Happy 2026! Praying it’s the beginning of a kinder, gentler, more peaceful year for all of us.
We had a great end to a not the best year. My practical husband made me spend the last day of 2025 getting new tires (much needed) on my car. A bit annoying but that’s part of why I love him because he thinks of that kind of stuff. Up to me? I’d be thinking about new tires when they were falling off the car.
Also, saw a fun joke later that said: Always get new tires on New Year’s Eve so you can be sure to have a Good Year. Ha, such a bad joke. However, fitting for me this time. (For anyone who doesn’t know, Goodyear is a brand of tires)
Then, we rang in the new year with friends eating good food and playing games. This Stinky pig game I gave my husband for Christmas was a big hit. Just silly and fun.
Yesterday, I didn’t do much to start off the year. Made a little mini brunch from leftovers for 3 of us (G slept in quite a bit) and then, simply read my book and rested.
Just what I needed. Everyone is Lying to You by Jo Piazza is the best book I’ve read all year! (haha). It was really good though, a bit of a thriller about a murder revolving around influencers and social media but it also had a good friendship type story.
And now for the 2 traditional items I post around the beginning of each year…
My Word of the Year
I probably won’t be posting as much this year (see full-time work hours) but I doubt I’d be posting too much about my word of the year anyway. It’s a bit more personal this year but I still wanted to share it. I know I like seeing what words everyone who does this picks. So I’ll share mine. I considered many: rest, gentle, relax, pause, pray, trust. Got some answer so stupid I don’t even remember it on a buzzfeed quiz. The surrender answer (again!) on the Dayspring quiz. However this is the word that settled on my heart:
Pray
Trust is definitely the companion to my word of the year as well. So, it just means I plan to talk to God a lot more this year and leave things in his hands. Also, not just pray for wants/needs but I also plan to offer up more prayers of gratitude.
Hopefully, I’ll do better than I did with last year’s word of notice. I “noticed” I didn’t do a very good job at it past oh I don’t know January. SIGH. Again, where did last year go? Note: In no way whatsoever, do I want another 2025.
*****
Moving on…I’m also making a basic 26 things for 2026 list. Did I do many of the 25 things from last time? Uh, no. I did do a fun hot chocolate challenge though! Still, I enjoy making these lists if nothing else and who knows maybe someone reading can be inspired and will do something I ultimately skip over.
My List of 26 for 2026
The no thrills just a straight up list edition. I am going to throw in some eye-break photos from last year though. And some of these are going to be vague, sorry, I know it’s going to bug you detail-oriented types out there!
- Take one photo every day and post somewhere (probably Instagram though my big plan is to try and post all the photos for the week here each Saturday. The brunch photos above were my photos from yesterday)
- Go on one walk a week
- Take one box a week/maybe a month? to the donation center. Basically, declutter!
- Frame the calendar cross-stitch months my late mother-in-law made (found these in my father-in-law’s things. I’ll share them at some point)
- Organize the holiday tubs (in progress)
- Subscribe to 3-4 magazines that I want to read and enjoy (physical subscriptions, not digital!)
- Plant more green beans and black-eyed peas in the garden.
- Date with husband once a month (better share this one again, we didn’t do great last year but I can’t remember if I shared it with him, LOL!)
- Continue to strive to set an example of peace and kindness over hate and anger.
- Improve our home decor (I know that sounds shallow and materialistic but I lived with a lot of half-finished spaces for a long time and I miss completed spaces)
- Step back and let others step up (This is going to be so hard to do!)
- Clean out my email AND hit unsubscribe as I do so
- Read a book a week (this should be easy for me as I read every night before bed)
- Give myself permission to NOT finish crappy books/tv shows/movies
- Treat myself to a fun new seasonal coffee cup each month (hubands gonna love this one, ha!)
- Get another facial (I did this for the first time last year as part of our mom’s night out fun at a local beauty school and it was so relaxing…)
- Actually, use my gift cards! And maybe for myself? Are you a gift card collector as well or is it just me? Oh, I’ll just pay normal this time instead of digging out the gift cards that you know are somewhere in your purse/wallet? I need to see what I have…mostly Target ones, I think.
- Organize our hall/linen closet. It’s sooo bad right now.
- Do something brave
- Pick a new restaurant to check out once a month (hopefully, we can do this as a family)
- Set up laptop my son gave me (It involves finding many of my passwords that connect automatically on the desktop so I keep putting it off)
- Learn to use the laminator I got for my birthday
- Organize my bill payment system a bit better
- Don’t replace feelings with being busy (something I was getting better at and then, this year, a setback…reference working full-time hours)
- Get my passport (Something I probably should’ve done a long time ago)
- Try a new drink off my Pinterest “drinks” board each month (hot drinks in the winter, most likely, cold drinks in the summer…)
If you’re still reading, thank you! And of course, you know I’m going to ask. Word of the year for you? Did you make a list? Anything fun on it (I might want to trade)?