At the beginning of 2013, I decided to make a list of 101 Goals for the year that I wanted to accomplish after being inspired by a blog post about someone who decided to do 101 things in 1001 days.  Now, I lost my first list that I started, didn’t actually come up with 101 and never wrote anything down on the pretty paper that I created specifically for this purpose, but that’s life.  And a pretty accurate depiction of how my plans/projects go sometimes.  I did come up with a little over 50 and successfully completed over 55% of them, so I think this year is a win.

It was fun to go back and see what I’d accomplished over the year that I already knew I wanted last January.  So, as I’m working on 2014’s I thought I’d post last year’s review (mostly as inspiration for myself, but maybe you’ll find it inspiring too: )  Note: These are in a kind of random order, and I did leave a few more personal ones off, but it’s still a pretty good overall list.

2013 Goals Review-Create a Blog: Done, obviously : ) My hopes for this little blog is to post at least once a week and to give easy and useful design tips and tricks, do some fun free printable/giveaways and use it as an outlet for my work.  Though I’ve only been blogging about a month, it’s been pretty successful so far.  And fun. And I hope next year will be even better.

-Send out at least 5 birthday cards: Done…all to one person.  In September one of my very favorite people had a birthday and we weren’t able to celebrate with her because she was living a few hours away.  Kevin and I went to Target to get her a card and ended up with about 10 that we individually signed and sealed and left some Halloween themed confetti in some as a surprise (or slight irritation, which was really more of the goal.)  It was one of the most fun birthday presents we’ve ever sent.  We were snickering in the card aisle of Target (like little girls with a secret) trying to decide which cards we should get.  I think we ended up with a few Get Well Soons, one Congratulations, a Miss You, a Birthday Card for a little girl and one real birthday card.  Happy 25th Mandi : )

– Exercise 3 times a week: mmmm….this one is partially done.  We started off the year pretty strong, but when it got really hot we faltered and then my schedule changed and I wasn’t home in the evenings and it got harder to work out a consistent schedule.  Going to do better next year!

-Make a Wedding Book of all our pictures:  Finished this with a month to spare! After being married a year and a half, we finally have a wedding book!  And we gave these as gifts to parents and grandparents for Christmas.  It was a hit!  I made it all myself in InDesign and got it printed with Blurb.  I’m pretty proud of it!

-Save Money out of Paycheck each month:  Done!

-Clean out office:  Done…a few times.  And needs to be done again.  Seriously.  We just can’t keep this room clean.

-Organize Basement:  Honestly, I’m no quite sure what I meant by this, and I don’t remember if I did it or not.  It’s okay down there, but it’s still a basement and could probably use some help.

-Set up office and make it pretty:  It was set up…but it’s not quite to the extent I’d like and we really don’t use it for an office. I do have a little nook out in the living room that I use as an office of sorts. So, I guess this one is semi-complete.

-Make Jolly Rancher Suckers:  Sadly, not done.  They do sound delicious, though.

-Make Awesome Business Cards:  Done. And they are awesome!

-Set Up Business:  One of my favorite accomplishments this year!

-Create a Doodle Journal:  Haven’t done, but I’d still like to!  I do have quite a few sketch books going around, so I’m counting those a little bit.  And I got a few cool books for Christmas about drawing and doodling that will help and I’m excited to use them.

-Eat Veggies 3 Times a week at dinner:  Um. No.

-Go 1 week drinking nothing but water:  No again. And I’m not really that disappointed.

-Visit 3 Different Cities:  Yes! We visited my friend in San Diego, went to Chicago for our 1 year anniversary and Louisville, KY for a weekend in January.  Plus a few smaller towns around home too.  Lots of fun places this year!

-Try 10 New Places to Eat:  Square One Brewery, Three Monkeys, Firehouse Subs, Rooster (awesome breakfast!), Smoking Barrels BBQ (yum!), Russells on Macklind (delish), ChimiChanga’s, Potbelly’s (not so good), Whole Foods Buffet, Mathew’s Kitchen

-Create 1 New Pattern a Week:  No, but the ones I did make were fun.

-Create 1 New Paper Product a Week:  No, again : (

-Take a Food Cooking Class with Kevin:  No, but I hope to someday.

-Learn how to use a DSLR:  Learned a lot, but there’s still more to learn!  Still using AV mode, but one day I’ll get into manual.

-Set Up and Etsy Shop:  Another one of my favorite achievements this year!

-Create a Design Inspiration Binder and put all my ideas I’ve found:  I don’t have a binder yet, but most of them are all in one place at least.

-Organize “important document shelf”:  Done!  All our important papers are finally organized after a year and a half.  Wahoo!

-Organize Dining Room:  Done, but could be done again.

-Send 4 things this year to friends: Done!

-Create Payment schedule for bills:  Done!  Oh, has this made my life easier. Hooray for automatic bill pay! Why wasn’t I doing this sooner?

-Cook a new recipe each month:  Yeah, didn’t happen.  I just don’t like to cook.

Make these suckers:  No, but I still want to!

-Have a Party!:  Done!

-Make Living Room Pillows:  No, but I did  get new ones from my friend and they look great!

-Make and Decorate a Cake:  I made quite a few really good cakes!  I didn’t decorate them like I really wanted, but they still looked cute.

-Make 10 things from my Pinterest “to make” board:  I don’t think I did, but I did make quite I few things from my food bored and used a lot of other stuff as inspiration for my design work.

-Learn InDesign:  Done!  And used it on a few really cool things : )

-Experiment with Photoshop:  Done!  Fun stuff.

-Update my Resume:  Done, but could probably be updated again.  I did an update on LinkedIn too.

-Do a Craft Fair:  I did sign up for one this year, but then got overwhelmed and and cancelled.  I hope to take part in one eventually, though.

-Learn more about how a websites work:  OH, have I learned about websites.  I still feel like I know absolutely nothing, but I’ve got a working website and that’s half (or more like 1/4th of the battle).  I’ve also learned that I despise web coding.  Every website accomplishment for me is huge.

-Hang up more pictures:  I have gotten more pictures hung!  Not as many as I’d like, but maybe one day they’ll finally be up.  I’m sure when that happens we’ll be ready to move : )

-Get Business Bank Account:  Done!

-Make 2013 Calendar:  Done!

-Go through/organize magazines:  I did go through them to get scraps for a school project, but I wouldn’t say I organized them by any means.  So, I guess that’s a no.

-Get Public Library Card:  Check!

-Organize Files on the Computer:  This is another one that I’m not quite sure what I meant…but I have re-organized the files on my computer recently, so I’m counting it as a yes.

-Get Time Machine for my computer:  Done!  One of the biggest things I was scared of when I started doing design stuff was that my computer would crash or break or get stolen and I’d loose every single one of my files that I’d worked so hard on.  So, I got this backup and it’s awesome.  Thankfully, I haven’t had to use it, but it backs up all my stuff automatically every time I save something.  It’s awesome.  But it’s Apple, so it’s expected : )

So, there’s my list.  I’m working on 2014’s and I think it’s going to be an even better (there’s some saying about wine only getting better with time? Maybe that should be my life statement too…)  I think this is the first time I’ve actually written down a list of year goals and I’m really excited to do it again.  I don’t know if I’ve ever accomplished so much that I set out to do in the beginning of the year.  And having a list of what I wanted 365 days ago is really motivating.  I was more excited to get stuff done and now, I’m excited at all of the things I’d forgotten about accomplishing.

Tomorrow, I’ll be posting some tips I’ve found helpful for setting goals, so stay tuned {Check that out here}. If you haven’t already make sure to like my Facebook page for updates!

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