I learned this many years ago from my first love, and she, I suspect, from her mother. It’s a simple and fun thing that’s always better with friends and family. In the end everyone will have a collage to help them to not loose sight of their dreams through the coming year.

**Step one:**Gather up all the magazines in your house. If you don’t have many / any get everyone who will be participating down to your local news-stand and have them all grab some magazine that reflect their interests in life.

Step two: You’ll need scissors, glue (preferably glue sticks), and something to mount your collages on. You can cut up cardboard boxes, or go to your local crafts store for some paperboard, or foam-core if you want to get fancy. I think paperboard is probably best because it’s thin enough to stick a push-pin through to mount it to your wall when you’re done.

Step three: About half an hour before midnight stick all the magazines in a communal pile, and make sure everyone has scissors. Start thinking about all the things you want to bring into your life next year. They can be mundane, spiritual, health, anything. Now find pictures in the magazines than represent these ideas to you and cut them out. When you’re ready start sticking them to your board. I seem to remember it taking about an hour and a half, maybe a little more, but it’s a wonderful way to usher in the new year, with hopes and dreams in your heart. Making your collages always ends up being a great social activity. Everyone’s talking about what each other wants in the new year, and how to get there, or why they didn’t get there this year, and those discussions engender lots of interesting tangential ones. It’s a blast.

Everyone gets to see everyone else’s collage, but no-one has to explain what each item on their collage means if they don’t want to. Sometimes the images have very personal meanings.

Step four: Take your collage and hang/place it somewhere where you’ll look at it every day for the coming year: bedroom, bathroom, desk, wherever. Your collage will help keep you on track towards what you really want in your life, and help keep some of those things from falling by the wayside. This is just as important as the making of it.

Let me know how it goes if you try it out this New Year’s Eve.