Last year, Jason and I went with another couple (Jason’s Best Man Chris and his girlfriend Maria) to the Poconos for a few days to learn how to snowboard. Because we are crazy, we did it again this year!

My stomach was in knots and I shook so bad the first day that I just wanted to give up, get some hot cocoa and stop this insane idea that I could conquer this winter sport. But Jason was patient and I just continued to bruise my body with each attempt down the hill.

Until day 2. I can proudly say I did an entire run without falling! Maria was extremely patient and spent all morning giving me lessons and by that afternoon Jason and I didn’t even fall when coming off the lift!

This morning we both woke up sore and bruised and came back home. The tree is still up and our living room is still littered with gifts. I should be organizing, but I also brought home with me a sore throat which will likely follow me into the new year. So I am keeping my bruised bottom on the couch tonight and most likely after work tomorrow too. Jason and I have agreed that it’s ok to be boring and ring in the new year with a movie and the puppies while our friends will most likely be out celebrating. I think we will soak up the much needed rest while we can!

So as I wait for Jason to return home from deejaying I’ll be Pinning for the rest of tonight and thinking of 2012 projects! I’m going to give in to the pressure of a new year and will have a post on goals I would like to achieve in 2012 up soon. My list keeps getting bigger!

Does anyone already have a new year’s resolution decided on?

I hope everyone had a very merry Christmas! Jason and I were so exhausted by the end of it that we passed out without doing any organizing. Our living room is a mess of wrapping paper and gifts! Did you get what you wished for? We sure did!

A while ago while I learned how to make yarn garland balls (idea courtesy of Courtney from A Little Glass Box) we found that Charlie, too, likes yarn. Jason took the opportunity to take our Canon Rebel out for a spin. Here are some of the test shots.

Last week a terrible thing happened to STC.

It was hacked.

I didn’t think ahead enough about what I was going to do if that ever happened before it did. Lucky for me, I had saved all of the images that had been posted about the house previously onto iDisk (a lovely service that Apple is actually going to discontinue in June 2012 with their transition over to iCloud, so I’ve been taking my time learning how to use Dropbox and move all of our files over to that) but none of the posts were saved. All of my posts from the past two years were impossible to recover and I’m still mourning over the loss of all of that information.

However, I’ve decided that maybe things happen for a reason. I decided to take a look at how I’ve been using STC.com and have realized that there are so many more possibilities to this blog than just updating the making of our house into a home. So before re-installing WordPress, I researched and researched back-up systems and finally decided on Vaultpress. It provides realtime continuous back-up for just $15 a month and I’ve decided with my busy lifestyle, $15 is something I can give up out of our budget to make sure this blog is safe. And the best part? They have free support so if the worst happens again they can help me bring the site back, which is something I can be honest that I know not a lot about.

I also learned about Google’s Webmaster Tools and highly suggest that every domain owner take advantage of this free service. Basically, you claim your domain by installing an HTML file onto your website that they can verify. After that, they will monitor your site and let you know if any badware has infiltrated your website.

So because of my lack (or laziness?) of research on doing back-ups, the impossible happened to our little homestyle blog and we have to start over. So please be patient as I try to re-build what we had, and add more features, especially with the Holidays just days away!

So here’s to a new STC, a new year, and a new outlook.