hello 2014!

image source.

Happy New Year all! Can you believe 2014 is upon us already? I really wasn't looking forward to saying good bye to 2013... it was a really great year for us! We spent 6 weeks abroad travelling the USA together and seeing old (and meeting new) friends, We bought out first house (I really should blog about that soon huh!!!??), we welcomed two new darling babies onto my mums side, I celebrated a quarter of a century, Morgan got a new car (which meant I got his 'new to me' car by default), I went fresh and chopped off my hair and Mr A sported a new hair style as well (it's HOT). We spent some of the most loveliest time with friends and family, we got more involved in our church home and we made some lovely purchases that are starting to make our flat really feel like 'ours' (so much so that I'm not sure I'm ready to leave it yet!!) And I enjoyed work more than I ever have (so happy to finally be doing something I enjoy!) Anyway, it was a pretty dang fabulous year and I am sad to see it go! But we must move on to new season and new changes. Praying God would be the center of our next year as a family and that we would get to know him more and deeper above all else! Also I do have some silly little goals of my own for the new year.

Lets see how I go then...

1. Be better at remembering friends birthdays. This is something I am terrible and sporadic at and I really want to be more on top of and prepared for this year!
2. Improve my photography. This was a goal of mine last year and something that I really think I did improve on... however I want to work more this year on my post editing and learning Lightroom which I have finally got after a few years of playing around with the trial version.
3. Finally get artwork up on our walls! We have lived here for 3 years already and I have not put a single nail in the wall that whole time... seriously need to fix that ASAP!
4. Decorate our bedroom. This is the one room I have neglected in my decorating attempts and I hope to remedy that soon. I want to make it a little sanctuary and a room that we enjoy spending time in (not just crashing in come bed time).
5. Spend more time with Jesus.
6. Keep the house tidier. I am a super anal neat freak when it finally comes to tidying up. But the problem is I let my house explode before I do a super duper (wipe down the cupboards and sort everything by alphabetical order tidy). And it drives me nutty (M too). M may not clean things as deeply as me but he sure is better at keeping things tidy year round and I want to be tidier for him so he is happy in this little space of ours too!
7. Work on our cocktail skills and perfect 5 new cocktails, with our new cocktail cart and shaker.
8.  Learn how to make macrons (tried and failed at this last year but I will perfect it one way or another!)
9. Knock our annual savings goal off the mortgage, we better be good at this one as the more we knock off the more we have for renovations!! :)
10. Blog more!

so what are your new years goals?

ps. The image above I found via pinterest and is the LilyandVal etsy shop. They have so many different prints and they are seriously lovely. I'm thinking I need this one for my house "Let your faith be bigger than your fear". Love it! they are my new favs :)