Farewell, 2012! Bring in the New Year!

Farewell, 2012! It's been a good one! The Pineneedle Collective has had a pretty amazing year. As I only started blogging properly last December (only one year ago), it's crazy to see how much this little space has grown in 2012, particularly as I also started commuting 4 hours a day to university at the same time! One of the highlights of blogging for me this year was that I was able to "meet" so many lovely people, either in the blogging community or those who are just readers. You've been nothing short of amazing. I'm constantly amazed by the thoughtful comments you leave, pictures you draw me and intelligent thoughts you leave in relation to my science posts! And even if you haven't left me any comments or sent me messages (goodness knows there's so many blogs that I silently creep on), it's awesome to know that there's so many of you reading and appreciating what I have to say. Thank you from the bottom of my heart. Here's some of my blog highlights from the past year! My DIY Valentines tights - with more than 50000 pageviews, this was a post which I had the most awesome feedback on, and have subsequently seen popping up all over the internet! It is amazing to know they've inspired so many people! Dying my hair pink, lilac and blue... and (accidentally) green... Learning how to make my own dresses and then subsequently making a whole heap from anything I could find, including pillowcases and tablecloths. Starting a love-affair with wigs in this post (may have also been a consequence of attempting to maintain my bright pink hair and subsequently destroying it...) Introducing my science alter-ego in this post and beginning to add a scientific fact to each  outfit post! This is the thing I'm most proud of in 2012, especially as it's helped me to discover other fashionable science bloggers and the fact that I have a whole bunch of intelligent blog readers! I'm inspired by the feedback I get on my science posts, especially the few messages I've received where someone's told me they want to do science because of my blog! I aspire to be a Brain Cox-esque science communicator one day, so it's been a very modest, but good start. This outfit (which I named Crouching Tiger, Hidden Lion) is my favourite of 2012. I'm  pretty proud of it. And just this month, opening my own store! This is an idea I'd been toying with for months and I finally did it! And I've even made some sales, so I've been pretty chuffed with that :) And that brings us to last night. I wanted to share with you all some shots I took last night with my boyfriend's little brother (hi Johnson!) who has just started getting interested in photography. I wanted to show him how to do "long exposure" shots and this is what we came up with! I felt like they were quite appropriate photos for bringing in the new years, and so this is how I'm ending the post. Happy New Years, everyone! I attempted to write "Pineneedle" in the one below, but failed pretty badly. It kind of looks like it says Pineneedle, right?  And because Johnson is also a 13 year old boy, I was obliged to do one that said "Batman". Hahaha. Hope you all have a wonderful New Years and that 2013 is full of learning, love, laughter and good things. I'm very excited (and nervous!) for 2013. Did I mention that I'm going to Japan in 27 days?? And then moving out of home?! I will have one last post tomorrow showing off a New Year's countdown outfit!