This has not been the year of my “annual goals”.
Honestly I can’t even remember if I shared my list. I may not have, in part because the last few years, I’ve made lofty lists and then more or less forget about them.
Not to say I haven’t done a lot of things! But I apparently am not very good at thinking ahead to the year in January and making realistic lists of ambitions.
Anyway, I’ve chipped away at a few things.
🔷 I printed a “blog book” from our 2023 Costa Rica trip. (Turned into a behemoth of a book and made me think I either need to seriously cut down on the length of my travel posts (😅, not likely) or reconsider printing them all….)
🔷I’ve continued to work on meal planning, and specifically, I’ve been (overall) using my “Meals” calendar on Google Cal to list our meals for the week, as I had suggested I wanted to do.
🔷 I’ve exercised consistently. My goal was 5x/ strength, 3x/ cardio, 1x/ yoga. Well, that’s ambitious. I have NOT done that all every week. In an effort to have a more attainable strength goal (after all, it’s better to consistently do something fewer times a week than “say” you’ll do it every day and rarely do it…), I switched to a 4x/ week strength program. And I would say, YES, I have consistently strength trained several times a week all year. I’ve certainly not done 3x/ week cardio, but I’ve also done quite a bit of cardio, on the whole. Yoga… eh, more of a “sprinkle” dose, but sprinkles are better than no sprinkes?
🔷I repainted our white front door trim!! Did I end up getting the second coat on it that it needed? No, no I didn’t. So that’s not awesome. But at least it got sanded and primed and re-grouted and looks much better than the peeling, flaking paint that was there.
🔷And finally, I ordered some prints for an empty basement frame! I hung a new frame at least 1-2 years ago now outside our guest room and it’s been hanging there empty ever since. After Hawaii, I decided I would keep it simple and just order 9 prints from that trip and be done. No trying to find a “splattering from our life” and all that jazz. Hawaii, the end.
I had a hard time narrowing it down, but here’s what I ended up with!
Here’s where it hangs:
I need to freshen up that little “overflow bookcase”…. It mostly houses the boys’ old Keeper of the Lost Cities paperbacks, which they read to death and are pretty beat up.
I think I’ve shared this little nook in our basement before, but isn’t it so cute? I just love that stenciled quote.
Daily Gratitude:
I am grateful for a walk in WARM rain yesterday morning.
GRATEFUL KAE 
Good job getting those home things done! I think I had lived in my house for about three months before I got a couch and over a year before I hung anything on the wall. It is just not something that I care about that much, and like you, I have a shit ton of photos and narrowing it down was very hard. I even have a folder in my computer named “WALL” and I think that I only ended up printing out a few of those. What I did do and am happy about, is use a Canvas Direct coupon to get a couple of those photos on canvas. Those are some of my favorite ones, they are lightweight and they were easy to do!
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I think “keep it simple” is the key to achieving a lot of goals! The prints in your frame look great, and yes I also love that quote.
Consistency is key to so many things in life. I guess “keep it simple” and “be consistent” are the keys to success!
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We still have so much aesthetic stuff to do in our house. Neither of us are good at that sort of thing (design is fine, but actually acting on it…we literally can’t even paint a room, it’s rather pathetic)…but it takes so long to get around to things when life is busy.
I didn’t make any goals in 2024 and I have LOVED being goal free. So much, in fact, I’m pretty sure I won’t be making any set goals for 2025 either!
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Well, I think when you already naturally do a lot of “goal type stuff” (ie you already do walking challenges, you read consistently, you have date nights, you make photo books, you plan and do little adventures with your family, you meal plan/cook, etc), maybe goals are not necessary! I like the act of making goals, but I often end up making goals that are not really easy to implement/track specifically (like my goal to strength train 4x/week. Well, ok, but what if I do some weeks and not others… it just gets muddy then to even really “count”, you know?) I do better with things like this photo goal: “print photos for basement photo wall”. Clear, concrete, easy to check off. Yet, I am always weirdly tempted to make these other recurring, more abstract goals…. Probably why I often don’t actually complete many things on my list!
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Every step towards a goal is one step further then before. I say you are well on your way.
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Thanks Tobia! I probably shouldn’t be so hard on myself.
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Oh the goals… I think I had “take up yoga again” and I did! I signed up for unlimited and that financially motivated me.
I love the frame, so lovely. When I make my yearly Shutterfly book in early January, I always agonize over what pictures to include.
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the pic of the bookcase and the picture frame is soooo peaceful and warm, just how I like for my house too. love it!
I need to start thinking about my 2025 goal list, but so many things are in the air now. hopefully I get clarity soon.
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Great work on those projects! The framed pics look great. As you know, I knocked out a big organizing project last weekend. It was a lot of work but looks so great so it was worth it. I didn’t have it on my radar as something that needed to be done but Phil mentioned that it would be good to organize it and the motivation hit so I rolled with it.
One of my 2024 goals was quarterly date nights. We’ve done pretty well with it but I don’t know that we will get a Q4 one in… the calendar feels full so I feel like I will just give myself a pass. We want to use a girl on our block as a babysitter as that will be more convenient going forward but then it’s more work up front to explain meals/bedtime and I am not feeling that motivated as sad as that is! I was hoping I could go to Phil’s company’s holiday party and consider that our date but it’s on taco’s bday.. and I just can’t bear to be gone that night so he will go by himself.
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I love that you printed and framed photos from your travels! You always take such great family photos!
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