Hello everyone!
Once again, I haven’t been posting. It’s hectic. Good hectic, but also terrible hectic. The end of 2016 was sad. But it’s time to turn the new leaf and start over. We can only hope 2017 brings just as much joy 2016 did, but without all the bad stuff that happened. So, Happy New Year! May this be the best year for all of you! May your lives be filled with joy, love, health, travel, good food, great business and your family really close by! This post is more for me than it is for you, but I hope you don’t mind it. I promise there will be lots of posts for you in the months to come!
What happened in 2016
2016, for me, was all about dreams coming true. I can really safely say that this was the best year I’ve had so far. Both on the personal and on the business level. Let’s see what happened:
- I finally visited London! That has been a dream of mine for almost 15 years. And this February I finally went there expecting a lot, but experiencing so much more! It was so much better than I expected. I really hope I will get a chance to go again and meet my fellow bloggers there. Of course, it wouldn’t be the same without my boyfriend who was there with me. We really had a blast. I wrote about our itinerary part one and part two, about some of my tips and tricks for visiting London, and I showed you what I got in terms of beauty and miscellaneous stuff.
- While I was in London I got a chance to meet two of my pen pals I’ve been internet friends for somewhere around 10 years, and I have to say, that was a really special experience 🙂
- 2016 was all about good food. We tried new things, we enjoyed it, and we made it ourselves. We are giant foodies, and I’m pretty sure that we’ll continue eating just as good in 2017. By the way, I still cannot think of the name of the green stuff on the salmon dish, not asparagus, but those little green branch-like veggies. Anyone?
- 3 week vacation was something we desperately needed. Summer is my favorite season, and going to our vacation house is my favorite part of the year. Being able to spend 3 weeks at the seaside was amazing! I wrote about part one of the vacation, but never got around to finishing part 2. I suck 😀
- This year, I’ve been spending a lot of time with friends and I absolutely loved it. I hope we’ll do that this year, too, and that we will always be able to find time for our friends.
- This year my 16-year-old cat died. And my parents didn’t want to tell me about it when I was at uni, so I found out when I got home and it was really devastating. We decided to get another cat, which would be very similar to the old one. And so we did, and this little kitten is the best cat we’ve ever had. It’s fearless, the biggest cuddler ever, and everyone loves it. Even the ones who claim they’re not cat people (cough cough).
- The dog is, however, not that new, but I’ve been spending every available Sunday with him, since I’m at uni during week. I love that dog so much, and I love that time I spend with him and my mom walking.
- Once I find a makeup look I really like, I will do it over and over again. However, lately I’ve really been trying to do new things every week, and I’ve really come up with some looks I really enjoyed. The purple look you can see below was my New Year’s Eve look, and I really enjoyed it! I think the gold liner added the festive feel to the whole look 🙂
- We’ve hit 5k monthly views this year, which was the ultimate goal, and I couldn’t be happier about that! Thank you all!
- I’ve enrolled into an Internet marketing course, which started at the end of August. It’s been taking up a lot of my time, but it finished at the end of November, and I passed my exam on December 17th. All I have to do now is write a seminar paper, and I’m done! I will be an Internet marketing specialist.
- Another one of my lifelong dreams came true, and that is getting into TEFL program. I knew I wanted to be an English teacher probably since I was 5 or 6 years old. I didn’t think I’d get in, there were a few bumps on the road, but I did it! And I couldn’t be happier about it. And I think my mom couldn’t be more proud 😀
- I went to my first blogging conference, which was a very interesting experience, even though I didn’t know anyone there. I felt like I was going somewhere just because I was invited 😀
- 2016 was also all about the lack of time. I am famous for doing everything last minute, and I hate that about myself. I did that with my thesis, with my exams, with everything. However, as the new school year began, I felt like time is slipping away from me. I had my classes, homeworks, I had my Internet marketing course classes, I tutored 2 times a week, and I wrote on my blog, which happened less and less often each month. I hope the next year will be much more relaxed, and that I’ll have more time to write 🙂
- Parties this year have been pretty much amazing. I don’t remember the last time I’ve had as much fun as I have this year. I hope the next year holds even better parties, and even better party looks! The look you can see below was for my boyfriend’s birthday party, a day before Christmas Eve. So, I decided to go with red, gold, bold and very festive.
- Finally, in 2016 I had a chance to work with some amazing brands, who have been more than generous. So, let’s hope the next year brands will want to work with me even more! 😀 To name just a few, I’ve worked with Born Pretty Store, Top Stil, Zaful and Cocomelody.
Overall, this was an amazing year, but let’s make the next one even better 🙂 Let’s see what I have planned for 2017. My New Year’s resolutions.
2017 goals and resolutions
- Finish 6 exams by February 13th
- Finish the seminar paper for Internet marketing course (please sign up for my newsletter on top of my right hand side bar, I need a certain amount of people signed up to pass, I promise I won’t bother you too often with newsletters)
- Have 1k followers on 2 social media platforms. 1k on one platform was the plan for this year, but I failed. I am going to really engage on all of my platforms from now on, so I hope we’ll make it!
- Host more giveaways. I’ve hosted 3 last year. 2 were international and 1 was for my Croatian readers only. I hope I’ll be able to do even more this year.
- Start a freelance marketing business. I would love to be able to at least pay a few bills with my blog. So, since I did take the course for Internet marketing, I would love to start doing that (both for others and for my blog). I can manage someone’s social media platforms, send weekly/monthly Google Analytics reports, manage their Google AdWords and help them promote via Google AdWords, do SEO for someone and even give tips on how to do their marketing better. If you, or someone you know, are interested in my services, please feel free to contact me via email (someone1393@gmail.com).
- I would love to have another 3 week vacation this year, and I really hope it’ll be possible.
- I signed up for more courses recently. Udemy had some really cool discounts recently, so I bought 3 more courses, and I hope to finish them as soon as possible.
- Blog regularly. News, right? What I really hope for is the time to do the things I really enjoy. That, of course, includes blogging. So what I really need is time. Let’s hope I have more of that in 2017.
- Hit 10k monthly views and try to maintain it.
- Work out. Ah, I am not even going to go there. 😀
- Be smarter with money. I’m not spending too much money on crap, but my problem is that as soon as I have a little bit of extra money, I go out and buy something I don’t really need 😀 From now on, I am going to try to make budgets for everything.
- Actually use the pins I pin on Pinterest 😀 I keep pinning, but I rarely go back to all the cool stuff I find. That is going to change this year.
- Start applying all the knowledge I got from the courses on my blog and try to grow it as much as possible.
- Wear makeup more often. As you may, or may not know, I wear makeup on Fridays. I would love to make it at least 2 times a week. But not too often, I really like to let my skin breathe.
- Do more nail art. As you may have noticed, this Christmas season, and the New Year’s eve, I didn’t do a single nail art design. That has to change soon.
- Spend more time in nature. I love nature, but I don’t spend enough time exploring it. I hope this year will be the year of walking in the woods, hitchhicking, riding bikes, rollerblading and even doing picknicks out in the open.
- Learn about skincare! Something I’ve been wanting to do for quite some time now.
- Do a castor oil experiment on hair, brows and lashes, and do updates on Facebook and Instagram.
- Lastly, a small group of us are going to a music festival in Austria this year. I really hope we have the best time there!
And that’s it for this post. Do you have any resolutions? Do you think I can pull off mine? 😀 Let me know in the comments.
Thank you for reading!
See you soon x