2019 Let’s Do This

2019 Let’s Do This

Happy Happy Happy New Year!!!

Holy moly it’s 2019! We hope you had a fantastic time celebrating the new year, whether that was with all your friends at a huge party, in front of the TV watching the ball drop, or sound asleep on the couch like Andy! Me, well, I was at work! That’s a wedding coordinator’s life (and it was really fun).

Naturally this past week has been all about reflecting on the year that was and looking towards goals and plans for the new year. I’ve been thinking about what projects we did (and didn’t!) finish this year and what we want to tackle in 2019, as well as just what we want this year to look like and how we want it to feel.

We built this platform bed in January.

I like to start a new year with a bit of of a theme, and in 2018 that was “simplify.” I wanted and desperately needed to keep our lives as calm, as uncluttered, and as simple as possible, and I think we did a great job. We tackled way fewer projects than we usually do (good for us, not so good for the blog!!), committed to a no-spend month, and really focused on just taking life as easy as we needed to without (too much) guilt about all the projects that we couldn’t get to and blog posts that we didn’t write.

We gave our master bath an update in March.

When I think back to where we were a year ago, our lives were so very different. Last year at this time we had a four month old and an almost-two year old. We were deep in the thick of babies and chaos and bottles and the absolute sheer craziness of figuring out this new normal as a family of four. Simple was what we needed.

Now we’ve settled in to the routines of a 16-month-old and an almost-three year old, and, well, I’m starting to think maybe “simple” has become a little “boring.” Simplicity was good for us in 2018, but 2019 feels like time to build on the lessons we’ve learned and have more fun!

My favorite part of 2018 was celebrating Olly’s first birthday in August!
(Photo by Kimberly Lane Photography)

In 2019, I want to be bolder. I want to make design risks, paint something in our house a crazy color, do a project just for fun even if it’s not something we need forever, invest in vintage furniture that’s weird and unique and not from the big box store. For me personally, I want to stop buying the black shirt just because it’s more practical. I want to wear bright lipstick for no reason. I want to get out of the house more. I want a lot more date nights — one a month would be an awesome (though difficult) goal. Of course I still want to do our best to live minimally, not buy things for the sake of buying them, and make smart choices for our family, our budget and the environment, etc., but I think we can do that in a way that’s just a little more fun and a lot more colorful. After all, white paint and pink paint cost the same.

So my 2019 theme is “be bold.” I hope you stick around to see what that’s going to mean and how it’s all going to play out because I think it’s going to be great. Crazy? Of course. Busy? Definitely… I mean, this year we’re going to have a threenager AND a terrible two, eeeeek… I think it’s going to be a fun year and I can’t wait to share it with all of you along the way! And we are already sitting on some exciting project news that we can’t wait to share with you soon!

So let us know, do you have any new year’s resolutions or plans for 2019? If you had to come up with a theme for your year, what would it be?