Happy New Year with Once Upon A Sketch & Bird Is The Word

This is my first post for 2012. 
I would like to wish you all a very Happy New Year, filled with His presence and His blessings.  The year that has just passed was definitely not very pleasant (at least for my homeland Greece), but I hope the new one will be better. 

For me, it starts very well actually, despite the fact that I'm down with a bad cold and I just can't stay in bed but must be at work.  It's one of those very bad things about my job. 
However, I'll try to show more optimism and be more patient this year.  Yes, this is one of the New Year's resolutions.  (Let's see how long I will keep it for).

As you probably already know, I was the winner of the November 1st challenge at Once Upon A Sketch.  Because I was in Athens during November, I wasn't able to be a Guest Designer for December, so Nadia offered me a guest designer spot in January.  Thank you, Nadia.

So here I am.
This is the challenge, along with my layout.

January 1st Challenge

Journalling Criteria/theme: New Years Eve!

Our theme this time is New year's Eve. We would like you to journal about your feelings around this time of year, or tell us about your most memorable New Year's Eve. Where were you? Who were you with? What did you do? Why is this one memorable? Note: the photo that you use for this challenge does not have to necessarily be from New Years Eve. For example, if you spent New Years Eve with your family you can have a photo of your family taken ANY time of the year.

Remember that you are allowed to also create a card or altered project based on this sketch and instead of the journalling criteria you need to use a quote.

You must combine our journalling criteria/theme with this sketch.

What did I do on New Year's Eve?  Oh yes, I was working.  Of course.

How did I spend it?  Watching people say "welcome" and "goodbye".  It was nice. 

(Ok, I didn't watch only.  I worked as well). 

About the page:  I wanted to create something that really represents me and at the same time have stress-free fun making it, so this layout is simple, with empty spaces as well as some flowers.  I just love adding a few flowers to a clean & simple, modern page. 

What do you think?  Do you like it?

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Now let's move to Bird is the Word.
The first word of 2012 to play with is the word PROMISE.
New Year's Day is full of  promises and resolutions (I make many, I confess).
So we can scrap about all the things we promise to do in the new year.

I chose to make a page about a promise my daughter gives everytime she sits to eat. And most of the time she doesn't seem to keep it.  Thank God we have a good washing machine.

This page is much fuller than the first.  Lots of colours and shapes. 
I really enjoyed thinking about the theme of the page, I had quite a few ideas as to how to use the word PROMISE, it's a versatile word.  The journalling says " ok ok I promise I will not dirty my clothes this time, Mom.  Although I love to do that... :)". 
You know how we sometimes promise to do or not to do something, knowing that we won't keep our promise?  This is one of these cases.

Anyway, I have to add that there's a wondeful sketch by Mary Thomas to use just in case your inspiration needs a boost.  Here it is

This turned out to be a loooooooooooong post. Thanks for stopping by!

I hope you have a great year ahead... a very creative one!