Hello, January!

When we woke up January 2, the temp on TV said -15, which is the temp at the Minneapolis airport. That made my husband and I flinch, until I realized that is about 40 minutes south of us, so it's probably about 5 degrees colder here.

I was wrong: it was 6 degrees colder. Yep, you can see in the picture how cold it was this morning.

The evening news said we made it above zero--to one degree above--but I think it didn't get there in Maple Grove. When we got home from IKEA at about one o'clock, the same sign said -7.

So what does that mean? It means January is here, the month where we here in Minnesota insanely look forward to the temps reaching the single digits--below zero.

New year's is also a time for resolutions. I made mine last year--to edit photos before printing them. I also took a couple classes to improve my editing skills and got a newer version of PSE. So what am I going for this year? Mainly, to reduce--and to help that, I'm not buying new supplies (exclusing adhesive and white/kraft cardstock) until I create 100 layouts. I may give up scrap shopping for Lent again. That helped my creativity a lot. Finally, I will probably do this again. Doing LOAD in October helped me destash a bit.

To make the task of no-buy more difficult, I got a Sale-a-bration catalog in the mail yesterday. I found three things I love--two stamp sets and a punch. To get them I would have to buy $150 worth of SU supplies.

So my resolve entered in: The first set I really wanted to go with the curly punch--which I can get anytime. The second--a set of houses--is cute, but not essential. And the border punch? In small print underneath, it says that it will be available next year to buy.

I can resist.

To record this year's resolutions, I am taking inspiration from a notepad I got in Chicago.

I checked the stuff I want/need to do the most, plus stuff I already do that I think I should keep doing. I'll narrow it, then turn it into a layout for my album. Which means I'll take another extend-a-arm photo of me. Nice.