Happy new year!!
My goal-oriented little soul loves new beginnings, and to have a whole, blank new year ahead of me is so exciting. I have to be really careful, though, not to let myself go crazy! That’s why I’ve decided to set smaller monthly goals again this year, rather than big, sweeping resolutions. I have done monthly goals before, and it seemed to work pretty well.
Last year I consciously did not set monthly goals, because I knew it would cause more stress than structure for me as I tried to figure out a new “normal” with a little baby–and then we moved and everything went topsy-turvy again. Now things are settling more into a rhythm, and I sorta-kinda have a better idea of what a reasonable set of goals looks like for me (hopefully!). Now I think that having a list of goals will give me structure: help me to focus on some projects and give me direction so that I’m not trying to do all the ideas that are constantly floating around in my head… So, I’m really excited to write a shiny new list of goals for January 2013.
The recent state of my craft space…soon to be remedied!
- First up, I want to set up my craft space. For Christmas, Husband helped me figure out a plan for organizing/storing my supplies and he bought me an Expedit shelf unit from Ikea! Hoooooooo boy, am I excited…
- Scrapbook!! I am getting back to “real” scrapbooking this year! Yay! I am choosing not doing a photo-a-day/Project Life project in 2013*, and I’m going get crafty with paper & adhesive again. But I’m going to ease into it, because I’m still not sure how crafty time is going to work into my schedule, and it’s been so long since I last made a paper layout. So right now, my goal is to just start and make ONE layout this month.
- Speaking of Project 366, I want to wrap up my album– finish printing photos, make title cards for each week, etc. I’d like to do a post on the blog about it, too.
- Cook!! I recently got two new cookbooks and I want to dig into them. I want to make (at least) one new recipe from The Complete America’s Test Kitchen TV Show Cookbook 2001-2013
and make (at least) one new recipe from The Smitten Kitchen Cookbook
. I think I might even try to blog about the recipes we make. Not a tutorial or a recipe, but sort of a review of how it turned out for us.
- In my post about my photo workflow, I mentioned that I’ve been looking into Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 4
. Well, I finally downloaded the 30-day free trial and have been trying to learn how to use the program. So far, it’s been slow going. But this month, I want to learn how to use Lightroom for real.
- Start thinking about a new garden! We live a lot further south than we used to, and I want to be ready when seed-planting time comes!
- Some smaller non-hobby stuff, too, because saying it here on the blog somehow keeps me more accountable: floss every night in January. Figure out some sort of consistent exercise habit. And finally, finally, find a frame, print our family photo and hang it in our living room!
Okay, there’s my list! Wish me luck 
Try the grilled cheese and onion recipe out of the SK cookbook! It’s awesome!
ooh yum. sounds tasty!!
[...] the suggestion of Nat in the comments of my January 2013 goals post, we decided to kick off our year of new recipes with a recipe from The Smitten Kitchen Cookbook: [...]