My word of 2015 Final Review

Yup, its that time of year again - nearly time for a new year and a new word, can you believe it? I've been working through my Unravelling workbook from Susannah Conway and as I got to the 2016 section I came to a complete stop because I honestly hadn't even thought about a word for 2016 yet and I was flummoxed. 2015 has been so incredibly busy, next year hadn't even entered my mind yet.

My word for 2015 - GIVE

My word for 2015 - GIVE

For 2015 I chose the word give. And although my intentions were truly good and I was in a very good place when I wrote my post about it in July - the wedding totally derailed me. Which seems like a bizarre thing to say - but holy wow, weddings are tough! Especially if you're already anxiety/depression/meltdown prone like me ha. Add in the fact that from May, we had a large event each month through to September - a welcoming party for my favourite one year old, two hen parties and two weddings (including ours). Each month I gave and I gave and each event was beautiful, magical, so fun and memorable... and our wedding well, it was perfect. I keep trying to think of other words - but it really was perfect, everything about it.

But even though our day was truly amazing, I've been exhausted ever since - totally beat. Creating something perfect is hard - and we really did create it - we made as much as we could, we put together as much as we could, it was all I thought about for months and all I worked on too in my spare time. I gave it my all, and ultimately, I forgot to leave a little bit to get me through the rest of the year. Oops.

So for 2016 - I've decided that I don't need to beat 2015 - because it really has been the amazing year I wanted and hoped for. Instead I need a word that isn't quite so um, generous and well, giving, ha. I need something real, something that feels right yet isn't going to exhaust me or take from me in any way like 'give' unexpectedly did. Though I guess when I assign myself a word like GIVE for the year, I only have myself to blame haha.

I'm starting Susannah's Find Your Word emails this week and I'm hoping the right word comes to me before December is over and hopefully I'll have a word of 2016 post to share soon :)

Did anyone else pick a word for 2015? How has your word influenced your year? Have you chosen your 2016 word already?

~ 2016 Freebie Calendar ~

Following on from my last post about 2016 Calendars from Snapfish - today seemed like the perfect time to share my yearly freebie For the easily distracted... calendar download- hurray! Although a quick look at my blog archives is saying I didn't actually make one last year - I apologise for that - this year I am on the ball haha.

Like previous years, I've chosen my favourite photos from the last 12 months - and I actually had a lot more photos than I thought to chose from - it felt like it had been a slow photography year (its definitely been a slow blogging photos year) but I've actually taken quite a lot more photos than I realised, hurray.

As well as photos, I've also added some of my favourite photography quotes and I will admit, its those that make this so exciting to me. Sometimes I don't have the words to say how I feel about taking photos (just sometimes...) and the ones I've included really do sum up a lot of my own opinions better than I ever could.

I really love the final result so I hope that you do too - click on the following button to download your own copy.

Everything's the same. Everything's completely different.

One of our wedding photos taken by the extremely lovely and crazy talented Katherine Mager - and its taken on film (we had digital and film hurray) at an abbey ruin, with a real film light leak on our wedding day. Be still my heart... thank you Kat.

Before we got married, everyone told us that 'nothing changes... you're still the same people and life still goes on'. And now that we've been married a month I can see that its true. We're back at work, back to watching our tv shows and films in the evening and now we even have spare time - I'd totally forgotten what that was 1 month ago haha.

But what no one told me is that at the same time - everything is completely different. Sure there's the seemingly obvious things like wearing a wedding ring and changing your name (which someone should have warned me is the biggest faff ever)... but its the surprise times you notice - holding Thomas's hand and feeling the ring there or seeing it on the counter when he's washing up. Getting post that actually shows your new name and the slight bewilderment of seeing it on paper. Perhaps at some point I'll be so used to these things that I barely notice but I kind of hope not, I want to enjoy it all as much as I can.

After the wedding, Thomas asked me how I was and how I felt and I replied

"I feel like I've gained something I didn't even realise I was missing." 

And that's the best way I can describe it - everything is the same but everything feels different, I feel different, we feel different. I still can't really believe its happened but I like it and now I can't imagine life without that feeling.