Hello & happy April! I just love the 1st day of the month. It’s so nice to have a clean slate and a new chance to start over and give it all you’ve got, because let’s face it, March got messy. While each new month may start off with good intentions, life inevitably happens and spins you around a bit. But that’s kind of half the fun of it all, isn’t it?
With everything said and done, I was only able to get 2 out of 6 of my big life & business goals FULLY accomplished for the month. I wish I had better news to report, especially now that I am publicly announcing my goals here, but I still feel like I made a lot of really good progress even if I can’t check everything off my list quite yet.
{ Ready to plan your own Amazing April? Click here to download the free calendar printable above, and hang it up where you can see it to start making it a great month right away! }
March 2016 Overview
Before I tell you all about my goals for April, let’s go over how everything went with March’s goals, shall we?
Life
- Put together a wedding plan. I was hoping to have a chance to cement some more of the details for my wedding next year (so we can start to spread the word to our families & get them prepared to travel out here to Hawaii), but Max & I didn’t get a chance to get past the ‘Wouldn’t it be cool if we ____________’ stage quite yet. Luckily our friends are getting married this month so maybe their wedding will give us some more solid ideas?
- Get our Airbnb ready to rent! Not yet… but progress was definitely made. We got a comfy new bed set up, bought a huge stack of fresh turquoise towels, and lots of stuff for the kitchen, but we still need to gather a few more things, so this one will be going back at the top of my list of goals for April.
- Work on landscaping the garden. This didn’t get to happen a whole lot, mostly because we haven’t been able to get the right tools we need yet, like a weedwhacker. However, we did get a new greenhouse set up and we’re already sprouting lots of cucumbers (a big staple in our house), so that’s pretty exciting!
Business
- Publish at least 10 blog posts in total. Oh man, so close! My goal was to get back on a steady blogging schedule by posting at least 10 times during the month, but instead I was only able to fit in 9. Still, that is up from only 4 the month before, so I’d still say I did pretty good with showing up around here more often.
- Design a Weekly Goal Planner Printable. Finally, something I can check off! I did design a new Weekly Goal Planner Printable to help break down big goals into smaller chunks and it’s been great for me to be using it myself all throughout the month to help me simplify my schedule too.
- Prepare to launch the Dream Design Community. Consider it launched! However, I just decided to make a BIG last minute change and make the community 100% FREE and open to EVERYONE who signs up for my e-mail list so that I can connect with more of you outside of the blog & newsletter and share design tips & planning advice with you throughout the month. Learn more & join here!
April 2016 Goals
I have a feeling that April’s going to be a really great month. Here are 3 life + 3 business goals I’ve set for myself:
Life
- Rent out the Airbnb for the first time. I’m giving this goal another push this month, as we still have a handful of details to take care of before our guest house is officially ready to rent out, like picking the perfect bedding, installing the TV and cable, and finding a nice little patio table and chairs for the deck. Then, of course, we’ll have to take pictures and set up our listing before we can actually get our first booking, but it all sounds pretty exciting to me, don’t you think?
- Take engagement photos & design ‘Save the Dates’. Max and I have been engaged since last summer, but in all of the craziness of looking for a place to live, we haven’t had a chance to formally announce our engagement or wedding date to our friends and family, so this month I want to get some photos taken of us so I can design our ‘Save the Dates’. I’m not really a big fan of taking photos, but it will be so fun to make the postcards afterwards! I can’t wait.
- Take Sundays completely off from work & un-plug. Since I work from home, it’s pretty easy to stay glued to the computer and let the work week blend right into my life without looking up to realize what day it is, but whenever I’m able to take a full day off from work, it feels so good! In order take every Sunday 100% off, I’m not only going to have to be better about planning things in advance (specifically blog posts), but also stricter about my time. It’s all worth it though because I really think it will pay off big time in the long run when it comes to my sanity and being more creative during the work week. Plus it = MORE BEACH DAYS!
Business
- Set up my new home studio. I’m so excited because I finally get to work in my new studio – Hawaii style! But it’s not exactly the most comfortable This month I want to get the new studio painted, set up a new desk & chair, get my iMac shipped over from my dad’s house, and make it a more comfortable place to work overall (since I spend so much of my time doing just that!).
- Post to the blog on a set schedule. I would love for Half Asleep Studio to be the kind of blog that you can check in on knowing there will be a new post up on a certain day of the week, so I want to try to start sticking specifically to Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays to publish new posts if I can from now on!
- Get new headshots of myself taken. I know I already said I’m not a big fan of taking photos, but while we’re already taking our engagement photos, I wouldn’t mind getting a couple of new snaps of myself to replace my old, grainy profile pictures. This is something I’ve definitely needed to do for a while, so I think now is just as good of time as any to suck it up and get it done.
Well, that’s it for my goals for April! I hope you enjoyed reading about all of the things I’ve got planned for myself this month. If you want to post your goals to a blog post too, I would love if you shared your link in the comments below!