I’m curious to see what new opportunities will open up in 2012. Below are eight things that I believe and will take FAITHFUL ACTION towards achieving – beginning in 2012.
- I will spend more of my time, energy and money for volunteer efforts. I think that we already do a lot, but we can always do more. I want to be a “Big Sister” this year. I can’t wait to see who my “little” is!
- Reggie and I will be celebrating our 10th anniversary this year. I want to go on a romantic trip to Paris together before our 11th anniversary. (I’m giving myself a little leeway, because we have a lot going on this year!)
- It’s birthday party year for the boys. We host kiddie parties every other year. Joy. Joy. I want to make sure that they get the parties that they want…within reason. We actually have a shot at that now that Sean has accepted that his party won’t include a Michael Jackson cruise (?!)
- I want to visit my family in Virginia this summer. We didn’t go in 2011, but a few family members came to visit us in NYC. Their visits made me miss my larger family even more. What can I say? My family is fun to be around.
- I must learn to take better food photographs. Just when I was starting to get the hang of taking pictures of people, I went ahead and added food as a major part of the blog. Food is hard (for me anyway) to photograph. It can’t do something cute like a kid…it just sits there. Oh well…I will either take an online and/or an offline food photography class this year. I want Foodie City Mom to be great all around. For that to happen, the pictures need to do justice to the recipes!
- I will refocus on making a profit online. In 2010, I set a goal to make enough each month to cover our monthly housing payment…and I did. It wasn’t because we especially needed it at that point financially. My income has always been “the gravy” since we had kids (although I do love myself some gravy). Rather, I had heard my friend Maria Bailey mention that a blogger was doing that with her blog and I thought, “Oh, that’s a great goal to make.” Let’s just say that by the end of 2010 I was burnt out physically and emotionally. Once I started thinking of blogging as a business, it stopped being fun because I’m too left-brained. I had met my goal, but the amount of work that it took to do so was SO much more than what it would have taken at one of my former corporate jobs. I was like, “Forget that. If I want to work that many hours, I might as well go back to work and really get paid.”By 2011, I decided that I just wanted to have fun with blogging again…and I did. I stopped doing things that I didn’t particularly enjoy and just kind of did my own thing – including re-branding to Foodie City Mom, which I love. A funny thing happened though…the profits still kept trickling in – not at the pace of 2010, but consistently enough. For 2012, I want it all. I want fun and profit. It makes me happier than you know when people share that they tried a recipe and it turned out great. (Unlike with certain skill sets, everyone can cook the basics!) I also enjoy merging my corporate background with my mom experience in speaking, providing content, consulting and such. I enjoy it even more when I’m getting paid to do it…so that’s my focus for 2012. (In hindsight, I also realized that I was a little crazy in 2010. I was administering 3 camps on top of all the social media work that I was doing…that was a meltdown just waiting to happen!)
- I’m “itching” to do something with mominthecity.com. My blog is and will be Foodie City Mom, but I’m itching to do some type of scalable business with Mom in the City. My nephew was up here for the New Year and he asked if I was a little OCD. (Smarty pants!) Not to make light of people who really do have this disorder, but I wonder if there are variations. Once I get something in my head, it stays in there until I do something about it. I have it stuck in my head that I’m just wasting online real estate by not doing anything with Mom in the City. Every couple of weeks, I do a google search on “mom in the city” to see if the old site has fallen from #1 and each time that it hasn’t, I’m like, “It’s a sign! I need to do something with that url!” (Yes, I know that I have a problem. Knowing is half the battle, right? Right?) Anyway, I have an idea that involves the “daily deals” space that I’m fleshing out. I just need to learn a bit more before jumping in both feet first!
- I will get back to my best weight. My friend Shari keeps asking me, “So, how do you do a food blog and not gain weight?” Well, it was pretty easy…until December. I didn’t get the memo that food bloggers spread out their holiday treat baking for their posts throughout the year. So, I was baking (and sampling) 4 types of cookies and a homemade caramel sauce in one week. On top of that I ate out at restaurants 4 times in the last week – with friends and family. Well, the party is over and now I’m on lock-down…at least until I can button my jeans without having to take a deep inhale. (Don’t act like you don’t know what I’m talking about.)
Well, that’s it for me. Do you have any great hopes and plans for 2012?