If you’re looking for new year resolution ideas, try ditching the idea of the new year resolution.

Last year, our church gave us a challenge on January 1. Instead of making resolutions, they gave us a poster to fill out with our family’s goals for our new year, along with timelines for making them happen. We were to post it somewhere we could see it as a reminder of what we were going to accomplish.

Everyone in my family made it to the dentist. We paid off our credit card. That half dead basil plant on our front porch is still partially alive, so we did grow something farmy.

We hit every single one of our goals except for winning a billion dollars in the lottery.

So I’m keeping it going this year, and I’m making another list. I’m changing it up this time, and coming up with a one thing each month style of list. Small things that add up to big changes.

I’m calling them new year resolution ideas out of habit. 

3 New Year Resolution Ideas to Try

Change One Thing in Each Room

Go through your home, both inside and outside. Let yourself get a little critical. What’s one small thing you’d change in each room?

For example – the mantel over the fireplace in our living room isn’t actually bolted down to the brick pieces it’s balancing on, so we can’t really put anything heavy on top of it. 

There’s a small hole in our bedroom wall I’d like to patch that currently has a tiny printout of the Raquel Welch poster from The Shawshank Redemption covering it until we get around to it. 

And we still haven’t quite gotten around to planting anything in the square foot garden we set up in the backyard last year. 

One small thing in each room adds up to work being done on our fixer upper house!

Revisit A Different Creative Outlet Each Month

I have a myriad of different craft supplies that I’ve built up over the year, and 2017 is the year that I start knocking out one project a month that has been on the back burner.

Currently I’m embroidering a tablecloth with all of the signatures of the people that were in our house for our 2016 Thanksgiving dinner. I saw that project shared on Facebook last year and fell in love with it. Each year, you pick another thread color and make sure you have everyone write their signature so you can add it to the tablecloth – 20 years from now you’ve got 20 years of friends and family who’ve joined your holiday meal, with the year embroidered along the hem in the coordinating color as a key.

The really neat thing is that we’ll be able to see the progression over time as Joy and Phil get better and better at writing their names.

This is also the year that I finally make Joy’s birthday banner out of onesies she wore as a baby.

I’ve also really been missing knitting.

A lot.

Challenge Yourself with Foods

Make a list of twelve foods you’ve been wanting to try. Now make one of them each month of 2017.

My list is a combination of foods I want to learn how to make, like macarons and more crazy flavors of ice cream. But it’s also foods Josh and I want to grow – tomatoes, onions, potatoes, and pumpkins. And one thing we REALLY want to do is get our bees to produce comb honey. You know the stuff – the really special jars of honey that have actual honeycomb inside!

Josh is plotting building a special lid for one of his hives where the jars are held upside down and the bees produce the comb right up inside them. Then ya just fill up the rest of the space with honey you’ve extracted from the hives the usual way.

But honey extraction is a blog post for another time, my friends.

2017 is gonna be an amazing year and you’re gonna need a really cute tea towel calendar to celebrate. Grab one in the shop!