I’ve mentioned a “Life List book” a few times now (in my January goals post, most recently), and thought some of you might be wondering what the heck that is!

I first spotted the idea on Valerie’s blog, and instantly fell in love with it. As someone who is goal-oriented and experience-driven, I never want to skip over the beauty of trying something significant for the first time, or accomplishing something for which I worked hard! The Life List Book helps with that – instead of adding more to your bucket list, it’s a way to record and celebrate the amazing things you’ve done in your life.

To get started, I purchased a simple chambray journal with lined pages. Then, I just started writing! My Type A side hesitated, wanting all the things to be in chronological order, but I forced myself to just dive in.

Among the items I’ve included so far: “Married the love of my life,” “Birthed a baby,” “Camped overnight on Cumberland Island with wild ponies,” “Hiked the Mist Trail in Yosemite,” “Worshipped at Hillsong in Paris,” “Scored an 800 on the verbal portion of the PSAT” (#humble :)), “Hosted an adventure dinner party,” “Played Gollum in a middle school play” (yes, that happened), and “Saw a live taping of The Martha Stewart Show in NYC.” Who knows what could be next?!

Now that the initial backlog is recorded, this little book sits on my bedside table for easy access whenever I complete a goal, hit a milestone, or have an experience that feels especially meaningful. The first 50 items only took up six pages, so surely I’ll have room to record seventy more years of my one wild and beautiful life, right? :)

A question for you: I’m not in love with the title “Life List Book,” so I’m curious if anyone has a better suggestion? I’m thinking something with record, but not sure…

Friends, I am so excited about this series!!! I loved hearing your guesses — everything from another round of Marvelous Mama to an extended personal finance guide (both of which sound marvelous, by the way) — but dare I say what we have planned is even better…?

A month or two ago, I was searching on Nancy’s blog for something when I stumbled upon the “organization” series she wrote in 2014. I remembered loving the posts when they were originally written, but as I re-read them, it hit me how much her life had changed in the last four years! I thought about how I would love for her to revisit the same topics, and then realized that they dovetailed perfectly with the most-requested topic from my reader survey last year: rhythms, habits, and routines. How do I make space and time for what matters most in all areas of my life? How do I get things done? How do I do it???

Well, I most certainly do not have all the answers, but one thing I have been given is a confidence in the decisions we make for our family and a willingness to share them. So here we are! Nancy was totally game for a revisit when I proposed the idea to her, and what I love most about this is that throughout this series, you’ll get to hear from two people who have similar hearts but different ways of living them out. There is no one right way to do things! Instead of a prescription, we hope to offer you inspiration, ideas, tools, tips, and encouragement. I am so excited. I also have WAY too much to say on each topic and am already having to rein myself in, ha!

Let’s start at the beginning: with time.

Readers who’ve been here awhile know I’ve written about this topic before, and I would definitely encourage you to check out those two posts! The most important takeaways: I have a permanent moratorium on the phrase time is flying by, the response busy but good, and anything else that sounds remotely similar. I also have learned to embrace this paradox: time is both precious and plentiful. To have as much time as I need for the things I want, I must be ruthless about not filling time with things I don’t care about or that aren’t a priority for me.

So let’s start there. What do I NOT do? Here are a few from a very long list of things. In general, I do not…

— Paint my nails
— Browse in stores or go to the mall
— Wash my hair every day
— Clean (well, I do clean – ha! But I pretty much do the bare minimum and let the rest slide.)
— Tidy (again, I do this – but there are MANY days and hours when things are NOT in their proper place.)
— Sell clothing I’m getting rid of (I just donate it.)
— Scroll on Facebook
— Get together with girlfriends (except for Articles Club and a neighborhood book club)
— Switch my accessories (I wear pearl studs and my wedding and engagement rings and that’s it.)
— Own a dog
— Volunteer
— Text (pretty much only with my family and only in reply to texts sent to me)
— Curate my Instagram (I am a stylist by trade – if I spent more time on it, it would look different!)
— Binge watch TV shows

Are any of these things bad? Not at all. But in a full season, I have to say a firm no to good things to make way for better things. (Things like puzzles with June, prayer, making dinner for my family every night, reading, weekly calls with my sisters, evening walks, writing on EFM, and SLEEP. I love sleep and get 8-9 hours every night.) I look forward to doing some of these things in other seasons. Your list might look very different from mine, but it’s important that you have it.

An integral tool for helping me prioritize my time and clarify my yeses and nos: PowerSheets. Y’all have heard me talk about them extensively at the end of each year and in my monthly goal posts, but they deserve a mention here, too!

As for how I organize my time from day to day, I am a paper calendar gal. In fact, I am an old-school paper calendar gal: I use an *original* Simplified Planner, purchased in 2012, which is really just a pretty blue binder that I fill with printable monthly calendar pages. And yes, though bulky, it travels to and from work with me every day I’m in the office! :)

Why paper? I want to see every event on every day of the month at the same time. So much of what I’m scheduling needs to happen in relation to other things, and I hate having to click back and forth between days or switch between the day view and the month view so I can see every event happening on a certain day.

You can read more about how I use my Planner here.

A Lindsay Letters Creatives calendar is the newest addition to our home, and I think it will become increasingly important as kiddos grow and our schedule gets more complicated! It hangs in our kitchen, and at the beginning of every month I transfer over from my Planner events that affect both of us as well as our meal plan for the week. We’ve only had it for a short while, but so far it has been super helpful to get John and I on the same page!

A final tip: there is NOTHING in my life that makes me feel more like I’ve wasted time or that I don’t have enough time than scrolling on social media. Nothing. If your schedule/life feels out of your control and you spend any amount of time on Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook, that might be a good (though hard) place to start. More about this and my social media boundaries later in the series :)

Friends, I hope this post was helpful for you and that you’re excited for what’s to come!! Don’t forget to read Nancy’s post here.

How do y’all manage your time? Are you a paper or electronic calendar gal? What do you say no to? I’d love to hear!!

The rest of the series:
Time: Em’s post and Nancy’s post
Finances: Em’s post and Nancy’s post
Home: Em’s post and Nancy’s post
Personal Lives: Em’s post and Nancy’s post
Work: Em’s post and Nancy’s post
Relationships: Em’s post and Nancy’s post
Kids: Em’s post and Nancy’s post

Affiliate links are used in this post!

About a year and a half ago Marget and Seth moved to California, which was terrible in pretty much every way for us (because they are far away now!!), but seemingly a good choice for them :) The silver lining? This year, we got to spend Christmas in California! Here are a few photos and what we did, if you’d like to see…

John, June, and I flew out at 7am on Christmas morning. We were NOT about to spend $600+ dollars for a plane ticket for our not-yet-two-year-old, but were VERY thankful to score an empty seat in our row on not just one but both of our flights! Hallelujah and thank you, Delta!!! June decided she did NOT enjoy the cool headphones we’d gotten her in preparation, but was content to simply watch the TV screen on the seatback and push all the buttons repeatedly for the duration of our five-hour flight :)

Marget and Seth live in a beach town near LA, and the first afternoon, we walked to the beach at sunset! It was the perfect wide-open arena for J’s current favorite game, run and chase.

For Christmas dinner we had ragu and papparadelle, a newish Thomas family tradition! We opened gifts a little bit at a time over our entire visit. June doesn’t seem to have totally grasped presents – she was just kind of happy to be included :) This, however, was clearly her favorite toy she received!

The next day we went for a hike at Forrestal Preserve and had lunch at Malibu Eatery (yummy grilled chicken tacos!). I was so proud of our little hiker – she walked at least half of the steep uphill climb!

We also visited the tide pools across the street, beneath the Trump National Golf Course.

In the evening, we walked the canals of Venice to look at the Christmas lights (such a crazy place!!), then had a delicious dinner at Rose Cafe. On a return trip I would love to do some shopping on Abbot Kinney – so many cute shops!

The next morning we took the walking path that runs through Marget and Seth’s neighborhood to their favorite playground, where we ate a mixed-up breakfast of bagel sandwiches from Noah’s and acai bowls from Paradise Bowls. My first time eating the latter – SO good and so California :)

As you can see, Uncle Seth was the fan favorite all week :)

Pretty soon it was time to head to LA for an al fresco lunch at The Paley and a matinee performance of Hamilton!!! Yes!

Needless to say, it exceeded all expectations. And the theater was so beautiful! I feel so lucky that we got to see this spectacular show – what a treat.

On our last full day we had breakfast at Uncle Bill’s, a pancake hole-in-the-wall, then spent a few hours back at the beach. There was much digging, and Marget and I played Chicken Foot.

Our flight home was uneventful, and now as I sit here writing a few days later, it is SNOWING! So different from warm Cali, although to be fair, snow is rather unusual for North Carolina.

Hoping you all had wonderful holidays breaks, as well!!

Affiliate links are used in this post!

Happy New Year, friends! Isn’t it marvelous that we’re all here for another year? :) Another year to learn and grow and move closer to the people we want to be.

Can I tell you a secret? Sometimes I worry that my goals aren’t big enough or different enough or important enough. Sometimes I worry that I never change, that I’m always just working on variations of the same things.

And you know what? There’s some truth in that. One of the greatest blessings of my life is that I have known who I am and what I want from a young age. I have great confidence in what matters to me and what does not.

You know how I’ve known my spirit age is 36 from the time of about 16? That understanding has given me the freedom to unapologetically craft the life I’ve been envisioning all along. So no, I generally don’t set goals like running a marathon, founding a charity, or selling my possessions and traveling the world at the beginning of the year. I’m not against “big” goals by any means, and if one becomes meaningful to me in the future, I will gladly take it on.

It’s just that in my life, the big things are the little things. I know who I want to be at 40 and 60 and 80. I might not know all the specifics (who knew I’d end up a Southerner??), but I have the general outline — enough to continue filling it in, little by little.

So here we go! Another year of adding color and dimension to this marvelous life. With that, I’m so happy to share my four 2018 focal areas…

Yes, focal areas, not goals! These are my areas of focus for this year, and I’ll flesh them out with specific, smaller projects and goals each month as I work through my PowerSheets.

1. Hear and do the Word. See and respond to needs. Observe the Sabbath. Listen to God. Be at home at church. Teach my daughter about God’s love.
Why? 2017 was a year of soaking in wisdom, and now I’m ready to put what I’ve learned into action, because that is what He desires for me. James 1:22-25 is my verse here.
How I will feel at the end of this year having made progress on this goal: Proud I spent time on what matters most. Likely humbled.
How I will celebrate making progress on this goal: I will record the highlights in my Life List as a record of His faithfulness.

2. Refine our home. Evolve our color scheme. Carve out distinct areas. Find new solutions for our changing needs.
Why? Our home is the arena for learning, growth, and unconditional love, and nothing matters more than love. If we can make it better, we should.
How I will feel at the end of this year having made progress on this goal: We will feel more at home in our home, content, and reminded of what matters most.
How I will celebrate making progress on this goal: A new home tour on Em for Marvelous!! :)

3. Fuel my body. Revolutionize meal planning. A fruit or veg with every meal. Less sugar. More water.
Why? I only get one and I want it to be capable of doing everything I ask it to.
How I will feel at the end of this year having made progress on this goal: Proud of myself for doing hard things and for strengthening my good choices muscle!
How I will celebrate making progress on this goal: I’ll treat myself to fruit along the way and we’ll celebrate with a delicious feast on NYE.

4. Build our legacy. Strengthen or set habits and rhythms. Record memories. Equip others. Invest in my people.
Why? I am blessed to be a blessing. I have been given much, and it is mine to be given away. I want to spend time on things that last longer than me.
How I will feel at the end of this year having made progress on this goal: Like things are on the right track but there is still more to do!
How I will celebrate making progress on this goal: Maybe a new piece of artwork for our home?

That last one’s a little vague, but you know what? The important thing is that it works for me :) And I look forward to fleshing out all of these more over the coming weeks and months!

And with that, here are my goals for January:
— Set a date for our spring camping trip
— File all paperwork in our blue room
— Make our “areas to be purged” list
— Tackle two areas I already know need help: our closet shelf and pantry
— Walk our home with John and make a list of needs and wants, then rank them
— Browse through The Lifegiving Home online resources (now that I’ve finished the book – so good!!)
— Write June a note on her second birthday (continuing a tradition)
— Set up my Life List
— Order our 2017 photos from Social Print Studio
— Confirm my EFM posting plans for January
— Order my Fruit of the Spirit canvas

There are few things I love more than reading about other’s goals! (Second only to reading other people’s Christmas cards, haha!) If you’ve posted your goals somewhere, I’d love to see – or just drop them in the comments! I can’t wait to take a peek and cheer you on.

Vision board sources, clockwise from top left: little girl, beautiful home, fruit, sailboat, kitchen table, soup, back steps, PB&J, fruits of the spirit

Affiliate links are used in this post!