2012: The List

As fast as this year started, it ended just as fast! After getting engaged and completing graduate school last year, everything just sped up from there and I have yet to really catch my breath! From wedding planning to relaunching my business to amazing workshops galore to traveling all over the world to getting married (twice to the same person!) to being all over the news to buying our first home and moving our life to a completely new place to adopting a second puppy to settling in our home and having out first real Christmas tree….it is safe to say, this year has been a doozy. From the onset, I claimed it would be the craziest and best year of my life, and that it was! But, I’m pretty confident the best is yet to come!

Don’t get me wrong, I feel so beyond blessed and thankful for the countless wonderful moments in my life over the past year, but I also know that the future holds amazing things! The best is truly yet to come. A full happy family, fulfilling careers, success, a full spread in Martha Stewart Weddings (A girl can dream!), good health, personal growth, and more love than we know what to do with! Our dreams and goals are within reach if we are willing to take the risks and do the work!

So, for the past few years, in honor of growth and living my life to the best of my abilities, I make the list. I take some time to really think about where I am and where I am headed, personally and professionally. I think about what I want to really accomplish, I think about what I want to make better, I think about what new things I want to experience, I think about what old things I might need to eliminate, I think about how I can work towards making my life the best I can. From all the little goals I want to tackle and check off my list in the new year to those lofty 5 year plan goals I want to start getting in gear to work towards in the next few years. These are not resolutions. These are goals, ideas, and plans. The list is where the work starts to reaching all our dreams and goals, to becoming a better person, to creating a more enriched life.

2012: The List

• Read more! For pleasure, for business, for growth. (Start a reading before bed routine.)
• Be more adventurous in cooking homemade meals. (Eat out less!)
• Create a regular cleaning routine for the house. (It’s a lot harder to keep up with when you go from a 2 bedroom apartment to a 5 bedroom house!)
• Create a consistent blogging work flow. (Picking a day a week to dedicate to blogging for the week, this seems to work the best for me.)
• Maintain organized book keeping and records for the new year. (Tracking expenses and staying on top of it.)
• Book my set goal amount of weddings for 2012. (and then roll right into 2013, with even more!)
• Blog submissions. (Getting my work out there and submitting to blogs.)
• Quiet time before bed. (Set aside a small amount of time before going to bed every night with no phones, no laptops, no ipads. Just being present and quiet.)
• Keep up and follow through with my health routine. (Regular vitamins, being vigilant about not accidentally ingesting gluten, finding a new gym near our home, and for the doggies’ health, taking them on regular walks again.)
• Create a financial plan for our future. (Personally and professionally. Investing in my business. Paying things off. Saving for our future. All of it.)
• Set financial goals for the future. (Where we want to be in 5 years, 10 years, and so on.)
• Date nights! Regularly. (In the midst of our crazy year, these sort of fell by the wayside and it is time to bring them back!)
• Document our life, more! (I say this every year and every year, I work at it a little more, but I always hope to be better at it. Though, I must admit having an iPhone definitely helps….do Instagrams count as documenting our lives?)
• Create and maintain a morning routine (and in turn, a sleep routine.) Getting sufficient amounts of sleep, waking at a consistent time, and having productive mornings.
• Make! Make things because I want to and I love it.
• Collaborate! Work with friends and colleagues to be creative and create.
• Connect! Make time to connect with others, from colleagues and friends to family and my own spouse.
• Push myself out of my comfort zone and towards great things.
• Dream! Always.

I am sure more will be added to my list over the next few days or even months, but this is where I am starting for now. What would be on your list?