2012: Another Year in Review

2012 was quite the year...Highlights?

Traveled...to St. George, Florida, a Disney Cruise to the Bahamas and Castaway Cay, the Grand Canyon, spending the summer in Boston and going to Virginia, DC, and New York while I was there (the best summer ever, yes.), St. George again, Idaho, and a quick trip to New York and Boston at the beginning of December.

Saw...awesome movies in theaters like The Hunger Games, Brave, the Dark Knight Rises, Pitch Perfect, the Perks of Being a Wallflower, the Hobbit, and Les Miserables (just saw it and it was really good).

Celebrated...a few of my friends' weddings and engagements, many friends and two cousins going on missions (this also made me sad to see them go), the Hunger Games movie and Halloween by throwing huge parties for them, my 21st birthday, the 4th of July in Boston, and the missionary age changes the church made.

Listened...to music like a new album from Carrie Underwood!!!, new music from Taylor Swift, David Archuleta, Kelly Clarkson, and the Killers; fell in love with artists such as ZZ Ward, Lindsey Stirling, Mree, Phillip Phillips, Kacey Musgraves, Fifth Harmony, and Birdy. Continued to love music from Glee.

Went....to concerts for Demi Lovato, Carrie Underwood, and the Killers.

Received and bought...too many new clothes (haha, though I do love them), my second pair of grasshopper shoes, a new steamer and a dress form, a Carrie Underwood cardboard cutout, the cutest Steve Madden shoes ever, and a smart phone.

Made...plenty of movies with my siblings and cousins, more clothes, headbands with my best friends, my Halloween costume, and new friends in new places.

Watched...tv shows such as Pretty Little Liars, Glee, Modern Family, Friends (favorite show EVER), Lost, Go On, Project Runway, the X-Factor, and Revolution.

Survived...a sprained wrist (that never completely healed unfortunately), getting way too many colds throughout the year, and the end of the world.

Accomplished...moving to the east coast and doing an internship with Anthropologie over the summer, another year of school (graduating in August!), getting into and getting ready to do a fashion show in February, participating in the bible videos the church does, and playing piano for the ward choir this past semester. ;)

Became...closer to my family and my friends, a better self and a better person, healthier, more in-tune with who I am and who I want to be, more confident, wiser, more independent, and happier. :)

After writing all that stuff down, I realize how amazing of a year I've had. I'm so so blessed and lucky to be me and to have my life. I always need to appreciate my life and how wonderful everything truly is.

My only goal for 2013 is happiness. Happiness for myself and for others. I know that if I'm working towards being happy and making other people happy, I'll be doing good things in my life. Happiness really is what it's all about. :)

Quicky

Fail on my goal to post every week!!

My excuse is: this week is education week, I have to wake up super early tomorrow to drive to Provo, I was in Provo all day today, I have to go to bed early tonight, and my sleep matters more to me than a blog. That's definitely good, right?

(I know that people don't really care whether I post every day or not--you don't, do you? This post is just for my own sanity)

Expect a normal post tomorrow most likely!

K goodnight, sorry for like the most pointless post ever. This is barely a post, I'd have to call it more a "flash post."

Okay really though. Night!

:)

*I just realized I put every week instead of every day at the top. Proof that I am very tired.

Goal Crazy

So I've made it a new personal goal of mine to blog every single day, even if it's something small, because I think it's really important for me to write down my daily thoughts and share them with others. So if you read this thing at all...then expect some more posting!

I feel like I have been going crazy making goals for the past few days, and it actually feels great, because they are doable goals and things that I think I can really do.

Like....I haven't bitten my nails for a whole ten days now. If you know me, that's a ton! I'm the girl who's sitting in class or church or anywhere and she's biting her nails to the core. And it just looks so gross. At least, I'm pretty sure it does, as I've never actually watched myself do it. It's funny how this whole thing started out, because I wanted to paint my toenails this cute mint green color, but I couldn't find it! So I settled for my usual purple and then was so annoyed when I was done and I found the green one. I go through quite an ordeal painting my nails sometimes because I mess up a lot and there is a lot of nail polish remover involved, so when I'm done, I'm just that...DONE. But I wanted to wear the mint green polish so bad, so I decided, what the heck, I'll paint my fingernails, even though they have maybe been painted once or twice before in my life. So I painted them, and they looked soooo cute! I tell you that it was one of the most special days of my life and I had such a happy feeling. I kept looking in the mirror, holding up my hand with my nails showing and just having a big smile on my face because I loved my painted nails so much. Right then and there I decided I would never go without painted nails again. Which meant I could never go with bitten nails again if I actually wanted them to look super cute. And that was that. No nail biting for ten days and I'm going to keep going! I have a system worked where I give myself a reward on a weekly and monthly basis and so far it's going well. This is honestly such an exciting thing, because I have bitten my nails hard core my whole life and just never planned on quitting because I didn't think it was possible, but I guess it just might be. :)

I've also just been making goals with the blogging every day and really trying hard to read a chapter of my scriptures every night. Many times I'm tired and I'll just get away with a verse or something, but it really hit me when I heard someone talking in church about how if we don't make the time to actually study our scriptures, we won't get much out of them. I can't open them up and expect to always read the exact verse I needed to read and that's all. I have to go through the whole chapter and then I will find that verse plus more. This is what I think about whenever my eyes start to droop and I'm tempted to just read a verse and go to bed.

And then in church today, I was really hit hard by what a girl commented in Relief Society (which is an hour set aside in our meeting where women 18 and older go to have a lesson and learn about stuff to help us in the gospel. The lessons are usually more geared to women, obviously) about weaknesses becoming strong. I've heard that so many times but I guess the way she worded it really stuck out to me. I mean as humans, we have a lot of weaknesses, man do I have a ton! I bite my nails, I struggle opening up to people and really sharing or speaking in large groups, my room gets messy way too easily, I procrastinate, etc. The list goes on and on, seriously! A lot of times, we think that these weaknesses will always be weaknesses. And yeah, they might improve a little, but we're always going to struggle with them no matter what. But not so! Every single one of those things I struggle with, can become strengths if we really work hard and believe that they can become so. My nails can become really beautiful one day, and people might not even ever know how ugly and deformed they used to be. Or I could become the person who is early and on-time with assignments and tasks, rather than the procrastinator. It was just really cool to realize that if I work at this stuff, it doesn't always have to be a weak thing in my life, it can be a total strength.

Basically, I know that habit breaking is so incredibly hard. I've struggled and overcome some really difficult things in my life that I never really thought I could do. I hope I keep this happy attitude of goal-making while I'm doing all this stuff, because I do want to improve on these things so much. The happiness when you truly hurdle a challenge is indescribable. You feel strong and you feel like you can do anything and you do feel so happy.

And that's my post and thoughts for the day. It feels good to get it out. And if you managed to get through this whole post...thanks for reading. :)

Goals that I will KEEP for 2012

So in my family, we got together and made goals for the new year. I feel like I always make goals and then never do anything about them because they are just in my head or I'm not really committed to them. But doing it with my family helps me to stick to my resolutions more so maybe it'll work. We have 5 goals to make, each in a different type of category--physical, spiritual, service, mental, and family. Since I live away from home, I decided to change my family goal to a social goal, because that's more applicable to me right now. And now a drumroll for my goals for 2012:

Physical: Eat at least 1 fruit every day and have something for breakfast every morning. This must seem like such a simple goal to some people but one thing that I really need to work on is eating healthy. I work in the mornings so often times I skip breakfast so I'm going to try really hard to just have something, even if it's on the go, like a granola bar. And I am really bad at having my fruits and vegetables and usually don't have any. So for a start, it's just one fruit, and eventually I'll move it up to more. Slow and steady. Oh, and you're probably wondering why I didn't put fruit or vegetable as the goal, but one thing about me is that I hate vegetables. They all taste gross to me and make me gag. So for now I'll just work on eating the fruit and maybe next year's goal will incorporate vegetables into my diet. ;)

Spiritual: Read one chapter in the scriptures every day. This is also kind of a simple goal but something I need to work on. Sometimes I feel too tired and I only read a few verses and don't even remember what I've read or I make excuses, so I really want to work on reading a chapter and fully reading it by studying and marking stuff that I read.

Service: Join a service club/group at BYU. This one's pretty self-explanatory, I'd say.

Mental/Intellectual: Turn in all my assignments on time and only miss each of my classes one time. I am the queen of procrastination and I have gotten into a bad habit thinking it's okay to skip class. Therefore a goal must be made in this area.

Social: Put myself out there at least one time every day. As a college student, I think too often I get caught up in my own little world and I really don't make an effort to try to talk to people or just be more open with friends. And for some reason it makes me kind of anxious to strike up a conversation with a stranger or something and so I never do it. This is something I need huge work on, I think. Some examples of this goal would be like talking to the person in the elevator, making a conversation with someone I don't usually talk to in one of my classes, flirting with a cute boy, or going over to a friend's apartment and just visiting with them. Stuff like that. This will be a hard one for me, but that's why it's a goal, right?

A few other goals I've made:

Blog at least three times a week.

Go to the temple once a month. I really should go more than this but I struggle making time to go at all, so this goal is a little small, but achievable for me.

Only one new clothing/accessory item each month. One thing about me is that I spend my money a lot and it's usually on clothes. My closet is bulging with clothing! And often times when I buy things I don't really need it, I just think it's cute. This buying thing also includes thrift stores. The exceptions are that people can buy things for me (like I can have clothes as a birthday present) or I can buy something if I really need it (like if I'm a bridesmaid and I need certain shoes to go with the dress or if I need something like new tennis shoes). This will get me to really think about my shopping when I'm doing so I can think, "Is this the item I want to spend on for this month?" I'll buy a lot less with a limit. Also in the rules are that if I don't buy an item that month, then I can't have an extra for the next month. And the item must be $20. I don't want to suddenly be buying a $100 dress because I haven't spent the money anywhere else! This is going to make me a smarter shopper and also it will cause me to just sew something if I want more clothes. (I got the idea from Meredith, who didn't shop for herself at all during 2011--she talks about it here--haha I'm not as amazing as she is at, I had to reward myself!)

So yep yep, those are my goals for the year of 2012! Writing them down is the first step so hopefully now I'll be able to keep them. :D Everyone's saying that 2012 is going to be a magical and wonderful year and you know what, I think that's true! Bring on the new and best year my life will have ever seen!

Pssst...what are your goals, if you made any? And if you didn't make any, why didn't you? I'd love to hear your thoughts!

New Years Resolutions

This year...my New Year's Resolution is...(drum roll please):

to not have a New Year's resolution! :)

People are constantly making goals at the beginning of the year and never keeping them. And I've always wondered why we only make goals at the start of the year. We should be making goals every day, whether it's January 1st, March 22, July 10, or October 4. My goal is to make continuous goals throughout the year instead of making a bunch right now and not keeping them. I want to be able to work on improving myself all the time and make little goals instead of big ones. Every day is a new start. If I make a mistake one day, I can try again the next. And if I make a mistake that day, I'll try again the next day. The point I'm trying to get at is that yes, we can still make New Year's resolutions, but we should have resolutions for every day. Some of my every day resolutions are going to be:

Keep my room clean
Compliment at least 5 people
Wake up on time and go to bed by 11
Get my required homework and studying done
Take out my contacts every night

Ok, well happy new year in a few days everyone! More updates on my Christmas break will come soon. :)