One of my favorite blogs, A Beautiful Mess, has posed a challenge to themselves and their readers, the 4 Simple Goals Challenge to be exact. I absolutely love this idea for a few reasons — goals are important to keep you moving forward, they have the ability to improve your quality of life, and even the smallest changes can have a huge impact.

You can find the ground rules here, but I’ve put in my two cents below.

It is important to choose goals that are attainable with little effort. Do you wish that you started your day with a healthy breakfast everyday? Do you want to read more? Do you want to call home and chat with your parents more often? These are all within reach, choose something simple!

Try not to focus on the end result. For example, eating a healthy breakfast everyday should be about improving your diet on a daily basis, not trying to drop a couple dress sizes.

You’re looking for life enriching goals, feed your soul. What will really make your life better? Talking to mom more often? Going for a walk everyday?

So, here’s the bonus…choose a reward for each goal so you can give yourself a big pat on the back as you reach each one.

Lastly, you’re supposed to blog about it. I know that not everyone has a blog, but I think this is a great exercise, so I say do it, with or without a blog. You could journal about it, comment in my posts, or share it on Facebook. Make it work for you.

I hope that you will join me.

xo

The party was a blast! Here’s the big Halloween roundup. When it was all said and done, we spent about $50 and were able to reuse a lot of old decorations. We found great free printables on Pinterest, pulled some things from our costume bin and, we even made use of our leftover Halloween candy. I regret not taking more pictures, but this will give you a good idea of how it all turned out.

Our friends are so creative and crafty, so their costumes were awesome, but I gotta tell you…my hubby outdid himself this year, as Jack of  Jack in the Box.

I dressed up as a piñata this year, and I loved how easy and inexpensive my costume was…it cost $15 and took about 3 evenings. I got this idea from Pinterest (here’s the pin I used). For night 1, I did nothing but fringe the crepe paper. For night 2, I hemmed my dress (bought at a sample sale for $5) and began adhering the fringe to the dress. I used fabric glue and made sure the my dress was fully extended while applying. I completed the front in about 2 hours. Then for night 3, I finished up by attaching the fringe to the back, and I made my donkey head. The donkey head was a small box with and 2 cone party hats. Again, this was  easy, fun, and comfortable to wear all night.

And so, from our family to yours, I hope you had a great Halloween weekend and made some fun memories.

Happy Monday!

xo