Happy New Year - 2012!

Although it's almost the end of January, since this is my first blog post for 2012 I can still say "Happy New Year!" I hope that the first month of 2012 has been going well for you.


Lobby at Hotel Monaco - Portland, Oregon

As I promised in my last post, I am following up with details about my holiday travels. I enjoyed spending Christmas in Portland, Oregon with my parents. I arrived in Portland on Christmas Eve and met up with my parents on Christmas Day. Although we didn't do a lot of major sightseeing during our stay, we did visit some wonderful parts of downtown Portland including the Pearl District and the Alphabet District (also known as Northwest). It's amazing how "walkable" Portland is, not to mention the fact that the dining and shopping opportunities are outstanding. I could certainly spend a lot of time in Portland - it's a great city and I am happy that I was able to spend part of my vacation there and visit with my parents. Another highlight of the trip was a visit to the Nike Employee Store in Beaverton. I don't think I have seen so much Nike apparel in one place before! Needless to say, I ended up with some nice items including shoes and hoodies. Sending a big thank you to my dad for making arrangements to visit the store during my visit. I am only including a few photos from my trip in this blog post, but feel free to view the entire photo album on my SmugMug site.


Christmas Dinner at Portland Prime


My Dinner Entree


The Nike Employee Store in Beaverton, Oregon

January has certainly been a busy month for me. In an effort to gain additional experience in the fields of graphic design and photography, I am taking a Photoshop class at Skyline College in San Bruno. I am discovering that Photoshop is fun and interesting, yet challenging too. I am also learning how to crochet. If you are a regular reader of my blog, you already know that I enjoy knitting. When I learned how to knit several years ago, I also learned the basics of crochet, but for some reason I ended up focusing on knitting. I've decided to give crochet a go, and so far I am really enjoying it. Of course I don't plan to give up knitting, but it will be nice to know how to do both, especially since I have come across some wonderful patterns for crochet.



Being the avid sports fan that I am, it's been a great month! The Patriots made it to the playoffs and they are going to the Super Bowl. I am excited! I am looking forward to watching the game on Sunday, February 5, and you can bet that I'll be wearing all of my Patriots gear. Go Pats!



One other project that I am working on for this year is taking one photo each day for the entire year. I'm uploading my photos to Shuttercal so that I can easily track my progress. The nice thing about Shuttercal is that it allows you to upload photos even after the date has passed. I take a photo each day and then I usually upload a week's worth of photos over the weekend. And it's no surprise that Shuttercal has an app for the iPhone so you can snap a photo and upload it on the go. How easy is that?!

As always, I'll wrap up with a quote. This quote in particular seems very appropriate for this time of the year when many people have made resolutions to change certain things in their life.

"If you always do what you always did - you'll always get what you always got!"
-Unknown