Hey There, September (Personal + Blogging Goals)
I think September may be my favorite month of the year. I mean, I love October more than anything, and November and December are awesome because #christmasmusic, but September may just take the cake. For the last couple of years, September has meant new beginnings, fresh starts, and the coming of the holiday season. September means days where the sun is warm on your face, but the breeze is cool on your arms. September means all the pumpkin candles and homemade stews in crockpots and dark berry lipstick. Every year when September rolls around, I feel inspired, refreshed and renewed and this year is no different!
August was busy for us. You can read about all the traveling, car buying, and flooding adventures we had here. I tried to keep up with my goals for the last month and had some success and some failures, but it could have been worse, seeing as life got really hectic, really fast.
August Goals Check-In (Read Full Post Here🙂
Blog – Consistency // Half Fail. I had a goal to publish 3 posts a week and I started off strong but then had a lot of crazy things happen in my life, like major flooding, so things got a little backed up.
Blog – Instagram Game // Success. I wanted to save up some money and purchase the guides from InstagramRevealed, which I did! Since getting them, reading them, and completely changing up my strategy, along with planning out my feed, I have grown my account over 2500 followers in 6 weeks! WHAT?! And I can say that they are genuine followers who all interact with me and leave me such amazing comments and messages. The guides from InstaRevealed work, (and no, it’s not just about the follow/unfollow method. I’ve completely changed my hashtag strategy, my engagement strategy, and my posting strategy and have seen growth from those things!)
Blog – Engage with Community // Success for the most part. I have been so much better about responding to comments on my blog, staying on top of my email and following through with comments on Instagram. It has been SO inspiring and refreshing to reconnect with so many of my blogging friends and readers!
Full Outfit Details Here
Personal – Find a Place to Live // Success. Dustin and I put a deposit down and just got approved for our apartment in Utah! I can’t believe we are moving there in just under two weeks!!
Personal – Find Time for Self-Care // Success. For me, self-care is investing time into my body and taking care of it. I did several face masks, got a massage, took the time to do my makeup, and treated myself some new fall clothes! I’m definitely feeling the self-love!
September 2016 Blogging Goals:
Switch Email Service Providers – I started off using Mail Chimp at the beginning of the year and then switched to ConvertKit. I have no issues with ConvertKit, except that I’m not sending enough emails to pay the price for the service. I recently stumbled across another email service provider that is FREE and it provides free automation, so I’m in the process of switching my email course and opt-in forms to that platform so I can save some money!
Use my Editorial Calendar – I stopped using my editorial calendar half-way through the summer and it really made things messy for me! I lost track of deadlines and projects I was doing and it was harder for me to stay consistent with a posting schedule. I want to sit down with my calendar and get back to organizing my blogging life!
Clean Up Site – There are some design elements that are inconsistent with my blog branding, so I plan on going through and updating those things. I want to re-do some pins for Pinterest, clean up some older posts with old giveaways, re-do my about me page and so on, so forth!
Full Outfit Details Here
September 2016 Personal Goals:
Redo Our Budget – Dustin and I are starting fresh in Utah this month, so it’s time for us to sit down and take a hard look at our budget. Dustin worked really hard this summer and because of that, we’ve had a little extra fun money that we spent without really thinking about. We need to get back into the habit of watching what we spend!
Clean Eating Detox – Dustin and I both have hit a pretty low point in our health and eating habits and we both want to make some changes. We kept pushing off the start of our clean eating journey because we were going on vacation, or we were moving, but we decided we needed to stop coming up with excuses and just commit to doing it. After all, we want a lifestyle change, not just a diet for a few weeks. We sat down last night and came up with a very solid and very thorough plan to do a deep detox until the end of October. It’s a long haul, but I’ve learned that the things I eat have a direct impact on my joint pain and I’m really over my joint pain.
That’s it for my personal goals, because I’m going to be moving in less than two weeks and trying to eat clean while doing that is a big enough goal as it is. I’d love to hear your goals for the month in the comments below!