My 2016 inspiration board

I love seeing the 2016 goals some of my friends have already posted! I’m always inspired by the goals of others — not so much the content of their actual goals, but the ways in which they arrive at them and the structure they use to maximize their chances for progress. A few I’m loving so far: Val, Victoria, and Nancy. I’ll be working on finalizing mine this weekend, and can’t wait to share them on Monday!

In the meantime, I wanted to share my inspiration board for 2016! This is the first time I’ve made one of these; to be honest, I’ve always been a little leery of them. To me, the danger with creating a board like this is that you can look at it (at the end of the year, or the middle), and say, well, my life sure doesn’t look like that. It’s not that clean, or beautiful, or color-coordinated. I didn’t want to even be tempted to have this board make me feel that way, so I tried hard to pull images that felt “real” – and in many cases, I did that by pulling images that ARE real (from the places I love or things we’ve done in the past).

But, for this year in particular, I felt it was important to have a visual touchstone. So as I pulled photos for this board, I challenged myself again and again to choose ones that didn’t just look pretty and went well together, but that meant something to me, and were relevant to MY year ahead. It’s not bad to dream, to be aspirational, or to look toward the future, but I think even those things need to be planted in reality. I’m not moving to Hawaii this year, and I’m not building a farmhouse. But, we hope to renovate our backyard, and we will be traveling to Michigan and Maine with family, and those are things I can dream about.

Alright – I’ll get off my vision board soapbox! :) Here’s my final version:

I wanted this board to be about finding the beauty that’s in my life, and the beauty I hope to add to it this year, and I think that’s what I did. Consider it a sneak peek at my goals for 2016 – can’t wait to share more on Monday! :)

Clockwise from top left: nursery from Elements of Style (photo by Sarah Winchester Studios), guitar, newborn photo by Cassidy Brooke, books photo by Nancy Ray Photography, bikes from Style Me Pretty (photo by Liz Banfield), backyard pergola, personal photo from Maine, holding hands, personal photo from Michigan, camping photo from Lovely Morning, Laura Ingalls Wilder quote, happy gal