Last year, Rob and some of our friends went to a huge party at a hotel in DC where my feet hurt and there was nothing but pasta in a cream sauce on an "all you can eat" buffet. We snuck off to actually have dinner and returned to spend New Year's Eve with our friends. It was loud and crowded, but our friends were there and we had fun.

We laughed about how much has changed this year as we headed home before midnight on New Year's Eve. We had a 9:30 dinner reservation, and both of us got dressed up and had a nice drink and ate delicious salad and serving after serving of meat at Fogo de Chao. We shivered as we walked to our car in the negative ten degree night, and I shook my head at the lines of twenty-two year olds in tee shirts and tank tops lined up outside of bars. I wanted to put a coat on them, and it made me feel so much older than I am.

I miss my family and my friends and the fun New Year's parties that took place on the East Coast without us, but at that moment, I was just happy to have a big coat on and to be spending the evening with Rob.

It's been a rough couple of weeks for me, but I'm happy. I'm so glad to see 2014 on my calendar--to be able to say, "We're getting married this year!" and to make a new list of goals. I still want to drink more water, write more often, and take time to really enjoy every day of this life, but there's more. I want my life to be something big and so far kind of unexplainable.

I hope all your dreams come true this year.

All of the products are awesome, but for this look I used the Pantene Root Lifter Spray Gel, Pantene Stylers Heat Protection Spray, and Pantene Stylers Extra Strong Shaping Hairspray. I'm not usually one for a root lifting spray of any kind, but this one is awesome and I think I'm going to start putting more time into styling my hair in different ways from now on. All it takes is a few extra minutes and a couple bobby pins!

Thanks for letting me share my experience with you--I hope you all had a great night last night! Rob has the day off and it's so nice spending the first day of our wedding year (!!!) at home together. How have you been celebrating this New Year?

I was selected for this opportunity as a member of Clever Girls Collective and the content and opinions expressed here are all my own.

Happy Day-After-Christmas, friends! We're still in Virginia until Saturday, but after that Rob and I have plans for a quiet and romantic New Year's Eve dinner at Fogo de Chao in Minneapolis. I'm really looking forward to getting dressed up and spending our last unmarried NYE together. In 2014, we'll be Mr. and Mrs. Peterson! I'm planning to put on a fancy dress, some heels, and do something really fun with my hair.

I'm not too much of an up-do lady, although I love an elegant up-do for really special events, I usually show up to a holiday party with my normal hair--curled, but maybe with a bit more volume than usual. I'm a fan of vintage styles, and really love the whole victory roll look (as you can see here). For our New Year's Eve dinner, I want to try something similar to that, but maybe a bit less costume-y. Lucky for me, Pantene sent a huge box of awesome products to help make my holiday hair styling a breeze.

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I was selected for this opportunity as a member of Clever Girls Collective and the content and opinions expressed here are all my own.

It was this year that I finally stopped measuring my life by semester.

Do grown people still do that? For so long, my year began in the fall, took a break around Christmas, and began again in January before ending in the spring. It was Freshman Year and The Summer Of, over and over again, I guess until recently, when I started running out of things to call them. I finished graduate school in October of 2012, and then it was 2013.

Recently, I've been thinking about the years that passed by not so long ago, the ones I always refer to by name--those years that made me into who I am today. I look back and am often slightly embarrassed by the girl who was there at the time, living out the scenarios that are now my memories. Those last years of high school seemed so crucial, and yet today I look back and say "how stupid," even though I needed them.

Junior Year of High School is when I started dating the boy who, five or six whole months later would be the first guy to break my heart. He taught me how to get over something and be stronger for it at the end of the day. I was really into my running and my school and my friends and my religion and I never anticipated a day when things would be different. I applied to colleges and went on visits and tried to picture a day where things might change, but I just couldn't see it yet.

Senior Year of High School was dramatic and life-changing in the way that high school is. New boyfriend, new heartbreak, except that this one taught me how not to get over something, and all the ways you could be regretful at the end of the day. I graduated and went to college, convinced that I would never change, that I would keep all the friends I had left back home, that this must be what growing up felt like.

Freshman and Sophomore Years of College were full of new people and self-discovery; a psychology major and a Spanish major and a whole lot of intro classes before I finally declared an English major. I learned that just because someone is handsome and nice doesn't mean he is sent to you from heaven above or something, and that notion was challenged at the beginning of Junior Year when the boy I believed to be my soul mate sat down on my bed and broke up with me. He was everything I thought I ever wanted, and for a year I had ignored how hard I needed to try to be everything he thought he ever wanted. Real love is work sometimes, but it isn't hard, and I hadn't learned that yet. He taught me to love myself and be happier for it at the end of the day.

The rest of Junior Year and the following Senior Year was what I suspect college is really supposed to be--I spent time making awesome memories with my friends. I was deeply engrossed in my courses, and read hundreds of pages a day in between classes. I started feeling like William Shakespeare and I knew each other well. I stayed out too late, often drank too much, and wore ridiculous outfits to theme parties with my roommates. We got in stupid fights and never really learned how to communicate until much later, but they were my best friends and we loved each other. We ate chips and queso dip almost every afternoon in our living room. I got a tattoo, wrote every day, could barely picture a life where I wasn't a student, and met the man that, five and a half years later, I'm about to marry.

My life has been so blessed. As I grow older I am learning to be so thankful for everyone whose path has crossed mine; for everything that has gotten me to where I am today. When I was in Virginia for Thanksgiving, my old roommates and I got together for a weekend and we picked up right where we left off and had a great time, but we still all seemed so much different--the better, adult versions of ourselves. Life happens and you lose track of time. Earlier this week, Rob and I were driving to dinner together, bundled up in our coats and scarves and I almost laughed looking out the snowy window thinking about winter in Minnesota--this random possibility that has become a reality for us. We live here now--we're done with school and we're working and this is our home now. I love it. I wouldn't change a thing.

Maybe as we grow older, we encounter fewer defining moments and feel less inclined to identify years in a special way. But maybe that's not true, either, because in 2013 I got engaged to the love of my life and moved to a new part of the country. I started blogging full time and challenged myself to write more and cook more and let go of the things that scare me. I'll never forget this year--it has been one of the best. Losing my dog has made it bittersweet, missing him so much and knowing that none of us will live forever, but hoping that we'll all be reunited in some way in the future.

And with 2014 looking at us from the last page of our calendars, I know that this new year will also be life-changing as I walk down the aisle and get a new last name and will probably move again (this time with my husband) and try to find more ways to push myself and get better and feel even more thankful for this life we're living.

All of these years are special, no matter how we refer to them when we look back.

I'm not a big New Year's resolution person. I tend to just list things I should have done last week. I'm going to run more. Start being nicer. Oh, and I'm going to drink less coffee. I'm going to read the Bible from cover to cover and figure it out. I'm going to stop spending so much time on the computer. Take my dog for a walk every day. Eat more vegetables. Take my fish oil. Lift weights regularly.