twenty-fourteen

I have seen many people post about their resolutions for 2014. I am not going to say I am not a fan of resolutions, but I have a tendency to forget about them from time to time... okay, most of the time. Like after January 15, I am no longer holding up my end of the deal.

I was chatting with a friend the other day and she mentioned she was doing a word for the year. Something to strive towards each day to make herself better. She decided on the word "valued." I thought about this my whole drive home and thought this was a pretty good idea. But, thinking of a word for the year was much harder than I had considered. It took me a few days after the Jan. 1 deadline to come up with something, but I have finally settled on two words. Before I reveal my awesome words, I have also decided to make a list of things to accomplish. I felt like making a list of 60  things (hopefully five for each month) would be a more realistic goal for me being as this is my first year to try something of this nature.

My words for this year are ... wait for it... "SPREAD JOY!" I follow @carolinegshops on IG and she does some awesome things every day to make people happy around her, which contributed into the words I picked for the year. I have several thoughts in my head of how I am going to accomplish this, but nothing concrete as of this moment. More deets to come!

So, now onto my list-- in no particular order--

1. Donate my hair to Children With Hair Loss
2. Get an awesome job! {Fingers crossed!}
3. Read a book series
4. Go to the movie theatre alone
5. Go on a vacation
6. Be a vegetarian for a month (I have done this twice before, but one more time can't hurt.)
7. Print photos from my iPhone
8. Try gluten-free foods
9. Send handwritten cards to friends and family
10. Go fishing (I love to fish, but never get to go!)
11. Volunteer with the Regional Food Bank of Oklahoma
12. Start growing my hair out to donate again
13. Delete my personal Facebook for a month
14. Dye my hair blonde again
15. Eat at a new eating estbalishment 
16. Run the Color Run
17. Create a Christmas jar
18. Take my little cousins for manicures
19. Buy something big that isn't on sale
20. Take a yoga class
21. Visit Lin in Indiana 
22. Go to a Red Hawks baseball game
23. Participate in a bible study
24. Eat dinner at a food truck
25. Go to an OSU wrestling match
26. Go to a craft show with my mom
27. Volunteer with Pets and People
28. Have a New Years Eve party
29. Knit a scarf
30. Buy a Shasta trailer
31. Drive down Rt. 66
32. Go to a pumpkin patch
33. Go ice skating
34. Take an Oklahoma day trip with friends
35. Bake a cake
36. See a musical
37. Build a snowman
38. Visit a cupcake shop
39. Donate necessity items to The Children's Center in Bethany, Okla.
40. Ride a ferris wheel
41. Go swimming
42. Visit a winery/vineyard
43. Tie-dye something for fun
44. Attend the Lavender Festival in Apache
45. Pay more each month on my car than my payments
46. Sell Frilly Farm Design items on ETSY
47. Go to a drive-in movie
48. Watch movies all day
49. Christmas in New York
50. Print and frame a photo I took for my house or office
51. Shop at Ikea
52. Have dinner with someone from high school
53. Throw someone a surprise party
54. Go on a train ride
55. Sew a skirt
56. Send out Christmas cards
57. Meet the Pioneer Women at a book signing
58. Own a Kate Spade purse
59. Visit a Christmas light display
60. Tweet 6,000 tweets

Well, that's it. There is my list. Don't worry ... you can be the first to find out when I accomplish these things by checking back here or follow me on IG or twitter {@brenna_davis} for a complete photo recap. 

Good Luck with your 2014 goals, resolutions, words and to-do list, blog friends. 

Resolution Woes

If you are like me, the word "resolution" scares me a bit and I fail miserably each time I attempt to actually do resolutions.

So, this year I came up with what I think is a better solution to my resolutions woes. Instead of going all year trying to remember all the resolutions I had set in January, I decided to do a monthly "to-do" list instead.

I am starting off January a bit easier, just to ease my way into it. Each month I will post my five "to-do" list items for that month. The best thing about this is that I can decide on my list at the beginning of the month and tailor it to the things I have coming up that month. For example, May will be finals week, so my list that month can be eat healthy, get lots of rest, study a certain amount of hours per class, etc. So here we go. January, please be nice to this novice "to-do'er!"

January To-Do List 

1. Print more pictures- most of the time I take all these pictures, upload them to Facebook, twitter and instagram and NEVER print them out. I used to have all kinds of fun photos hanging in my apartments at college, offices, etc. and now I have none. The same pictures have been in some of my frames since I was a junior at OSU. Yikes! That was a long time ago!

 2. Drink more water- Before I ended my career with extension, I was up to drinking almost 160 ounces of water a day (for those doing the math, thats eight 20oz bottles) and felt great! So, my new goals is to start drinking that much water each day again. It is a bit trickier since I won't have a Culligan man to bring me water or an ice machine in the next room, but I will manage. Thankfully, the gym has an awesome ice machine I can "borrow" ice from and there are handy water filter machines on campus to get good water! This is totally do-able, right?

3. Take more vitamins- This is self-explanatory. I don't take any as of right now, so this should change. I am accident prone too. Vitamins should be a must for me.

4. Make my bed every morning- I am living in a new (tiny) apartment for the rest of this semester and since the apartment is smaller than tiny, a messy bed makes a clean apartment look messy. So, my goal this month is to get in the habit of making my bed. I think it is probably just a good idea to get in the habit of anyways, but it won't be easy. You see, I am typically the girl that is getting up and leaving the house with the perfect amount of time to get to the office before I am late and now throwing bed making into the mix will be a bit of a challenge, but I can do it. (Getting around earlier probably should be on my goals list too, but maybe next month!)

5. Send cards to friends and family- Do you love getting mail as much as me? It is by far my most favorite thing except getting bills. That isn't fun. Anyways, my goal this month is to send cards via snail mail for any occasion or no occasion at all. No occasion cards are my favorite. It is nice to know someone is thinking of you!

So, there you have it... My January To-Do List. I think I will go work on number four right now and actually make my bed for the day ... Yes, I realize it is past noon and I have been out of bed for three hours and it still isn't made. However, in my defense I just started this to-do system and it is my lunch hour so a productive lunch hour is better than a non-productive lunch hour! :) 

Peace, love and I love to-do list,

FFG