I’m not a resolution-y type of person, but there is something about starting anew each year that makes me feel like I can wipe the slate clean and move forward with a bit more purpose and power.

I figured since there are 12 months in a year, and this happens to be 2012, it would be cool to challenge myself to master one sometimes-small, maybe sometimes-big thing a month. I doubt I’m the first special snowflake to come up with this idea, but here’s my list:

1. Create a functional office space for myself. No more operating from the counter on the side of the stove. (Already well on my way! I can hear Scott in the other room, cutting dry wall. Our new home office is starting to take shape.)

2. Learn to make homemade tortillas (especially wheat). We spend way too much money to buy freshly made tortillas every week. This can’t possibly be that hard.

3. Improve my blogging and photography work-flow. There are about 50 million places on my computer that I store images and files. It takes forever to search for things, organize them, back them up (when I rarely get around to that). I need a system. This haphazard approach is costing me too much time.

4.  Finish writing my book draft. Yeah, so NaNoWriMo didn’t exactly turn out the way I wanted. I spent much of the month trying to sift my way through postpartum anxiety and figure out the best dosage for my meds. I gave myself a writing break pretty much right after I vowed to write every day. It just wasn’t worth the stress.

5. Print a photo book for every year of Kendall and Leyna’s lives so far. That’s 4 total. They don’t have to be fancy or pretty. Just simply printed in chronological order with a burned DVD of the pictures stuck inside the cover. I HAVE to stop sucking at these things.

6. Do something for someone in need. Maybe another blog fundraiser, maybe just time volunteering, but something that has a big impact on somebody else’s life.

7. Run a race. I thought I might try to attempt another marathon this year… and I may. But, the thought of training for one right now is pretty overwhelming. If anything, I want to at least run a half marathon this year.

8. Purge my closet. Because, really, who needs that shirt they wore in their senior high school pictures *cough* 13 *cough* years ago?

9. Take a vacation. Maybe it’s with the kids, maybe without, but a REAL vacation to an exciting place we’ve never been before.

10. Learn to take self-portraits. I got a tripod and camera remote or Christmas, and I’m super excited to put them to use to master self-portraits to get pictures of me with the kids or us as a family.

11. Print and display our wedding photos. I want to finally get around to designing and printing a photo book (I have a couple Picaboo vouchers I plan to use to make one similar to Leyna’s book I printed last year), and print a large canvas collage to hang on our wall.

12. Make our master bedroom look less like a frat house. We’ve focused so much attention on the rest of this house, all the parts people can see when they walk in, the kid’s rooms. Our room, though, is… embarassing. Seriously. I HATE for people to see our room. There’s no rhyme or reason, no matching furniture. It smells like dogs. This has to change.

So, that all should be manageable, right? And to hold myself accountable, I just set reminder timers on my phone for the 1st of every month to remind me to tackle a new 12 in 12, the 15th to remind myself to keep working on it, and the 30th to see if I’ve blogged it yet.

What about you? Have anything in mind you’d like to accomplish this year? If you get a 12 in 12 post up on your blog, feel free to link it up here: