My Totally Attainable Goals for 2013

Yep, just gave myself a pep talk in the title.

I'm almost afraid to write this post for the following reasons:

a) my goals will be out there in the internet universe and thus I will held accountable for all of them forever and ever

b) I sort of forgot about my goals from last year and don't want a repeat of saying I'll do a bunch of stuff and then not doing said stuff

 

(I'm so going to write an update post on my mini-goals from last year.)(Hopefully before the end of 2013 January, m'kay?)

 

So here's what I'm going to try this year. I'm gonna choose three goals, each from a different area of my life.

 

Then, I'm going to make a list of 50 40 30 20 or so "challenges" that I would like to tackle before the end of the year. Some of them will be hard, some of them will be scary, and some of them will be super easy so I can cross them off the list right away and feel like I'm doing a good job. ;)

The Home Goal

 

My only home goal this year is to o-r-g-a-n-i-z-e. I don't know how many times over the holidays I had to hurl myself across the room screaming NOOOOOOOO when a guest was about to open a drawer, cupboard, or closet. I've been hiding my hoarding for too long. I will, I WILL clean out every closet, every drawer, every dresser, every cupboard, every everything until my house is completely snoop-worthy. {I just made that up. It means that if someone came over and snooped in the bathroom drawer, I wouldn't have twelve toothbrushes in varying shades of pink and in varying degrees of crustiness crammed in there amongst all of the pairs of eyeglasses I've ever owned since I was fourteen.}

I'll be sharing my progress along the way, only because I know that deep-down you are totally a snooper and really want to see what lies behind all of my closet doors everyone needs a little bit of organization inspiration. ;) 

The Personal Goal

My personal goal this year is to take more pictures of my family. This includes me actually being in some of the photos, and it also includes printing them and putting them in REAL photo albums.

This picture is ridiculous.

Since I bought my DSLR two years ago, I've printed about five pictures. FIVE! And three of them were for my mom. I also have ten thousand pictures of flowers from my garden this summer, but only like, ten from Cooper's first Christmas. How sad is that!?!?!

 

I need to get out of the frame of mind that each picture needs to be "perfect" or "professional-looking". I'm sure when I'm eighty years old I won't care if there are shadows under people's noses or if the white balance is off a bit in a photo. I'll just want to see pictures of the Coopster with smooshed cheerios in his hair and drool running down his chin. (He makes that look pretty adorable I must say.)

 

The Blog Goal

 

My goal for the blog is not to gain more followers or to get more pins from my projects or to gain more sponsors. It's to be more consistent in replying to YOUR comments. I struggle with this one. Big time. I'm sure you can relate to this, but ever since I started this blog I've either been working full-time or looking after a baby. I find it difficult as it is to scramble together enough minutes to put together a half-decent post. So by the time I'm done writing the post and hit 'publish', I feel guilty that I haven't walked the dogs yet, or washed the dishes, or made dinner, or played with Mini-Coop. Later in the day I'll check my iPhone to see if there are any comments to moderate. If there are, I do a little happy dance inside, think of a cute reply in my head, and then make a mental note to go back later and actually write the reply. Except I never seem to have time to. Booooo, me.

There are times when I do go back and write a reply to every single comment in a post, but it's usually two weeks after the comments were written and I know that nobody will ever see them because I waited too darn long. 

 

So. You are my friends. And I want to be a better friend by taking the time to write YOU back when we were so lovely as to write ME in the first place.

 

P.S. Did you know that if you have your email address on your profile page or if you leave an email address in your comment it makes it so much easier to reply? For realz.
 

 

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Now, the fun part.

 

My Challenges for 2013:

 

1. Take a family vacation.  

 

2. Learn Photoshop and/or Lightroom better by taking an online or in-person course or workshop.

 

3. Wear pink lipstick out of the house on a weekday.

 

4. Choose a runner for the stairs already.

 

5. Teach the Coopster better sleep habits, ummm, like how to self-soothe. Apparently he likes to wake up every hour now to get cuddles.

 

6. Eat at a sushi restaurant even though it makes me queasy just thinking about it. 

 

7. Order some fabric with color (gasp!) and make some new cushions for the living room.

 

8. Go fishing. Of course I would let the fishies go.

 

9. Read ten books. From the library.       

 

10. Knit one thing. Maybe a scarf. Maybe a baby scarf because they are smaller.

 

11. Give away 10 small gifts to unsuspecting peeps just for the fun of it.

 

12. Help Alex finish the basement.

 

13. Take Cooper for swimming lessons even though being in a bathing suit in front of strangers is kind of horrifying.

 

14. Get braces. Again. Yuck, blech, boooooooooo.

 

15. Do a 1000 piece puzzle. Wow, I'm a nerd.

 

16. Make a (wannabe) real photography website. Eeek. That one is scary.

 

17. Do some family portrait sessions and charge a wee bit of money for them. Eeek! That one is super scary too.

 

18. Cook a recipe from the Thai cookbook that I bought two years ago.

 

19. Bake some cinnamon buns.

 

20. Adopt a baby. Okay so this one doesn't really count because we've been trying to do this for the last four years. But maybe 2013 will be the year it goes down!

 

 

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What's your #1 goal for 2013? If it's to do a puzzle then we're totally besties.