April + May goals

I took this picture all by myself.

I've come a long way with my photography skills.

Be proud.

I know it's cliche, but freak, I can't believe April is over.  April and May are always the two months that speed by the fastest for me.  One second it's April Fool Days and the next moment I'm chaperoning graduation.  I think it's because I wait and wait and wait for spring and then when it's finally here, I'm just so dang excited that before I even realize what has happened it's gone already.

Today it's time to analyze some April goals.  This year, instead of making New Year's resolutions I set one main goal for each month.  The idea is that by focusing on one thing, I would be more successful.  The idea is more or less stolen from The Happiness Project. (Full post here.)  

Here's what I wrote about April's goals:

APRIL:  FOCUS ON FAITH
I try to make God a part of my daily life, but sometimes it all just gets so hustley and bustley that I feel like He about dang near gets crowded out completely.  In April I want to spend more time contemplating the spiritual and developing deeper connections with Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ.

Sub goals:
- 30 minutes of "quiet time" a day- time to read scriptures, ponder, and write down spiritual impressions.  Tell Greg my plan so he is not trying to distract me while I am working on this.
- Attend the temple every week in April.
- Deeper focus during prayers.
- Be patient and loving.  Pray for help throughout the day when I feel like I am lacking.

How I did:

In the overall category, I felt like I did well.  I spent more time "contemplating the spiritual" and I felt God helping me in so many ways.  This month I kind of felt like God just put all the pieces of my life together for me.  Not that he made everything perfect, but that He showed me again that He is there and I can stop stressing now.  He's in control.  So yah.  I consider the month a success.

As far as sub goals go, I was about half and half.  I did go to the temple every week in April.  It was pretty amazing for me to see that increased spirituality.  I feel closer to God in the temple than any other place and I needed that extra assurance and love from Him this month.  (See this post on temples.)  I did better with more focused prayers and with being more patient and loving.  (I adopted a motto from The Happiness Project:  "Act the way you want to feel."  I repeated it to myself when I felt frustrated or annoyed with a situation or a person and it seriously helped so much.)

The only thing I didn't do well on was the thirty minutes of "quiet time" a day.  I really didn't make it a priority and if I'm being honest I probably got anywhere from 5-10 minutes of quiet time a day.  Not enough.  I started the New Testament and read the book of Matthew and in to Mark as well as listened to lots of LDS general conference talks while I walked my dog, but it didn't have quite the same feel as sitting down and pondering the scriptures.  Something to work on for next time.  

And now, on to next month!

MAY:  SAVE
Greg and I will likely have some big expenses coming up (June's goal is to go to Europe! July's goal is to push a baby out of me!) so I want May to be a month of absolute loyalty to my bank account.  No spending other than what is absolutely necessary- gas, groceries, etc.  It's only for a month.  I can do it.

Confession:  I bought a maternity swimsuit on Saturday and already broke my "absolutely necessary" rule.  But come on, "absolutely necessary" is all so relative anyway, isn't it?  I only bought the top, I told myself I already had bottoms that would work, and I did get it 10% off because there was some make up on it.  I bought it at Target so it only ended up being $23.... given I am planning on pretty much living in the pool the next few months I'd say it was absolutely necessary.

But no more spending for the rest of the month!  I am a big enough dork that I strangely really get into it when I make myself not spend like this.  I can be a real freaking miser when I want to be.

Update on other goals:

January:  Grow my blog

February: Write a book

March: Be a better wife

I am working extra hard on my blog and have seen growth every month... I'm hoping to hit a major milestone in May and get 100,000 pageviews for the month.  In April I worked on my book less as I took over my classes again and went out of state twice.  There just wasn't any time!  But I attended a fabulous writer's conference and my new goal is to just write 15 minutes a day.  If I can do that then I can keep my momentum and keep the book alive. I am still working hard on the being a better wife thing... I try to be super supportive of Greg and always speak highly of him in public.  I also gave him a hot stone massage last week for no reason other than to show him I love him...  He was very doubtful when I pulled out the burning hot rocks, but then he loved it so that's a win!

I would love to hear about any goals you are working on.  Share with me so that I don't feel like the only loser who doesn't quite follow through on all of mine!

Oh, P.S. totally irrelevant to any goal "topic" but still something that I am working on- I have set a new rule for myself that I can't be on my phone after 10:00 pm on weeknights.  I have been annoyed lately with how late I've been going to bed and how much time I have wasted on my phone.  I go to bed around 10:30 or so, but then I realized I just fart around on my phone for an hour.  It takes away from scripture reading time or snuggling time with Greg or even just reading my favorite book.  So no more phone for me after 10:00.  I'll let you know how it goes!

I'm also working on responding to emails within 48 hours... we'll see how that goes.

March + April Goals

23 weeks

Dress:  c/o Shabby Apple

Earrings: c/o JeweShop

Shoes: Thrifted
Photo cred: Aubrey Zaruba

If you haven't ever owned a dress from Shabby Apple, you need to.  Their selection for classy dresses is unbeatable, and they are comfortable and totally wearable.  I love the dress I am wearing because it is so versatile- I can wear it to school, to church, or just out and about.  Also, it isn't a maternity dress, but is the perfect cut and material to accommodate my growing belly.  I am saving up my money for this one next- I absolutely love white dresses in the summer.

It's March 31 which means it's time to examine my monthly goals.  If you haven't been following along, at the beginning of 2014 instead of setting resolutions, I set one monthly goal for every month of the year.  I figured by focusing on one thing at a time I would be more successful.  Here are my post evaluations of my January goals and my February goals as well.  Ah, yah!

MY MARCH GOAL:  BE A BETTER WIFE

Sometimes I just think Greg deserves a kinder, happier, less insane woman.  That's all.

Sub goals:
- No nagging.
- Do an act of service daily for Greg.
- Say thank you more often.
- Be more willing to do "his activities" and less pouty when we don't do "my activities."
- Tell him I love him and compliment him every day.

HOW IT WENT:

The first half of the month was a total success, whereas the past week or so I have kind of slacked with the acts of service, especially.  I was focused and in the groove and it was easy to remember to do something extra nice for Greg in the beginning, but then I suppose I just got a bit lazy.  I picked him up sodas on my way from school, left him notes, gave him back massages, put a towel in the dryer when he was showering so it was extra warm when it came out, etc.  I noticed something interesting which was that the more I focused on finding ways to serve Greg the more I noticed that he was constantly doing the same for me.  My guess is that Greg is always doing these extra little acts of service for me, but perhaps because that wasn't where my focus was I didn't notice.  He'd make a snack for me when we were watching a movie, or offer me a back massage (lots of those these days- my lower back is killing me!) or bring me home a treat from the grocery store.  It actually made me a little embarrassed to realize how good Greg is naturally at this while I had to make a more concentrated effort.

Along with the act of the service, there were three things I tried hard to do every single day:

1.  Thank Greg

2. Compliment Greg

3. Tell Greg I love him

 Greg's love language is words of affirmation, so I found that he seemed to appreciate me saying those three things every day more than my acts of service  They seem pretty basic, and by keeping it to three I could remember really easily what I was supposed to be doing every day.  Also, turns out it was really easy to do this, usually just a sentence or two in my daily speech and Greg always reacted extremely well to it.  For example "Thanks so much for going to dinner with me at my mom's tonight. (Thank him).  I really appreciate you being there and you are always so sweet and pleasant with my family. (Compliment Greg)  I love you. (Say I love you)."  

I also tried to be "less insane" which basically means no random emotional outbursts.  I think I only had one for the month, so I consider that a whopping success, all things considered!

Now, on to April!  

APRIL'S GOAL:

APRIL:  FOCUS ON FAITH
I try to make God a part of my daily life, but sometimes it all just gets so hustley and bustley that I feel like He about dang near gets crowded out completely.  In April I want to spend more time contemplating the spiritual and developing deeper connections with Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ.

Sub goals:
- 30 minutes of "quiet time" a day- time to read scriptures, ponder, and write down spiritual impressions.  Tell Greg my plan so he is not trying to distract me while I am working on this.
- Attend the temple every week in April.
- Deeper focus during prayers.
- Be patient and loving.  Pray for help throughout the day when I feel like I am lacking.

I am so excited for this goal.  The past six weeks or so have really rocked me in a lot of different ways of my life, and I feel like I need to focus on what really matters.  I feel my dependence on my Heavenly Father more than ever and my need for Him.  I am so excited to try to prioritize everything else accordingly and really focus on the spiritual this month.

UPDATE ON PAST GOALS:

January's goal was to be better at blogging- I have continued to try to be better at responding to blog comments, at least responding to the comments on one post per week.  I have felt like I've done better at promoting Bon's Book Club (71 comments on Thursday's discussion on Divergent.  WAHOO!  I hope you are all reading for April The Night Circus- discussion is on April 24) and I have maintained a steady flow of traffic for my blog.  I am still trying to figure out ways to continue grow my blog and at this point I don't have a ton of ideas.  I am kind of over sponsoring. Ideas???

February's goal was to write a book.  In February, I wrote about 13,000 words in my novel, which wasn't great at all, and I was disappointed in myself.  In March, I wrote 34,000 words in my novel- much better!  I'm at 54,000 words now, about 200 pages.  Wowzers!  My goal is to have 75,000 words and very close to finished (if not finished) by the time I go to a writing conference at the end of April.  It is all very excited and very terrifying.

That's a wrap, folks!

I love you. And that's that.

Coupla things.

I've been thinking about goals for the year and goals for the blog and where I want it to go and what is the purpose of this blog anyway and my oh my haven't we suddenly gotten quite deep?  I love Starbucks giveaways as much as the next girl, but I would like to think that this whole blogosphere runs much deeper than that.

In fact, I know it does.

There is a certain site where people go to bash on bloggers.  If you don't know what I'm talking about, count yourself lucky.  I recently got my very own page.  Big day for Bon Bon!  Interestingly enough, some of the criticism made me think and change up the way I do a couple of things on the blog.  Not all criticism is bad, afterall.  One person mentioned that I hardly ever respond to comments.  And I thought, "Crap. They're on to me."

The truth is I'm awful at responding to comments.  I am sorry. It's not that I don't have time, it's that it falls low on my priority list, somewhere below daily posts, grading research papers, and burning dinner.  But that is something I want to change.  I have such an appreciation and love for you that reads this blog and I absolutely soak up your comments.  Bathe in them, if you will.  Somehow I have convinced a group of intelligent, thoughtful, and funny women to read my frequent ramblings.  And for that I am so grateful.  So I want you to know that I am making a goal to be better to respond to comments and to let you know more often how much I like you. Because isn't that the reason we all blog anyway, because of the great people we meet?

Also, I am overwhelmed at the response to yesterday's post.  So so so excited about the idea of a blogging book club/ link up party.  Details will be forth coming.  ETA is February.  BOO YAH!

Now.  For a chick I am digging on.  Her name is Blaire and she is the writer behind Market Confidential.  Which I would love to name a child.  Blaire.  Not Market Confidential.  I think it's the most classy, chic name.  ANYWAY... Blaire is just getting started in this crazy blogging biz and I'd love it if some of us helped her hit the ground running.  Show her how awesome and loving this blogging world is.  Also, just so you know.  I'm calling it right now.  Blaire's going to be the next big blogger.  She just fills a niche in the blogging world that I think is totally ignored- that of the working, professional woman.  Mommy blogs have got their corner, fashion blogs have pretty much stated their ground, and you know, recipe and craft blogs kinda vomitted all over the internet.  But what about a little more shout out for us working women?  That's where Blaire comes in!  She talks about working in the corporate world and how to dress for the job.  I especially loved her post on what boots are appropriate for work (what do you think?  Over the knee boots- nay or yea?).  Not to mention the girl has impeccable style.  Not to mention her blog design is flawless.  Not to mention she's the most sincere, thankful girl I've ever interacted with.  Not to mention she's smoking hot.  Can you tell I'm smitten?   Read up on what she has to say in this post and then don't forget to show her some love on her blog.

(P.S.  Blaire confided to me that she is a guest post virgin.  

Well isn't this an exciting first night for her?!?!

EEK!!!)

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Helloooo Life of Bon readers! My name is Blaire and I blog over at The Market Confidential. I'm a newbie at this whole blogging thing myself, but I've been a fan of reading them for a very.long.time. And seriously, is Bon Bon just not of the best ones out there?! I adore her and her blog! And am beyond excited to be guest posting here today!

Since this is my first time sponsoring Bonnie's blog (or any blog for that matter), let me fill you in on how this little blog came about. I decided to start The Market Confidential because I got so bored with professional women's attire. Apparently there's this conception out there that you have to dress like a dud to be considered "professional". WRONG ladies. You can totally dress cute, fun, and glam without losing credibility. Disclaimer: I have a business management/econ degree. Not one from Parson's School of Design. But I see enough to know what I'm talking about...kinda.

And I needed a creative outlet. When you're in the financial industry, your eyes start to cross after awhile at all the facts, figures, analysis (is that a plural version of this??), market information, political information...yours crossed yet?? Oh yeah, it gets mundane after awhile. I think my clients are the reason I stay sane;)

BUT, the blog is not only a fashion-idea blog. It kind of runs all over the place. Workout ideas for during the work day, energy/food boosting tips to get you through those eight+ hours, beauty tips, etc. with interjections of my personal life are what you can expect. I'm always looking for new ideas, so please shoot some my way!  Pretty please?!

Here's just a couple things you'll see often (outside of the things mentioned above)...

Diet Coke and mimosas...because that's how I function

This bundle of cuteness (who is also my nephew. No kiddos here yet, thank GOODNESS.) He drains my bank account on a daily basis. 

I'm a terrible picture taker, but THAT is one of my New Year's goals. But it also is the reason I don't have any funny pics to throw at y'all today. I wish because I love seeing them on other peeps blogs. How awesome was the pic of Stephanie from the last sponsor post in front of all those jello shots?! I loved that! And couldn't stop laughing. But  since I don't, and I only have boring pics, here's yours truly...just so you can put a face to the blog.

Thanks so much for having me Bonnie! Y'all stop by and say hi! 

New Year you are hereby resoluted!

For three years in a row in high school I had the same New Year's Resolution:  To get my first kiss.

Some girls just start slow/are awkward/ don't flirt well.  Don't ya'll worry, I learned.  It just took a while.

After I got my first kiss I didn't know what to do on New Year's anymore.  Make real resolutions?  WHAT?!?  That doesn't sound like fun!

I feel like New Year's Resolutions kind of get a bad rap.  Like we all make them and then promptly forget about them.  This has got to change, I say, it's got to change!

I present to you...

BONNIE'S 2013 NEW YEAR'S RESOLUTIONS

1. Don't forget about New Year's Resolutions.  Hey!  This one is the most important one, isn't it?!?

2.  Do two acts of service every day.  One for Hubs.  One for someone else.

3.  Go on vacation.  Priorities people.  Priorities.  I really want to go with Hubs to visit his mission in Russia this summer.  Saving and praying we can somehow make this work.

4.  Read 36 books.  On my immediate to read list is this and this and this.  Oh, and I can't wait to reread this.

5.  Exercise 3 times a week.  It'd be a lot easier if I didn't hate it so dang much.  Anybody got suggestions to get a girl to enjoy a little work out?

6.  Be more friendly and outgoing.  Look for people who need a friend.  Go out of my way to meet people, to say hi, to get to know those around me.

7.  Make an effort to keep strong relationships with siblings and friends.  Hubs is great.  But I've still got a lot of other people I knew long before Hubs ever entered my life.  Keeping up relationships can be tough, but it's so worth it.

8.  Deeper, more thoughtful prayers.  Let's face it, I need some serious guidance in my life.

9.  Choose to be happy.  I've heard it said countless times in my life that happiness is a choice but until recently it never registered in my head.  The discovery was made while I was on Instagram.  I was jealous of every picture I saw.  Everyone seemed so happy.  "Oh my gosh those stinkers are in San Diego?!"  "Oh she gets to stay home and read all day, I'm so jealous."  "She walked her dog today, that looks so gorgeous." "I wish I could have gone skiing today!"  It took me a second to realize I wasn't jealous of any of their actual situations, I was jealous that they all seemed so happy in what they were doing.  I could be happy no matter what the situation was, I just had to choose it. This year is going to be a happy one for me.  (Instagram plug:  Follow me @thelifeofbon)

10.  Beat my little sister in tennis.  This one shouldn't be too hard considering she hasn't played for a year and a half.  Sucker.

11.  Reach 4000 followers on the blog.  Yikes.

12.  Try two new recipes a month.  I'm trying to be realistic here.  No overdoing it!

13.  Say thank you as much as possible.

14.  Be the type of person that makes others feel good about themselves.  No more sarcasm (especially with students), no snide remarks.  People like to feel good, so I should make them feel good.  I guess that's called being nice?

15.  Get preggers.   

JK about #15.

Maybe.

Guess you'll have to keep reading through 2013 to find out!

Did you make New Years Resolutions?  If so, leave the url in the comment box so I can check it out!  I can't wait to see what your goals are!

(P.S.  Pardon our mess.  We're under a bit of construction around here!)