Happy New Year 2016

Y'know, I've never been a big New Year's person. I've always felt that making New Year's Resolutions was a set-up for failure, and that the middle of winter was a dumb time for a new beginning. September 1 or Labor Day always felt more like a new year.

A lot of bloggers seem to have enjoyed choosing a single word as their guide for a new year, and I haven't ever done that. I think I'd prolly quickly forget what that word was!

All of this being said, it is hard not to get in the spirit of goals that prevails right about now. I'm thinking that "hopes" is a safer, more reasonable, more realistic word for me than "resolutions" or "goals." So, to that end, I've wrapped my mind around a few hopes for my quilting in the year ahead:

• I hope not to buy a lot of fabric. I have acquired a great deal of background fabric and it should be fun to see what shows up on these backgrounds.
• I hope to look at the UFOs and deal with them. Surely at least one could be finished and donated as a raffle quilt somewhere -- just because a quilt isn't to my particular taste doesn't mean that someone else might not love it. There might be a UFO that one of my besties would be interested in finishing. There might be a UFO that could turn into a blog give-away. It would feel so good to end 2016 without a stack of UFOs!
• For a long time I've wanted to make an Improved Nine Patch quilt. I hope this will be the year for that.
• Finally, I hope to begin to plan 2016 Christmas gifts early and get to work on them early. This year I had planned a couple of aprons and tote bags for gifts and didn't get to them. So I plan to make my gift grid very soon and map out a schedule for sewn gifts.

How do you deal with the New Year? Resolutions? Goals? Hopes? Focus Word?