Thirty

Three weeks ago, yesterday, I turned thirty. The photo above is the amazing cake that my hubby made for my little celebration. I've been contemplating a lot of things recently and feel that it is time to share the rest of my world with you. I've been blessed with only good things since I've started blogging. I have the sweetest group of followers and although I don't always respond to your comments, please know that I read and cherish each and every one of them! Many of you know that I have a private blog for my close family and friends where I share my personal life more freely on there. I've always had a phobia of being out there on the internet, but as I've said many times before, you have all helped to calm those fears. My hope is that I'll be posting here more often with a hybrid of my personal blog and my craft blog. We'll see how things evolve from there...

I haven't been very good about blogging recently and I don't have any really good excuses. Don't feel neglected, because I haven't been keeping up with my personal blog either. Yes, I've been busy, but everyone is busy. I haven't been super crafty recently, but I've been working on other projects. Me projects. I've always been one to set goals for myself. I'll be honest with you. I'm not the best at following through, but I do like to make them. :) As I approached thirty, I started to reevaluate some of these goals. I knew that a lot of them were still important, although I wouldn't necessarily reach them before my birthday. But, I got to work anyway.

One of my hopes was that I would have a home of my own by the time I turned thirty. Our situation right now just doesn't allow for that. Living on one educator's salary and hoping that being in this area will be temporary isn't conducive for us to go out and purchase a home of any sort. For the time being, we'll remain in our teeny, one-bedroom apartment, but I knew that I at least wanted it to FEEL like a home. I've been reluctant to do any serious decorating here. Each year that passes, I am almost certain that it will be our last year here. So it didn't really make sense for us to do any real decorating. Last year, I came to the conclusion that if we're going to be here, for however short or long a period of time, we might as well love being here. And so began Project Nest. While I have no intentions of turning this blog into a home decor blog, I may begin posting some photos of this ongoing project. I was thrilled when my neighbor stopped by the other day and called my home worthy of "pinning", but I had to laugh because most of my ideas are indeed from the land of Pinterest. :) Regardless, I am growing to love my place and it makes sense that I share my love with you. For those of you who come here for my card ideas, I won't be offended if you aren't interested in me sharing my apartment with you. I promise there will be no hard feelings if you scroll past those posts and straight on to some card goodness.

Another goal, and probably biggest endeavor is regarding my education. I've decided to go back to school to finally pursue my doctorate. This has been a life long dream of mine. Well, perhaps not since infancy, but as far back as I can remember, I've wanted not just to go to college, but to get a Master's degree and a PhD. Since I was already two-thirds there, I figured I might as well take the leap. I started right before our school year ended and it has been an insane amount of work. I have had to make a lot of adjustments to my schedule since then, which is why you may not be seeing me in blogland quite as often as you were used to. I am scared to death of what things will be like once school starts back up in just a few short weeks! I am certainly not very good at balancing things, I can't imagine that juggling school-school and work-school will be easy!

So, while I'm not claiming that turning thirty has made me worldlier or wiser, I am just wanting to share this journey with you. I hope you will be excited to share in this adventure with me! So tell me, what kind of lifelong goals do you have that you could start working on today?