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!

2009 resolutions update...

Okay, while I was on the treadmill last night I was thinking about my goals and resolutions for the year. I started thinking, "what were my resolutions?", "I wonder how far on/off track I am.", so I've copied in the resolutions that I posted at the beginning of the year and I'll give an update next to each - I can't wait to see how I've done...

2009 Family Resolutions:

• Eat at home more [cook more ;D] - Proud to say that we've been a lot better at this and have some yummy new regular meals to show for it.
• Be more active [mountain biking & hiking together] - We have been better at this, but could continue to improve. We've been to the greenway together several times [running/walking/biking].
• Keep a close eye on what buy - We've been very good at this as well and our bank account shows it - yeah us!
• Try to get more sleep [all of us stay up too late] - We've all been better at this. We all stay up late on the weekends, but the weekdays are much earlier [most of the time] then they were before.
• Pick up after ourselves so the house will stay cleaner - We've all been better at this too - it's much easier to do the real house work because there isn't so much picking up to do first.
• Spend more time together as a family - I think this is the only one that hasn't really gotten better overall - probably about the same. With Allie being a teenager, I guess we're lucky that she spends as much time with us as she does :)

My 2009 Resolutions:

• Eat healthier foods and think about what and why I'm eating - Most of the time [more often than last year] :)
  
• Improve my tennis game - I haven't been able to play as much tennis as I would like, but we made it to City Finals, so that must count for something!
• Take Max for a 30 minute walk daily [at least most days] - nope ~ I think I've taken him for 4 walks. I know it's bad, but he's getting old and he has a hard time moving around for a few days after a walk, so I can't make myself take him.
• Keep up with house work better [try to keep main floor company ready at all times] - not perfect, but better.
• Continue to grow my business - I have worked very hard at this and it shows! It is growing even in this hard economy. I've added supplies and additional software to my offerings and it has helped a lot.

Whew! That was a lot better then I thought it would be! I have had a good first half of the year, so I just need to stay on track to make sure that the next half is even better.

I hope you enjoyed this post. I would love it if you left a comment about your new year's resolutions and goals and how they're going so far this year!

Happy New Year!!!

I just want to wish everyone a very Happy New Year for 2009!


I also thought it would be nice to take a minute to reflect on some of the things that we [me, Jeff & Allie] did in 2008 that made it so awesome. I know 2009 will be even better ;D

Then, at the bottom I've included some resolutions that I hope we can use as a guideline for the coming year.


I hope I didn't leave too much out, it's hard to remember everything ;D

2008 Family Fun:

• Spent spring break in Florida and had a wonderful vacation. Allie brought her friend Nylet and my mom and dad even stopped by for a couple of days. It was a great time at the beach.
• This will seem kind of morbid, but Jeff & I spent a few days in AR with his family when his granny passed away. We really did have a good time visiting with everyone, so even though we were there for a sad occasion it was nice.
• Jeff's family [mom, sister, brother-in-law and 2 nephews] spent a few days with us over Memorial weekend. We spent one day doing touristy stuff in Dahlonega and Helen and another day at Six Flags.
• Allie & I spent some time in Evansville visiting with my family during the summer. We were able to see my grandpa and some of my uncles, aunts and cousins.
• Jeff's dad spent a couple of days here right before Thanksgiving. We had a great lunch the day he left @ Sushi Nami. He showed us how to properly eat sushi [like cleansing your palette with ginger in between types - who knew?]. He also had us try several kinds of sushimi [just plain raw fish] - it was surprisingly good, especially the salmon.
• My mom, sister and nephew came to spend Thanksgiving with us. For the first time ever we did the "Midnight Shopping Madness"! We had a great time - we shopped from Midnight to 9am!
• Allie & I spent a couple of days in Evansville before Christmas. It was good to see Grandpa feeling a little better.
• We all started mountain biking again.

2008 Jeff Awesomeness:

• Logged nearly 500 running miles in 2008 - WOW
• Mountain biked at Central Park alone - lots
• Got a promotion, raise and title change at work - yeah!!
• Worked really, really hard so that Angie could continue to stay at home and work instead of getting a "real" job ;D
• DIY projects - ran electric, phone and network cable in the basement; hung drywall in basement; and painted the main level of the house

2008 Fun for Angie:

• Trained for and competed in a sprint Triathlon
• Trained for and walked in the Atlanta 2 Day Walk for Breast cancer in memory of my grandmothers
• Played tennis [Alta spring and fall leagues] and went to playoffs in the fall
• Spent a girls week at the beach with Debbie, Sonia and Lou
• Started playing poker monthly for a girls night out
• DIY projects - Painted faux treatment on one wall in living room; helped Jeff with paint in the rest of the main floor; helped tape & mud drywall in the basement

Allie's 2008 Accomplishments/Fun:

• Finished her freshman year with all a's and 1 b
• Got her driver's permit
• Had the best summer ever just hanging out with her best friends [Kate, Same and Katy]
• Had a great time going to concerts ~ a total of 5
• Went to Six Flags several times over the summer with friends
• Spent a lot of time at the pool this summer just hanging out
• Started mountain biking again
• Is getting great grades this semester [she works so hard]!
• Got her first car ~ a silver Beetle!
  

2009 Family Resolutions:

• Eat at home more [cook more ;D]
• Be more active [mountain biking & hiking together]
• Keep a close eye on what buy
• 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

My 2009 Resolutions:

• Eat healthier foods and think about what and why I'm eating
  
• Improve my tennis game
• Take Max for a 30 minute walk daily [at least most days]
• Keep up with house work better [try to keep main floor company ready at all times]
• Continue to grow my business

I'm not very good at this, but if I'm going to talk about all the great things that happened in 2008 I guess I need to touch on a couple of not so good things too. Jeff's granny passed away earlier this year and she will be missed a lot - she was always full of smiles and laughter. Also, my grandpa has been ill all year and in and out of the hospital. It has been very hard for me to watch him while he is so sick and frail. It's also been hard to see how tired it's made my dad - it has really taken a toll on him as well.