Looking Back

This post looks wordy, but it's mostly a lot of pictures! 2011 was a pretty great year all in all. Bearing in mind how absolutely rubbish my memory is, I'm going to do my level best to remember all the fantastic things I've done!

January and February were the usual post-Christmas blur, made all the more blurry with planning, shoe and dress shopping and saving money for the things that were coming.

March was NashCon time. After planning this on TwilightMOMs for almost an entire year, I FINALLY got to meet up with not all, but a fairly huge chunk of the people I'd been dying to meet for the longest time from across the Pond. There was a small group of us who were pretty tight, encapsulated within a group of about 15, within a larger lot of about 30 who had all arranged to meet at the Con. As well as meeting EXTRA people who we have remained friends with (Cory/Mel - I'm talking about you!) It. Was. Amazing.

 NashCon

I gave up smoking in April. I was very proud of myself. I managed to get to 150 days before I started again. iFail. Especially when I made such a big deal of it *facepalm* I am determined to do it though, so  look out for that at some point.

May time was around about the time when SOMEONE got me hooked into a certain new (to me) fandom and had me frolicking around in the Jewnicorn forest with her in no time. (There's a sentence I never thought I'd say!) And so began my obsession with Andrew Garfield. I had, of course, already seen The Social Network, but I don't think I'd ever really seen it, so of course I purchased the BluRay and watched it a LOT and read fanfic upon fanfic (slash btw) and was even inspired to write my own in June! (Still not finished. DOH)

 Andrew as Spider-Man by Annie Wu (deviantART)

I was also asked by Cathy to be her co-bloggess on The Daily Twimes. This was a huge thing for me. I was so proud that she asked me and also embarrassed that I was so crap at it. (One of my New Year resolutions is to manage my time better to make SURE I get all my blogging duties done!)

As part of the awesomeness that is The Twimes, we were able to secure the first interview with one of the new vampires from Breaking Dawn Part 2, Guri Weinberg. It was pretty cool, and we have interviewed him again since, and I think we are safe to say that we're pretty good friends with him now :) There is always some good banter to be found when he gets his butt on Twitter.

June.. um... the best thing I can remember about June is S's birthday night out with BFF and her husband when we went into town, got exceedingly drunk and danced like mad things to our favourite band Bad Dog. It was SO good and then drunken end of night texts sent by me at the end of the night (after I woke up on the toilet at almost 3am!) were hilarious. Here's an example (love to hear your attempted translations!)

 My drunken / hungover texts...

In July it was Harry Potter Marathon time. I went to one Harry Potter film every night leading up to the double whammy of the two Deathly Hallows films back to back - part two (in 3D - I'm not a big fan, but there wasn't any choice) starting at midnight. It was a really great week :)

Team Snape FTW

July was also rejuvenate my sex life month. I know that might be TMI for some of you, but you know what? It happened in 2011 and it was pretty important!! So yey! :D

August was our family holiday in Eastbourne which we tweeted our way around on England_Tour. It was not bad, but I don't think we'll be doing a B&B again. Not with two small kids. Memories of pizza in the park like a family of chavs keep coming flooding back to me o_O

In October, I attempted to watch one horror film every single day this month. It didn't go so well. I think I got about 12 watched. Not a great number, BUT I realised that I'm not actually that scared of horror films any more. So that's good.

My birthday - had a great overnighter with my BFF which ended with about a four hour Skype phonecall from my other BFFs across the Pond who had made me an utterly awesome present  (love you all so much!!)

Claire, Toni and Me :)

Later on in the month I went to ET6 where we met some more Twilight peeps including the wonderful Toni Trucks and became her official fansite setter-upper along with Claire who is awesome! Also got to meet a ton of Twitter friends who I hadn't yet met, but there they all were! And made a load of new friends too! LOVE how the Twilight fandom brings people together!

November? Well. This was the month of Breaking Dawn Part One. I went to the midnight showing on the Friday, then on the Saturday I met up with my lovely friends from all over England in a hotel in Leeds and we watched it again, followed by dinner, drinks and board games, and then another viewing on the Sunday morning :) It was brilliant and needs to be repeated.

 with my Rob mask. Or Rob with boobs. Take your pick.

Oh and of course, there was the tattoo. Mustn't forget that!! From this:

to THIS:

Final version. See what he did with my picture? (Ignore love handles)

December was DallasCon and 100 Monkeys. Two of the coolest things of the year. Dallas was a late addition to the calendar after I discovered Cathy was going as correspondent for the blog she works for, Twilightish. I mentioned it to hubby who said that as long as I got everything else such as kids/work covered, I could go. I remember the squeeing that ensued when I told Cathy! In the end, we went VIP, which meant backstage access to the whole convention. Absolutely brilliant. Seriously, a proper highlight to the year with one of my favourite people on the planet. We got to get back together with Guri Weinberg for another interview as well. It was awesomeness wrapped up in a big bow :) And I've already told you all about the 100 Monkeys show, so I won't go on about that again.

Almost all of what happened this year would not have been possible without my husband and my and his families. I have told you before there's a reason he gets the hashtag #BHE (Best Husband Ever) on Twitter whenever I mention him and here it is. I have been very lucky to be able to travel to a lot of places and meet a lot of people while he stayed and watch the kids (or make arrangements to have them watched) and I repay him wherever I can, but I'm nowhere near up to quota yet.

Here's to 2012...

In other news...
Films I've seen: The Adventures of TinTin, The Inbetweeners Movie, Limitless, Hangover Part II, Gnomeo & Juliet, Battle: Los Angeles, Crazy Stupid Love, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, Arthur Christmas, Breaking Dawn Part One, Harry Potter & The Deathly Hallows Part 2, Friends with Benefits, X-Men: First Class, Apollo 18, Water for Elephants.

Books I've read: The Hunger Games Trilogy (Suzanne Collins), Angel (L. A. Weatherley), Soul Beach (Kate Harrison), Cosmopolis (Don DeLillo) Never Let Me Go (Kazuo Ishiguro), Water for Elephants (Sara Gruen), The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo & The Girl Who Played With Fire (Stieg Larsson), White Cat & Red Glove (Holly Black), Lover Unleashed (JR Ward)