My New Year Traditions!
Happy New Year!
Welcome back to my blog!!!
Today, I thought about sharing the 3 things that I absolutely love doing every new year!
Picking a word for the year
Picking a saint for the year
AND
Creating a vision board
Now, you’re probably thinking it’s January 11, it’s too late to do this, but, it’s never too late to keep your vision for your hopes and dreams for the year!
So, I would love to take you through each topic and how I go about it!
First, let’s start with a word and saint of the year!
A few years ago, I heard about Jen Fulwiler! She is a Catholic Comedian, amongst other things, and she created the COOLEST website: Word of the Year Generator!!
For the past few years, again and again, I find her website to get my word of the year!
Now, when you go to the website I linked below, right away you will see, “Show me my word.”
But, I encourage you to wait. Before you eagerly press the black button, say a prayer. Maybe write down some words you would like to receive for the year. Maybe talk to someone about your hopes and dreams for the year. Because, what I’m sure Jen hoped for from this, was to make it about you and God. What is God going to do in your life this year? Or what do you want Him to do in your life this year? When you focus this activity on faith, you’re able to get more out of it!
ALSO, PAUSE, before you go off and do this awesome activity…I have to tell you about the word I got a few years ago. The word was BEHOLD. Now, I don’t exactly remember the year I got it, but I do remember that year being filled with surprisingly seeing the word behold EVERYWHERE. And hearing it, EVERYWHERE. I would hear it in mass every Sunday, in readings and so on and so forth. And that year, when I would hear behold, I knew God was telling me to look and see what He is doing in not only my life, but others, or even in the scripture stories. It meant SO much to me hearing it constantly.
Now, sometimes your year may distract you, or other things can happen to detour you away from your vision. AND THAT IS OKAY. But, I encourage you to not give up on it, write your word down somewhere, stick it on your fridge and I pray this activity and practice will mean a lot to you for years to come!
(What I forgot to mention before, was after you press the button for your word I encourage you to look it up. Google a Christian meaning of it and think on what God is telling you.)
Oh, and you are probably wondering what word I got for this year…so, this year I have SHINE!!
Jen Fulwiler Word of the Year Generator:
*** After you get your word and before you leave Jens site look to the bottom right***
You will see a button that says “Saint Name Generator!”
Jen not only made a generator for a word of the year but also a saint! How cool!
At least it is super cool to me because I love learning about the saints haha!
Now, before you click, “Find a Saint for Me,” I encourage you to go about it the same way you did for your word. Pray, reflect, talk about it…think about what kind of saint you would like to walk with you this year. Of course, I would like to get one who went through the same type of things I am currently going through. But, it is also fun to see who God desires you to have. ;) Because honestly, when we invite God into our lives, how can He not have a hand in our desires?! I have to say, every year I get a saint I have never heard of haha. So, no matter who you get, look them up, learn about them, write their name down and ask them to intercede for you this year, because if you ask, I know they will!
Oh! And my saint of the year is…St. Guntramnus!
Jen Fulwiler Saint Name Generator:
https://www.saintsnamegenerator.com/
Okay, and last but not least!
Now, this may be the point where all this may be a bit too much for you haha and that is okay! Sometimes I get ahead of myself and want to go all out and do all the things when quite frankly, that can stress me out. So, pick what you’re most interested in. Do one or do them all! But, make sure it brings you peace, not burden to be perfect, because that is not what this is for!
(And no one is perfect or going about life perfectly!)
Last year, I completely forgot to do a vision board since I was getting married the month of January. But, this year I am back on it! I particularly love vision boards just because after the year ends, I love to look back on the board and see what all ended up taking place. If I am not mistaken, the year I decided to put the word “LOVE” on my vision board was the year I met my husband haha. So, maybe vision boards are all fluff, but maybe they’re inspiring for you to go after your dreams! ;)
There are different ways of going about making one:
The classic, get you a piece of printer paper or bigger if you’d like.
(Or, tape two pieces of printer paper together to make it easier on you)
Grab some magazines, books with words or pictures and start flipping through! You could definitely go to Walgreens too for some bigger paper or to buy some magazines if you desire. But, when flipping through, see what you gravitate toward. What words stick out to you? What pictures describe what you are dreaming of for the year? Or what pictures or words do you just like? You can be as creative as you’d like! You can tape or glue them to your paper and when you are finished put it somewhere you’ll see it daily!
Another idea is open up your Pinterest app (which is what I chose this year) and create a board: “2024 Vision Board.” I began searching things I wanted to do or grow towards this year. I saved the ones I liked to my Pinterest board and kept searching. I have to say after taking some quiet time to do this, it was really inspiring seeing my vision for the year come to life!
My 2024 Vision Board on Pinterest:
After that, a few days passed, and I was ready to have my vision board in front of me…
If you have never heard of Canva, it is about to be your new best friend, for like everything creative haha. Canva is an online website for design! I love it so much that my husband and I designed our wedding invitations on there! You can have Canva print and ship too!
Moving on…haha…
What I did was open Canva, (create an account if you don’t have one) and search, “Desktop Wallpaper” in their search engine. Then click, “Create a blank Desktop Wallpaper.” If you don’t want to use Canva then you can do this on Word or Paint! What I like to do so that I don’t have a million pictures saved to my computer (haha), is copy and paste the pictures to your document. So, I went back to Pinterest and copy and pasted the pictures I saved on my board, to my Canva document! It seems tedious but it was so fun and went by quickly. Especially if you put on some music in the background!
Now, if you complete on Canva, go to the top right, click “Share” and then “Download” and you will have it saved to your computer, tablet, phone, or whatever you used! I chose to put mine as my Desktop Background and have LOVED seeing it! And, of course I made it into the color vibe I like haha.
You saw the vision board I created on Canva when you clicked on this blog post!
Canva’s Website:
(They have an app as well!)
To close this very, very, long Blog post out, I just want to say thank you for reading but also, that I will be praying for you all that come here!
I hope this post inspires you and your faith in God.
He has a plan for you and wants to help grow in every year of your life.
But mostly, He wants to love you through it all. It’s worth inviting Him in. :)
I hope you enjoy creating!!
Love,
Allie <3
Yet – The King will come
https://youtu.be/dVz6yimuTgU?si=D8nROfSnobmK4jbC
Future posts to come:
Gods faithfulness
Grief
Being authentically you
