2012 Goals & 2011 Recap

Every year I’ve set goals here on the blog (you can see past ones here) and last year I set goals in three areas – Home, Financial, and Business. Writing them down really did help to keep them in my mind, so I would encourage any of you to think about setting a few doable goals this year!

However, I realized at about the 6-month mark that some were just not going to get done. Sigh.

I’m going to keep this short and sweet by giving a brief review of how we did with our goals from 2011 followed by what we’d like to accomplish this year in these same three areas.

Recap of 2011

Home:

• We officially got rid of all the carpet in the entire house! This was 7 years in the making- so a nice one to check off the list, let me tell ya.
• The back deck is gone- replaced by a much more usable space that includes a gravel patio, herb garden, and gazebo-like room (almost…).
• The kitchen update was started, but not finished. This however, was the fault of Ikea not having the counters we needed, so I take no responsibility for this one. *smile*
• No chicken coop (I know, *sniff*), no finished laundry room…but hey, we know what to put on the new list!

Financial:

• Paid off our garage debt, making us debt-free but for the mortgage! That was a happy day.
• Both the Jeep replacement fund and the vacation fund have been growing. The Jeep is still hangin’ in there and the vacation fund is helping our family take a trip to Arizona for spring break.
• Kept the food budget to $400- for the most part.

Blog:

• We refreshed the blog at the beginning of the year, and had fun with a 2-year celebration. I managed to publish a couple of guest posts (one is even a regular gig!), and of course brought you more recipes, gardening ideas, DIY posts, and tutorials.
• What didn’t happen were the indexes I really wanted to provide to make it easier to find things around here. And no ebook. Seriously, why haven’t I found time for these things?

Goals for 2012

Home:

1. Finish the laundry room, already! Actually, we have to re-do the floor, as my cream and green painted diamonds were not a good choice paired with a large dog.
2. Chicken coop…chicken coop…chicken coop. Please??
3. Ikea should have those counters in, so as soon as we can figure out the timing, the kitchen will be updated.
4. My word for 2012 is: ELIMINATE. I’m going to go through each area of my house and try to look at everything with a new eye- an eye towards eliminating all the things I don’t love, find beautiful, or know to be useful. I’m not talking clutter, here, either. I’ll have more on this later this month- much more.

Financial:

1. One of the great benefits of freeing ourselves from debt was being able to give more this last year, so we definitely want to keep that up.
2. Our next “baby step” is the six-month emergency fund, which we’ve been working on. When that’s done sometime this year, we need to up our retirement funds.
3. Save to pay cash for our spring break family vacation to Arizona (we’re halfway there).

Business:

1. I really, really, want to move the blog to Wordpress. Will this be the year?
2. There will be indexes this year for recipes and projects, I promise! And better navigation, too.
3. I’ve got a couple ideas for ebooks- my goal is to make the time a priority to work on them.
4. I worked hard on improving my photos for the blog- I want to continue to improve in this area, since they are important to almost every post I write.

I’m also starting to put together some series ideas for the year as well, in addition to more “Back to Basics” posts. And what I’d really like to know is:

What would you like to see here at An Oregon Cottage? What areas would you like to know more about, or seen broken down into steps. I absolutely love hearing from you guys and have learned great tips and ideas from you as well- you all have enriched my life more than I ever imagined when I started blogging!