Happy New Year!

Happy New Year to my family, friends and wonderful customers & followers!! I've spent the morning reflecting on what a great year 2009 was and have included the highlights below. I'm just amazed at how lucky I am ~ I have an amazing, caring family, great friends and loyal customers.

In addition to reflecting on last year, I've started looking ahead to 2010 and I have a lot planned, personally and professionally, so I thought I would take a minute to document it and share with you {smile}. I hope everyone has a great and prosperous new year! I would love to hear your thought & comments, so leave one if you have a minute.

2009 Family Fun:

• We started off 2009 buying Allie a car. Her birthday wasn't until June, but we wanted to give her time to practice driving in her own car so that she would be comfortable and confident when she got her license.
• March ~ Jeff and his dad drove an F430 Ferrari & a Nissan GTR in Charlotte, NC for Jeff's birthday. We visited Jeff's family [his mom, dad, sister, brother-in-law and two nephews] in Columbia, TN for a karate tournament that my nephew Jake was in. While there we spent time playing - riding go karts, putt-putt, and playing laser tag.
• April ~ Jeff and I went to a super bike motorcycle race at Road Atlanta. It was a lot of fun! Then, later in the month I went to Indiana to visit my family and see my grandpa before he had a heart by-pass surgery. Visited with my aunt Jennifer twice ~ it was so nice to see her. I also got to spend the day with my dad on his birthday which I haven't done in years!
• May ~ My mom and dad came to visit for the weekend ~ we celebrated my my birthday early and they watched my tennis match [my spring ALTA tennis team went to City Finals! We didn't win, but making it to city was a HUGE accomplishment for us]. Allie started her first job ~ watching Ethan & Emma all summer.
• June ~ Allie turned 16 and got her driver's license! Allie and her friends painted her bedroom and had a blast. I drove down to Columbus, GA to visit family [uncle Gary, aunt Andrea, cousin Jennifer, her baby Grady and her husband Dwight].
• July ~ Family Vacation! We drove a lot ~ GA to Williamsburg, VA, then Baltimore, MD, then Washington D.C., then Kill Devil Hills, NC, then finally back to GA. We had a great time riding roller coasters at Busch Gardens, visiting George Washington's house, eating & walking around Baltimore's wharf, spent 4th of July seeing the sites in DC and watched the fireworks near the Washington monument, and for the final leg we relaxed on the beach. As soon as we got home from our summer vacation we drove up to Gatlinburg to see my sister-in-law, Staci, for her birthday for the weekend. We had a nice time visiting Jeff's dad, sister, brother-in-law and two nephews.
• August ~ Jeff and I celebrated our anniversary at a cabin in north Georgia - we had a very relaxing weekend.
• September ~ my mom and dad took a road trip from Indiana to the West Coast, then to visit us in GA, then drove to the East Coast and back to Indiana to make it a full Coast-to-Coast road trip!
• October ~ Jeff, Lisa [my sister] and I all participated in the Nike+ 5K Human Race. It's a worldwide race that you run with your ipod/nike+. Jeff ran in Georgia while and Lisa & I ran in Indiana.
• November ~ We got a black lab puppy ~ Jack! His full name is Van Dalen Siddhartha Captain BlackJack. He's just the cutest little thing. A few days after we got him we took a long road trip to Texas to visit Jeff's mom, aunt, sister, brother-in-law and two nephews for Thanksgiving. Allie and I went midnight shopping on Thanksgiving with one of my very my best friends Whitney and her daughter Bree ~ we had a great time!
• December ~ I spent two and half weeks in Indiana to visit family. Jeff and Allie came up for the last week and we also drove to Illinois to visit Jeff's dad, grandma and uncle. We had a nice Christmas.

2009 What was new for AKDesigns Boutique:

• Started selling machine embroidery supplies
• Created a fan page on Facebook [392 fans at the end of 2009]
• Started selling machine embroidery designs that Katie at The Cutesy Mom created
• Became an authorized reseller for Monogram Wizard products
• Celebrated 1 year anniversary for my blog [287 readers at the end of 2009] and yahoo group [919 members at the end of 2009]
• Started carrying "Green" eco friendly supply products
• Created Catalogs for our Fonts and Frames

I'm not very good at this, but if I'm going to talk about all the great things that happened in 2009 I guess I need to touch on a couple of not so good things too. My grandpa is still not doing so well, but hasn't been in the hospital as much this year as he was in 2008. My aunt Jennifer was diagnosed with lung cancer in January. She is so strong and has been fighting it and living life to the fullest ever since. She's had lots of chemo treatments and more recently radiation for a couple of brain tumors that were found in October. She is an amazing woman! Last, but not least, we lost our loving and loyal dog, Max, in November. He was such a good dog ~ everyone that met him just loved him, he was so caring and gentle.

Now for resolutions...

2010 Family Resolutions:

Continued from 2009...we improved on all of them in 2009, but can improve more in 2010...

• Eat at home more [eat out less]
• Be more active [walking, jogging, mountain biking & hiking together]
• Keep a close eye on what we buy [only buy what we need]
• Try to get more sleep [all of us stay up too late]
• Pick up after ourselves so the house will stay cleaner
• Spend more time together as a family

New...

• We've been recycling for years, but this year we're going to pay more attention to how the items that we buy are packaged - we plan to purchase brands/items based on whether the package is recyclable when possible
• We have lots of reusable shopping bags and plan to use them more this year.

My personal and business goals & resolutions for 2010

Personal

• Be a better mom, wife, relative and friend
• Walk/jog a half marathon in April ~ Country Music Half Marathon in Nashville
• Walk Jack every day
• Eat better / healthier
• Be a better meal planner
• Improve my tennis game
• Lose 15 pounds
• Log 250 miles [walking and jogging]

Business [AKDesigns Boutique]

• Create as many new machine embroidery designs as possible
• Get all of my machine embroidery designs that are complete listed on my website
• Complete my Design Catalog and update the Font and Frame Catalogs
• Become more "Green" by stocking more eco friendly supplies/items and using only recycled, up-cycled or recyclable shipping materials when possible
• Continue to grow blog, yahoo group and facebook page followers
• Add additional new designers to expand our machine embroidery design choices

Thanks so much for taking the time to read my blog post ~ HAPPY NEW YEAR!