New Year, New Goals

Resolutions is a popular word around the new year. Me? I’m more of a goal setter. I write goals in my job for students we work with and a few of the requirements are that they are 1) specific 2) measurable 3) attainable. Let me break it down for you. Let’s say someone has a resolution for 2017 for “drinking more water.” I’m sure you’ve heard this one. Well, what’s more? A better thing would be to add a specific. ‘I’ll drink at least 80 ounces of water a day’ or ‘I’ll drink at least one cup (8 ounces) of water first thing each morning.’ This makes it more specific AND measurable. You can count how many ounces of water you drink in a day or whether you drank a cup first thing in the AM. Finally, it’s attainable. You CAN do this. It’s not “I’ll lose 20 pounds in 2 weeks.” That’s probably not going to happen. Now that you know how to write a Psychologist-approved goal (ha!) I’m going to share a few of mine with you all. I add to mine throughout the year and come up with new ones, so this is just a starting point for me.

First, I want to share our holiday cards! We went with a New Years card because we were a little last minute with them and it is something EVERYone celebrates- whether they may want to or not. I personally LOVE the new year.  We of course had to include our sweet rescue puppy, Maddie in our photo. Isn’t she the sweetest? We utilized Minted to design our cards. We used them for our save the dates and wedding website and will be using them for invitations, too. It is SO easy and they are great to work with. I love the site and how they support so many small artists. Plus, its affordable and they get it done FAST. We had these cards in just a few days. We also did custom stamps because.. why not? One less errand to run (I realllllyyy do not like the Post Office) and they are so cute. It adds such a fun little bit of personalization. They also have an amazing feature where you can put all your addresses in their address book and then you get all your envelopes printed FOR FREE. Hello time saver and best thing ever not to have to write all those out. Plus, it saves them for you for future reference. Yes, please and thank you. Whether you need invitations, cards, or even art and decor for your home, definitely check them out!

Okaaaay on to a few #GOALS:

• Complete two Whole 30s before my wedding. The first will be in January and will begin when the official Whole 30 starts on the 2nd. Follow along and check out all my recipes I’ve posted using my Whole 30 tag. I’ll be creating more and doing weekly check ins. Not only is this one going to be about feeling better, but I’m about to kick it in gear for my wedding prep, so I’m going to be pretty strict on it and just because it’s Whole 30 approved, I won’t be eating it all the time. For example, I’m not going to eat compliant bacon every other day like I usually do.
• Create a budget with my fiance and have monthly checkins to help us stick to it and reevaluate as needed. #grownups
• Buy a new Mac computer (MUCH needed).
• Take a photography class (whether it will be online or in person is TBD).
• Pay off all $ spent on cc’s at the end of each month.

A few other ideas that aren’t yet goals (because they don’t meet the criteria!) and are mostly blog related: include more beauty and home decor on the blog, do an apartment tour, grow my Pinterest and use it more for my blog traffic, continue to put myself out there & get out of my comfort zone to meet other bloggers & attend more events, make a blog content calendar to plan out my posts more, donate a % of blog profits to a charity (likely for rescue dogs and children with Autism), get over my fear of doing videos.

I would love to know some of your goals for inspiration. PS I updated our coffee table with the cute acrylic tray and new accessories pictured in the photo at the top of the post. I wanted to get all the magazines cleared off and leave more space by organizing everything with a tray. I love it! I’ve linked all the fun items below:

Happiest of new years to you and yours! Xo

Thank you to Minted for providing us our holiday cards. All opinions are of course, my own.