2024 recap & 2025 goals

Hey, friends!!

It’s been a couple of weeks since I’ve posted, mainly because I got busy and I kinda completely quit blogmas halfway through. Sorry about that, guys 😂 I didn’t want to miss this post though because I love reading other people’s recaps & I love getting to look back at all my old ones and see what’s changed & what’s the same.

2024 was a great year, and I’m honestly so excited for 2025. Before we rush into the new year, though, I wanted to recap this past year for you guys and share my goals for 2025!

2024 highlights

Decorating & setting up my room. You can read/see my closet tour here, and I’ll hopefully have a room tour coming up soon once I get a couple of things to finish it off. I love decorating, though, and not only doing my room, but helping my mom decide things for the rest of our new addition was great! I also painted one of our bathrooms and a lot of other random stuff around our house. 😂

Read 50+ books & listened to even more. New favorites this year: A Solitary Blue by Cynthia Voight, Stargirl by Jerry Spinelli, The War that Saved My Life by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley, Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie, and My Father’s Daughter by E.L. Kongisburg.

Both of our Lutsen trips, our family reunion, & Door County. This year, we went skiing for a week in Minnesota at Lutsen, then went back up there this summer (both seasons are so beautiful up there!), went to a family reunion right after that in the Twin Cities, and then went to Door County for a couple days at the end of the summer. All of these were amazing!

A waterpark trip with all my cousins. Until a couple of years ago, all my family from my dad’s side would go up and spend a couple of days at a resort together, and we finally did it again this year. Being with all my cousins + doing waterslides and everything was so much fun.

Drivers-ed & getting my permit. Not my favorite thing but it is something I did. 😂

Finishing another book & Crazy Writing Week. Writing hasn’t been my main focus lately, but I still love doing it, and finishing another project is always exciting. CWW this year was also a blast!

Made lots of food & new recipes. Some things failed but a lot turned out amazing! One thing I want to do this year is less baked goods/snacks and more real meals but we’ll see if that happens. 😂

Church & youth group activities. We had VBS, a formal, & a lot of other fun things.

Skiing with my siblings. Skiing every week in the winter is 100% one of my favorite things my family does and 2023 was no different.

Made new friends & kept the old ones. I’m so thankful for all the amazing people God’s put in my life! 🤍

Cross-country season! This season was probably my favorite so far and even if it didn’t end the way I wanted to (I got sick right after our Conference meet and didn’t get better before sectionals), it was so much fun and I love the girls I get to run with! Plus my sister made it to state and watching her run there was great.

Ran a lot & also got into a really good workout routine. I think I ran around 1060+ miles this year, which is way more than I expected at the beginning of 2024. 😂 Before this year, I mainly just ran during xc season and a little bit here and there. This summer, though, I wanted to have a good season & had a lot of goals, so I started running and training more, and now it’s pretty much my whole personality, hahaha. I’m way too excited for track and xc next year. 🤪

Saw so many pretty sunsets & sunrises & the northern lights & the solar eclipse. Kinda random but the amount of amazing sunsets and sunrises I saw this year had to be mentioned. Also seeing the northern lights & the solar eclipse this year was cool and always leaves me thinking what an amazing Creator we have. ☺️

Got a boat. This is kinda a crazy story that I’m not going to get into, but pretty much we got a boat (it’s a mix between a pontoon and a speed boat) at the end of the summer, and it was so much fun to take it out and tube a couple of times.

Designed websites for Daises & Design Co. Not a ton to say about this one, haha. If you need a website designed, I’d love to design one for you! More details here.

Christmas & this whole holiday season! From Thanksgiving to New Years, this Christmas season was amazing. We did a ton of baking, watched way too many Christmas movies, went caroling, Christmas shopping, put up so many lights all over our house & yard, had an amazing Christmas Eve service at our church, and three different Christmas celebrations.

Another year of blogging. This year might have been the hardest year for me with blogging. I spent a lot of time being uninspired and not posting much, but I just want to thank you, guys, for following along for another year. 💕 I love getting to do this and share my life with you, and I can’t wait to see what’s coming in 2025.

Other small highlights: girls trips with my mom & sister | lake days | senior photos for my friend kate | recording the podcast with mayim | snow days | ugly sweater run | summer bonfires | all of our cats | chili cookoff + painting pumpkins | drawing on procreate | drinking way too much iced coffee + spindrift | Bible journaling |

goals for 2025

• do each of the Little Bible Plans & memorize 3 verses each month.
• keep a prayer list
• complete one polished writing project
• 400 subscribers for the email list & post once a week on the blog
• have successful track & xc seasons + training in the off-season
• get my license
• keep working on all my random businesses & earning money
• grow friendships

now, it’s your turn!

What was your favorite part of 2024? Goals for 2025?

Happy New Year, friends!! 🥳✨

Pearl 🤍