My Blog Goals for the New Year

I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday season!  Today was my first day back to a normal routine after having a house full of people.  We had a couple fewer people at Christmas than we did at Thanksgiving, but the average age of the kids was much younger, so it seemed crazier.  As of this morning, my kindergartener is back at school and my hubby back at work.  The house seemed so quiet with just my 3-year-old at home.  I guess the quiet gave me a little while to think about goals for this blog for the next year.

Since I only started this blog a few months ago, my goals aren’t too detailed.  Basically I need to work on everything, but having at least a couple of months under my belt has helped me come up with a few biggies that I am going to focus on.

Get Organized and Start Scheduling

Life with 2 young children and a husband that travels extensively is crazy!  That’s nothing new for us, but trying to also squeeze in time for this little blog of mine is new.  I realized very quickly how challenging this was going to be, but I’m only just now sitting down to figure out a game plan on how to manage it.  I am setting aside some time in the next few days to develop a general calendar for myself that will work with my family’s schedule.  My husband is really great about taking charge of the kids and household duties when he’s home, so it would make sense to focus my time on the blog and my projects on the nights and the weekends when he’s here.  The problem is that if I spend too much time working when I have him around then I almost never get to spend quality time with him.  (By the way, one of his personal goals is to try to be home more.)  I know a lot of bloggers that take on much more than this, so it can be done.  

I also plan to get organized by having a monthly editorial calendar.  My hope is that this will allow me to plan my general calendar a little better.  If I know what I am going to blog about at least a month in advance I can find time in my general schedule to get it all done.

Set Realistic Timelines for Projects

It seems the catch phrase of the new year has been “swallow the frog.”  Over the last few days I have heard so many bloggers talk about how one of their goals for the year is to tackle the things they want to do least or find the most difficult.  For me, my “frog” of almost any project is actually finishing it.  I can complete 99.9% of a project, but somehow that last .1% is what is holding me up from finishing.  I can get caught up on the final details, or I’m just so sick of working on it that it’s just too much to do that last little bit.  In order to make my monthly editorial calendar work I need to set a finish date on each of my projects.  This will force me to get through any little hiccups that almost always accompany a DIY or design project and keep things moving so I can stay on schedule.  

Begin a Weekly Series

I’m throwing around some ideas right now on a regular weekly blog post.  The topic would be the same each week and alway run on the same day.

Publish Better Photos

I took a photography course years ago while we were living abroad, but I unfortunately didn’t practice much to retain everything I learned.  I’m definitely getting more practice these days, but it would be nice to take a refresher course.  I also only the learned the most basic of photo editing, so I’m hoping to take a much more in depth course this year.

Learn Something New

One of the great things about DIYing is that I’m almost always learning something new, but I have a couple of big things that I would like to learn this year.  I’d love to learn more about Photoshop so that I can use better graphics within the blog, and I’d even like to learn a little about Adobe Illustrator.

I also received a sewing machine for Christmas that I’d love to get better at using.  I sewed a little in school, but I haven’t done much since then.  I have so many curtains and pillows that are needed throughout the house that it would be great to save a little money and make them myself.  I also have some amazing chairs in my living room that I’d like to try my hand at upholstering, and some sewing skills would come in handy!

Thanks for sticking with me for the first few months of my blogging experience.  I am having an absolute blast documenting all the stuff we have going on around our home.  I’m already getting to know several other bloggers, and it’s a lot of fun having a new avenue of meeting people.  I hope you stay around over the next year to see where this little blog ends up.