Goal Setting: Mid-Year Check In
Can you believe that we are already halfway through 2015? It seems like just yesterday, I was mailing out our Christmas cards. For our card design this past year, we decided to try something a little different and include our 2014 Highlights and 2015 Wishes on the reverse side. (Click here to see the front side of our cards!) Now that we are mid-way through 2015, I thought I'd give you guys an update how we are doing with the goals we shared back in December!
1. Becoming Homeowners
If you've been reading my blog for a while, you know we accomplished this goal in April when we purchased our very first house! We've now been here for just over two months and we absolutely love it. I've shared a few pictures in our "We're Buying a House!" post and via Instagram, but I am working on creating a more thorough "before" home tour to share with you guys. Stay tuned!
2. Adopting a Pet
We crossed this off our list this past Sunday when we brought this sweet girl home. Her name is Chloe and she is a two year old boxer. She was rescued from a high kill shelter by PA Caring for K-9's. We are so happy to have her here with us! Those of you who follow me on Instagram can look forward to MANY more photos of our little lady. I'm obsessed!
3. Hosting more game nights
We've hosted a quite few impromptu game nights so far this year, but I want to start planning ahead more so we can invite more people! We also want to have a housewarming party sometime next month, so I need to get myself into planning mode!
4. Visiting Ella in California
We did this too!! Last month, Anthony and I traveled to California with a group of our closest friends to celebrate my best friend/college roommate, Ella's graduation from the American Film Institute! We spent an amazing week in beautiful southern California, stayed at an awesome Airbnb, cooked delicious dinners, went hiking above Griffith Observatory, visited the Getty Museum and took day trips to Venice Beach, Santa Monica and Santa Barbara. It was a fantastic trip and we hope to go back again soon!
5. Celebrating our second year of marriage
We are looking forward to celebrating our second anniversary in October. We'll be traveling to North Carolina twice in the next two months (for my best friend's wedding festivities!), so when October rolls around we will probably want to do something more low-key. Last year for our anniversary, we spent a weekend in West Chester, PA and met up with our photographer, Savannah Smith to have some photos taken. That's the nice thing about having an October anniversary-- its the perfect time to have pictures taken and have them in time to make Christmas cards! We are already planning a "Second Anniversary/Our First Home" photo shoot with Savannah. I think this is going to be a yearly tradition for our little family!
6. Having more fun times with family and friends
So far we've been lucky to spend a lot of quality time with our family and friends so far this year. Some of my favorite memories so far were simple times, like the first day we were in our new house when my Gram came over and just chatted with me in the kitchen while I was scrubbing cabinets and a couple weeks later when my friends, Jamie, Morgan and I just hung around talking while I was doing random things like measuring for curtain hardware. We had a great time hosting both a Mother's Day and Father's Day lunch this year. Our house is in the perfect central location for our families, plus we have enough parking space for 15+ cars, so we're quickly becoming the party destination!
I have to admit, I was a little hesitant at first to share our big goals, like buying a house and taking a Californian vacation. What if we couldn't pull them off? At the time we were writing these goals, we weren't sure if they were even realistic for us, so sharing our dreams made me feel a little vulnerable.
But you know, after taking the plunge and sharing these goals with our family and friends (and all of you, of course!), I am so glad that we did. When we attended Christmas parties last year, everyone was telling us how much they loved our card and asked us questions about the different goals we had set our sights on. It was so awesome to feel their support and encouragement. Sharing our goals publicly became a form of accountability for us. It's much easier to postpone or give up on a dream that you haven't told anyone about. When things got difficult, we had the motivation we needed to keep pushing through.
Plus, I'm a big believer in the idea that you only get what you have the courage to ask for in life. By putting it out there in the universe that these things were what we wanted, I like to think that we had the universe working on our side to make it all happen.