Sep 1, 2017 | Goal Setting, One Little Word 2017 | Thrive
September is here and it’s bringing all of my favorite things – football games, nicer weather, and all of the pumpkin flavored things. For the first time this year, August actually felt the length it was meant to be. We had a lot going on including multiple weekends out of town, so it will be nice to stick around town this month. Mizzou’s plays three weekends in a row at home during September, so we are looking forward to all of the excitement that brings. Kevin has been to every home game but one in the past seven years and I’ve been to almost as many, if that gives you any idea of how seriously we take our Tigers.
August was full of being absolutely spoiled my my family and friends. I’m coming at you from a new computer and have some fancy headphones to match, thanks to my thoughtful hubby. Speaking of, we went on our first photoshoot together, which was a total blast. I’m looking forward to a lot more dates like this in the future and I’ll definitely get around to sharing some more photos soon.
On the Blog In August:
August Goals Recap:
Monthly
Celebrate turning 26 – Turning 26 was so much easier for me than turning 25 was. I was spoiled rotten and celebrated myself by making my annual birthday cheesecake.Schedule a hair cut with a new stylist – This was a fiasco and I ended up getting my haircut by the same stylist I’ve been going to for the past two years. It turned out just fine, but maybe I’ll get to try someone new in the future.Read Artist’s Way and complete challenges – Done and still keeping up with morning pages on a regular basis. I’m glad to be putting some of these practices into my life.- Send two cards using the INK app – Dang, I really wish I would have done this. I’m adding it again for September.
Daily
8 Hours of sleep each night – Since I was being intentional this month, I did a LOT better on this than I normally do.Low FODMAP foods – I mentioned last month that my doctor suggested the low FOD MAP diet for me. I did a lot better eating this way but I’m trying to do even better in September.Journal – Straight up knocked it out of the park.Workouts – I’m proud of what I did but am looking to ramp that up with more walks and outdoor runs in September.Oils – Done and done!
September Goals
Monthly
- Celebrate 8 (!!!) years with Kevin
- Take photos at my family’s annual golf tournament
- Get my passport – I’ve been meaning to update this since we got married, but haven’t gotten around to it. This needs to happen this month.
- Schedule another photo shoot with Kevin
- Send some thank you and encouragement cards – Hand written cards are my favorites but like I mentioned above, I didn’t quite get to the INK ones from last month so I want to incorporate a couple of those as well.
Daily
- Move my body + Quiet Time + Essential Oils
Aug 18, 2017 | Gardening, One Little Word 2017 | Thrive
In all of the posts that I’ve shared about our house, I have never shared the best part: we live next to our best friends. In all honesty, it’s just as epic as it sounds and I’m dreading the day that we don’t live 15 steps from front door to front door.
Earlier this year when we were talking about all things outdoor landscaping and gardening, their empty raised beds came up. I jokingly mentioned using them if they weren’t, and next thing I knew, we were huddled over their kitchen table with a ruler and a plan.
We went to a garden store within a couple days and got lots of veggies and flowers – tomatoes, bell peppers, jalapeños, zucchini, basil, mint, and lots of marigolds. We did a lot of research on companion plants ahead of time and we read that Marigolds are really helpful to have around vegetables to prevent bugs and other pests.
We got lucky that the beds were already filled with some pretty amazing soil and each spent time tilling one of the beds. We didn’t get to plant right away because we had a torrential down-pouring for a week straight. All of the plants we purchased, aside from the zucchini and half the marigolds, were “starters” or baby plants, so we keep those under an awning to prevent them from getting washed away in the rain. In the meantime, I did a little black-hole style pinterest browsing about garden journals and of course had to make one of my own.
When it was finally time to plant, we quickly learned that we either 1) needed more marigolds or 2) needed to invest some time in shooing the animals away. Within the first week or so, we lost a couple tomato plants and felt very weary about the zucchini seeds, which landed us back at the store. We decided then to expand our garden to another area of their backyard and even plant some trees, with the help of services from the Georgia Tree Company homepage online. This allowed us some extra room, which was a good call in retrospect.
I’ve only ever grown vegetables in pots, and even then, they didn’t ever turn out very good. During my last attempt, the landlord at my old duplex sprayed something inside of the pots around the plants. I wasn’t sure what it was and when I asked, he had already thrown the the packaging away, so I was afraid to eat or offer the veggies to anyone. During that summer, the plants never got very tall or wide and stopped producing veggies early in the season.
Because of that failed attempt, I think I was even more excited when we started to see new growth and flowers, because I knew vegetables would eventually follow. From the beginning, we agreed that I was going to water on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday mornings and then she was going to check on them and water as needed on the other days.
Probably my favorite part of the whole experience was when she was telling her sister how much joy she was finding in garden, only to learn that she loved playing in the garden when she was a little girl. I don’t remember gardening growing up, but I’m the same way, I can’t deny how much I love being out there (as long as I have bug spray on) so much that even pulling weeds doesn’t phase me. I’d much prefer that to getting ready for work every other morning.
I’ve shared by heart on producing fruit here once before, but I couldn’t help but include something similar in my journal. The whole process from tiny little seeds to food that I get to use to nourish my body is such a good reminder of our growth as Christians and the importance of being pruned and watered regularly to continue to bear fruit. 
It’s been about four months since we started our garden and yesterday was our biggest harvest yet. Based on the number of green tomatoes and almost ripe peppers, I have a feeling it won’t be our biggest by the time the season is over. I can already tell that growing veggies is something I really want to continue to do. There is so much to learn and perfect that I don’t think this will stop being challenging and exciting. I got to have a lot of fun conversations with co-workers (some who convinced us to try pollinating our zucchinis by hand) and giving veggies away just tends to make people happy.
I’m off to start planning next years garden – what are your favorite things to grow?
Aug 10, 2017 | Goal Setting, One Little Word 2017 | Thrive
August, august. I’m so thankful for the changing of the month and the cooler weather that August seems to be bringing us so far. I’ve always been a lover of the summer, but I have to say that I’m seriously looking forward to the fall this year. As we gear up for fall, I’m looking forward to so many things – college football and tailgates, mums on our front porch, taking my pup for more walks when the sun’s still up, and lots of layered clothing. But before I wish away August, let’s talk about goals for this month.
On the blog in July:
July Goals Recap:
Monthly
- [Faith] Ask someone to be my mentor – Womp womp. I’m really bummed that I didn’t put more thought and prayer into this in July.
[Faith] Keep working on my faith binder – I made some serious progress on my binder this month[Health/Faith] Complete Camp Reset – This project overwhelmed me quickly due to the amount of time it required, but I kept up where I could.
Weekly
- [
Creative] Do something creative for myself – I loved being more intentional about this in July!
Daily
[Health] Food journal – I feel like I did great on this, continuing the progress into August.[Health] Work out – I randomly joined a boot camp in July which really kicked my butt into gear and got me excited to work out again. Even though boot camp is over, I’m looking forward to continuing this through this month and beyond.[Creative] Instagram – I posted 8 times in July, which is a bit more frequent than I have in past months.- [Faith] Quiet time – I really just need consistency here.
[Health] Oils – Last month, I used DoTERRA oils every single day. I don’t know if I’ve ever completed a whole month of a daily goal – so I’m super pumped about this one.
August Goals:
Monthly
- Celebrate turning 26 – I had the HARDEST time with turning 25 last year. You’re probably rolling your eyes, but I honestly felt like there were so many (ridiculous) expectations I had placed on myself that I hadn’t met yet. I have a feeling that turning 26 will go more smoothly.
- Schedule a hair cut with a new stylist – I’ve been going to the same stylist for a while and finally got the name of someone new who specializes in curls. I’m ready to keep the most open mind possible.
- Read Artist’s Way and complete challenges – I read this book two years ago but didn’t have time to complete all of the challenges. I picked it up again at the end of last month and have really been focusing on the challenges.
- Send two cards using the INK app – The INK app is an app that makes a post card out of your photos – all you have to do is upload the photo and add your message to the back. I’ve used this app once before and was so happy with the quality, so I really want to send a few more this month.
Daily
- 8 Hours of sleep each night – this will be next to impossible, but it would even be worth it if I could do it a couple nights a week.
- Low FODMAP foods – I mentioned last month that my doctor suggested the low FOD MAP diet for me, so I want to do better at eating foods that fit into these categories as opposed to taking antacids to make me feel better.
- Journal – I’m doing morning pages each morning, which goes hand-in-hand with the Artist’s Way.
- Workouts – Just trying to be consistent with working out this month – probably more of an every other day thing as opposed to daily.
- Oils – Keeping my DoTERRA streak going from last month!
You’re turn! How are you going to kick butt this month?
Jul 1, 2017 | Goal Setting, One Little Word 2017 | Thrive
There’s really nothing like skipping an entire month of goals. I wish I could say that I took a month off but in reality, I just didn’t take the time to post them. I’ve been thinking a lot about priorities and while I sometimes go back and do “make up” posts, I just don’t think that aligns with what makes sense in my life. If I’m not jazzed at the beginning of the month (like I normally am), why force myself to post them later? It didn’t help that it took me longer than normal to complete my Powersheets this month since it included a goal refresh. This means that I went back over the goals I set in January and revamped them for the remainder of the year. I could have completely ditched the old goals, but the ones I have yet to complete still made sense for this year and my life, so I only made a few changes. As I wrote them out, I made to sure include my “why” for each reason so that when I create new goals each month, I can use that to put baby steps for each goal into practice. Here’s a look at what I’m making a priority for the rest of the year:
- Health – I’m a typical Type A kind of gal and recently I’ve let my to-do list and stress level get the best of me. In the coming months, I would like to focus on my health by tracking my food intake, using oils, and spending time at the gym. My doctor recently suggested a new diet called “low FODMAP” to help with the heartburn symptoms that I’ve been struggling with and that has really changed my intake and the amount of time it takes to plan out and prepare each meal. I’ve been feeling a lot better, but I hope to continue this process so that I can determine which foods will need to be eliminated from my diet permanently and what can be phased back in.
- Faith – This is one of the areas in my life where I just consistently have to work hard to include quiet time on a consistent basis. It’s sad, because quiet time is so treasured to me, but I find that if I allow it, it will typically be the first thing that goes when I have too much on my plate. I don’t have specific goals here other than finding my community and places where I fit in so that I can make the biggest impact.
- Social Media – Honestly, I kind of hate social media but for some reason I can’t help but scroll. I have tried a lot of tips and techniques, but when it comes right down to it, I just need to plain quit. I think connecting online has caused me to see in person community differently and I really want to make sure that I’m prioritizing the right thing. I haven’t figured out yet what this looks like, but if you have any suggestions, I’m all ears!
- Blogging – I’ve considered giving up on my blog more than once, but I always come back to it because I just love this space so much. To be honest, I think I would keep doing it even if I knew that not a single soul could or would see it. My goal at the beginning of June was really to update my blog design (which is already done at this point…THANK YOU SARAH) and start creating time in my calendar to sit down and write. I want to include more personal posts but those tend to take a bit longer to write and I just haven’t been allowing myself that time.
- Work – One of the biggest goals I have for my job this year is to take my real estate exam. I’m excited and nervous because test taking scares the crap out of me (thank goodness college is over, amirite?) but I know it will have a positive impact on my job when this one is checked off. Also, I have a feeling there will be a lot of studying on my part, so making time for that will be really important.
New Goals for July:
- Monthly Goals:
- Project Life and One Little Word (as usual)
- [Faith] Ask someone to be my mentor – I’ve been wanting to do this for so long but I’ve been turned down more than once. When you do this, you’re really asking someone to spend their time investing in you and that can be hard regardless of their answer. Hopefully making this public will make me more likely to complete it? We’ll see.
- [Faith] Keep working on my faith binder (I mean look at this, need I say more?)
- [Health/Faith] Complete Camp Reset – Cori over at The Reset Girl has created an online “camp” for July where a whole community of awesome people are spending the month considering how self care fits into their lives. Cori has created a ton of amazing resources and I’m so excited to follow along. If you’re interested you should check out the information here. (PS: It’s totally free)
- Weekly Goals:
- Do something creative for myself – This is one of those that I can’t commit to every single day, but I really want to make a priority on a weekly basis. I don’t want to limit myself to specific tasks or projects, but I do want a good couple hours of time where I’m just able to dig in.
- Daily Goals:
- [Heath] Food journal – As I mentioned above, I’m keeping track of my diet so that I can determine what foods are my triggers, so while I’m at it, I might as well keep a calorie count and see how that plays out. I’ve gained a few pounds in the past year, so I’m definitely interested in making some lifestyles changes along with this one.
- [Health] Work Out – Part of Cori’s camp includes exercising for 20 minutes a day. Of course this isn’t mandatory, but I’d love to get outside or find workout videos that I can easily fit in to my schedule.
- [Blogging] Instagram Post – It’s a lofty goal, but I’d like to share my blog posts more often on social media. Since I haven’t decided what I want to do about Faecbook, I’m planning on sharing these more on Instagram. If you don’t follow me, you should.
- [Faith] Quiet time – I really just need consistency here.
- [Health] – Oils – Two months ago, I purchased a starter kit from Doterra and I am absolutely loving them! There are a few that I use on a regular basis but I really want to get in the habit of trying more of them out and finding different blends of oils that I can use in our diffuser. If anyone has any suggestions, please share!!
Thanks so much for following along!
May 1, 2017 | Goal Setting, One Little Word 2017 | Thrive
Happy May! Although we had a relatively mild winter, I am so looking forward to warmer and brighter days ahead. We ended April on a VERY rainy note this year, so I feel pretty confident that we’ll get to enjoy those May flowers. I can tell you my rose bushes have already started opening and it is making me so excited.
Reviewing Goals for April:
Complete Project Life and One Little Word for April – Killed it and started being a little more intentional about how I complete project life, so this was a major win.Finish Lent Strong with No Social Media – This was tough, but I’m so glad I did it. It definitely helped put in perspective how much time I was spending on my phone.- Edit Wedding Photos – I’m about halfway done, so I’m going to continue this goal into May.
Workout – Twelve workouts on the dot, how bout dah?Continue Covering Others in Prayer – I’m glad I kept this practice up, I’m really enjoying it.Gardening – You guys. By far the best news about my goals is that Sarah and I decided to start a garden. I’m so pumped.
New Goals for May:
- Complete Project Life and One Little Word for May – As always, I love sitting down to print photos and work on my creative projects. I’ve noticed that my supplies are adding up (without being used) so I’m not buying anything else until I make some headway here.
- Plan a Day Ahead – I’ve been spending a lot of time figuring out how to make my life more efficient so I’m going to try planning my days out the night before. By looking at my calendar and my to do list (things I WANT to be spending my time on) I’ll be able to make sure that I have enough time for them. A lot of my problem lately is that I can’t decide what to do next, so I spend a lot of time trying to make a decision. I’ll let you know how it goes.
- Edit Wedding Photos – My goal was to have these done in April, but I only got about halfway! Hoping to schedule in a little time here and there and have them done by the Omaha trip.
- Workout – I’ve loved how I’ve felt since getting back to the gym, I’m going to try again for 12 workouts in a month.
- Continue Covering Others in Prayer – I’ve chosen someone new to intentionally cover in prayer for this month,.
- Trip Minibook – We’re going on a trip this month and I’m going to make a minibook with my pictures and the fun things that we do!
- Give Myself so much Grace – I’m anticipating a busy month here, so I am just taking it easy when possible.
Thanks so much for following along here. I’d love for you to share your goals too!
Apr 1, 2017 | Goal Setting, One Little Word 2017 | Thrive
March was particularly great and while I feel like I killed it, I also felt more relaxed than usual. I’m wondering if I can attribute that to the severely decreased screen time and buzz of news or more time in the gym, but either way it felt like a breath of fresh air. As I began making my goals for April, I couldn’t believe how quick the year is flying. Speaking of, this month we will celebrate one whole year in our Highridge Ranch.
Here were my goals for March:
- Continue working through Psalms Day by Day. I have to admit that I fell off the band wagon on this one. I wasn’t feeling particularly creative and didn’t want to force myself to create when I wasn’t feeling it. Some entries got done, but not enough to mark this completed.
Social Media Free Lent. This was the biggest goal for me in March, so I’m glad I was able to complete it! You’ll see a post after Easter about my thoughts and feelings of staying away from online community for 40 days.Cover others in prayer.Just keep budgeting. Kevin and I have officially been budgeting strictly for a year this month. We are really killing it in the budgeting game.Celebrate two years of marriage. We had a great night hanging out, reminiscing about our wedding day, and eating dinner at a new restaurant in town.Shoot my first wedding. Kevin’s mom got married in March and they asked me to be their photographer. It was my first wedding and I had such a blast.Complete Project Life and One Little Word for March. Done and Done!Read three books. Read four this month – The Silkworm, Career of Evil, Essentialism, The Nesting Place
Goals for April:
- Complete Project Life and One Little Word for April – On my list as usual! This is the time of year when I start feeling that I’ve left my word in the dust, so I’m particularly looking forward to digging in.
- Finish Lent Strong with No Social Media – I’ve officially made it one month without social media, but I still have 16 days left until Easter, so I’m hoping to finish strong.
- Edit Wedding Photos – I snapped over 400 photos at the wedding and I’ve already started making progress on the editing process. My goal is to get these done in April.
- Workout – I’ve been getting back in the gym these past few weeks but I’m trying to make a monthly goal of getting there twelve times (or about 3x per week).
- Continue Covering Others in Prayer – I’ve chosen someone new to cover in prayer for this month. Hoping to continue being super intentional in that area of my life.
- Gardening – I’ve been waiting for a warm weekend to start planting, so hopefully I’ll find a good one this month. I still haven’t decided if I want to go with flowers or veggies, but I’m happy to let that be a last minute decision.
What are your goals for April?
