Well, here it is...the blog post that to some degree scares the crap out of me! Hahaha...
Why you may ask? Well, as you all know, I don't like to fail when it comes to my personal goals and so this blog post scares me because I feel like I have to live up to everything I write.
Such is why I call them my "hopes".
However, it motivates me because not only are they things I don't want to fail at...I don't want to let my dear blog readers down by not keeping up with them.
I mean seriously, how lame would I be to give you my update at the end of the year and every single one be like, "well, I tried on this one, but yeah it just didn't happen."
And then, instead of the (probably only) 2 loyal readers I have ( ;0) thanks Mom and Heather), I would have none!
I refuse to allow that to happen.
So, here they are, my 2012 Hopes.
*I've listed the ones that aren't really capable of being measured first...because let's face it. These will always be on my hopes list, and are things I will continue to strive to make better.
~ I want to continue working on being the best wife, “maschia” to the ducks, daughter, sister, granddaughter, aunt, friend, etc as I can be. There’s always room for improvement ;0)
~ I want to continue to work/focus on my marriage. Every relationship in our lives requires work for it to continue to progress. The most important relationship to me, aside from my relationship with God, is my relationship with my husband. He and I share our lives together, now and forever, and in order for our life together to maintain it's yee-ness (I'll explain yee at another point if you don't understand this terminology) we will always have to work on it. Go Team Elliott!
~ I would like to continue working on my faith and my relationship with God. It’s very easy to become overwhelmed and let the stresses of life overcome and overshadow the things that we really need to focus on. But if we make it a point to grow in our relationship with God we are better equipped to handle those life stressors. It doesn't mean we won't have frustrations and trials, it just means we'll have the best resource (God) available to us to help us through those rought patches.
~ I am going to work on not letting other peoples issues become my own. I feel like there are certain situations in my life that I could have easily been sucked into the middle of, when in all honesty, it doesn’t have to do with me. I’m not one of the key players in the situation, and I’ve tried very hard to not let the issues of those close to me, that are key players in the situation, become my issues. It’s difficult…because when it comes to those I love, I want to go to battle for them, but I can’t. I just can’t. And I can’t let their issues become mine, and I can’t let their issues eat at me. It’s not healthy for me, and it drags down those around me.
~ I want to increase my random acts of encouragement. I know this was on my hopes list from last year…but I focused on some of my other hopes more than I did this one. So here it is again. I want to do at least one random act of encouragement a month. And I fully understand how odd that seems, like I'm planning out a random act of kindness. But here's where the randomness comes in: I will intentionally, once a month, seek some quiet time with God and ask him to put someone on my heart that I can help encourage. It may not be random from God's point of view, because he knows what's going on with that specific person...but I don't. All I know is that God loves that person in my life so much that He's showing them His love and encouragement through the words I have to say to them.
~ I want to donate my time or resources to a local organization at least once a month. Most likely (knowing me and how busy our calendar can get and how fast it fills up) it will more than likely be resources that are donated.
I made a conscious effort to go through my closets and drawers after Christmas, I tried on EVERYTHING…if I hadn’t worn it in a while, if I knew I really would never wear it, or if I didn’t LOVE the way it looked on me (even if it fit) I got rid of it. There’s no reason to have clothes in my closet that I’m never going to wear and that I don’t feel good or confident in. The original plan was to save it for our garage sale in May…but that’s 4 months away, which means it will be sitting in my basement for 4 months, UGH! Then I thought I’d take it to Goodwill…then I thought, I wonder if there’s a local clothing pantry at a church or something???? I found one in Noblesville and will be dropping off a box of clothes in the next few days. I don’t need the money for the clothes and I’d rather someone who truly needs them have them.
~ I want to be better this year at doing Menu plans. Last year started off good and trailed off there toward the end, with no menu planning being done the last few months. Chris and I are very good about budgeting, but food is our weakness and we’re very easily talked into forgoing all that’s in our fridge to go out to eat. This isn’t always a bad thing, but we just need to discipline ourselves to use more of our “go out to eat” money for grocery money. Since I get home around 3pm every day it’s easier to make food at home...not like when we both got home around 6 and neither of us wanted to spend an hour in the kitchen making something, when we were starving right then and there. How I plan to get myself in this discipline, I don’t know (suggestions welcome), but I definitely need to do so.
~ So last year my goal was to finish Scrapping 2010 before starting on 2011…granted I strayed a smidge from this as I did start on 2011 before completely finishing 2010…but I did keep my word and finished 2010 instead of just dropping it completely once I started 2011. SO…this year I have a new Scrapbooking goal. I want to finish 2011, get at least half of 2012 done, and get a little bit of 2009 done too…YIKES! That’s a big goal. But I do have a plan for getting this done. Each month I plan to get 1-2 months from 2011 scrapped. Some months had more going on than others, so if I encounter a long month to scrap…I’ll just do it. If the next couple months are small scrap sections then I’ll do both. I already have January and February of 2011 scrapped, so I’m currently a smidge ahead of the game (well, as far as 2011 goes) so I should be able to finish 2011 earlier in the year than December 30th ;0) and get more than 2 months of 2012 done by the time 2013 is here. Depending on how this goes, I may even up this monthly goal to include the month prior to’s scrapping, meaning in February I’ll work on January from 2012 as well as a month or two of 2011. This would obviously make it easier to get caught up but may be a little over zealous. My scrap retreats could be time focused on 2009. I do have some stuff scrapped from then already, but at the moment I don’t know how much is done and how much I have left, so who knows how long it will take to catch up on it, but at least I’ll be working on things that are sitting in a bag in the closet just screaming to be put in an album. Wish me luck…this is I think the biggest measurable challenge I’ve given myself.
~ Last year my Blogging hope was to blog once a week…go ahead and chuckle, it is humorous. This year my hope is to simply blog…just kidding ;0). I am going to be much more manageable with my hope for blogging this year and say at least twice a month. I can do that, right? Once every two weeks…that’s manageable, isn’t it? YES…yes it is! I can do it.
Well, that's all I've got for you right now. Wish me luck, and feel free to ask where my hopes are at periodically throughout the year.
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