We’ve always used our Christmas tree as a way to display our memories.  Whenever I travel, I try to find my Mum a Christmas decoration as a gift (Travel Souvenirs: Christmas Edition).  Now I’m living in America, I’m starting my very own travel/memory tree!

Back in November, my other half had an operation on his wrist and has been in a cast since.  I was inspired to do something ‘crafty’ with his empty pill bottle and turn a negative into a positive!  I came up with a new Christmas tradition that I want to start…the Christmas Tree Time Capsule!

The idea is that each Christmas I will decide on my hopes, dreams and goals for the following year…a little like New Years Resolutions, write them down on a little piece of paper and store it in the bottle, that will then be opened the FOLLOWING Christmas Day.  That way I can reflect back and see if I’ve reached my aims during the year.  I recently saw a motivational speaker who said that you are more likely to accomplish your dreams if you write them down.  It’s like setting them in stone rather than just keeping them in your mind.

I split my goals into 3 categories:

• Blogging
• Travel
• Family/Life

Then I came up with 3 goals for each category.  For example, for blogging I have 3 ‘milestones’ I would like to reach by the end of the year, such as a target amount of followers and collaborations.  For travel, it’s the bigger aims, such as the countries I want to visit or the activities I would like to do.  These aims are a lot harder to reach now I’m living in America, I don’t have the same level of disposable income that I had when I was living in the UK, so these aims have to be fairly sensible!  The last category, family/life, relates to my expat life and are more internal things, things like how I’d like to be feeling this time next year.

At first I was going to decorate my pill bottle with Christmassy colours, but then I couldn’t help but feel that it looked like a Minion, plus the Minions are awesome, so that’s what I drew!  I then attached a little bit of ribbon to either side of the bottle so I could hang it on a tree branch!  I’d love to make a whole army of Minion bottles!  Instead of having paper inside, it would also work for sweets/candy, money, small gifts.  A Christmas tradition while I was living at home, was that during our Christmas dinner there’d be 4 little trinket boxes sat on the table.  Each one would contain a different unknown amount of money, up to £5 and after dinner we would pick a box each (and of course I’d be hoping my Sister would get the lowest!!).  These little pill bottles could be used in the same way!

Do you have any goals for the New Year?  Do you write them down anywhere or just store them in your head?!