No post for ten days then no goals posted on the first of the month? Y’all must have thought I fell off the face of the planet! In fact I am still kicking, just busy traveling! As I mentioned last month, I have one more busy month ahead (this one), and then the rest of the summer should be more relaxing – whew!

Revisiting my goals for May:
Get back into a good exercise routine, working out three times a week. Yes! Did a much better job with this this month.
Finish planning our France trip. Well, seeing as we’re just a few days away from departure, I’m going to call it planned. Hoping we can do a little more parsing of Provence and the coast before D-Day.
Buy a crossbody bag before our trip. Yes! On Sunday… hoping it arrives in time!
Build flower bed along our back fence. This one we ended up tabling. We’ve been waffling on whether to do a more wholesale renovation of the backyard. At the beginning of the month, when I set these goals, we were leaning away from it, but now we are leaning toward it. If we’re going to do it, we don’t want to spend the money on what will eventually be torn out, so we’re holding off for now.

June goals:
— Enjoy our France trip to the fullest! Eat baguettes, walk Parisian streets, break out our language skills, admire the fields of Provence, etc., etc.!
— More travel: Virginia, Connecticut, and Kentucky!
— Celebrate Father’s Day, older sister’s birthday, and younger sister’s graduation with my family
— Have lunch dates with two dear friends
— Replace my everyday bag while in France (no. 40!)

If you’ve posted your goals somewhere, I’d love to see – or just drop them in the comments!

I’m looking at two more big months of travel, friends, including this one, and then my schedule will calm down a bit! Trips to Charlottesville, Charleston, and Wilmington/Bald Head Island are on the docket for the next few weeks. I’m still going to try and squeeze in a bit of little by little progress around the edges, with my biggest goal being to get back into a regular workout routine. (We were doing well in January and February, but then the busy hit…)

Revisiting my goals for April:
Rehabilitate my passed-down luggage rack
Buy an exercise ball for sitting on (sometimes) at work
Set new daily habits and get back into the daily habit habit
Invite two friends to do things with us (invited one!)
Build flower bed along our back fence

May goals:
— Get back into a good exercise routine, working out three times a week
— Finish planning our France trip!!
— Buy a crossbody bag before our trip (any recommendations?)
— Build flower bed along our back fence (hoping we can check this one off since my Dad is coming to visit!)

If you’ve posted your goals somewhere, I’d love to see – or just drop them in the comments!

So. Last month I warned (myself) that March would be a really busy month. And indeed it was. But you know what? I killed it!!

I just attended Making Things Happen, and one of the first exercises we do is to answer the question, “how are you feeling?” Instead of writing “stressed” or “frazzled,” I wrote “confident” and “empowered.” Basically, the last three weeks were a super-charged version of the life I want to live: spending time with family, spending time with friends, being outside, experiencing new things, doing really great work that I can be proud of, using our home as it was meant to be used, and honoring a wonderful friend. That’s the good stuff, my friends. The only thing that fell a bit to the wayside was blogging, which I’m sad about – but there’s always April!

Friends, I am astonished that I accomplished as much as I did from my March goal list…
Touch up paint on our front door
Add a bench to our foyer
Frame and hang more art downstairs
Finish planning and host a really wonderful shower
Add cafe curtains in the dining room (nope)

Goals for April:
— Rehabilitate my passed-down luggage rack (I already bought the trim!)
— Build flower bed along our back fence
— Invite two friends to do things with us
— Buy an exercise ball for sitting on (sometimes) at work
— Set new daily habits and get back into the daily habit habit :)

If you’ve posted your goals somewhere, I’d love to see – or just drop them in the comments!

Hello, friends! I am 28! I kept saying to John last week, I need to write something for the blog about my birthday! I’ve done so in the past (here and here, for example), and it seems right to mark the occasion somehow. But this year… I don’t know! There just wasn’t anything I wanted to say. So I didn’t. My really, really wonderful coworker friends wrote this for me, and it made me tear up. John and I started Saturday with brunch at Monuts, ate a “lunch” of gelato at Whole Foods, and finished the day with pimento cheese and macaroni au gratin (and a few leafier things) at Poole’s Diner. (Best macaroni and cheese I’ve ever had, hands down.) We ended the evening by re-watching the fourth Harry Potter movie while snuggled on the couch with our two furry friends.

Sleeping friends from earlier in the week…

And now it’s on to another year and another month of goals – and a very busy one at that. My March will include: one five-night trip to New York City, one speaking engagement (nervous nervous nervous), one two-night camping trip, one four-night trip to Texas, hosting one baby shower, and one two-day conference at work. Whew!! With all that in mind, I’m trying to keep everything else low key.

Goals for March:
— Touch up paint on our front door (hold-over from February!)
— Add a bench to our foyer
— Frame and hang more art downstairs
— Add cafe curtains in the dining room
— Finish planning and host a really wonderful shower!

Despite wanting to stay low key I feel like these goals are VERY ambitious for this month of travel, so we will see how well I do! If you’ve posted your goals somewhere, I’d love to see – or just drop them in the comments!