2010 - How'd I do?

At the beginning of this year, I set out a series of resolutions so I thought I would check in on how I did:

Be healthy. I am taking a new assignment at work that will involve more travel and responsibility. Last time, this resulted in workaholic hours, bad eating habits and a few too many pub crawls. This time, I resolve to take proactive steps to manage stress, exercise, eat healthy and continue to ensure that my family, friends and husband get the best of me - not what's left over.

On a scale of 1 to 10 - I give myself a 5 on this one. I did make progress in better eating habits and managing my work hours. I quit my job in November because of some of those issues. My husband and I have started a great habit of getting up at 5:30 am to go to the gym so that has been really good. Plus - it is CSA season so the bags of veggies we pick up at the farm every other week forces me to eat better. I am definitely ending the year more strongly than I began.
Actually use the cookbooks gathering dust on the shelf. I love to buy cookbooks. I have lots of beautiful cookbooks with pictures of amazing food. This year, I am going to make some of that amazing food. Each month, I am going to pick a cookbook and make at least 4 dishes out of the cookbook. I'll share the results here - minus the cursing, cries of desperation and mess of course.

If you have read the posts on the 2011 Cookbook Challenge, you know I did not do as good of job on this as I should have and I am already taking steps to tackle it in 2011. I did try a lot of new recipes off the web and shared many of them here with you.

Be charitable. Carve out time to volunteer. Select charities and be intentional in giving.
I think I will always feel like I didn't do enough. My two months off at the end of the year allowed me the time to volunteer quite at a bit at a local homeless ministry and the local library. I enjoyed both experiences very much and will work to put in a few hours every month in the upcoming year.

Get a better handle on my finances and develop a concrete plan to save for retirement. I will not be an elderly person eating dog food out of trunk of my broke-down Saturn Vue.
Yeah.... not so much. I did get a better handle on finances, but did not complete the retirement plan. Though my mom did point out that dog food is just as expensive as regular food so I should consider that if I am living out of my trunk.

Laugh a lot and often
This definitely got accomplished. It was a truly remarkable year filled with great memories from trips with my husband, time with family, and visits from and to friends. I am very blessed to have a life that is filled with laughter.

Try to limit reality TV to 4 shows. JUST KIDDING! We all know that is impossible.
So I think I actually came pretty close on this one. After much consideration, I made the difficult decision to break up with the Real Housewives series and I scaled way back on Big Brother this summer. It just got to be too much. I think I have narrowed down to: Survivor, Top Chef, Amazing Race, Hell's Kitchen, The Next Food Network Star, The Next Iron Chef, Chopped, BrewMasters, Drinking Made Easy. Given many of these shows are competition shows, I feel much better about my reality TV watching habits, but if Bret Micheals comes back with another Rock of Love - all bets are off.


Now to think about my resolutions for next year.... What about you? Did you set resolutions? How did you do?