2026 Goals & Dreams and 2025 Year Review

Find out how I did with the goals I set last year and what my hopes and dreams are for 2026 in the areas of personal, home and financial, and business. It’s motivating to set goals, even if you don’t make them all, as a way to look at what we have accomplished and how we’d like to take steps forward in our simple homemade lives, no matter how big or small.

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As I sat down to think about this annual review of the goals I’ve set every year since the beginning of An Oregon Cottage back in 2009, I actually wondered if I should continue with them. Does anyone read them? Does anyone care? Is it helpful?

Because I’ve seen a number of people this year declare they aren’t setting any goals and stating it in a way that was self-affirming, as if they’d been forced to it or something. And if that’s the feeling, then, yeah you should probably take a break.

Setting Realistic Goals & Desires

But I want to be clear that goals (or habits, or dreams, or desires, or whatever you choose to call them) have never been about long, detailed lists to check off, strict guidelines with definite outcomes, and feelings of failure to me. And I hope I’ve communicated that through the years!

Goals are about taking small steps (cutting back on sugar, making room for reading or creating) and sometimes large ones (buying that house, taking that trip) that move us along to the life we wish for and the things we hope to do.

I spent many years never making any intentional goals. But I got to a point in my life (right around the time I started this website) where I looked back and was disappointed at the things we hadn’t done, the books I hadn’t read, the places we hadn’t gone.

Now this wasn’t a huge failure or anything – we had renovated two houses on a minimal budget, were raising two great kids, and had minimal debt, and good friends and family relationships – but I was saddened that I had let life just sort of happen and hadn’t taken full advantage of the time we were given.

So I made goals. To read more (from 0 to 100 books in 5 years). To travel (we showed our kids the beautiful Pacific Northwest, took ourselves to Greece, the Caribbean, and more). To finish house and garden projects (so many that became part of the blog). To get healthier (which prompted this series and book). And to move the website and my business to become more useful to you, my online friends.

The Difference Goals Can Make

Looking back I’m so glad I started the tradition of making goals. Is it perfect? No. I’m the first to admit I don’t always do the quarterly 6-month check-ins and the goals aren’t always at the top of my mind. Do I reach them all? Of course not – but I’ve always said that’s not the point, sometimes the goal wasn’t even the right one to begin with, but making it and discovering that it wasn’t right is useful and helps point us in the right direction.

The goals I’ve made through the years that have stuck so that they are now habit-like have brought the most joy and blessings to my life. They include things like:

• Monthly Trips: I can honestly say I wouldn’t have thought to plan out a years worth of monthly trips/outings without setting a goal. And it’s been life-fulfilling and even life-changing. Sometimes it involves a plane and travel with a capital T, sometimes it’s just an overnight somewhere – and sometimes it’s simply an afternoon picnic and paddle at a nearby lake. But without the plan? I doubt they would happen because we aren’t spontaneous and it’s easy to just get caught up in everyday life and routines. But having something to look forward to almost every month of the year? Joy.
• Savings: Without goals to save certain amounts in both retirement and regular savings I’m again not sure where we’d be. I mean, I’m sure we’d have something, but when we made a goal in this area (this was a joint goal for me and Brian), we primed ourselves to be ready to give up some things to make room for it. Without the goal, we simply wouldn’t have thought about giving some things up, I’m sure.
• Movement: Once I wrote down the goal of some type of exercise 5-6 times a week, I searched for different things I would actually stick with (strength training and HIIT or walking for me) and it became simply what I do in the mornings. In other words, a habit.
• Reading: You probably guessed I would add this since it’s my poster child when I talk about setting goals, lol. When I realized in 2014 that I went a whole year without reading even one book – me, who had read (sometimes voraciously) since middle school – I was shocked. Since I found so much joy in reading, I made a goal to read at least one book a month. Because of that, I started searching out ways to get books (we lived rurally, so I had to be creative), ways to read more, and habits to develop to fit in reading. Without the goal? I probably would’ve read a book here or there, but that year I made a goal to read 12 books, I actually finished 31! The goal made it something I thought about and sought out ways to make it happen.

And guys, that’s what I think is key here: making goals, dreaming dreams, writing down your hopes – they put what you’d like to do in the forefront of your mind so that you are actively thinking about ways to make them happen. Even if it’s slowly over many years.

And so I’m here once again to share my goals, reviewing the previous year and looking ahead to the next. There are ups and downs, some goals were met, some were changed, and some are moving to yet another year. But it’s all good – and it’s all part of our SIMPLE homemade life (no “big, scary” goals for me – just one step in front of the other to the life we dream about💜).

Quick 2025 Year Review

Personal goals: I met most of these by at least half if not the entire year. The major misses were wanting to read apocryphal books (I tried but they were really weird to me, so I concentrated on the Bible and Christian living books – some of which made it to my best books list) and working only 3 days a week. There are seasons through the year where that works, but mostly I still need at least 4 days and sometimes 5 to get everything done. Which was a good thing to learn, and I’ve added a new goal that I think will be more doable throughout the year.

Home & Financial goals: The big wins for the home were finishing the laundry room and starting the kitchen side porch (yay!), the big loss was yet again not moving forward on our stalled upstairs landing (ugh). So, yes, it will be on the list again. We made a big trip was to Glacier, so fun, but we dropped the ball again on estate planning (though to be honest, Brian’s been overwhelmed with his family estate stuff after his mom’s death and there’s only so much brain band-width for that).

Business goals: I updated my Oregon Cottage Shop and added not one, but TWO physical cookbooks and had a profitable sale of them in November(and wonderful feedback 💜). A highlight for sure. I did an okay job planning more in advance, but didn’t really move forward with a solid email plan. I want any emails I send to be useful and welcomed and not just noise, so I may have spent too much time thinking about this and not enough in doing, lol.

2026 Goals

Personal

1. More Bible and prayer time in the mornings with journaling. I want to spend more than just a cursory few minutes, to really think about how what I’m reading can impact my life.
2. At least 26 minutes walking 5 times a week. 26 minutes for 2026, get it? This is in addition to my daily workouts and is usually happening after lunch (I started recording this on January 1).
3. Strength train 3 times a week. Continue progressive overload weight training.
4. Grind my own grain. Since I bought a mill and grain a year ago and have yet to grind any, I figured I better make it a goal, lol.
5. Creative/craft days on Fridays at least 2 times a month. This is what I’m hoping to make happen this year after realizing that weekly days off regularly weren’t feasible. This is important to me because there are specific DIY’s I’ve wanted to get done for literal years that aren’t happening without a goal including:
   -Paint and recover my office chair.
   -Recover guest room chair (I think it’s a 30 minute project!)
   -Upholster (or deconstruct?) Brian’s grandmother’s chair as well as sew new covers for our outdoor furniture cushions.

Home & Financial

1. Upstairs landing finished! I have no words to explain why this isn’t done yet.😳
2. Kitchen porch finished. This is moving along and I’m SO excited.
3. New greenhouse (and learn how to start seeds in it). I’ve given up the idea that we’d make one with salvaged materials (Brian’s heart just isn’t in it) and ordered a small one from Costco that fits the cemented area we have. Which means it can be put together and ready to go to grow this season’s seeds – yay!
4. Road hedgerow improved. Install water system, mulch, and deer protection. Without these things the shrubs will just continue to be stunted.
5. Continue monthly trips and plan an overseas trip. After going to Ireland, I was burned out on international travel and all the planning that went with it. It’s been a few years and I long to go to more of Europe, so this year I hope to plan this for us.
6. Meet with an estate planner. #1 on our to-do list now.

Business

1. More useful physical cookbooks. A reader poll asked for pantry staple recipes, so that’s next on the list and we’ll see from there!
2. More intentional email plan. Again, useful is the keyword, but also, fun? Like a cooking challenge with a gift card involved? More behind-the-scenes?
3. Update garden planner and content. I’ve been wanting to do this for a couple years, so this is the year! As well as sharing garden and some DIY things more regularly again.
4. More quick, inexpensive pantry recipes. I’m having fun with this series and I hope you are, too – especially as food prices have gone up this past year.
5. Continue updating older recipes. Some are classics that just need a refresh after years of being on the site (a few left from 16-17 years ago when I first started!).

What would YOU like to see here in 2026? Leave a comment and let me know!

Curious about past goals? You can see them all here.

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