A few things I'd like to do in 2014...

Resolutions aren't for everyone. Up until, well this week really, they weren't for me either. Of course tomorrow is just another day. It's a Wednesday. The middle of the week. Half way from the beginning and half way to the end. But it's also the start of a brand new year. This year, to me it's something more than Wednesday. It's a clean slate. It's a fresh page in a brand new notebook. It's that point in the road that I'm choosing to turn left instead of trundling straight on. And the very thought of it has been that little ray of light in the distance that I've been heading towards in the hope that I'll reach it in one piece. And I did. I made it out of 2013 and I'm very happy to close the door on it, leave it behind and move forward! 

These aren't really resolutions as such, it's more of a list of goals, things for me to work towards over the year that may end up changing and if that happens, then it's okay.  

+ There are currently a lot of empty frames and pictures that need to find frames piled up on our kitchen table waiting to be hung up. It's one of those things that we've been putting off because I think we were both a little tired of constantly doing things around the house. We still have a seemingly never-ending list of things to do, some are more long-term things (i.e. they're crazy expensive and we need to save for them or the disaster that is spare room that we don't really use so we're using it for storage at the moment!) but getting some more pictures printed and hanging them up is something we can totally do this year. We definitely want to have a gallery wall somewhere too, we just need to decide which wall to use. I think once they're all up it'll also make the place look a lot more homely & personal.

+ I almost want to set myself a crazy goal but I think I'd be too focused on reaching a specific number than on finding books I really want to read and I'd be disappointed if I didn't reach the number, which in the grand scheme of things, wouldn't be that important anyway. So my goal is to read as many books as I can squeeze in throughout the year
+ This year I deliberately stopped taking a camera everywhere I went for the first time in years. Instead of enjoying myself wherever I was, I had been finding myself just constantly on the lookout for photo opportunities and I felt like I was missing out. This year I'm determined to find a balance between having a nice time myself and pausing for a few seconds every so often to snap a quick photograph. I have some instax film on its way to me and I definitely want to shoot some more 35mm as well as digital. And who knows, maybe Mark and I will get around to opening that print shop we've been talking about for years. It'll be nice to work on something together!

+ It's taken a long time (*ahem* twenty four & a half years) but I've finally realised that things, unfortunately, don't organise themselves - I actually have to put some effort into it. I'm venturing out to paperchase this afternoon to buy some new pages for my filofax and I'm actually going to use it properly this year. To ensure I do use it properly I'm also going to get a nice pen and some stickers to make the pages pretty... essentially I'm bribing myself to be more organised with pretty stickers. Totally reasonable I think ;)

+ Even if it's just a picture or a few words that mean something to me that day, I don't think that everything has to be perfect all the time. This is one I'm hoping will feel a little less daunting when my life is more organised as per above goal! I've shoe-horned the word almost in there because I don't want to post something if I feel like I don't have anything to say or to share. After reading the comments left on my blog survey, there were some that particularly resonated with me, which I will talk about in a post shortly - they were all so helpful, the good and the bad so thank you if you filled it out for me! Some of them left me feeling a little bit...scared almost of my space here. But I'm trying to remind myself that I can't please everyone all of the time and all I can really do is make this a space that makes me happy and hope that you like it too.

+ In posting daily, there's so much opportunity there for me to experiment with content and it's almost like I'm giving myself permission to have a little bit of fun with trying out some things that perhaps aren't so much in my comfort zone. I did make videos for a little while but there are so many people that make the kind of videos I was making about a zillion times better than I ever could, so I stopped. It didn't register at the time that there were so many other kinds of videos I could make so we'll see how that goes next year. I'm not going to tell myself I'm going to make a video a week or anything, I'm just going to have a play around and see what happens!

This is a bit of a silly one, but after reading back a few posts from this year, I appear to severely overuse the word super. I don't often use super in everyday conversation so I'm not sure how it's become such a fixture in my blog writing! There are lots of other words that mean something similar that I could use instead, maybe I should reach for a thesaurus a little more - unless of course something is actually super like supernoodles or superman or supercalifragilisticexpialidocious... (I definitely did just watch Mary Poppins!)

+ Lastly, next year I'd like to do more. Whether that's getting things done around the house, trying something new that I've never done before or going on more mini adventures. I've lived in Derbyshire for a few years now and I still haven't been inside Chatsworth House, which is silly because I've wanted to visit for absolutely ages. Hopefully gone will be the days of me putting things off for good...!

Do you have any goals you're going to be working towards achieving next year?

Love, Jennie

xoxo 

P.S. Stay safe this evening and have a wonderful time! ♥