A Little To-Do List

Well, it's that time of year. People are thinking a lot about resolutions, goals, plans, to-do's... all of it. I'm no different. I have a lot on my mind these days - life, family, friends, our wedding, work(?), our rental... and more. My mind is constantly working these days and I find it hard to turn it off sometimes, so I decided it was time to sit down and try to write down some of my goals and to-do's for 2013.

Family

- Find a "Memory Chest" for Halle: This falls somewhere between family & rental, but I feel it falls more on the family side of things. I want to find or make a wooden chest that I can paint, and then store keepsakes for Halle in. I have her first year calendar, some special cards, certain outfits and a few other books, etc. that I want to put away for safe keeping for when she is older. This is high on my priority list as many of these items are scattered around the house and I don't want them to go missing/get damaged.

- Organize our "Memory Box": No surprise that I have a box full of ticket stubs, brochures, pieces of paper, napkins, boarding passes, etc. from the past 5 years that B & I have been together. Unfortunately, when they are sitting crammed into a box, they aren't making us smile all too often. The other week I picked up a "Smash Book" from HomeSense, and it's perfect. It's essentially a scrapbook that isn't meant to look pretty & that is all that we need. I'm determined to get this book filled up, so we have a sweet book we can flip threw together.

- Finish our 2012 Family Year Book: I've started and come so close to finish up a photo year book. I have a few photos that are missing from the month when we were computer less - so I just need to pull those together and finish cleaning up pages that I started. I'm hoping that I can finish this up before Halle turns 2! 

Rental

- Finish the garage sale chair: Yup - that garage sale chair is making some progress and I hope we can finish it up before Spring hit's. Even before the Super Bowl would be great. The more seating we have here for the big game, the better!

- Paint a canvas for Halle: I've already found the inspiration for what I want to paint for her, and I have a canvas in the basement that I plan on painting over... now I just need to get on it.

- Finish painting Halle's final bookshelf and hang it: I'm so close to finishing this one and it will make such a huge difference in her room. This little girl has SO MANY books and a bunch are sitting in a box in her closet. I can't wait to get them out and into a better rotation of reading with her. (My Dad built this shelf around the time Halle was born... so it's been sitting around unpainted for far too long, so it's time to finally cross this off my list).

- Paint the dresser in our dining room: This will probably come after all of the items above, but I hope I can get on this soon. I'm not overly bothered by the wood finish on it at the moment, but I'm sure as I spend more and more time in the Dining Room, it will bother me more.

- Find or Make a Dining Room Table: This is more of a wish list item. We don't NEED the dining room table, but I wouldn't mind having a bigger space for entertaining friends out here. It would also be nice if it could be a larger space for me to work on projects. Maybe this is something I can start pricing out soon.

Life

Life is a lot harder to write out than these first too. I've been thinking a lot recently about what I would like to do... all of the time. Work wise. I've spent a lot of time wondering what my future looks like when it comes to work. What drives me? What am I truly passionate about? The biggest part of me always seems to be wanting to help people, and I feel like if when I get back into the working world, I am inclined to want to be a part of the not-for-profit sector. I want to do something that betters life for other's. 
In the meantime, I want to work on being a better Mom to Halle. I've done my best to reduce how much time I spend on my phone/online while I am with her during the day. I find these to be unnecessary distractions. I've already removed Twitter off of my phone, and I'm leaning towards doing the same with Facebook. Most of my blog writing and reading is done while she is napping or in bed at night - but even at night, I find I prefer dedicating that time to B, and spending time with him. At the end of each and every day this little family of mine is what is most important and I want to spend a lot of time focusing on them this year.

What is on your list of things that you want to accomplish this year? What are your goals or to-do's and what will you do to encourage yourself to check items off of that list?