Happy New Year!

I LOVE a new year! Now that I'm getting older, NYE and New Year's day almost seem like Christmas eve and Christmas day did when I was a kid. Full of hope, anticipation and excitement of what lays around the corner. The gift of a new year and all the possibilities that come with it. So excited!

Every year my partner and I, (well I should now be saying Fiance!) we write down our resolutions... dreams, wants and hopes for the year ahead. Then I organise a jar which contains 'magic things' to help make everything we've written come true. Glitter and trinkets from the year past, or colourful bobs and ends. We each also write each other a card, about what ever we want for each other in the coming year or for our relationship together, or simply just to say 'I Love You'.

We then gather all these things together, grab some sort of celebratory drink (Bubbles!), a rug and umbrella and head down to the beach at sunset on the first weekend in January after New Years Day. There we lay out our rug, facing the ocean we pop our drinks and read each other our resolutions - they need to be said out loud so the universe can hear them of course! We then place our lists in the jar along with our unopened cards to each other and screw the lid on tight, fastening it with a big bow. We make a final toast to the magic jar, sealed with a kiss of course!, then lay back and enjoy whats left of the sunset before walking back home.

A year later on New Years Day we open that year and once again read our resolutions, plus our cards to each other. We don't necessarily gauge our year on what we have or have not achieved on the list but instead sit there and just discuss - its important to remember that there are always so many more things crammed into the year than we'd originally put on that list!

Now this year I went to get our jar out of the back of the cupboard.... after the year we've had, such ups and downs, I wasn't as excited as usual, didn't know how I felt really. I reached for the jar, and because of its contents, its usually noisy to move...it wasn't.  Picking it up and pulling it closer to my face for inspection I was shocked....then I just couldn't stop laughing. The jar was JAM PACKED with mould. From white through every shade of green onwards to black. A toxic bomb not to be opened under any circumstances, for even if we did, I highly doubt we could read it! It just seemed meant to be. We didn't need to test ourselves further by going over the resolutions we struggled to keep last year. 2012 was hard, a struggle. The jar summed up the year. And I couldn't be happier to be starting this year anew.

Goodbye 2012!