Well, here we are–2019. Another year over and a new one begun and to be honest, I love it. A fresh slate, a clean start, a new beginning. What I don’t love? Resolutions and the whole “new year, new you” mentality. I mean, why was the old you so terrible? You know what I do love though? Goals. Plans. Dreams. Personally, one of my favorite times to think about my successes of the past and plan for the future is at the start of the new year and this year is no different. This year I have work goals and personal goals. I have dreams for my blog and for my family (to be honest, some of those dreams overlap).
looking back at 2018
goal 1
One of my goals for 2018 was to grow my Instagram following. Honestly, this is something that I have struggled with. I don’t want to do the whole “follow, unfollow” method and I definitely don’t want to buy fake followers just to inflate my numbers, but I also don’t have hours to devote to an app every day. I’ve got five kids and lots of other things I have to be doing with my valuable time, you know? My goal was to reach 7,500 on Instagram by the end of 2018 and thanks to focusing on content, engagement, and giveaways that I thought would be appeal to my followers I far surpassed that. At the end of summer I reached 10k on Instagram and have been growing steadily ever since. Thank you so much to all of you who follow along with me over there!
goal 2
I also wanted to make a little more money blogging in 2018; I didn’t have a set number, I was just hoping to do a little better than the year before to help justify all the time it takes from my family (and my sleep). Not only did I make some more money via great collaborations, but I also made a little bit of affiliate income. I only share products I love so it makes me so happy to know that y’all are benefiting from the things I’m sharing! In addition to paid collaborations I had some amazing opportunities for my family this year in the form of hosted trips and your feedback has let me know how much you love seeing these!
goal 3
My last goal was actually an ongoing one to update old blog posts. I’ve done a few of those here and there when I’ve had time and I’ll continue to work on that this year. I love going back and updating the formatting and making new images for old posts! Some of my older posts are so great (if I do say so myself) but they aren’t always the best looking. It’s fun to look back and see how far I’ve come. One of my favorite updated pins is from my post 5 Great Places to Take Young Kids in San Francisco and one of my favorite updated posts is Must-Dos for a Birthday at Disneyland.
best of the blog 2018
No review post would be complete without a sum up of my top posts of 2018. These are my top 10 posts from last year that y’all liked the best–they’re not necessarily the ones I would have chosen! I’ll be honest with you–some of these shocked me. Most of them are just real, honest, raw posts about motherhood and families. A couple are posts that I almost didn’t even write. And the number one post from last year ended up going viral and blowing up bigger than any post I’ve ever written and gained the record for most pageviews on my blog in a matter of weeks. I was completely blown away by the response to that single post and it has encouraged me to write more posts like it. Definitely look for more real posts about motherhood in 2019!
- Why We’re Not Telling You Our Baby’s Name
- Creating a Place for Baby When You Don’t Have Space
- My Favorite Costco Cake Hack
- In Defense of Large Families
- January 31, 2018: A Birth Story
- Loving and Dressing your Postpartum Body
- Our Homeschool Life
- 7 Things Not to Miss at Jellystone Park
- 101 Things to do this Summer
- Movie Club Monday: Quotes from the Princess Bride
2019 goals
blog goals for 2019
- Triple my pageviews (preferably by the end of the first quarter!)
- Make more Vlogs (ah, my poor, neglected YouTube channel)
- Continue to update old posts
personal goals for 2019
- Be a “fun” mom again, be more calm and spend more quality time with the kiddos
- Recapture my love for reading and read 24 books by the end of the year
- Continue to stay away from social media on Sunday until the kids have gone to bed