A Blogger's Year: Looking Back at 2012

A nice way to review a blogging year is to take the first sentence written from the first post of each month. Here's a look at our 2012, month by month. 

January: Live every day as if it were your last and then some day you'll be right.  ~H.H. "Breaker" Morant (Enjoy Yourself!)

February: If there is one thing that I have learned in my many decades of life, it is that any given group of women will have some amazing stories to tell, and my knitting group is no exception. (Maggie and the Blessings)

March: I'm having a little trouble blogging lately, mainly because we are doing so many bloggable things! (Memories at the Window)

April: In the spring a young man's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love. ~Tennyson (Springtime in New Mexico)

                                                                                                           

May: I was slow to embrace cell phones, but I'm catching up. (Dialing Back the Calories)

June: We are far from our southern New Mexico desert in every way. (What We've Been Doing Lately)

July: Pretty catchy name for a clothes store, isn't it? (Allsaints Spitalfields)

August: What a summer it has been! (Vacationing in a French Country House)

September: What do you do when your doctor disappears? (The Case of the Disappearing Doctor)

October: One of the first places we visited while in France last summer was the town of Chauvigny in the Vienne  department of Poitou-Charente. (A Day in the 12th Century)

November: City-light diamond necklace at the throat of the mountains... (New Day in November)

December: December may be my favorite time in New Mexico. (A Night Filled With Light)

That was our year, filled with some surprises and more adventures than I might have imagined. I hope that your year was a lovely one.

Happy New Year!

Our Year in Review, Month by Month

I am beginning to learn that it is the sweet, simple things of life which are the real ones after all.

            ~Laura Ingalls Wilder

Our year was made up of simple moments and simple pleasures. We welcomed friends from far away, we became travelers ourselves, we improved our surroundings, and, perhaps most important, we got chickens. 

~Mrs. Zee

*****

I learned this trick from another blogger (Nan, was it you?)--To look back on the doings of the year, just take the first lines posted at the beginning of each month. It's as good a way as any to look at the things that happened. 

January

Here is just one more thing that I would like to share with you about Christmas as we experienced it in New Mexico this year. We have a wonderful blend of cultures and traditions, and I think that this video expresses the diversity and experience quite beautifully.

Happy New Year! But First...

February

We love the idea of eating fresh, organically grown vegetables and fruits.

Why We Won't Eat Veggies

March

As I mentioned yesterday in the post titled Fixer, many of the more tender cacti around town have been killed off by our spell of bitter weather this winter.

Cross and Thorns

April

Having finished knitting a hundred sweaters for Knit for Kids (more about that later), I've decided that a person can accomplish a hundred of almost anything. 

Come Walk With Me

May

There is probably a life lesson here: Wonderful, loving moments may happen too fast for us to focus on them properly.

Weetzie Love

June

Remember those cute little chicks we brought home a few weeks ago?

Chicken Coup (for spelling fans, this is about a chicken uprising, not poultry housing).

July

Happy Fourth of July!

Tombstone Flag

August

A few weeks ago, I showed you this yarn, the Bodega Bay colorway of Mini Mochi, which I got from Jimmy Beans Wool.

Socks: Bodega Bay

September

A week or so ago I took a little break from blogging, ostensibly  to work on some fiber projects. While I was knitting, Beez and I took a train trip across the country.

By Rail Across the Country

October

On our last full day in Boston, we had a lovely sidewalk breakfast at a little bookstore on Newbury Street called Trident Booksellers & Cafe.

History, History, and More History

November

Way down in southern New Mexico

In a green valley 

Along the Rio Grande

There is a pecan orchard

And in the middle of that orchard 

You will see a little adobe house

And a little adobe garage

And next to the adobe garage sits a little chicken house...

Behind Door Number Three: The Egg Story

December

Yesterday, I showed you the "before" color in the mostly unused room at the front of our adobe house. 

The "New" Dining Room

Happy New Year, everyone!

A Year on The Zees Go West

This idea came from Nan of Letters from a Hill Farm, who got the idea from another blogger, and so on: Once again, this fun meme is great for the end of the year. Take the first line of each month's post over the past year and see what it tells you about your blogging year.

It's an interesting way (more interesting to me than to you, I suspect) of looking back to see where the blog has wandered from January to December. In the case of The Zees, there have been book reviews, memories about younger years, a little homesickness for New England, some spring decorating around the house, art by our own Auntie Bucksnort, explorations around New Mexico and research into its history, and a lot of raving about the wonders of adobe and our home-to-be in Las Cruces.

If you are a blogger, you might give this meme a try. I hope you'll let us know if you do so, via the comments below.

January:

As the minutes pass, it feels to me like we are collectively pulling the [new] year...toward us. From Eat, Pray, Love, by Elizabeth Gilbert.

February:

I once took an undergraduate class in logic from a Catholic priest.

March:

When I was first married, my brilliant new husband teased me about making what he called Heatherstone curtains--referring to my family’s home on Heatherstone Drive and my mother’s love of decorating (and re-decorating).

April:

You know you’re in [eastern] New Mexico when:

...It's 72 degrees outside and the weather channel tells you that it's fixin' to blizzard in a couple of hours. And it does.

May:

I thought I'd share a couple more pieces of art done by our own Auntie Bucksnort, since she isn't likely to show you any (challenge, Auntie!) over on her blog.

June:

A word about the fibers that I use: This is as good a time as any to admit that I am no longer the fiber snob I started out to be.

July:

Herbert Eugene Bolton, an authority on Spanish American history, had this to say about Pecos:

[Pecos] was the gateway for Pueblo Indians when they went buffalo hunting on the Plains; a two-way pass for barter and war between Pueblos and Plains tribes; a portal through the mountains for Spanish explorers, traders, and buffalo hunters; for the St. Louis caravan traders with Santa Fe; for pioneer Anglo American settlers; for Spanish and Saxon Indian fighters; for Civil War armies; and for a transcontinental railroad passing through the Southwest.

August:

[Caption on a photo of cars buried in snow]: Spring in New England--those are my cars, and this is why I still keep an ice scraper in the car year round

September:

The good news today is that you get a big laugh--and an even bigger laugh if you've owned sheep and have tried to move them where you want them to go.

October:

I was out early the other morning admiring this sliver of moon next to Venus.

November:

Walking into an adobe is like walking into welcoming arms

December:

[On a video of an “extraordinary musical instrument”]:Update, 12/5/09: A musical friend pointed out the improbability of this "instrument," and, sure enough, he was right.