grateful for those. i had a wonderful weekend in berlin with five amazing ladies and it restored me. i visited a magical place that was achingly beautiful in its decay. i updated my "my girl" post because i was feeling out of touch with myself. looking back at this month, a million signs were there and i didn't read them. i guess for whatever reason, i wasn't ready to read them, tho' frankly, if they'd been flashing in neon, they couldn't have been clearer. i met a fantastic artist and was enchanted by her work. and i saw those fairytale mushrooms - amanitas - for the first time in person. (25 blog posts)

october 2010

october found me pondering life lessons and the blogosphere. i confessed that it wasn't really going that well on the whole "not buying stuff in 2010." we visited frilandsmuseet in copenhagen. and hosted a halloween party for 28 4th graders - all of which showed up 30 minutes EARLY, much to my dismay! i had a four-day bout of the flu, but the fever seemed to give me some clear thinking. and i sewed some clothes for sabin. (29 blog posts)

november 2010

in november, i despaired about our old, crappy house. i acquired a beautiful new macbook air (further underlining how badly that whole "not buying stuff" thing was going). i was fortunate enough to get to travel to manila twice in november. both trips were really a high point of my year, especially the second one, as sabin came along. and november ended on a very good note, with a great conversation that i badly needed at that moment with a very wise person who i love and respect. (23 blog posts)

december 2010

december was covered with the most beautiful snow and there were sunny days that gave us magical light. i started making things again. i participated in reverb10 - an exercise in reflecting and manifesting what's next. i finished my 365 project - taking a picture every day of 2010. most of important of all, i found my way back to myself - as is reflected in the increased number of posts, both here and on domestic sensualist. december felt like waking from a long slumber, a new beginning and i can't wait to see what 2011 brings. (44 blog posts)

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and after taking a picture every day in 2010, we had to have a new group for 2011 - postcards to blog camp - because we didn't want to lose the sense of community we found on flickr. if you'd like to contribute an occasional photo that you're proud of, but don't want to take a photo every day, come and join us!