2012 Goals

Happy New Year! I love the new year. A fresh start, a new beginning, time to pause and reflect on the previous year and think about whats yet to come. I have spent a lot of time thinking about my goals for 2012. Things I would like to work on or improve.

It's kinda cliche but here are my 2012 New Years goals, resolutions, inspirations, what ever you want to call them.

Personal
*Drink more water.
*Exercise 3 times per week. It may be nothing too exciting, just a walk around a park would be nice.
*Cut back on coffee. This isn't something I necessarily want to do but I figured if I drink more water maybe my coffee intake will become less. Right now, I drink way.too.much.coffee.
*Read more. I have some awesome magazines and books begging to be read but finding "me time" is difficult.
*Continue to have a large garden and put up enough produce to feed my family for the non-gardening months.
*Keep growing my blog. When I started this blog a couple years ago I never dreamed it would grow the way it did. I LOVE being a resource for helping people and I love the ideas I have gotten and online friendships I have made. I would love to make it to 500 subscribers. I just really like that number! Making a little more money from blogging would be nice too, but honestly it's really not about the money. I truly enjoy blogging.

Ok. Moving on.

Financial
*Successfully complete our 31 Days of Nothing Challenge. Would love to have a chunk of money saved up to go towards our medical bills that we accumulated in 2011.
*To go along with the above...pay off all our medical bills. Right now we owe almost $2000. And unfortunately, since it is the new year, our deductibles will start over.
*Start tracking coupon savings each month. I have always been curious how much money I am saving with coupons. I may do this for a few months just to get an idea.
*Stay on track with our budget and go back to using the envelope system. This system really works for me and I don't spend near as much money when I am using cash instead of swiping my debit card.
*Increase our savings account by $5000. This may be difficult, but if we work really hard I think we can do it.

Family
*Read more books together. All my kids love to read and this would be a good thing to do
as a family.
*Spend more one on one time with my husband. With the business of life, sometimes we don't get a chance to really connect just the two of us.
*Establish a good morning routine with the two youngest children. Once the 3 older kids are off to school sometimes I feel lost with what to do with my little ones that are still at home. I want to get some sort of schedule in place.
*In general just spend more time with my kids and husband. I am always so busy and feel like there is so much to get done in the day that I need to just sit back and truly enjoy life.

Greener, Healthier Living
While my family has made huge leaps this last couple years in being more earth friendly there is always room for improvement. I want to step up a few things this year.
*Step up the composting and actually move it around so that is composts!
*Continue to recycle. I need to get a larger recycle bin for our kitchen.
*Completely switch over all cleaning products to homemade. Right now about 80% is made by myself.
*Buy less packaged and processed foods. Cook more from scratch.
*Continue to garden, shop local, attend produce auctions and support our local farmers.

Well I think that is it! Doesn't seem so bad huh? I look forward to 2012 and I hope you continue to follow me and my family on our journey.