…including my brain. :) I’m finally done all my Christmas shopping and safely and warmly inside for the night. I wouldn’t have been out at all today except…

I did a really dumb thing yesterday.

I was supposed to finish up all my shopping yesterday, and I had one last store to go to. I hopped in the car and headed out to a store I rarely shop at, but had some gift certificates for. I got about halfway there and realized that I forgot the gift certificates… they were still sitting on my desk. So what did I do?

Instead of heading home to get them and then back to the store, I stopped at the lake to take pictures instead. :)

The lake looked so pretty with its first coat of ice…

Even the cattails are frozen…

And since the Thursday Challenge theme today is “light” I couldn’t resist this shot of the sunlight on the lake…

And just because I didn’t want to finish the day without doing something a little Christmassy, here are a couple of the decorations along our street:

So my trip wasn’t a total waste of time yesterday. I just didn’t get any shopping done! :)

Have a very Merry Christmas!

I don’t do much decorating for Christmas usually, but visiting everyone’s blogs over the past two weeks has got me more in the spirit to actually put some decorations up this year. So we finally got started with my little Santa tree this evening:

I still have to string the ornaments and get them added, and no the tinsel didn’t stay that way. My son said it made Santa look way too much like Cousin It. :)

I’ll post new (and hopefully better) pictures once we’re totally done here. In the meantime, check out more wonderful shots of all things red at Ruby Tuesday. If lots of colour is your thing, then the Color Carnival is definitely for you!

Have an awesomeday!

So, the idea behind the Monday outlook post was to set myself up for a more productive week. Now that the week is over, I can report my results to you…

I failed.
Miserably.
Brutal would be an understatement.

Out of the eight challenges I set for myself, I met two and a half:

1. There is new content on the Thoughts of Christmas blog. (challenge #3)
2. I went wandering down one of the river paths and took some new photos. (challenge #8)
3. There is new content on The Acorn Stash blog, and on this blog. (challenge #6 – considered only half done because there are still more blogs that need new content.)

It’s an improvement over last week since I only completed two challenges last week. But it’s still brutal.

Am I embarrassed? You betcha. But more than that, I’m seriously ticked off at myself. Mostly because I have no excuse other than that I was totally, utterly, and completely unmotivated to write. And so I didn’t.

It’s not even like I can say I had a ton of other stuff to do because I didn’t. In fact, I didn’t even step foot outside the house all week until I went out Friday morning to take pictures and get groceries.

If I’m really honest with myself, I think I have to say that I’ve lost my passion for internet marketing, at least the way I’ve been doing it for the past several years. The whole keyword and market research thing has left me thinking that there has to be something more. I think for awhile I’d much rather write on the topics that interest me and make me happy, and hope that they interest you and make you happy too. I realize that I won’t be able to please everyone, and quite frankly, I’m okay with that.

And now on a more positive note…

I had no problems being motivated to train this week. With some great results, I might add! After just one week of weight training and cleaner eating, I managed a 4 percent reduction in body fat. So the week wasn’t a complete loss. :)

And I do plan to do better on both the challenge and content creation fronts this week. I’ll post my plans for the week as soon as I have them figured out, so stay tuned.

And have a wonderful week!

Here’s a summary of this week’s content:

Some Thoughts of Christmas Traditions
Christmas Shopping Survival Tips

New Wallpapers For You

Monday Morning Outlook
Order and Chaos Side by Side