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My 2014 New years Resolutions

photo by LK Griffin Photography

It’s the time of year where we vow to be better people, promise to progress as human beings and generally swear to not eat carbs. As a severe goal oriented person (and a Virgo) I get as giddy as all 25 bachelorettes meeting Juan Pablo COMBINED just thinking about them. But here’s the deal with my resolutions;  I like them to be specific and achievable. For instance my goal will never be ‘achieve work/life balance’, that is just way to annoyingly big, cliché and unachievable – it doesn’t leave me with ‘the how’. Instead it will be ‘spend at least 1 day a week with my family and without my phone or computer.’ The more specific you get I think the more you can actually achieve the goal. It becomes a rule, not an abstract suggestion. Listen to me get all self-helpy on you … but I personally just think this actually works.

Last years resolutions went well (I accomplished all of them), so I’m going for it. Welcome to a VERY long VERY personal post …

curbly-sunroom

Resolution #1: Grow the blog readership by 50%. You heard me, FIFTY PERCENT!!! I have a whole list of ways I’m going to do that, but mainly it comes down to these three things:

1. Blog more. I don’t know if I can commit to 2 posts a day, so I’m going to go ahead and say at least 7 posts a week. These will be 65% percent about design/style and 35% about anything personal – most likely motherhood/relationships/career/kids – which is why I’m doing more posts. I know that many of you just come for the design/style stuff and many of you are new to the blog here for the more personal mommy stuff, so in order to keep everyone and grow I’m just going to write more and do more posts so that i can do both kinds of posts (because honestly I love both equally).

2. Engage more with you guys. Now with my new blog platform (wordpress) I can respond to comments (Squarespace didn’t allow that) and now that I’m going to be home more I plan on reading every comment of every post (at least for the first three days since its posted). Last year I would post at 7am and then leave the house for the rest of the day. When I got home at night I would respond to comments but at 10pm it wasn’t exactly my first priority. So since I’m staying home more this year I’m going to be better and reading and responding.

3. Have every post be these following three things:

– Personal. Just because I am posting more doesn’t mean that its a machine with a bunch of contributors – NO. Its my blog and will always be from my perspective, written by me, but with some graphics and admin help thanks to Ginny and some DIY’s and market stories from a few experts but still overseen by me.

– Pretty – every post must have good photography/graphics.  It’s really easy for me to get lazy on this because I barely know Photoshop, but its time to make this blog look really good, every post (with help from and thanks to Ginny).

– And either informational OR inspirational. I want you guys walk away with something – either feeling like you received some design/style information or feeling inspired to do change something, somehow.

Personal, pretty and information/inspirational. This is my new standard for EVERY post.

saarinen-table

Resolution #2 : When my instinct is unsure on something, take a week to think about it.

The problem with just saying ‘listen to your instincts’ this is that sometimes your (read: MY) instincts are wrong. For instance when I was approached to do The Fig House project this year my instinct said ‘NO’ and then after a meeting I changed my mind and now I’m SUPER happy that I did it. It’s really hard to know what is a good risk that makes you uncomfortable and what is a bad risk that you are going to regret, because sometimes you get the same feeling from your gut about both. Also when money is involved then my instinct is particularly hard to figure out – my bills say ‘Yes! You could use the money!!’ while my brain says ‘No, that’s not really your deal …’ and when you have a mortgage, baby and full-time employee, sometimes if you don’t think things through your bills wins and then everybody loses…. So I’m going to give it a week and bounce the ideas not just off ‘my people’ but my best friends who know me, my brand and how much I work.

charlie henderson

Resolution #3: Strengthen my marriage

Admittedly, after having Charlie we are probably in the best place we’ve ever been. I’m obsessed with this dude. But, we’ve been together for 14 years and have a new baby so yeah, things can slip easily. To be proactive about that Brian and I came up with these 4 resolutions together to make sure that we have a good marriage no matter how much I work and how much time/energy Charlie takes up.

1. Make one special dinner a week together, and get this: WE WILL SIT AT THE DINING TABLE. Candles may or may not be involved. This may not be such a grand resolution, certainly. I mean most of you do that every night. But Brian and I don’t cook nor do we eat at a table. We usually ‘make food’ which involves a salad or heating up kashi meals, or we get take out. So this is our attempt to spend some time together, cooking something new/special and then sitting down together like a date. We plan on getting a sitter at some point so we can go on dates but regardless we should be spending more quality time at home together.

2. Saturdays are officially ‘family day’ … well at least 1/2 the day. Why only 1/2 the day? Again I like realistic/achievable goals. Our friends are very persuasive when it comes to weekend brunches or dinners and Brian and I both have serious FOMO and simply can’t say no. In fact, we’ll both be kinda bummed to be missing out and that’s not a good way to walk into spending the day together as a family. So if we all do brunch together then Brian, Charlie and I spend the rest of the day just the three of us afterwards, or if we are all going to do something that night then we spend the day as a family until then.

3. Give each other 1 night off a week.  I need my girl time and Brian needs to bro out now and again, so at least one night one of us babysits Charlie while the other one gets to go out, sans child. As soon as we figure out what we want with childcare (nanny? sitter? nothing?) then we’ll be able to have a sitter watch Charlie one night a week so we can go out on a date night, but until then we can at least give each other a break from parenthood for one night so I can gab with the ladies about my sleep deprivation and undoubtedly look at pictures of Charlie on my phone the whole time.

4. Don’t dress like a total slob around the house (this is just my resolution, Brian didn’t weigh in on that one obviously – he’s not an idiot). I’m giving myself until January 6th to live in my ugly pajamas, my hair in a bun, bra-less and without any makeup. But starting next week I’m going to buy comfortable clothes that are at least cute and somewhat flattering, put my hair up in cute bobby pins instead of a bun, and take 2 minutes to put on makeup. It’s not that difficult, I can do it. Brian would NEVER say anything, but I caught my reflection in the mirror the other day and it wasn’t that hot chick that can pull off wearing her boyfriends t-shirt around the house … I looked like I had thrown in the towel and that I never cared if I got laid again. I’m not being hard on myself, i promise, but when you work from home it can easily start slipping and I think I’ve been slipping for a while (pre-birth) so this is me trying to catch it before it goes too far.

Other random resolutions:

Work out 3 times a week, not including walks. Normally my resolution is four times a week, but since i’m breastfeeding and therefore don’t need to work out as much I’m going to take it easy on myself this year. But those three times will be actual workouts, not just cute little walks with Charlie.

Get a spray tan and/or a blow out once a month. Weird, I know. But here’s the deal – even if I don’t have an event to do it for I just feel so much prettier afterwards and life just seems slightly better. It’s a $30 fix that makes me feel good. It’s not a massage – it doesn’t relieve physical stress and I’m not pretending it does. But feeling prettier is good for your health. I’m pretty sure Oprah would agree. (I just found the new Versus Spray tan that looks SUPER natural and just gives you a healthy glow).

Call people on their birthdays. I’m terrible at birthdays because I don’t care about mine at ALL. I’m the worst. My birthday has always been over labor day so as a kid I never had parties at school and everyone was always on vacation. I think its made me just not care about birthdays which is fine for me, but I have to remind myself that other people care about their birthdays and it means something to them. I’ve already added them an alarm to my calendar for most of my loved ones and while of course i should send a card, a phone call will at least happen.

Well, there you have it – my very specific 2014 resolutions. So, friends, what are your resolutions? Do you have any that are the same or any suggestions to help me accomplish these?

Happy New Year. I think its going to be a very busy, very happy and very productive year.

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