I've decided to take most of January to focus on our home: it's time to do our yearly closet purge, deep clean all the carpets, and reorganize the dumping ground that our basement has become. While I haven't read the book myself yet, I have read a lot of articles on The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, and I'd like to try to use these techniques to purge more unused items from our home. Though I can't make too many promises on this front.. I can be pretty sentimental about little things so we'll see how far I get.
I have big goals for Birch Landing Home too and I want to grow my Etsy shop and blog in many ways. I'm planning on expanding to more New England-inspired decor in the shop including signs, handmade boxes, and painted sap buckets (don't worry, we'll still have our signature hand-etched ornaments available). I'd also like to get our products carried at more local retailers too.
The blog will still be a mix of DIY projects, product reviews, and lessons learned as first-time parents but there will a be a stronger underlying New England vibe to it. I'd like to blog more about our favorite places to visit in NE as a family as well as showcase more great local products and makers (by the way, if you're a New England-based maker and want to collaborate this year please send me a message).
And then there's fitness goals.. every year I say I want to get back into running and while I did run a lot more this year than I have in a while, I still didn't get to where I want to be. So this year I want to make the push to finally run a half-marathon! For those of you who aren't familiar with my running backstory, I was training for a half-marathon about six years ago when I suffered a couple stress fractures, mostly due to a structural issue with my foot (which I now wear orthotics for).
We're hoping to expand our family again within the next year or two and so I feel this year will be my last chance to try for a half marathon again before I'm too pregnant or busy with a newborn to seriously run for awhile.
