Can't believe this is my ninth year of doing this! Here goes...

1. What did you do in 2011 that you'd never done before?

Went on holiday with my girlfriend's mum, sold something handmade on etsy, been the tooth fairy, rented a whole house with a garden, meal-planned for entire months at a time, made a fish pie, grew and ate vegetables in our own garden, got a dog (as an adult), read Harry Potter to my sister Charlotte, planned a holiday to Japan and China (we're going in March!), handmade the majority of Christmas and birthday gifts, made bubblegum (Libby got a kit for Christmas), saw a reindeer close up, opened a joint bank account, wrote a NaNoWriMo novel for adults rather than young adults, went to Warwick Castle, joined the Youth Hostel Association and went on a youth hosteling holiday, made a hat, bought hockey jerseys (I have a Canucks one and a Blaze one), became a remote worker, had a fish pedicure, went running every day for a whole month, watched a royal wedding (on TV!), used vacuum bags for storage, used no-jet-lag tablets (amazing!), went to Seattle.

2. Did you keep your new years' resolutions, and will you make more?

I didn't keep last year's (to get rid of my Christmas belly). Oops! This year's will be to get fitter in the early part of the new year, ready for skiing again in April. Hopefully walking the dog several times per day in all weathers will help with that one!

3. Did anyone close to you give birth?

Yes! Abi gave birth to a gorgeous baby girl - Sophie Charlotte

4. Did anyone close to you die?

No

5. What countries did you visit?

Canada (Victoria and Vancouver (plus Montreal as we changed planes there and were surprised how French it is!), USA (Seattle (plus we changed planes in Houston), Scotland (Edinburgh)

6. What would you like to have in 2012 that you lacked in 2011?

My answer for probably all of the previous 8 years of this has been a dog, and this year we have one! I'm happy to enjoy life with her for now, until we go on to wanting to buy houses and have babies!

7. What date from 2011 will remain etched upon your memory?

August 27th - the day we left London, and December 18th - the day we got engaged!

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?

Planning a wonderful proposal on top of Grouse Mountain in Vancouver. I'd been planning it since March, bought the ring in October and was almost sick on the day with nerves!

9. What was your biggest failure?

Putting weight on after starting working from home for the majority of the time in August.

10. Did you suffer illness or injury?

No.

11. What was the best thing you bought?

Juan - our roomba. We wouldn't live without one now, he's awesome!

12. Whose behaviour merited celebration?

The clean-up teams after the riots in the summer.

13. Whose behaviour made you appalled and depressed?

The monsters who slandered and fired my mum from the job she'd had for almost 15 years, throwing her out of her home. Also the yobs who smashed up both of her cars shortly afterwards.

14. Where did most of your money go?

Rent, and an engagement ring.

15. What did you get really, really, really excited about?

Moving to the country! And ice hockey!

16. What song will always remind you of 2011?

You got them moobs like Jagger, moobs like Jagger, moo-oo-oo-oo-oo-oo-oo-oo-oobs like Jagger!

17. Compared to this time last year, are you:

i. happier or sadder? Happier
ii. thinner or fatter? Fatter
iii. richer or poorer? Richer

18. What do you wish you'd done more of?

Exercising!

19. What do you wish you'd done less of?

Eating chocolate! And spending money! We could do with some savings right about now...

20. How did you spend Christmas?

In Victoria in Canada with my Dad, Sue, the kids, Nicky, Nicky's mum Angela and some family friends Sue and Tony. It was a really wonderful Christmas, made even more special by the fact that Nicky and I were on our own last Christmas, so it was lovely to be all together this year.

22. Did you fall in love in 2011?

I'm already very much in love.

23. How many one-night stands?

none

24. What was your favourite TV program?

'Merlin', 'Game of Thrones', 'X Factor' and 'Extreme Couponing'. Also 'My Transsexual Summer' was an excellent mini series

25. Do you hate anyone now that you didn't hate this time last year?

No

26. What was the best book you read?

The Percy Jackson series

27. What was your greatest musical discovery?

Adele, plus I'm partial to a bit of the Bublé, but don't tell Nicky!

28. What did you want and get?

A house in the country! A dog! A fiancée!

29. What did you want and not get?

Lego Harry Potter episodes 5-7 on the DS, but I'm extremely happy with everything I did get this year!

30. What was your favorite film of this year?

The final Harry Potter film. Also Percy Jackson and the Lightening Thief, I must have watched it 10 times already. Also Going the Distance, which is quite a good rom-com although not one to watch with parents!

31. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?

I was 28 and spent the day in Tring with Nicky, mum and Nigel. We went to the natural history museum, and had a picnic in the park! The following day we met Dad in Winchester and went out for a lovely breakfast in a hotel and then wandered round the old town. Perfect!

32. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more
satisfying?

Nothing could have made this year any better.

33. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2011?

Jack Wills meets the Gap.

34. What kept you sane?

Switching to decaf coffee, I highly recommend it!

35. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?

Kirsty Allsop

36. What political issue stirred you the most?

The London riots. They were just before we left London, and definitely did nothing to convince us to stay!

37. Who did you miss?

My family in Canada. When I saw them at Christmas I hadn't seen them since July!

38. Who was the best new person you met?

Probably Robert from work. He's an American stand-up comedian who got into Game of Thrones in a big way this year!

39. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2011:

It's all worth it the end

40. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year.

"I'm on the right track baby, I was born this way"

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We would like to introduce a new member of our family - Milly!

No, we haven't had one of those "I didn't know I was pregnant" experiences, she's our adorable new puppy!

We're currently on holiday in Canada, but this is a photo of her before we left, helping Nicky with her packing.

She's 18 months old and is a labrador/staffie/whippet cross. She has great traits from all those breeds - very strong like a labrador, very people-oriented like a staffie so she loves her cuddles, and very fast like a whippet!

She loves the mirrored wardrobes in our bedroom and can't quite work out where all the extra dogs come from!

She's visited us a couple of times and stayed overnight before we left to go on holiday, and she's moving in permanently the day we come back. We can't wait, we love her already!

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We intended to go to the castle today, but we were cosy inside and it looked like it might rain, so we decided to stay indoors and make handmade Christmas cards all afternoon whilst watching movies. It doesn't get much better than that!

We're actually having a second Christmas celebration with my mum, step dad and granny when we come back from Canada, where all the cards and presents have to be either handmade or part handmade with a £5 limit, so we're going to be busy!

Here's a couple of t-shirts I made this week as Christmas presents for my 8 year old cousin Naomi. They were both very fiddly but fun!

Annoyingly, both of our iPhones broke last week. Nicky's stopped turning on without being plugged in (and after a while not even then) and then a couple of days later I managed to drop mine and smashed the screen. Oops! Nicky went to the genius bar at the apple store and found out that the insides of her phone were completely fried, so she bought a refurbished replacement phone. I sent mine off to one of the iPhone specialist websites to get the screen replaced, which was great except that not having a phone for the few days it took to be sent back was really weird!

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Nicky and I just bought our winners' t-shirts! Slightly unnerving, but brilliant motivation to finish on time - this year's t-shirts are awesome!

https://store.lettersandlight.org/merchandise/nanowrimo-winners-circle-t-shirt-2011

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Nicky hurt her elbow at work today. We made up a couple of heroic, dramatic stories to tell, but the truth is that she was just opening a door and felt something twang! She had to go to A&E (very embarrassing apparently when you're a nurse!) to get some x-rays, but they've told her that it's too swollen and painful at the moment to work out what's wrong. They've given her a cuff sling thing, she can't work all weekend and she's got to go to the fracture clinic on Monday morning! Bless her!

Whilst Nicky nursed her arm on the sofa and commandeered the remote controls, I got to grips with our new (to us) sewing machine! Mum has lent us hers, and I'm very excited, I've wanted one for ages!

I practised by making Nicky this bow (I actually sewed it the wrong way round accidentally, but you can't tell)

Then I made a HAT! I've never made a hat before! I had this awesome old t-shirt from http://www.threadless.com that I never wore any more, so decided to give it a new lease of life as a hat using (loosely) this tutorial: http://atsecondstreet.blogspot.com/2010/05/t-shirt-hat.html

It turned out great! I might make one for my little cousin for Christmas. Handmade Christmas presents are definitely the way forward!

I added an All Star label cut off an old pair of Nicky's Converse trainers.

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So as of right now I've written 5906 words, which may seem like I'm irretrievably behind, until you see these two awesome graphs!

This is my NaNoWriMo progress in 2009:

And this is in 2010:

So you see, it's all going to be fine! (she says, wide-eyed and clutching the arms of her chair with mad professor hair)

Nicky is an absolute star, she's already over the 10'000 word mark! Here's to 15 more days of writing mania!

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Last weekend we went with mum to an awesome scrap/craft store in Worcester and, amongst other totally bargainous things, found some extremely cheap sculpey clay. We've really enjoyed using it! These are last Saturday's creations:

And these are from this weekend - we decided to make some Christmas decorations!

My favourite is Nicky's festive elephant, and Nicky's favourite is my snowman.

We got all the hats, scarves, winter jumpers and thermals out of the vacuum packs in the top of the wardrobe this evening, and replaced them with my shorts and Nicky's summer dresses. Winter is coming... (she says ominously.) Having said that, I can't believe it's November already and we haven't had to turn the heating on yet!

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So, we're ten days in to NaNoWriMo and already we're hopelessly behind (me more so than Nicky, who is on a complete roll!) but I'm taking comfort in the fact that we only started on 6th due to night shifts and work trips, and last year our friend Rachel and I didn't start until 11th, and we still won! I'm out of my comfort zone this year, as instead of my normal young adult urban fantasy, I'm writing for adults! It's very slightly science fiction, but will be filled to the brim with star trek science that would make any real scientist cringe, as there's no time to do any research. That's my excuse anyway!

In pictures, here's what we've been doing since I last posted:

We've been to the castle 4 or 5 times now (the annual passes are the best things ever,) and loved it all done up for Halloween (although neither of us like actual scary things, so we avoided the Seance show they had on, and haven't been down to the dungeon!)

We've harvested our bumper crop of radishes, including this mama of a radish!

I've been to Edinburgh for work, where I came across this shiny board. Good old J.K.!

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I can't believe it's only a week until NaNoWriMo! Nicky is saying that she'll do it with me this year, which would be awesome! Can't wait.

We've had a really busy couple of weeks. I've been travelling around for work (travelled 19 hours over two days last week!), our friend Rachel came to stay with us, and Nicky's mum has been up for a couple of days too. We took Nicky's mum to her first hockey game on Sunday, and it was the best game she could have come to! The Blaze were playing the Nottingham Panthers, and the two teams were both so good and so closely matched it was absolutely brilliant! Plus we won, which is always nice!

It's been fun, but we're both exhausted (Nicky's been doing some night shifts too) and have been a bit under the weather. Time to step up the vitamin C!

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Liz and Laura came to stay with us last weekend! We had country ales in various country pubs, went out for afternoon tea, visited the castle and Laura got rather snuggly with a knight! It was an awesome weekend, we can't wait for them to come back!

On the Sunday after they left, Nicky and I went to the hockey and saw the Blaze get slaughtered by the Belfast Giants 5:2. We stayed for the interviews with the coach and the man of the match after the game, and apparently they've brought in a Canadian to strengthen up their defence! His visa has been approved and his first game will hopefully be tomorrow, which should be good!

Nicky and I are having our first weekend at home without visitors for a while, so we're going out tonight into town to experience the nightlife that Warwick has to offer, and to go to the "mop"! This is a carnival that's appeared right in the centre of town - it was quite startling this morning to see it there when we went to get haircuts!

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