It feels a bit self-indulgent to be picking out lots of my own pieces to mark the year, but doing just that is one of Mama Kat’s prompts for this week so I kind of had to join in.

I bought this domain name on New Years Eve last year, although I didn’ t make any use of it until a few months later. Starting to blog again was one of my big resolutions, and one of the very few that I’ve ever managed to stick with. I’m so grateful for all of the support that I’ve had this year – the online social communities are some of the warmest and most encouraging places I’ve hung around in.

Blogging’s also helped me to see my world differently. I look for humour and fun in things more than I used to, and I encounter so many other people doing the same. I think creativity’s there for all of us if we just open our eyes to it.

These are my picks of the posts that I’ve most enjoyed writing, and in some cases putting together pictures for. Some are just moments in my life, and others are reflections on the whole of it.

When I first started blogging here, it was kind of a little secret thing that I did on my own. Mike knew about it but didn’t really get involved.  The day that we made Sticky 5-Spice Gammon together was one of the first times that I’d enlisted him to help something for the blog.

We’ve had loads of fabulous days out this year; we’ve been to lots of new places in search of new experiences (and new photographs), and one of our favourite new finds was the Yorkshire Sculpture Park. This post was a bit of a whistle-stop tour after our first visit. We’ve learned now that it’s better to take it easy and meander around a small part of the park more slowly. There are still bits that we’ve not seen, and pieces change all the time.  There are some more posts and pictures of our visits here.

I don’t do a lot of sponsored posts, but when I was asked to do one about baking it was a perfect excuse to make some gingerbread men – Mike had been asking me to have a go for ages. They were great fun to make, but we definitely overdid it a bit – I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many gingerbread men in one place.

I’ve always been a ponderous and nostalgic person, and blogging’s encouraged that side of me lots this year. It seems silly to call “Where I’m From” a meme because it was far more than that, but it had lots of us joining in and seems to be a pretty established writing exercise.  I love it – I loved writing mine, and I loved reading others from across the world and seeing how closely our memories connect to each other, wherever we are.

Nowhere’s encouraged my sentimental side more than in taking part in some of the weekly RememberRed prompts on Write on Edge, a gorgeous community of bloggers and writers.  When they asked us to write about a season of change in the first week of September, I wrote a piece about myself and my school friends turning 40 this year.

I loved writing about the Class of 1988 the most out of everything I’ve written this year, I think.

And it turned out that turning 40 wasn’t so bad after all.