photo via sugar & cloth

Hey there and welcome to Weekly Wishes, where I talk about the goals or challenges I want to achieve this week and also let you share your own through the link-up below. I’d love for you to join me and add a link to your own goal-oriented post! It’s a great way to make new friends from around the world and gain some motivation to achieve your weekly aspirations.

Last Month’s Wishes

If you remember, on the first Monday of every month, I now share my monthly goals. At the beginning of January, I shared a hefty list of things I wanted to accomplish that month. Some highlights of the things I accomplished in January were finally adding a more professional portfolio to my design studio site, starting my pottery class, and hosting the first Bloggers Giving Back meeting. I didn’t, however, go to any yoga classes (womp woooomp) and didn’t launch my Special Project #1 (though I did share what it is!). All in all, January was a pretty good month. Something that I didn’t write down as a goal last month (but that ended up becoming a biggie) was hiring a dog trainer for Monja. So far, we’ve met with our trainer twice and I see so much improvement in my dog. The training is not really about obedience — we already take group classes for that. This new training we’re doing is about behavior — specifically, the aggressive tendencies I’ve started to see in Monja. I feel like starting this (really intense) training process with Monja was a big accomplishment for January. More details on that in an upcoming post, promise!

OH! AND HOW COULD I FORGET? Remember how one of my wishes for last week was to nail down an apartment lease, as I need to move out of my current apartment in a few weeks? Well, I DID IT! Let me tell you the story! First of all, I live in Orange County, California. Even though I grew up mostly in San Diego (about 90 minutes South of Orange County), I moved back to this area because it’s where I went to high school and college. It’s also where my dad lives. It just feels like home. It also happens to be one of the wealthiest areas in the US. Many parts of it are ridiculously flashy and there are tons of houses that cost more money than I’ll probably make in my lifetime. (Sidenote: Those aren’t the things I love about this area, but they are inherently part of the culture here). Anyways, you can imagine how hard it was to find a one-bedroom apartment for little ol’ me in my price range and not in one of the sketchier areas of Orange County (because even though much of it is really nice, there are a few areas I wouldn’t feel safe in). I felt like I was searching for something that didn’t exist.

That night, I searched online and found a few apartments I liked…but they were expensive. Almost too expensive, but I convinced myself that it’d be worth it to live somewhere nice, safe, and not falling apart. Since I work from home, I really want to live somewhere that I enjoy being. When I went to look at one of those apartments the next day, I found a winner — the perfect size, nice and sunny, right next to hiking and nature trails, and near one of my favorite areas of Orange County. But like I said, it was pretty pricey and I wasn’t sure I could actually afford it. When I sat down with the leasing agent, the first thing he said was “you’re not going to believe this, but I’ve never seen our apartment prices this low.” I thought he was pulling a sales move on me, but then when he told me how low the price was, my jaw dropped — the apartment I wanted was almost $200 cheaper than it had been 12 hours ago! An hour later and it was mine. 🙂 I am so thankful and can’t wait to move in in a couple weeks! Pictures coming soon! WOOOHOOOOOO!! 🙂

This Month’s Wishes

1. Host the OC Blogger Brunch. Wahooooo!! I can’t wait for this event! Have you registered yet? We’re bringing together a bunch of bloggers for food, crafting, and good ol’ fashioned mingling. It’s more than half sold out already, so get your tickets fast. I’d love to meet you! 🙂
2. Make something I’m proud of in my pottery class. I’ve taken two classes so far and tried the wheel last week. No bueno. Even though I totally suck, I’m still enjoying the fun of experimenting. Hopefully this month I can learn enough to make something I feel good about.
3. Pay my taxes. I finished my taxes already (using TurboTax!), but now I just need to actually pay them. That’ll be nice to check off the ol’ to do list!
4. Move into my new apartment! This is less of a “goal” and more of a “definitely going to happen in the near future,” but I still wanted to put it on here since it’ll be a big part of this month.
5. FInish Monja’s behavioral training series. The private classes we are doing come in a series of four sessions — we’ve done two. The next session is at a popular outdoor mall in Orange County (to deal with lots of distractions) and the final lesson is off-leash at a dog park. Here’s to hoping we finish strong.
6. Work diligently on my new shop’s product line and aim for a March launch date. Can’t WAIT to reveal it! But there is still so much to do AHH!
7. Reach 100,000+ monthly pageviews. I NEVER thought my blog would be anywhere near that, but in the past month it’s gotten 90,000 pageviews! Everyday the number grows and I’d be lying if I told you it wasn’t at least kind of exciting. Reaching 100k would feel like a milestone for me…and would be a nice birthday present for my blog (which turns one-year-old TOMORROW!!). 🙂
8. Take less baths. Yes, you read that right. I started taking a nightly bath a few weeks ago and literally can.not.stop. Like, even when I’m super tired and just want to pass out in my warm bed, all I can think is, “welp, haven’t taken a bath yet…duty calls.” I do enjoy these nightly baths…but every night? Not necessary!
9. Read a book. I did not finish last month’s book and really need to get my booty in gear if I want to reach my 10-book goal for this year. I love to read, so what’s the deal! Any books you love? Tell me!

Weekly Wishes Instagram Art

Be featured here! Just take a picture throughout the week of your Weekly Wishes in action and tag it with #WeeklyWishes on Instagram. I choose four of my favorite #WeeklyWishes photos at the end of the week and share them with a link to your account! (Free exposure!) Here are this past week’s winners: 

Clockwise from top left: @afterapriltheblog | @bysarahhalstead | @onthewallcat | @annehnert

 WEEKLY WISHES LINKUP RULES

1. Share your posts about your goals, challenges, or wishes for the week, month, year, decade, whatever! Entries completely unrelated to the theme or linked to your homepage will be deleted. 

2. Link back to this site so others can get their goal-setting on, too! You can use the button below if you’d like!

<div align="center"><a href="https://melyssagriffin.com/tags/weekly-wishes/" title="The Nectar Collective" target="_blank"><img src="https://melyssagriffin.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/weekly-wishes-button.jpg" alt="The Nectar Collective" style="border:none;" /></a></div>

3. You can link up your posts on any day of the week, but the most common day to do so is Monday. 🙂

4. THE MOST IMPORTANT RULE OF ALL! You MUST visit the person’s blog who linked up directly before you and leave them a motivating comment. This is such an important part of this linkup! We are each here to encourage each other and build a community of determined women and friends. 🙂 If you do not do this, your post will be deleted from the link-up.