Five for Friday (What's on my mind tonight)

1. Photography - I've been reading books on it, signed up for some classes in January (from the fantastically talented and super-cool Alisha Stamper), and am trying to better understand how all the elements come together into the image you were trying to capture. I see it as such a great way to capture how my life looks, and I just want to be better at it.

2. Travel - Hawaii in April. New Jersey/New York in June. New Hampshire in September. A few trips to California in there somewhere. Mmmmmm......I love thinking about the people and places I'll be seeing soon.

3. My Kitchen - Now that operation "buy a new house" became operation "keep the condo and play more instead of spend more", I am really trying to decide what to do with my kitchen. It's tiny, but I want it to be functional, colorful and easy to keep organized and clean. And I need to keep it relatively inexpensive. Time to gather ideas, look into options, and prepare for some manual labor. After the holidays are over, it's on.

4. Poetry - The focus of a lot of my writing lately has been poetry. It's such a satisfying genre and I find it to be such an intimate form of self-expression. I've just started a poetry collaboration with Amy H.W. and it's a fun, less threatening way to open that up for someone else to read. I'm trying to summon up the courage and be brave enough to post some work here. We'll see.

5. Working Out -Between not being able to cycle (too cold) and not being able to run (injured hip flexor) I'm really struggling with motivation. I'm still putting the time in, but it's a struggle every day. Part of it is because I can't do my favorite workouts, part of it is boredom with what I can do (elliptical, spinning, swimming, Zumba, weights), and part of it is the typical holiday/winter blah. What i need to do is figure out how to get outside more. Yes, that's exactly what I need to do...Snowshoe, snowboard, XC skiing...ok, how to do that with work and a three year old...? Hmmmmmm.