I wasn’t really prepared for Day in the Life, but I jotted some things down so here you go. Sorry I didn’t take a single photo!

What I Did

1. Won a luxury champagne cruise for 2 on Loch Lomond in the work draw. Unexpected!

2. Invited Claire on aforesaid cruise as our joint birthday outing. Let’s hope for some reasonably warm weather .

3. Got a payslip in the post and NOTHING ELSE. Lame post for 8 days and counting

4. Wondered how exactly they get Amazon super saver parcels to arrive 5 days later than standard mail. Is it a special service via Belgium? Claire suggests yaks are involved. To be fair, I remember when I worked at the sorting office, the second class mail would get ditched under the table the very second even a single first class letter arrived.

5. Discovered it was also Hourly Comic Day and enjoyed following Edward Ross’s day.

6. Was so cold I had to go find a warmer jumper, and actually put socks on.

7. Watched people slowly start bidding on the Plan B magazines I listed on eBay at the weekend. Please take them so I don’t have to bin them.

8. Checked on all my printing products – all still queued for printing, sigh.

9. Wondered if I might be getting addicted to sourdough bread

10. Paid my Etsy and Folksy bills. $20 to Etsy, how did that happen?

11. Got a bit excited when Pusheen the Cat requested to follow me on Twitter

12. Coveted a Japanese enamel kettle

13. Bought the live action Paradise Kiss DVD from YesAsia. I hope the subtitles aren’t too atrocious and the adaptation also isn’t too atrocious.

14. Made pancakes for dinner. Because I can. And it’s almost Pancake Day.

15. Randomly made an Etsy treasury of mountains (see top of post).

16. Had a peek at the Moon, Jupiter and Venus all hanging out together

17. Ditched all my plans and went to bed at 9:30pm because it was cold and I was tired out. Mind you, I read for hours.

What I Ate

An actual proper breakfast of cereal, oats, 9 hours out of date yogurt, half a banana and a cup of tea. A hardboiled egg on sourdough toast, cheese on sourdough bread, some carrot sticks and a cup of coffee for lunch. A bag of Quavers. Some dark chocolate caramels from Thorntons. Some water. A ham and cheese pancake. Peppermint tea.

Check out Nikki’s blog to read about everyone else’s days.

So, how are all you 5 year diary owners getting on? I’m pretty pleased to have finished 7 months of entries and I only missed a couple of days. I was using a prototype from July last year to make sure everything worked as expected. Unfortunately, I didn’t consider that pushing half the pages to the back temporarily would mean half the years are wrong in my diary so I am still in 2011, oops.

Those of you with real actual diaries should have just completed your first month so how are you finding it and what are you recording? Mine seem to be mostly what I got in the post, what I worked on, where I went and what I watched on TV. I kind of wish I’d noted the weather or what I ate every day but then I might not have stuck to it so easily.

At some point after I became self-employed, I starting thinking of daytime reading as an unacceptable indulgence, probably because I love reading and could happily do it all day every day. However, this does mean I don’t get as much reading done as I would like and my unread magazine pile is growing at an alarming rate*. I was waiting to meet Katy in West the other day and enjoyed my peppermint tea and book above so much that I am now allowing myself a reading outing at least once a week. I can go anywhere I like and have lunch and/or tea and/or cake and read whatever I like from my unread pile.

I realise it’s a bit sad that I have to resolve to spend more time doing fun things, but it is hard when you run your own business(es) in that there’s always something you could be doing. I’m posting them as an irregular series on I Like Zines, if you fancy keeping up with my reading and eating choices. That practically makes it a business expense…

*which is especially pathetic as I only buy 3 magazines regularly.

I liked 2011, but found it extremely annoying to say, so I’m glad we’re into Twenty Twelve. According to my fortune from Animal Crossing I’m going to be Super Lucky this year. Let’s hope so.

So, how did I get on with my resolutions? Well, some good, some bad.

The Good

Project Clearout was a great success – by the end of the year, I was pretty much addicted and getting rid of things that would have upset me greatly in January. I’m going to post up some tips soon in case you’re in the same boat this year.

My publishing projects went well too – I got my Kawaii Japan book and 5 Year Diary published, updated my Tokyo Shopping Guide and finished a few more zines. I’ve got a couple more zines on the go just now that I hope to get up for sale soon. Plus, of course, I set up Pushpin, so it’s been a zine-filled year.

And I successfully completed another 12 months of What I Wore drawings and collected them in a free zine.

The Bad

My new Shopify theme never got far, though I did so much Shopify work in 2011 that I have plans aplenty for when I do get the time.

My graphics tablet was a sad casualty of an upgrade – Photoshop CS5 goes completely doolally when my tablet is installed. Hopefully Adobe have fixed the issue by now – I should check.

My mum still hasn’t got a sewing machine so I ended up putting my fabric up for sale instead. Hopefully we can get this collaboration going in 2012.

And I still haven’t been commenting much, though I do heart a lot of things in Tumblr and Instagram.

I’ll carry those over as extras but here are ten things I want to do in 2012.

1. Draw more! After 2 years of What I Wore drawings, I’m a bit bored of Illustrator and so it’s time to get back to my sketchbook. I plan to do some watercolours and lino printing and share something every month.

2. Make a big decision. I still can’t decide what direction to take Asking For Trouble. I’m ready for an investment but which way to go? Trade Fairs? Licensing? PR? I need to choose one and push on.

3. Book Clearout. While I got rid of loads of books last year, I still have an enormous pile of books to read. I want to have read or ditched them all by the end of the year, with a good amount gone by July 1st.

4. Learn about fabric design. Not being a quilter, I don’t really do the whole collection thing with stripes and basics as a buyer or a designer. The fabric industry is all about collections though, so I’d like to have a go at learning all the rules I already own Lizzy House’s ebook and the True Up Field Guide to Fabric Design so I have lots of things to try.

5. Explore more. I’ve just been totting up my holiday allowance at p/t job and I only took 5 days off in the entire year! There’s been a real lack of trips in 2011, especially to new places. This year I’d like to take more short breaks and day trips. On my wish list – Portmeirion, the Isle of Wight, Skye, and I’ve already picked up a deal for a couple of days in Boat of Garten near Aviemore.

6. Answer emails. I am getting worse and worse at responding to emails promptly. Partly it’s forgetfulness/busyness, but often I get lengthy and/or bizarre emails and eventually I end up just deleting them as answering 3 months later feels even more weird. I’m going to try and respond to most emails within 24 hours, even just to say thanks, I’ll get back to you later.

7. Finish my zines. I’ve been working on a bunch of stuff this year, but I’d like the contents of my zine planning folders to either be part of published zines or deleted by the end of 2012. I’d especially like to get my Zelda zine, my space zine and my 2 how-to zines published.

8. Review your zines. I want to do more to promote the zines I love to read, so I’m going to make the effort to post about the majority of zines I read over the next 12 months, over at I Like Zines.

9. New eats. I’m in a bit of rut with food as I tend to use my favourite ingredient combinations over and over in different ways. I’m going to make a little book collating all the recipes I’ve bookmarked and try and make something from it at least once a month. I’ve already made the booklet and now I am hungry.

10. Contact 5 scary people. I’m exaggerating, but there are a few shops I have always had in mind as dream stockists and I sometimes come across other great opportunities for my products. I’m always putting them off for another year until I do x, y and z but I’m going to actually contact 5 of them this year and see what happens.

Well, that’s what I’m excited about doing this year, but no doubt 2012 has its own plans for me.

My annual look back at what I got up to this year.

January

I made a book! And that was about it.

February

Project Clearout got underway, as I sold loads of stuff I probably wasn’t ever going to use again. Goodbye typewriter I wrote all my early zines on! My mum also came to visit, to help me get rid of things and I made some new products and a silly free zine about hats. (more…)

Well, 2011 is almost over so I best post something about Christmas before it’s too late. I don’t really do Christmas soI can’t promise it will be exciting. Above are most of my gifts including lots of Paperchase and Lego stuff from my sister!

My Christmas Eve tradition is digging out my Gamecube and Animal Crossing, pulling up a year’s worth of weeds, stomping on all the cockroaches in my neglected house and then hunting up Jingle the reindeer for some gifts. It’s really pretty with the snow and the tree lights and has so many more fun things than the DS version, like balloons and Halloween and getting a gold statue of yourself when you pay off your mortgage.

On the right, a Lego minifig ice cube! They are really ace, except having Lego men floating face down in your drink feels a bit wrong.

Christmas noms – fancy dinner at Malmaison with my workmates at 5pm. Tablet ice cream on Boxing Day. Would eat again.

And finally, my bestest present – the bunny lamp I have been coveting from John Lewis. It was a bit out of  my budget but everyone else loves it too so I got it with my Christmas money. Plus, since I saw it, my main bedroom light fitting fell apart and had to be replaced and then the bulb blew on my beside lamp. You can’t argue against that. Hope you all had a good Christmas too.