I'm going to be honest with you, I'm not so uber excited to see my progress for the 2012 Hopes. I'm pretty sure I didn't quite fulfill any of them 100%...but I do feel like there was quite a few things that happened this year that may have kept me from hitting the mark on all my Hopes, but were most definitely worth it. I'll list them after the update.
*Updates will be in blue ;0)
Holly's 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'm going to do an update on all of the above in one paragraph, because as said before, they're not really measurable. As always I feel like there are areas for improvement, but all in all, I think this year I became closer to my husband and to God. As well as many other family members and friends.
~ 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.
~ This just makes me giggle...because to be perfectly honest, this specific hope is in relation to a specific situation that is continually happening. I've stayed out of the middle of it, so as far as that goes, I've hit the mark on this one...but it is a struggle. I think this is something I'll always have to work on. And thankfully I have wonderful family and friends who are aware of the situation and who can support me and help me to maintain my stance.
~ 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 did really well at this, at the beginning of the year. I was very purposeful for the first months about spending time in prayer about who I could encourage. But life happened, and that just kind of fell off. There are times that I encouraged someone without realizing in the moment that I had done so. So I'm gonna consider this a win. I think I put too much pressure on myself for this one at the beginning. Honestly, encouragement isn't something you can force.
~ 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.
~ This worked out the first few months and then life happened and things got crazy (as they always do). I still would like to be able to donate more of my time and energy to helping others. But I think I need to do it as it comes as opposed to forcing it to happen.
~ 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.
~ 2011 repeated itself here. I do think it was a smidge better, but not a whole lot. I think I need to come up with a list of things we love, and maybe a few new things each month, and just rotate meals. I DREAD menu planning for the simple fact that I want to make things we'll like, but I don't want to eat the same things all the time. We've tried so many new things over the past two years that I really feel that there should be enough varieties of recipes that I should be able to come up with a list to go off of.
~ 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.
~ This is the easiest hope to update, because it's the most measurable. I didn't meet this goal...but I feel like I could have if other things hadn't come in to play. Let me explain...
I got through August of 2011 scrapped and May of 2012 scrapped, which that in and of itself is HUGE, in comparison to years before. On top of that I started Scrapping4Adoption. I finished a 20 page album for a friend and have done 25 pages on another friends album for Scrapping4Adoption. I'm so happy to be able to do this to raise money to help with our adoption, and I LOVE putting an album together for a friend, but the truth is that doing these albums did take some time away that I would have worked on mine. So I don't count this against my Hope...and I honestly feel like this was a pretty big win for the year.
~ 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.
~ 7/12 months I did 2 posts...not great, but not so bad, right?
So there you have it...
I think the number one thing that happened this year that was HUGE in our lives and had the most impact in my available time was starting the Adoption process. Paperwork was my life over my Summer Break this year. I feel like it's a good enough excuse for slacking a bit ;0)
~ I want to continue working on being the best wife, “maschia” to the ducks, daughter, sister, granddaughter, aunt, friend, etc as I can be. AND hopefully, to be the best Mommy I can be. ;0)
~ I want to continue to work/focus on my marriage. Go Team Elliott!
~ I would like to continue working on my faith and my relationship with God.
~ I am going to continue to work on not letting other peoples issues become my own.
~ This year I really want to focus on my health. I'm 32 years old, and as far as I'm concerned, I'm pretty healthy for someone living with CF...but I know there are ways that I can tend to slack with my health. I don't exercise, I don't always take my enzymes, I'm not always good about checking my blood sugar and taking insulin. So I really, REALLY want to make these things a HUGE priority this year. I don't have a plan for the exercising right now...mainly just that I need to actually do something (even if it's just 10 minutes 3 times a week).
~ I want to work on my menu planning and more specifically, putting together the list of recipes we LOVE. I think this will really help me with being more organized with my menu planning and maybe I won't dread doing it so much.
~ I'm going big again for my Scrapbooking goal this year. I want to finish 2011, 2012, stay up to date with 2013 and work some on 2009 (or just older stuff in general). This year I did take some time to go through all of the things I have in tubs/boxes/bins from years ago that need scrapped and I got them all organized. This will help as I move forward with catching up on these things because I know just how much I have to scrap from each year. Some years it's a little, and some years it's alot...but either way I think it will make things more manageable. I also want to finish the 2 albums I have for Scrapping4Adoption by the end of January. Woo...here we go.
~ My Blogging hope is to blog at least twice a month...baby steps.
Feel free to check in with me as the year progresses.
