Name one really wonderful thing you will for yourself in 2019

[St. Louis]

Dear Lounge Ladies,

I've never been one for New Year's Resolutions (at least none having to do with diet or exercise) but every year I add one new habit that makes me happy and, if possible, makes someone else's life slightly better.

Decades ago I vowed to carry real handkerchiefs everywhere I go. Such a treat.

Then a few years ago I pledged to send lots of cards and letters through the mail. That was a roaring success. My friends and family loved it!

This year I plan to eat my meals at a nicely set-up table. I will use my special 1930s china and my bakelite flatware. Every photo I've ever seen of a 30s or 40s meal shows lots of dishes, condiments, nice napkins, properly distributed flatware, and a glass of water or milk at every setting. This isn't really that much extra work, and incidentally I hope will help me manage my meals & serving sizes.

Over the summer I stopped at a yard sale where I picked up a dozen huge linen napkins in perfect condition. I washed and starched them & set them aside for the New Year. I may still have to eat my lunch at my desk when I'm in the office, but my meals at home will be lovely & civilized.

Do you ladies have any similar plans to treat yourselves well?

 

[MissMittens]

What I'm hoping to do this year is take time out for myself reading by the fireside. I have a modern apartment so don't have a fireplace, sadly. That being said, I've found a few gel fireplaces that would work, so I've been planning the library/music room around getting one of those.

 

[BettyMaraschino]

Little late to the party here, but this year I hope to make more of my leisure time. Since moving home almost 5 years ago, I haven't sewn one complete item. I always find an excuse - housework, various qualifications, tired, not enough time etc. Well no more.
I'm also teaching a colleague how to crochet, so I'm hoping to have completed a granny square blanket (if not two - the never ending granny square I started 2yrs ago!)
I hope that now I've got over the major lifelong fear of dancing, I will be able to get up on the dancefloor at the rockabilly rave and atomic this year. I am planning on attending closer to home events, which are about once every 2 months if that, and whatever classes I can to gain confidence.

 

[St. Louis]

Wow, that's so admirable! -- all of it, I mean. I'm curious -- do you have a dedicated sewing space? I love to sew, but I have to create an almighty mess in my living room whenever I want to work on a project. That's what keeps me from finishing things; I just can't confront the idea of living with the mess for days or else dragging it all back into storage and then out again every day.

How did you overcome your fear of dancing? Did you take classes?

 

[AmateisGal]

What I really want to do: find myself again.

After my divorce in 2017, it took all I had to heal and recover. In the middle of 2018, I started dating again and it's been full of ups and downs. I've also found that I'm questioning some of the core beliefs I've held for years - and that has really rocked the foundation of my soul. It's been incredibly hard to deal with.

So basically, this year, I want to figure out who I am now, what I want, who I want in my life. It's a process I didn't think I'd ever be undertaking, but here we are.

I also want to start dressing more vintage. I ordered a few dresses from ModCloth and I'm going to attempt to try and style my hair in different vintage looks. I don't know if I'll be successful or not, but I'm going to try!

 

[St. Louis]

That sounds wonderful. What eras particularly appeal to you?

 

[AmateisGal]

That sounds wonderful. What eras particularly appeal to you?

I love the 1940s, but I'd like to do the 1950s, too. We'll see!

 

[Amy Jeanne]

I would like to sew more and wear more of my creations. I just recently made an Edwardian blouse and skirt and actually wear it. Not that I care about this, but it actually looks kinda modern/fashion forward if you just wear straight modern hair. I want to sew more Edwardian skirts. I'm making a pussybow blouse from 1977 right now and plan to wear it. It's just I live in Colorado and it's freaking cold all the darn time lol.

 

[sheeplady]

So this is a neat idea for a thread, and when I saw it pop up, I thought long and hard about what I'd do for myself in 2019.

I have two young kids (6 and 3) and another on the way. I work a job that has great work/life balance, but it is also the type of job in which I can always do more work; so the work can expand to fill any time I have.

I often pulled in a thousand different directions. When I thought about the question, all I could think was, I don't have anything really good to post. And then I felt a little bad about that. It is not as if I don't do wonderful things for myself (being blessed with a husband who is a great father and encourages me to be a whole person). It's just that my things didn't seem good enough or big enough or fluffy or shiny enough.

This year I decided that I was going to scan our vintage photographs (pre-1990). These are images of my husband's and I's early childhood, our parents, grandparents, and even some of our great-grandparents. These are mostly images that only we own; essentially the only pictures we will ever have of the families from which we (and in turn our children) originated from. Close to 4,000 images (fronts and labeled backs) to be exact. Heaven forbid, if the house burnt down, all that would be lost. So, I started scanning. It took me February until two days ago, working every night for an hour or two.

Ostensively, this was for the kids. But really, truly, it was for myself. I've now seen the last grandparent die on three sides of our families, and the mess it caused. I didn't want my kids fighting over family pictures. It gives me amazing peace of mind. I also realized that the people who should have done this (elders in the family with more time and resources than me) weren't going to do it-- so it would fall to me or the kids. I am the matriarch of my family now, and this seemed a matriarch-ish responsibility. My kids may never want these images, but, darn it, if they do, they are done.

So, the big thing I did so far in 2019 is I embraced my role as matriarch and scanned 4,000 family images.

Years in the future I will digitally label them, scan the rest of our images (1990-2012), and if I live long enough, put together nice album/storybooks for each kid. But for now, I am pleased.

 

[St. Louis]

Wow, that's fantastic, Sheeplady! And many hearty congratulations on your Great Expectations!

 

[sheeplady]

Wow, that's fantastic, Sheeplady! And many hearty congratulations on your Great Expectations!

Thank you! Our lives are about to get more busy!

Among the exciting things I found in the photographs is a picture of my great-grandparents on my maternal grandfather's side of my family. I did not know this image existed; and it is the first time I ever saw it in my grandparent's pictures. I had assumed I could only go back to my grandfather's pictures on that branch of the family. (My grandfather's family was quite dysfunctional, so I doubted any images existed or were kept.) The picture also has a street sign on it, and I was able to trace them back to the home they owned in the 1940s; before this I only knew the city in which they lived.

It is a tiny little blurry snapshot but made me so happy to see what they looked like. I am so happy that when my mother offered me the albums years ago I took them.

 

[Miss Moonlight]

I don't really do the resolutions thing, but the turning of a calendar year does have me thinking about what I've done or not, and where I can go from there to achieve what I'd like to have in life. Reading over some of the posts here, I recalled what I thought about in January. And I think I've achieved some of it. Sewing: I want to sew clothes for myself, instead of just making Halloween costumes. I also went through my far too large stash of unused patterns and sold a lot of them, to reduce clutter. And I am about to start the first project, a shirtwaist dress from a Laughing Moon pattern. Health: The last few years was tricky in terms of health because of a slew of allergies which suddenly worsened or made themselves known, and revamping my diet from one that worked very well for me to one that I don't like and which includes very little that I actually like, it's been awful. But I feel like I finally got a handle on it. I've had a challenge with sugar- because it's one of the few pleasurable things I can eat. And while my weight fluctuated a lot, I thought I'd found my way and things were going well again, I'd gotten my body where I wanted it again. But I've yet again fallen off that track. So back to the ration diet I go. It seems like the only way that works for me... probably because my allergies are to overwhelmingly modern food and supplements. Along with that, I decided to walk more, get more exercise, and I have. Being over 40 hadn't changed the way my body reacted to things like calories or exercise until very recently, and now quite suddenly, I see what so many others were talking about! I also told myself I'd take the time to read more, and I have. At night, before sleep, while reclining in bed. I plan to make a bed jacket after the dress, just to make this a more refined experience. ha. Most recently, I read At the Sign of the Jack O'Lantern by Myrtle Reed, and a revisit to The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, and I'd like to read Forever Amber because it's referenced a few times in an episode of the Abbot and Costello radio show.