I love the New Year. I love new starts, I enjoy beginnings because they start out so pure, so innocent. It’s beautiful. This makes me a sucker for New Year’s Resolutions. I rarely stick with mine because they always include things like no more soda or lose 20 pounds. Let's be real, I love diet coke and food too much to follow through with that nonsense.

This year I wanted to take a different approach. I am an avid journaler, not just a bullet journaler. I have one where I write down all my feelings and the things I normally would never say out loud. I decided to look through it from all of 2016. I broke it down by month and picked out what I had been learning. Then I looked through all my pictures on Instagram to see what kinds of things my family had been doing the past year and I wrote down our milestones. Once I did that, I looked at my year as a whole and thought through how I wanted to do my life differently. It sounds like a long process but if you like reflecting like me, then it’s very enjoyable and interesting. 

There were some things that I forgot I learned and some things I would rather forget, but reflecting through them all gave me a fresh perspective on how I want to change my heart rather than just make a change in how I look. Based on this exercise I came up with six New Year's Resolutions:

-Be Present in my life. I tend to check out when things get tough or zone out on my phone. I want to make a real effort to bring myself back to what’s going on at the moment. One thing I realized is that I spend a lot of time worrying and that has prevented me from being present.

-Be honest in my relationships. I am a people pleaser, I want everyone to be happy but that usually comes from me not saying what I want or how I feel. It sounds like a selfless thing but it’s not. I’ve realized that its lying and I don't want to lie. I want to be authentic and that means saying how I feel. 

-Do Yoga! I love the meditative exercise that yoga can be and how it brings your body and mind together. It’s a way to relax, which is what I need more of in my life!

-Study the wilderness/desert times of the people in the Bible. I think there is much to be gleaned from them and I want to grasp it as I go through this dry season in my life. I want to stop grumbling and start learning!

-Stop comparing myself to other people. This has been a struggle my whole life and it is really self-defeating, I’m currently brainstorming ways I can combat this…I’ll let you know if I figure out some good ones because this is easier said than done. 

-Be a fun mom! I want to spend more time playing with my kids than worrying about how big of a mess we are making. 

Those are it! I feel excited to work on these things this year. Have you spent time reflecting on 2016? Did you make any New Year’s Resolutions?

Three Tips for Thoughtful Holiday Moments (Plus a Special Treat!)

I have mixed feelings about the Christmas season. I dislike that there is plenty of advertising about finding the perfect gift, making it seem like it’s all about getting and giving stuff. It can get stressful trying to get the actual gatherings of your family members set up. There are all the decorations and the pressure to make your house like Pinterest. It can all be overwhelming. Yet, I love the true meaning behind Christmas, celebrating the birth of Jesus. I love the special moments and traditions my family does each year. I wish my focus could solely be on the simplicity of Christ and family and delving deeper into those relationships. But how? This is something that I think about every year.  I brainstorm how I can add special little touches to make my family and friends feel loved and like they matter. This is something that can easily get lost in all the hustle and bustle of trying to find the perfect gift or set the perfect table. It takes intentionality. We have to check in with ourselves, to see if we are being a Martha or Mary this Christmas season. Are we busy doing a bunch of things, going to a bunch of events that we aren't taking the time to sit at the feet of our Savior and intentionally engage in great moments with our loved ones? There are a myriad of ways that we can spend our time in this short few weeks and I don't want to miss the opportunity to have precious moments with those I love. 

Here are three tips for adding in those thoughtful touches that will create more precious moments this year:

1. Hand write letters and cards to your loved ones. I know almost everyone sends out holiday greeting cards with pictures of their families, but why not write a personalized note on the back or get some blank Christmas cards? (Target has a ton of cute ones in the dollar spot!) Write out a note about what you love and appreciate about a friend or family member, especially if you don't get to see them very often.

2. Make it a point to talk about what you are thankful for each day. This might be easy to continue if you have been doing something like the Thankful Tree during Thanksgiving. Through all the ads, commercials, and the stacking lists of wants that can come with the Christmas season, it can be easy to forget that we are already blessed with so much. A great time to talk about this is  during your bedtime routine with your kids, we try to do this, it’s not everyday but its a great note to end the day on.  It can help focus their little hearts on all their blessings instead of all the toys that get slammed in their faces during errands and the constant question of what they are asking Santa for Christmas. 

3. Use these handy Que Cards from Of Noble to inspire great conversations during your Christmas gatherings. I busted these out during my Friendsgiving and they were a hit! It’s easy to get stuck in ruts of conversations with people you are familiar with or hard to start conversations with relatives you don’t see very often. Having a guide handy can break up any awkward moments and help you go deeper and discover things that you never knew about your loved ones. During friendsgiving, we found out one friend’s passion for a national ice cream holiday! The questions on the cue cards inspired many great laughs that night. 

I hope these tips inspire you to add a little something special to your Christmas this year. If you try any of them out please let me know! 

AND As a special treat Of Noble is offering my readers a special coupon code for the Que Cards! You are not going to want to have Christmas dinner without these, many great conversations and laughs await you! Use the code SEWZIP to get 25% off your purchase of the Que Cards, this means that you will get both the printable AND the digital version for $7.50!! Run and grab some for your celebrations this year, the code will be available until Midnight on Christmas Eve but don’t wait that long to get them! 

What meaningful things are you going to do this season?

Holiday Planning with the Bullet Journal

The Christmas season can come with tidings of great joy and....stress! There are many activities we can get involved in and it is hard to keep track of them all. One thing that has been a time saver/brain saver/sanity keeper for me is my bullet journal. Have you heard about the bujo (hipster slang for bullet journal) craze? If not, check out the official bullet journal's site for all the basic information. I decided to make a short video of my favorite bullet journal pages and tell you a little bit about how I use it in my holiday planning. This is my first video and I feel a little awkward about it, but we all gotta start out somewhere! I shared my video on my Facebook page, you can check it by clicking HERE!

Meanwhile these are some details from the video:

My Monthly Layout for December, find the free printable here. 

My monthly December task list and my weekly setup. 

My bullet journal and my favorite pens: 

TomBow Dual Brush Pen, Tombow Fudenosuke Brush Pen, & Pilot G-2 0.38 Pen. 

Another great resource in starting a bullet journal is Boho Berry, she has great videos and tutorials. 

What is something that has helped you in your holiday planning?