Hello friends! First off, happy new year! I hope 2017 brings you happiness, good health, and so much more. I have a feeling it will be one of my favorite years yet. At this moment, I know 2017 will include so many new things for me including graduating from college (early), having my first full time job in my field, getting my first car, and so much more. A lot of changes are coming, but I am determined to continue my creative journey with some big goals for the year.

I'll be including some tips on how you can make your own goals as well as how to keep your goals organized. Everyone's goals should be different, find the perfect sized goal for you and it will work out much better. Let's hop into some tips and what my creative goals are for 2017!

1.) Organize and find a place for my photo albums

I recently purchased more albums this summer. I believe I have 7 albums in total, but none of them are organized. If you love the way you have your albums organized, leave me some tips below. Where did you start? I know that a lot of people do yearly albums (which is probably what I'll end up doing), but sometimes I'm not sure when the pictures were taken. I understand that this isn't a huge deal, but it is important to note that I do/will have a lot more pictures for one year over another.

Although the album organization is a huge part of this goal, I also want to find a place within the living quarters of my house to store them. I am hoping that the new entertainment center will be able to hold a few so we can look at them more often. If not, I hope to perhaps keep one out on the coffee table to encourage looking through them.

2.) Complete 2 travel albums

This may seem like a very daunting goal, but it shouldn't be. I know that our vacation photos are some of our most prized possessions. They are memories that we especially want to document justly. I have three trips that I need to scrapbook, however, my goal is only two. This is actually a great tip, set your goal in the median. Not too high and not too low, where it is still a challenge, but not so completely overwhelming. As for tracking my progress on this goal, I plan to do at least two pages per month for each album. This is tricky for me, mainly because only one album is started (12x12) and I'm thinking about doing the other one as a 6x8. Maybe I'll track my entire journey with documenting my travels here on the blog! Let me know if you all would like to see that too.

3.) Follow at least 2 spending freezes

This one is more for the health of my wallet than anything. If you don't know what spending freezes exactly are, they are essentially a hold on purchasing any crafty materials besides adhesive. They typically last a month long and my first one will begin in February 2017. Although, I will be making a conscious effort to not buy nearly as much as I have been in the coming year until I move a lot more out of my craft room. Are you happy with the size of your stash? I know that a lot of people tend to wish for a larger stash, but I am very content with the way mine is now. Just for a heads up, you may see that I post hauls during my spending freezes, but I have ordered things from overseas which take sometimes a month to get to me, so that's why they may be a bit off. Do you plan on having any spending freezes?

4.) Create more cards and have an organization system for them

Many of you may have realized that I have been creating more and more cards. Well, with all of these card creations, I find that I need a way to organize them. If you too are a card maker, then you have probably heard of Jennifer McGuire. She is the queen of craft room organization and I hope to follow her way to organize cards for this goal. She has several organizational videos on her YouTube channel that you should definitely check out. Her card organization includes storing each card with a matching or appropriate envelope and storing them be theme. This would be so very helpful for all of my family members to find cards as well. Overall, for this goal, I hope to have a better system that will assist me in keeping track of cards on hand and to encourage me to send more cards out to family and friends.

These are my main goals for 2017, crafty wise anyway! I have plenty of other goals for 2017 too! Please let me know some of your goals for the new year in the comments, I would love to hear some of them. If you have any questions, please let me know. I hope you enjoyed these insights into what goals I'm setting up for myself this year! I cannot wait to get started with them. Thank you so much for stopping by!