October Goals

Happy October! It's finally starting to feel like fall now that the the leaves are changing, and pumpkin spice everything is out in full force! [Oh, and for those of you who have seen Mean Girls, happy October 3rd! :) ]

Today I thought I would share with you a few goals for myself for the month of October.

View outside the window of my dorm room

1. Get outside my comfort zone. Now that midterms are over, I feel like I really need to put myself out there a little more. I think I really just need to relax a little and start enjoying the college experience more by hanging out with friends, meeting more new people, and maybe joining a couple more organizations. At my school, formal Sorority recruitment is in the winter, and the sign up starts this month. I'm still trying to decide whether I should rush or not...any thoughts about that from people who are in sororities?

2. Keep up better with school work. I always get my work done, but I have a tendency to push things off and procrastinate, which leads to me staying up really late to catch up. I need to do a better job at managing my time for my reading and homework, so it doesn't get too overwhelming for me.

3. Go to the gym more often. The first 3 weeks or so that I got to college, I was really good about going to the gym everyday. But now that the school work has piled on, I haven't been as good with it, so I'm setting a plan for myself to go the gym at least 3-4 times a week. I don't have an excuse either, because there's a gym literally right down the street from me.

Anyway, I really hope I can accomplish these goals this month in one way or another! I have a feeling this month's going to be a good one for me...between seeing Gone Girl tonight, having The Best of Me (another Nicholas Sparks chick flick) come out in a couple of weeks, going to more OSU football games (but this time with fall weather), and going to a Dan + Shay concert near the end of the month, I'll be keeping myself pretty busy!

Do you have any goals or fun things you'll be doing this month?

Thanks for reading!

August Goals

July went by in a blink of an eye. I had so much going on from work, to spending time with my high school friends, to shopping for college, that July was truly a blur. I did accomplish most of my July goals which is good, though! Speaking of July goals, here they were:

Spend More Time With My Family

I did accomplish this goal, thankfully! Since I'll be leaving home for the first time in a couple of weeks, spending time with my family was really important to me. I tried setting aside time to hang out with my siblings...from watching chick flicks with my sister to attempting to play basketball in my driveway with my brother, I'd say it went pretty well! Some shopping trips and family movie nights were had this month too! :)

Finish College Shopping

I wanted to be done with all my college shopping by August, but that didn't happen. I did get a good bulk of it done, but there are still a few odds and ends that I need to get. The Target and HomeGoods bags have already started to accumulate in my room...so I do have something to show for the college shopping I did this past month!

Start blogging again on Dream It Up Nails

This unfortunately didn't happen either. I've just been having a hard time finding the motivation to paint my nails lately, so I haven't been able to blog on DIUN. In fact, I'm still wearing the same nail polish (although now badly chipped) as I had on for the 4th of July. I've been debating on whether or not I just want to stop blogging on Dream It Up Nails all together, and just post about some nail related stuff on this blog. It's also hard to blog about only nail-related stuff because now that I'm going of to college, I really don't have the funds to just blow on collections of nail polish. I'll have to think about it...I guess I'm still a little attached to my first blog.

Become a member of the Her Campus Blogger Network with this blog

Done, as you might be able to tell from the Her Campus button on my blog's sidebar! Although I was already a part of HCBN with my blog Dream It Up Nails, I wanted to be a part of the network with this blog too since I don't know if I'm going to keep blogging on DIUN. But hey, hopefully I'll meet some awesome people through the HCBN and through this blog! 

Start Working Out Again

Ughhh. I really wanted to accomplish this one, but with how much I was working this month, it just didn't happen. I need to learn some different ways to motivate myself to work out....any ideas?

Go Through My Closet

Done! I had a pretty big pile of clothes to giveaway after I was done cleaning my closet. Now I guess there's room for more! :D

Read A Book

Yep! I haven't finished it quite yet, but I'm almost done with it so I guess it counts! I've been reading a book called Buckeye Rebirth, which is mostly about the 2012 Ohio State football season, as well as the hiring of their coach, Urban Meyer. It's actually pretty good, and I wanted to read it since I bought season football tickets and I thought by reading this book, I'd appreciate the football games a little more!

Do a "High School Series" on this blog

Not quite for this one. I did one post on this in July, so I started the series which is good! I hope to do a couple more posts in this series before I head off to college!

Spend time with High School friends

Check! Not as often as I had wanted to, but I got together for lunch and shopping a couple times with my high school friends! Hopefully I'll have a chance to get together with them a few more times before we all head off to college in different states (and countries in regard to one of my friends)!

Now that I've gone through my boatload of July goals ... here are my goals for August:

Pack ahead of time for college

Meaning: hopefully I don't put off packing for college until the night before I have to leave. I can just see myself doing that, so I'm keeping myself accountable by putting this goal on the blog!

Keep an open mind 

This has always been a hard thing for me to do, but I think that when I head off to college this month, this will be necessary. I need to be open when it comes to meeting people, since I'm going to a big school with all sorts of different people. I know that in order to make new friends, I'm going to have to refrain from being to quick to judge. Hopefully I'll be able to keep an open mind about activities too, and that I won't write any activities off just because I might have to go to them alone the first time. 

Make Social Media Accounts for the blog

It's probably about time that I make some social media accounts if I ever want to grow this blog! I already created an Instagram for the blog, so I just need to create some buttons for my blog's sidebar, and maybe create a few more social media accounts.

Plan blog posts better

I really need to plan out when to write blog posts, and have a set time in my schedule to do so. I have a growing list of blog post ideas to pull from, I just need to get more organized in actually writing them!

And those are my goals for August. Hopefully I didn't bore you to death from explaining the statuses of all my July goals! It's weird to think that the next time I will be writing a monthly goals post, I won't be in Chicago anymore...I'll be away at college.

Anyway, thanks for stopping by! Talk to you soon!

July Goals

I hope you all had a great 4th of July! Mine was good, and I was so glad to spend it with not only my immediate family, but my grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins! It was nice seeing them because in a little over a month, I'll be heading off to college and I won't be around as much.

I also marched in the parade which was a fun experience! I got a scholarship from a service group in my town, and they wanted me to join them in the parade. We ran out of candy to pass out after the first street we went down, so I'm sorry to all the kids near the end of the parade! :(

Anyway, now that the 4th of July has come and gone, I thought I'd share some of my goals for the month of July:

Spend more time with family.

College will be here before I know it, so I really want to try and spend more time with the people who have been there for me my whole life. Once I get to college, I won't be able to go home until winter break, so I'm going to make sure I set some time aside to hang out with my family!

Finish college shopping.

Oh my, I still have a long way to go with this one! All I've gotten so far is my bedding set (which comes with a comforter, sheets, pillow case, and sham) and a mattress pad. I still have loads of other things to buy, like a new laptop, printer, back-to-school clothes, and other dorm essentials, so hopefully I'll save myself some stress and finish most of my college shopping before August!

Start blogging again on Dream It Up Nails.

This is a biggie for me. I just past my 1-year of blogging mark on DIUN, and I feel TERRIBLE that I haven't blogged on there as much as I should/wanted to. In fact, I didn't blog on there the whole month of June. Granted, I did have my graduation, grad parties to go to, and I have been working a lot, but these aren't really excuses since I could have planned ahead and scheduled time in for new posts. I've also been on a no-buy for nail polish the past few months (since my Mom wants me to save money for college stuff and not spend it all on new nail polish collections), which hasn't helped me make new posts for DIUN, either. I guess that's another reason why I made this blog. Because on this blog, I can blog a lot more since it doesn't all have to be about nail polish. But I do really love doing my nails and the nail polish blog world, so I am planning out some posts for the month of July, and I will hopefully be back blogging on DIUN shortly. :)

Become a member of the Her Campus Blogger Network with this blog.

I'm already a Her Campus Blogger Network member with my other blog, DIUN, but I'd also like to be a HCBN member with this blog too. I just feel like HCBN has a lot of members who have lifestyle/college/beauty blogs, so I'd fit in better and maybe make some blogger friends if I joined in with this blog. I'll apply this month, so hopefully I'll get in!

Start working out again.

Ughhhhhh. All May, I kept telling myself to start working out again. You know, to look decent for summer. But of course it's now July, and I never did start working out. It's pretty sad too, since all I have to do is walk out my room, down the hall, and into the laundry room where there is a treadmill, workout bike, and weights. Like how more convenient can it get?? I'll have to develop a workout plan this month, and stick to it. It's probably easier said than done, I guess.

Go through my closet.

I have so many things I don't even wear anymore in my closet, so it would be a good idea to give some clothes away to people who need it. It would also be nice to clean out my closet to see what I still need to buy in terms of clothes for college!

Read a book.

 So far this summer, I haven't really had time to just relax. June was just crazy and hectic with graduation, grad parties, and the fact that I've been working a lot at my summer job. So in July, I hope to set aside some time for myself and just cuddle up with a good book! Any suggestions?

Do a "High School series" on this blog.

Now that I'm done with high school, I thought I'd do a "high school series" where I share advice, my thoughts on high school, and my experience with the college admissions process. My thought is that maybe someday, someone will find this advice series helpful, just like I wish I could have talked to someone about life in high school when I was an incoming freshman!

Spend time with High School friends.

It's not even college move-in time yet, and I've already learned that some of my "friends" in high school weren't really my friends. However, I'm still really close with some girls from high school who have been there for me from the start, so I definitely want to see these girls more over the summer before we go our separate ways when August comes around! It's going to be weird not seeing them everyday when college starts, but I know I want to keep in touch with them and make use of the rest of my summer by spending time with them!

Hopefully I'll accomplish all these goals by August! Thanks for reading and have a great rest of the day!

♥ Colleen