Hello, dears!

How was your Christmas? Mine was a little different than normal, but still wonderful. 🙂 We had 5 celebrations with different parts of the family, caroled at a nursing home, had a beautiful Christmas Eve service, were blessed with many fun gifts, and ate WAY too much good food. XD

Now, the post. Whew, where do I start? 2018 has probably been the most exciting, scary, stressful, wonderful, and all-around life-changing year for me yet. O.o I don’t think I can do it justice in one post, but I’ll try.

Today I’m going to show you guys some highlights, blog stats, popular posts from this year, goals for 2019, and more. I hope you enjoy the ride! Let’s start with some highlights from 2018, which aren’t necessarily in order.

~HIGHLIGHTS~

WE MOVED! We moved from our old farm to the small guest house on our new farm while we got the big farmhouse (pictured below) ready to move into. So we technically lived in three different houses this year. O.o It is quite the process to move an entire farm, and we’re still not finished. However, we’re pretty settled here now, which feels marvelous. I love our farm! I posted a little series on moving with three “episodes”: one, two, and three.

FINISHED SCHOOL! I graduated from high school this year and have been greatly enjoying the freedom. 😀 I’ve been keeping plenty busy with my Etsy shop, rebaling hay, and spending time with friends, among other activities. 🙂

Got to see Aria twice. I had no idea at the beginning of 2018 that I’d get to meet my dear blogger friend, Aria, for the first time this summer… and then visit her again in the fall! But I did, and we had so much fun together! Here is the post about our first visit, and here‘s the second.

Learned how to barn dance. Some of our church friends taught us how to barn dance; since then we’ve practiced our skills more. It’s just so fun! 😀 See more pictures from this dance here.

Got about 60 inches of rain. O.o That’s about twice as much as normal! This year was unbelievably wet, guys. When you’re a farmer, too much rain is kind of a rare problem, but boy was it a problem this year. Dad STILL hasn’t finished harvesting the crops and it’s December! That, like, never happens. It’s quite a lesson in trusting the only One who can control the weather.

Improved my cooking skills. This summer, Mom handed part of the cooking over to Megan and I. We took turns alternating between making supper each week and baking, and still do. I’m so glad I can learn this skill now rather than later! I’ve gotten pretty decent at baking bread from scratch if I do say so myself. 😉 And pizza too, heh.

Attended book club. Some friends from church started a book club and invited us! We’ve had half a dozen meetings or so, and they’ve been great, since most everyone there could talk about books forever. XD

Hosted a 50th anniversary celebration. Mom’s side of the family spent the weekend at our farm to celebrate Grandpa and Grandma’s 50th wedding anniversary. We had SO much fun! That was definitely one of my top highlights of the year. See my post about it here. (And yes, I’ll try to post the second part soon!)

Improved my art and participated in Inktober. I drew a fair amount this year, particularly for Etsy and Inktober. You can see all my Inktober drawings here, and my Etsy art here. (The picture below is a custom dog portrait I painted.)

Wrote a poem book! Making a book was one of the most exciting things I did this year! I enjoyed writing, editing, and selling the book, and hope to make another one eventually. You can read more about it here and purchase it here.

Officially became an adult. I turned 18 this year. O.o I suppose I’m an adult now, but I’m not sure if I feel like one… 😛 I did get to vote for the first time, though, so that was fun!

Successfully re-launched my Etsy shop. This summer, I researched more in-depth how to sell my art and learned so much. (Keep an eye out for a post about that soon!) I’ve really enjoyed running The Color Box Studio and I’m so excited to see how my business continues to grow.

Hosted The Summer Bored Games. It was a blast brainstorming and hosting this fun boredom-buster contest with Clara, K. A., and Megan. We hope to do it again next year!

Made many new friends and kept the old. The nice thing about moving only two hours away is that now we have double the friends! We enjoyed spending time with friends this year, whether they stayed at our guest house or we went to visit them. (See a post about it here.)

Helped rebale thousands of hay and straw bales. It’s hard work, but for the most part I don’t mind it, and I can tell my strength has really improved since we first learned how to do it a year ago. Sometimes it feels kinda good to work until you’re exhausted. 😛

Read 66 books + 10 books of the Bible. *sigh* I know 66 books really isn’t that much, especially for how much I love reading. I guess that’s a good gauge of how busy we were, heh heh. However, I did keep up with my Bible journal pretty well, reading a chapter of the Bible and copying down my favorite verse from it almost every day. I hope to continue the habit in 2019.

Became members of our new church and started singing on the worship team. Leaving our old church was super sad, but our new church family quickly made us feel welcome. My parents, older siblings, and I joined as members a little while ago. I also started singing often on the worship team, which has been great fun!

Created a studio. Another top event of the year for me! I turned one of the walk-in closets upstairs into a beautiful studio, and I am still absolutely LOVING it! I can hardly imagine what I did without it. XD I’m writing this post at my desk right now, which looks pretty similar to the picture except with a few more things on it. 😉

Lost three rabbits (not counting several baby bunnies) and gained a donkey. Sadly, three of our pet rabbits didn’t take too well to the move. 😦 My rabbit had a big litter of ADORABLE baby bunnies, but they came to a tragic end as well. (See the post.) *sad sigh* At least we got Eeyore, Megan’s donkey!

Exchanged many letters with my pen pals. I think my current pen-pal count is nine… maybe? Anyway, I sent and received many letters from my friends. Thank you for brightening my days, guys, and I’m sorry for all the times I took forever to respond! XD

I met one of my followers. One summer day, my mom, sister and I visited a small farmer’s market near where we live. One of the vendors there, a girl, suddenly looked at us with wide eyes and was like, “I read your blog!” And we were like, “WHAT?! Really?!” We all just kind of gasped and laughed and it was just SO WEIRD. She even asked to take a picture with us! I FELT SO FAMOUS. XD XD If you’re reading this… thank you for making my day, dear! It was so fun to meet you. 🙂

Stayed with a friend’s coworker and memorized and performed a 12-minute speech/skit for church. Those things don’t necessarily go together, but both of them were pretty much outside of my comfort zone and I’m glad I did them. 🙂

Explored the farm with my family. It’s been a strange experience to live on a farm without knowing what every nook and cranny is like. My family and I have enjoyed walking around the 450 acres we live on and piecing the property together in our minds. It’s so beautiful. ❤

If I remember one thing from this year, it will be moving. Running back and forth to our old farm and new, fixing up two houses, moving in twice, and many other things I won’t go into made it a really stressful, hectic year for all of us – especially my parents. There’s still so much going on, but at least we have room to breathe now, and I’m so grateful for that. I’m so grateful that God sustained us through the chaos and has blessed us abundantly where we are now.  ❤

BLOG STATS

• Followers (current #): 4,817
• Comments: 5,508
• Likes: 7,171
• Posts: 62 (*winces*)

First, these stats are as of Sunday the 30th. Second, my views went down from last year, but my visitors went up. I’m just impressed I have that many views for publishing half the number of posts I did in 2017! :[] Again… this was a crazy year. XD Here’s to more posts in 2019!

ALSO GUYS I CAN’T BELIEVE I ALMOST HAVE 5,000 FOLLOWERS THANK YOU GUYS SOOOOOO MUCH! I don’t think I could have dreamed how far this blog would come when I started! Thanks for sticking with me. ❤

MOST POPULAR POSTS

1. The Ultimate List of Pen Pal Ideas
2. Poems {Third Edition}
3. Recent Art {+ GIVEAWAY!}
4. Macro Photography + Lens Review
5. Hand Lettering + Font Inspiration

Whew, that was a lot of different featured image designs. :[] I’m pretty satisfied with the one I have now, though. 🙂 I hope to do more pen pal and poem posts in the future, and probably more of the others too. Which post was your favorite?

2019 GOALS

• Reach 80 sales on my Etsy shop. I already have 24, and most of those are just from the past couple months, so this goal seems reasonable.
• Launch BuJo printables set. I’m super excited about this idea: I want to make sets of BuJo printables for each month, with a pretty cover, mood tracker, art, and quotes to beautify your journal. 🙂
• Read 3+ Great Books. My Dad has a set of I think 60 “greatest books” of the world, from Homer and Aristotle’s writing’s to Tolstoy and Orwell. So far I only finished The Illiad and am working on The Odyssey… I listed such a small number because many of the books are HUGE.
• Memorize 3+ chapters of Romans. My friend Aria and I are working on memorizing the book of Romans together, and I hope to keep at it. 🙂
• Write poem book #2. | Look into traditional publishing. This is pretty self-explanatory, but EXCITING!
• Publish 2 posts a week. As I mentioned before, I’m going to try to make shorter (but still quality) posts and fit in two a week, starting in 2019.
• Worry less; trust God more. 🙂 I tend to worry a lot. Not, like, bad anxiety, but there’s just always something. That’s not good or necessary, and I hope and pray God will help me trust that his plan is good and he will carry it through.

I’m super excited to work on and hopefully complete these “resolutions” for 2019! By the way, if you have a hard time going through with your goals, check out Hannah’s excellent post about that here.

And… that about wraps this wrap-up up! (Well THAT was confusing. XD) Anyway, I hope you enjoyed this post!

What were some of the highlights from this year for you? What about your goals/resolutions for 2019?

Thanks so much for reading, dears, and HAVE A HAPPY NEW YEAR!

***Allison***