First of all, thank you so much to everyone who has taken the time to respond to my annual reader survey! I can’t tell you how much I appreciate your kindness, thoughtfulness, and honesty. I’m convinced y’all are some of the loveliest people on the internet and I hope you know how very grateful I am for each of you. Can we all just get together for brunch someday, please? :) If you haven’t had the chance to take the survey yet and would like to, head to this post (and be sure to leave a comment to enter to win a $30 Nordstrom gift card–the winner will be randomly selected this Thursday).

Friends, I’m SO excited about my 2019 goals. I have been working on them for a few weeks now (following Lara Casey’s goal setting series) and when I look over what I came up with, I’m filled with peace. They feel challenging, but attainable, and specific, while contributing to the big picture of what I want my life and legacy to look like. This was the first year that Dave and I set specific family goals together, and each of our personal goals are connected to those as well. We were blessed with a lot of progress to look back on in 2018, and as we discussed the year over macaroni and cheese and wine on a dinner date a few weeks ago, it was a sweet reminder of how much we can accomplish when our goals truly matter to us.

Once again, I made an inspiration board for the year–I’ve come to enjoy this step of the process much more than I expected to! You can see my 2018 board here and my 2017 board here. Isn’t it funny how they look different, but similar at the same time?

Clockwise from top left: Lisa Cohen via Dustjacket Attic, Maegan Martin via Blessed Is She, Emily Ley, Gal Meets Glam, Camille Styles, Colin Price via Style Me Pretty Living, Kristina Mae Ettlin, Lauren Conrad

2019 Goals

1. Focus on getting to know Jesus intimately and personally. I always include something about growing closer to God in my annual goals, since really, it’s the goal of my entire life. This year, I want to focus on Jesus in a special way, learning as much as I can about Him as a person, getting to know Him more deeply one-on-one through prayer, and spending regular, intentional time with Him in the Eucharist.
Action steps: Spend time in “intimate prayer” (a specification I learned from this phenomenal podcast interview) daily. Go to Adoration every other week (switching off weeks with Dave). Read To Know Christ Jesus. Study the Gospels.

2. Celebrate the liturgical year intentionally. We learned SO much last year as we walked through living liturgically for the first time!! This year, I want to be better about planning ahead and choosing to do more for fewer feast days (quality > quantity) in order to see the greatest impact in our family.
Action steps: Buy a Blessed Is She Liturgical Planner (check, and it is AMAZING! Grab one here if you don’t have a 2019 planner yet!) and The Catholic All Year Compendium (check, and wow…if you have any interest in liturgical living, this book is a must-have. So comprehensive and approachable.) Create a small category in our budget for liturgical living expenses (check! We decided on just $20/month and are putting this toward things like special treats, new books for Charlie, activities we want to do as a family in honor of a feast day, etc.) Choose the feast days we want to celebrate during my first Sunday prep time of each month and write out specific plans (maybe in a blog post? These would be simpler than the posts I did last year since they’d focus on the days we personally plan to celebrate. Let me know what you think!).

3. Drastically cut down on screen time in favor of reading, quality time, hobbies, and genuine rest. As you know, rest is my word of the year for 2019, and I hope to live that word out most through this goal. More often than not, I know screen time doesn’t make me feel truly rested, so I want to replace it when I can with things that do.
Action steps: Collect and keep a few screen-free evening activities easily accessible (let me know if you have any suggestions!). Always have an entertaining book on hand. Explore a few new relaxing hobbies. Experiment with limiting TV nights to weekends only.

4. Foster contentment and joy in our home–continue to make our space work for us and reflect our lives and personal style. We made so many good improvements to our house this year and learned a lot along the way. Here’s to more of the same this year, with a few bigger projects to tackle on our list, thanks to the CPA being over!
Action steps: FINALLY redo our laundry closet and master bathroom to better work for us and bring us more joy. Overhaul our yard so we can enjoy it more. Continue to approach any home purchases with serious intention, and to edit ruthlessly throughout the year. Figure out which indoor plants work in our space/are easy to care for. Blog an updated home tour to share progress!

5. Grow in physical strength and prioritize good fuel for my body. I am SO proud of the running I did in 2018…but I think I did two ab workouts during the whole course of my training. Yikes! I am looking forward to incorporating strength training back into my weekly routine this year. As far as good fuel goes, I’ve listened to a few fascinating podcast episodes lately (here and here) featuring Kelly LeVeque, and want to put some of her strategies into practice. I’m also revisiting my Tone It Up nutrition plan–longtime readers know I love Tone It Up, and especially now that one of the girls is a mom, I feel like I can relate to them a little better again, ha!
Action steps: Find a new weekly workout class and commit to attending. Do one or two at-home workouts per week. Read Body Love and re-read the TIU nutrition plan to gain a better understanding of food as fuel, and incorporate their strategies into my eating habits.

6. Treat Something Pretty like a business and create the best-quality content I can in 2019. I’ve been blogging for eight years (!), and whenever I have a spare moment, this is what I reach for. With those spare moments growing fewer and farther between every year, I feel like I need to make a decision: actually apply some of the “business of blogging” knowledge that I’ve accumulated and learned over the years to SP for the first time, or be okay with this being an every-once-in-awhile hobby. I would really like to give the former a go :)
Action steps: Carve out dedicated time each week to work specifically on the blog. Break more intensive posts into smaller action steps and schedule each step. Improve photography! Connect with a photographer friend for training and occasional shoots. Review survey results and make note of any recurring themes, FAQs, etc. to address.

7. Create heirloom-quality family yearbooks for 2015-2019. Creating our wedding album in 2018 was a great reminder of how much I value having photos beautifully printed and curated! I’ve been wanting to make family albums for ages, and would love to tackle our “archives” this year so that the task doesn’t get even more overwhelming as time goes by.
Action steps: Specify a timeframe for myself to design each album. Create folders of the photos I want to include in each one. Design albums and save our pennies to have them printed, maybe during Cyber Week :) Set aside a week at the end of the year to design our 2019 album.

8. Grow in my role at Gal Meets Glam and exceed expectations at every opportunity. “Exceeding expectations” is a big theme of the company culture at GMG, and it’s something I try to take to heart in order to serve the team as best as I can. Since my role is brand new, there are so many ways it can grow, change, and be defined, so I’m looking forward to seeing that continue to solidify throughout this year!

I was very happy with my system of setting a monthly goal per yearly goal in 2018 (and love that I’ve seen a few people share that they’re adopting a similar strategy this year!), so I’m doing that again! Here’s what’s on the docket for January. (Note, I won’t be sharing my monthly goals for yearly goal #8 publicly, but promise I’ll be working on it behind the scenes :)).

1. Read To Know Christ Jesus daily during morning prayer time.
2. Plan our January feast day celebrations.
3. Read two fun fiction books.
4. Paint master bathroom cabinets.
5. Go to the newly scheduled PiYo class each week this month (it’s now an evening class, which I’m a little wary of with Charlie’s schedule, but we’re going to give it a try!).
6. Thoroughly review survey feedback and make notes on takeaways.
7. Outline an album design game plan for the year, and start curating photos for 2015.