For me, 2017 was definitely not a year of running. I did a half marathon in January and then... nothing. A small flurry in May, when I thought I might be doing a local trail race, but that tailed off when things got serious on the house moving front. 

Recently though I've started again. I've watched a friend (EssexHebridean) do the couch to 5k and after eight short weeks of regular, consistent running (something I've never managed to do since I started in 2003), she is now running faster than I ever have, even at my fittest. 

I'm extremely impressed with her, and extremely unimpressed with myself. I know I get quicker if I run regularly - yet in thirteen years I think I've only ever done three runs in a single week a handful of times. Even when I was training for the marathon, I was more likely to do one run every fortnight than anything more regular (which explains my shoddy marathon times...). 

I like running, but I've never really pushed myself very hard. I go out for a run, and barely get above walking pace. There's nothing wrong with this of course, but I know I'm capable of more. 

Anyway, inspired by Robyn and other friends who have taken up running regularly, and by looking back at old race photographs and the fun I've had running with my sister, I decided to get back out there. And of course, I motivate myself best with a race... so we've entered a series of short trail races over near the new house (which we still aren't living in... yawn). The first one is the first weekend of February - just over two weeks away - and needless to say I am not remotely prepared. 

But I have been out. Before work, in the semi darkness, running round the park, trying not to slip on the ice. And early morning, in the gym, before anyone else is there, trying not to feel self conscious when the next person comes in. 

Not much, not fast, but regular. 

For now. We'll see how long it lasts... 

This year, I want to get a bit more proficient at identifying wildlife. I'm pretty good with birds, and can identify most of the common British birds by sight (but not by sound, except for the very obvious ones). 

My knowledge of trees is a little more ropey. I can identify the most common ones (oak, sycamore, beech, silver birch, cherry, elder, willow, hawthorne, holly, poplar etc) by either leaves, bark or other key features, but I am shockingly bad at identifying trees in winter. 

The other day I was walking across town - the sky was grey and nondescript and I fell to idly looking at the silhouettes of the trees.

They're surprisingly different (or maybe it's not too surprising...). Some have twigs that point upwards, some droop down. Some have many small twigs clustered together, while others are more sparse. The outlines are different too - some spread wide, others more compact. 

It seemed to me that the shape of the branches was so distinct that there was likely to be an online guide I could consult, so as I walked I took pictures of as many different types as I could see (which also helped to take my mind off my freezing fingers). 

However, it turns out I can't find what I was looking for online at all! The best I can find is an A-Z guide to native UK trees produced by the Woodland Trust. This does have winter pictures of each tree, but they're quite small, and you have to click through to each species in turn and then click through the pictures to find the winter one. 

The Dendrologist (a journal sadly no longer printed) has this handy winter twig identification guide, which doesn't really help with these photographs, but might if I go out collecting twigs instead. There is also perhaps a more useful dichotomous key from Virginia Tech Dendrology department, although it is obviously North American, so I am not sure how much the species differ. 

Of course, it's easier with leaves. Country Life magazine has a simple pictorial guide to the most common species, and the Forestry Commission has a tree name trail - pretty much exactly what I was looking for but using leaves rather than twig shapes. I'll make sure to come back to that in the summer. 

I'm pretty sure the answer is to consult a book. I'm also pretty sure that we have a tree identification book, locked deep in a box in the cellar somewhere. In the meantime, you might see me around town collecting sticks and doing bark rubbings. 

I found a tiny bit of beeswax in a drawer under the sink, leftover from a previous attempt at making my own soap. I'm not going to be making soap again until we've moved, but I haven't made toiletries of any kind for a while, and fancied having a go at my own lip balm. 

Surprisingly, I've not made lip balm before. It's pretty straightforward. I had a quick read of these instructions, and then didn't really follow them at all. 

The key, it seems, is to mix oils that are solid at room temperature with those that are liquid. I'm sure there are numerous recipes out there that will tell you the 'right' amount, but I confess I just guessed and used what I had in the cupboard. 

So mine contains that little bit of beeswax, a splash of coconut oil (again left over from soap making) and a bit of the olive oil we use for cooking. I also added some lipstick that I found lying around - a cheap one I picked up goodness knows when, that is far too dark for me, and barely stays on for five minutes. 

Everything got melted and stirred together in a glass bowl over a pan of boiling water, and then I poured it into these little tins that I've had lying around for literally years, waiting for a job. 

I hadn't realised that both tins had tiny holes where the hinges fit, and so I ended up with lip balm spilled all over the chopping board. Oops. 

Never mind, it's not toxic, so I scraped it off, melted it down, and added it in a tiny bit at a time while it set. 

The verdict? Perfectly acceptable. With hindsight I should have used the whole of the lipstick - I'm not going to be using it for anything else, and the colour is barely noticeable in the lip balm. I might also have used a little more olive oil, although I'm not certain about that - it's quite solid but does soften with the heat of your finger, and you wouldn't want it too soft.

I've missed making things, and am really looking forward to experimenting a bit more once we move.  

Last week, in the not-quite-real time between the start of the new year and the return to work, I met a friend at Idle Valley nature reserve. 

We've met there before, as it's roughly half way between my house and his. There are lakes, and a lot of birds, and (most importantly) a cafe. 

On this day it was rather soggy, and we waited for a while in the cafe for the rain to ease off. They have several pairs of binoculars and a telescope that you can try out, and we had a jolly time watching the flocks of birds rise from the lake then drop back down, then rise and circle each other in an elaborate dance. 

Eventually the rain eased enough for us to brave a walk around the lake. 

Wandering round the reserve, I was reminded of my intention to visit all the nature reserves run by my local Sheffield and Rotherham Wildlife Trust. I'd finally made it to number eight back in October, but there were still four to go. I'd very much like to visit them all before we move miles away into the countryside with other exciting places to explore. 

So when the sun shone last weekend, I took myself off to Greno Woods - reserve number nine on my list. 

It was rather nippy, and also gave me a nice excuse to wear my wellies, which don't get nearly as much use as I'd like. 

The sun shone through the trees and picked out the vivid green of the holly. It was quite magical. 

I wasn't really following a footpath, just wandering about wherever my fancy took me, and eventually I found myself out of the woods.

I sat for a while on a bench looking at the view, and would have sat for longer, but it was so cold I feared I might seize up if I stayed still for too long, so back into the woods I went. 

After a couple of hours of wandering, I was rather peckish and in need of lunch. Sadly, having paid no attention to which direction I was going in, I was thoroughly lost, and it took rather a lot more wandering to find myself again, by which time I was quite chilly and a teensy bit grumpy. 

I did make it home eventually though, to a well deserved bowl of soup. 

Just three reserves left to go now (I think). I might just make it before we go after all... 

On Thursday between Christmas and new year, the sun was shining and I took myself off for a nice long wander through the woods. 

This path snakes ever so slightly uphill for a few miles, and as the trees thinned out, it got colder and the ground was covered with an increasing amount of snow. 

Eventually I reached the top of the hill, and stopped to drink my flask of hot chocolate. I was warm from climbing the hill, but the air was freezing, and as I turned the corner and left the trees behind me, the wind blew across the exposed road. 

I'll miss this route when we move. It's my ten mile running route (or at least it was, back when I was capable of running for ten miles...). On this occasion though the aim was scenery, and, after seven miles of walking I decided I didn't need to trek the last three miles through the suburban streets so I hopped on a bus.

The very next day I found myself doing the first part of the same walk with a friend, and this time all of it was in the snow. 

It's funny how much difference the snow can make to how the landscape feels. 

On this occasion we just walked for a couple of miles, then stopped for lunch at a cafe (along with half of the rest of the city population, it seemed). 

It's felt good to be out and about in the winter weather. Not the grey, rainy, gloomy weather (not all the time anyway), but give me a bright sky or a bit of snow and I'm itching to be outside. I can see a lot more being outside in my future... 

Happy new year! 

Each year I seem to start off thinking I won't go back over all my old blog posts, but that's always what I end up doing anyway. To start off, here are some previous posts

Looking back on 2016 - the year we started to decorate, and continued to decorate, and still didn't move
Looking back on 2015 - the year we started packing ready to move
Looking back on 2014 - a year of running and gardening

I started my review this time last year by laughing at how I'd thought we'd move house in the first half of 2016. I ended it by saying we'd definitely move in the first half of 2017. And now, here we are, 2018, still in the same old house... but at least there have been estate agents and solicitors and money changing hands and (dare I say it) we hope to move in the next few weeks...

So, without further ado - 2017. 

After starting with a review of 2016, I launched myself into Uber Frugal January, with posts about food, travel, and getting value for money. We went out and about quite a bit, and ended the month with a DIY update. 

In February, I did a round up of Uber Frugal January (I'm doing it again this year so I must make some time to write about it again). I got enthused about cycling before work, and did a catch up of the reading I'd done over the last few months. 

I started March with a 32 mile bike ride, in preparation for my 62 mile race. My weekends were filled with DIY, yet more cycling, and a little trip to York with some friends. I did some more DIY (of course), mended these socks (that I've had to mend twice since) and finally got out into the garden after the winter. We spent quite a bit of time looking round other people's houses, and I planned an epic cycling adventure after tonsillitis scuppered my 62 mile race. 

In April, my epic cycling adventure happened, and I spent a happy (if windy) two days cycling over the Trans Pennine Trail to see my sister. 

We then spent a week in Northumbria (where I did not even look at a bicycle, let alone get on one). 

In May, the garden started flowering, I did a little bit more reading, and spent a lot of time in the countryside, hiding from the appalling, half decorated mess that was our house. Surprisingly, there are no DIY posts from this time - odd as it felt like DIY occupied our entire lives. 

There are no posts in June. June was a month of chaos as we decorated, tidied, cleaned - and found a house we adored and put an offer in. At the start of July I despaired that it would ever get finished. But it did, and after marvelling at how pretty our current house and garden looked, by the 20th we had found a buyer, ditched the house we originally wanted to buy, and put an offer in on a second. 

Finally we were able to have a normal weekend while we waited for our buyers to sell their house. 

In August, I made jam, our buyers sold their house, and our offer on our second house was rejected. After yet more wandering, we finally found the place we will hopefully call home, and the legal and financial shenanigans began. 

I looked back on the changes we'd made to our house, and acquired a big load of fruit which I turned into jam. I ended the month with an evening wander out in the peak district. 

In September we got uncharacteristically adventurous and hopped on a plane to visit our friends in Berlin. I reflected on August in the garden, spent a lot of time in the woods as they turned slowly more autumnal, and we had a little day trip to Bakewell. 

In October, I finally finished one of the socks I'd started months before. We went on a little trip to the seaside, I cycled along the canal with a group of other women and visited some wildlife trust reserves - and I mended those pesky socks that I'd already mended earlier in the year. 

In November, I marvelled at there still being flowers in the garden, and drummed my fingers impatiently as we were still waiting for our mortgage offer three months after applying. Finally, it arrived, and for a day it seemed things would move quickly... but then our buyer had to put their house back on the market and we all had to settle back into endless waiting again. I visited my sister and her new dog in a bid to think about something cheerful. 

Fortunately, by the start of December, our buyers had found a new buyer (hooray!) and we visited our new house again, this time with a heating engineer in tow. Things were rather grey and muddy, and I tried not to be concerned about the amount of grass and mud we are buying... 

Back at our current home, it snowed (a tiny bit) and we spent a lot of time sitting in cafes. 

I ended the blogging year with a Christmas day wander and some knitting. 

It's good to look back. Of course, I don't record everything here, mostly only the more picturesque things that involve cake, scenery and knitting. It's been a rather trying year in real life and when that happens it's sometimes easy to forget that there have been cheerful things too. We finally sold our house! I cycled all the way to the other side of the country! And in amidst all the chaos there were still flowers, knitting, cakes and wanderings. Not a bad year.

Looking back though, one thing that was missing is running. I did a half marathon in January with my sister (which I seemingly didn't write about here) and then... nothing. For a while cycling took over, and then house nonsense has eaten up the rest of the year. I've started running again in the last couple of weeks and goodness me I've missed it. Look out for more running from me in 2018...