little white truths

I mentioned this last year and I'm pleased to say that I've done it. The aim under this heading was to organise myself better so that I'm not drowning in draft posts and reams of unedited photos - because all this means is that it's hard to find whatever photos I need to edit in my endless photo folders, and that things occasionally get lost because I have too many draft posts so I can't keep track of them all.

My aim last year was to hit this issue head-on, and I'm pleased to say that while I used to have something like 70 draft posts at any one time, I'm now sitting in the 20s and have been for months. That's a good number. Enough choice, but nothing gets lost. And instead of rows and rows of folders containing unedited photos, I now have between one and two rows of folders - so we're talking hundreds of photos now but not thousands, which I can live with.

My aim for the year ahead will be to keep these systems in place and never slip back to where I was. Fingers crossed.

Write more non-beauty posts

This one I've been promising to do for years, and I always seem to fall short. Yes I've written some other posts (environmental posts, travel posts, positives posts etc), but the beauty posts have become habit and I've found those the easiest to do with little kids running around.

Perhaps next year, once I've got both kids in kinder, I may have the mental and emotional space to spread my wings a bit. I do need to write more restaurant reviews too (which I used to do when I was pregnant but stopped doing after kids), so I'll have to start taking more food photos when we go out.

I would also like to send this blog further into environmental territory, so I would write more posts on saving water and utilities, and cutting down on plastic consumption etc, plus more reviews of the sustainable items I've been buying lately (eg flasks, coffee cups, bread bags, bamboo toothbrushes), and I think that people would be interested in those. Yes I'll continue to do beauty posts, but I would bring in more additional material.

Maybe I can do it over the next year. Maybe. Finally.

Get a decent camera

This was on my list last year, and while we did consider buying one with the money I received for Christmas from my family, in the end we decided to keep that and add it to our savings so we could buy solar panels (which are getting installed shortly).

But I would like to get a decent camera, and my husband enjoys researching technological gadgets so he's had his eye out for a while and we'll get one eventually. While I used to hate taking photos and thought of it as a 'necessary evil' in terms of the blogging process, it's now something I enjoy doing - and I would like to explore the process more and get a little better at. This will be helped by a new camera, and of course I'll be able to use the camera for other things too.

Perhaps this year will be my new camera year, and I hope this will have flow-on effects so the pictures on the blog will improve with time. Fingers crossed.

Explore more budget skincare brands

This was a plan from last year and I'm happy to say that I've done it. Over the past year I've tried a lot from both Andalou and Trilogy, and the next brand on my list is Skin Physics, because what I've tried from them so far I've really liked.

My aim with this has been to bring you a more complete idea of what's good at the pharmacy/drugstore and what isn't. While I've explored plenty of budget makeup over the years, I haven't done this as much with skincare so I'm glad that I've now started doing it and I would like to continue doing it.

On that, if there are any budget skincare brands you're interested in, do let me know in the comments. It's easy to get lost among all the different options so I've been going for the ones that generally have good reviews, but some brands mightn't have been reviewed much yet so they mightn't be on my radar.

Looking forward to continuing with this plan in the year ahead.

Explore other panning challenges

This was on my list last year but I haven't met this goal so I would like to include it again. While I already do Project Pan, Pan that Palette and Project Dent, other challenges exist that I would like to explore and learn more about (eg, by seeing what others find to be easy or hard about them), before considering whether to bring them into my own routine.

One of my issues with year-long panning projects - and I have posted on this before - is that too many of my products sit around gathering dust, because even though I do reach for non-panning items on weekends, I tend to reach for my favourites every time. This means that my second and third favourites don't get enough use, and some of my newer items haven't even been used enough so I don't know yet whether or not they're in my top three.

Over the next year I'll be looking into what other beauty lovers do to make sure everything in their collection gets used, and if I find any decent new challenges to try, I'll be sure to consider adding them in. Even a weekly makeup basket might be a good option for me, and I do like the idea of one month, one palette too. We'll see if my panning challenges grow or change in the year ahead.

In sum

Just a short post today because I don't have many plans in my head at the moment and I don't want to throw in resolutions from earlier years to pad things out: what I wanted to do was set out a few things that I would like to change or keep changing over the next year, and I'm hoping that by keeping my list smaller, it will be easier for me to meet my goals.

Fingers crossed!

Hope all's well with you, and speak soon x

* All images courtesy of unsplash.com