For the last couple of years on my birthday I’ve made a birthday list with things I want to realize in the coming 365 days. As of today I’m a year older, which means it’s time to say goodbye to my 27 in 27 list and see how well I fared with this challenge.

January last I made a list with 27 challenges to complete in the upcoming year: my 27 in 27 list. I put my list up on my wall, my wunderlist and my evernote app and still I managed to loose sight of some of these goals, although I think I really didn’t do bad this year.

Finished challenges
01. Starting a course illustration and comic design at art school

I’ve been wanting to go to this course for a couple of years and now I’m doing it! I really enjoy these lessons even though some assignments really aren’t my thing. One of the perks of following this course is learning (and having) to use new materials and tools. We rarely just sketch or use graphite pencil, which is nice as that’s my to go material whenever I draw something. It also pushes me to create more and most importantly to finish more real drawings, which is something I almost never do…

02. Do the 50 book challenge

I nailed this one! I read a total of 77 books last year and I have this challenge to thank for this. I was really competitive to reach my 50 books as soon as possible, putting priority on reading as much as possible. After reaching 50 books I calmed down a bit, but I still read a lot.

03. Buy a book in a local/independent bookstore every month

It’s wasn’t easy every month to pick up a book in a local bookstore, as I’m pretty much a cheapskate. I’m constantly comparing prizes and I’ll buy the book wherever it’s cheapest. As Dutch books often have a fixed prize online & offline this lead to buying more Dutch books, which is actually a nice side effect.

These are the 12 books I bought in local bookshops:

• Joe Speedboot by Tommy Wieringga
• Les Contes de Beedle le Barde by J.K. Rowling
• De Kunst van het Crashen by Peter Verhelst
• Morantology by Caitlin Moran
• Te veel verdriet voor één hart by Ed Franck and Carl Cneut
• Chew vol. 1 by John Layman and Rob Guillory
• 7 Pinguin Little Black Classics
• De Aankomst by Shaun Tan
• Gestameld Liedboek: Moedergetijden by Erwin Mortier
• Vuil Vel by Marita de Sterck
• Oblomov by Ivan Gontsjarov
• We Should All be Feminists by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

04. Learn how to silk screen

I was very lucky to have a course on silk screen printing in my last semester of my bachelor. It was a lot of fun learning about screen printing and I’m pretty sad it’s been so long since I’ve screen printed. I really want to do something more with this skill, but I’m not sure how to do it at home or whether I really need another hobby.

05. Graduate as a graphic designer

I had a hard time in my last year as a graphic design student. A lot of things didn’t go well, there was a lot of friction, stress and frustration crying. But I also made a lot of friends, had many good times, learned a lot and graduated in September. These last two years have also taught me that, yes, I can (if I really want to) and I still have a long way to go to battle my tendency to procrastination/fear of failure (as is evident in my still not having finished my portfolio/still not having a job).

10. Comment more on blogs and social media

This is one of those goals on the 27 in 27 list of which is was hard to figure out whether I managed to finish. As I’m feeling very lenient, I’m going to say I did. I haven’t commented regularly during the whole year, but I’ve started commenting a lot more in the past few months. I don’t read as much blogs as I’m used to, but I’m paying more attention to commenting. I’m still a bit of a lurker though.

12. Finish five sewing projects (3/5)

I definitely didn’t finish this one, I only made 3 sewing projects (a sun screen, a baby blanket and my panda pencil case), but I’m still going to count it as finished. Making these three projects really have ignited my love for sewing again and I’ve been wanting to make more projects, but I just didn’t have the time. I even started cutting fabric for pillow cases. So yes, not completed, but it still did what I hoped it would do. You can definitely expect more sewing projects in 2016.

14. Make 12 illustrations

I managed to finish this goal accidentally. I didn’t think I managed this goal until I realised I did make 12 different illustrations for the twelve months of my 2016 agenda. I don’t think I’ve shown all twelve illustrations in my agenda related posts, so maybe I’ll put them in a workspace wednesday update.

15. Visit 27 new places

This was one of those challenges on this list where I didn’t really think about what I really meant by it beforehand. I’m pretty sure I visited 27 new to me places this year, with my visiting a couple of nice places for walks and with visiting Keulen and London and only visiting places there were I hadn’t been before.

16. See 27 new (to me) movies

I’ve watched:

Star Wars Episode 4 Star Wars Episode 5 Star Wars Episode 6 Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Arc Star Wars Epidsode 1 Star Wars Episode  2 Star Wars Episode  3 Predator I Predator II

Predators Jupiter Ascending Independence Day The Imitation Game The Jane Austen Bookclub Eastern Promises Edge of Tomorrow Mad Max I Mad Max II

A Beautiful Mind Apollo 13 Jurrasic World The Martian Serenity Inside Out The Maltese Falcon Mad Max: Fury Road Mr. Holmes Galaxy Quest

Some of these movies were complete crap (the original Mad Max for instance), but there were a lot I really liked. I think Eastern Promises, The Imitation Game, Serenity and Galaxy Quest were definitely some of my favourites.

17. Go driving the car 27 time (also known as getting serious about my driving license)

Although I didn’t go driving 27 times in total, I did get really serious about getting my driver’s license. I started driving lessons at the end of December. I went home on Monday to put in the request at the town hall and on Sunday I got my provisional license (saying I can drive alone)! I then drove home from my parent’s house to Ghent, in the dark, while getting lost. So, yaay!

18. Make a piece of furniture myself

I made a DIY Jar Lamp from scratch this year, of which I’m quite proud. I also got into more re-upholstering of lamps and gave myself a pretty desk lamp. I didn’t manage to make my own bench for our hallway (buying one at Ikea was cheaper/easier), but I still feel like making my own lamps is like making my own furniture. I’d like to do more home/decoration DIY’s in the future, although it’s not always easy making them on a budget.

19. Photograph more non-blog related things

In January I did the January Photo-a-day challenge and the July Bookish Photo Challenge this year, which was fun. I also tried snapping more random pictures with my phone and I tried being more active on Instagram. I’m still not one of those people who takes her camera everywhere, but I do enjoy making photos more. After reading Shoot! I also started to put more effort in my photography and I want to embrace the medium even more in 2016.

20. Blog more

I started well off with this one in January, but the next couple of months I didn’t had the time to blog a lot. In August I got more free time and I immediately started blogging more. September was the month with the most blog posts: 16 in total! The next couple of months I put out about 10 posts a month, which I consider a good amount. This month hasn’t been going well until now, but I’m sure I can put another four posts online by the end of the month. My goal was to post at least eight posts a month and for about half of the year I managed to do just that. The other half was so busy I stopped doing almost anything but school work, so yes, this is definitely a goal I reached.

22. Watch all the Star Wars movies (marathon style)

We didn’t really marathon the movies on one day, but we watched a movie a day for about a week. It was the first time I completely watched the three oldest movies and I really liked those. We also watched the three more recent instalments of the series and although I watched them when I was younger and liked them then, I didn’t really liked re-watching these episodes now. They weren’t very good and I don’t think we’ll be attempting watching those again soon. I’m also not sure I want to go see the new movie. Has anyone been?

24. Find a day planner that works for me

I made my first day planner at the beginning of 2015. I really liked learning about book binding and putting my own planner together. I really liked that first handmade planner, but it wasn’t completely what I wanted, so in September I started working on my 2016 planner. I designed all the pages again, put in some illustrations to add extra colour to my agenda and made a midori notebook styled cover. I’m really happy with this new planner, it has tons of space, although it’s a bit on the large side, and I really like using it.

25. Discover & start a new sport

I still wouldn’t call myself sportsmanlike, but I did try a couple of different things the past year. I did the 30 Day Shred (and was really impressed with myself, which seems quite silly now), I also started the Six Week Sixpack (but never finished it though) and I also started doing Yoga with Adriene. Getting these things integrated into my daily life on a regular basis is something for the next 365 days.

26. Go hiking (monthly would be cool)

I started good on this one and went hiking in Zeeland, Doeveren, Duivenbos and De Bourgoyen. After that good start I slipped up a bit, but we still went for serious walks in Keulen, Gent and London, so although not all of those walks were in nice forests like I imagined, I’m still happy we went on all of those walks. Next year I really need to get to the High Fens, I’ve been wanting to go there for ages and I still haven’t been.

Unfinished Challenges

These are the goals I didn’t manage to get to or finish in a way I found satisfying.

06. Find a job – Erm… I need to get more serious about this. Now that I can drive to places that aren’t accessible by bike of public transport and now that having a driver’s license isn’t a no-go on job interviews I’m running out of excuses.

07. Getting the number of unread books in my bookcase down (starting at: 27) – I believe the number of unread books on my shelf has almost doubled in the last year, even though I read quite a lot of books from my shelf. I was buying them faster than reading them, so this is a bit of a fail.

08. Make a vlog – I did film some try-our footage this year, but I never got round to making the actual vlog bit happen. I’ll be going to a workshop on vlogging in April though, so it should happen somewhere this year.

09. Do a 365 days project – This goal was just impossible to do this year, with all the school work. Almost as soon as I started this I had to quit. I tried making up for it by doing a 30 day challenge here and there, but that’s not the same.

11. Illustrate a (very) short story – Maybe I’ve should have started by making this goal “write a short story” or something. I wouldn’t know which story to illustrate otherwise. Maybe I’ll give this a retry in the next year though.

13. Blog 27 successive days – Ah, I tried this a couple of times (in August and September) and failed miserably. I think this can only work of you have enough content planned out before starting and although I had the plan, I never managed to write enough posts in advance to finish this challenge.

21. Make a short animation – I wanted to finish an animation I started in my first year of graphic design, but I never got to it. I’ve been through all the material I have for it and it seems so overwhelming to start that project again. I’m not sure I’ll ever finish that animation.

23. Play Magicka with the Boy – This started off quite well. We played a bit of Magicka and then switched to playing Hearthstone for a while, but we didn’t keep this up.

27. Dye my hair pink – I still really want to dye my hair pink, put it’s a bit pricey to do it at a hair salon, which was the main reason I didn’t get to this one this year. I’m also not sure which hair salon in Ghent to go to. I’ve visited numerous Facebook pages of salons, but I didn’t get the impression any of them would be able to give me a pastel pink look. I’ve contemplated doing it myself, but I’m scared I’ll end up with no hair. :p

I finished 18 of the 27 challenges I set myself this year, which isn’t bad, all things considered. I never managed to finish one of these lists, but that doesn’t keep me from making new ones every year. My next list will be up in a couple of days!

Have you ever attempted doing one of these birthday lists or bucket lists?