I'm Expecting A Lot From You, 2013!

Happy New Year! I love the idea of celebrating and embracing a new year and all its potential. I love it so much that we have a big neighborhood party here each year to ring in the new year. Our house was packed with friends on New Year's Eve. It was loud, raucous, happy, and full of laughs. Laughing is one of my favorite things to do and there was no shortage of it that night. There was also no shortage of champagne... :)

2012 was a year filled with serious challenges but also wonderful things. It was a year filled with firsts and lasts. Here's a look back at our year in pictures:

To summarize 2012, it was filled with love, laughter, family, friends, celebrations, heartbreak, acceptance, joy, forgiveness, gratitude, making mistakes, doing things right, illness, worry, and recovery. There were trips to NYC, Whistler, Leavenworth, and lots of travelling for my husband for work including two trips to Tokyo. There was working, dancing, zumba'ing, learning new things, white river rafting, hiking, boating, kayaking, cooking, baking, photographing, crafting, DIY'ing, home improving, and spending lots of time in the great outdoors. Whewww! 2012 was full!

There is so much potential in the idea of a new year, isn't there? I like to take this time to bring closure to the past year, review my goals, tweak them if needed, and think about new goals. I'm excited for 2013 and can't wait to see what happens this year. I know it will be a great year, I can feel it! Here are some things I'd like to accomplish in 2013:

Family

Enjoy them as often as I can. Relish all the moments, big and small. They are the most important people in the world to me and I want them to feel the love I have for them in all our interactions. I hope to go on more date nights with my husband and spend as much one-on-one time as I can get with my son before he goes off to college in the fall.

Friends

My friends make my life better and I want to continue fostering those relationships. My friends are inspiring, funny, and adventurous and they make me feel loved and appreciated. They accept me for who I am, flaws and all. I feel the same way about them! I'm so grateful for my true blue friends. Plus they make me belly laugh and y'all already know how much I like a good guffaw so I really look forward to sharing many laughs with them.

Health

I'd like to continue with my fitness goals and working out regularly, and we are getting back to our normal routine of healthy eating again. We were doing pretty well most of the year but really went off course with this goal in the last 2-3 months, especially during the holidays. It's time to get back to eating healthy! I love the app from MyFitnessPal to track diet and exercise goals, so I'll be using that more regularly again rather than the sporadic once every week or two that I've been doing. I'm also getting back to planning out a weekly menu. The more I plan, the more I stay on track. I'll be posting some of my favorite healthy recipes but they'll still be balanced with a few indulgences here and there.

I also want to continue spending time enjoying the great outdoors with all the activities that we enjoy doing. Mother Nature grounds me and makes my soul content, so I shall keep feeding this soul of mine. :)

Blog

I really enjoy writing. This blog has been a great way for me to express myself and I get to share some of my favorite moments of life with you. I will continue posting about some of my favorite past times: cooking, crafting, DIY home projects, family, friends, and celebrations big and small. I'd like to write a post 2-3 times a week this year, and for the past month I've really made an effort to do that. I hope to post more healthy recipes, and I'd like to improve a couple cooking skills and plan on taking a couple cooking classes. I've even recently joined an online cooking club and can't wait to find out more about that! I'd also like to continue to build and enjoy the friendships I've made so far through blogging. That has been a wonderful benefit I didn't anticipate when I first started doing this and now it is one of the things that makes blogging for me so wonderful - I love connecting with people with all the various media that we have available!

Home

I've got several projects I'd like to accomplish this year on the home front including these:

Garage: It's our dirty little not-so-secret secret. It's PACKED with stuff, and much of it we don't need but can't seem to part with. Being avid DIYers, we have a lot of tools and paint cans and all the other "accessories" that go with that, but we've got to reign it in a bit and corral the clutter!
Master bedroom: In 2006 when I was away on a trip, my husband surprised me with a bedroom makeover when I got home. We used to have a tropical style bedroom with green walls and darker bedding but I was wanting something more serene and spa-like so he painted the walls a light gray and changed out the molding and doors to white (it was previously 80s yellowed oak). The color scheme in our room is white and gray and simple. It's classic and I still love it. We have white sheets, a white comforter, and white curtains with touches of silver, gray, and light aqua throughout, and dark brown furniture (other than my white vanity table). It's lovely but its been 7 years and there are a few things I want to add to the already existing decor. I won't be changing the color scheme too much because I still love it but I'd like to add more punch and personality to the room with ideas that have been rattling around in my head for the last couple years. I'll write more about our master bedroom in a later post since that's my next project. 2013 is finally the year I'm going to get out of planning mode and get that room done!
Master bath: Will this be the year we update the master bathroom? I'm not sure, but it could be! I sure hope to find the time (and the budget) to do that.
Fireplace: A couple years ago I wrote that I was going to reface our fireplace surround with tile in our family room update post. I still haven't done it but I hope to accomplish that this year.

Dance

Keep doing it, that's my plan! I love hula dancing and plan on continuing with the dance group I belong to. They are wonderful, kind-hearted, Aloha kind of people and I am really blessed to be a part of something so special. I also hope to take several fun dance classes/workshops as I've done periodically throughout the years including more salsa dancing. That's fun! I'm not a big ballroom dancer but I sure love the fun, less formal kinds of dancing classes.

Photography

My goal this year is to become a better photographer in several areas, but especially with food photography. I blog a lot about food and I want to improve my photos for those posts. I look back on some of my earlier photos and think "Oy!" when I see how bad they are. I didn't know any better and now that I've taken classes and studied it more, I think my photos are better, but there's a lot more room for improvement. I know just enough to be a tad frustrated with some of my pictures and want to learn to make them better. I plan on taking even more photography classes this year. I enjoy photography very much and will keep snapping away capturing some of my favorite moments. My husband and son got me some photography equipment for Christmas that I didn't even know I wanted but somehow it was exactly what I wanted! I'm so glad they thought of that. :)

Work

I'm making a big move in my career in the second half of the year and while I'm not sure what I will be doing yet, it is time for me to move on from the role I'm in. I'm a registered nurse and I currently work for myself as a contracted executive director for a professional nurse association in WA state. It's been a great job to have - I work mostly from home working less hours than I used to, and the best part is that I've been able to be home for my son for the last 5 years. My goal has always been to do this until my son graduates from high school, and here we are, graduation in June! There will be a lot of transition for me this year in the career department (not to mention the mother department!) and I'm excited and a little nervous about it. I've got several exciting ideas about this, so stay tuned!

Travel

We love to travel but our budget and our careers really limit how much we can do. We are planning on taking a couple trips this year that we've been saving for and I can't wait! We love the area we live in and will continue to take advantage of places close by for day and weekend trips, but we are also planning a trip to Hawaii, Cabo, and if it works out, maybe even to Japan! 

I think one of the keys to a happy life is to have things to look forward to. Setting up the year like this by planning out some of the things we'd like to do puts me in a great mood. I feel like we have so much to look forward to and I can't wait to start accomplishing some of these things.

Years ago I consciously changed the way I looked at life by simply changing one thing. Instead of asking "why?" when a question or opportunity or idea comes to me, I ask myself, "why not?" It allows me to embrace opportunities that I might have otherwise turned down or might not have come my way if people didn't think I was receptive. It sets me up to experience things I never would have tried before. With that attitude often comes the unexpected and I welcome it. I can't wait to see what other things await us in 2013. Bring it on, world! 

Wishing you a year filled with good health, prosperity, love, unexpected pleasures, and joy!