2025 in Review
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2025 was a good year. My baby turned one and I got to see her personality really start to evolve. She’s saying “Mama,” “Dada,” and “duck” 🦆 (that’s her favorite word). At work, I achieved a little personal goal of speaking on the main stage at Google I/O. I also visited a new country, Peru, and saw a world wonder; Machu Picchu.
It wasn’t an easy year by any means, maybe even one of my hardest between newborn life (our baby had a lot of challenges at first) and being thrown back into the deep end when I came back to work. But I feel like I’m ending this year full of gratitude for everything I’ve been able to experience and accomplish, and I’m excited for what 2026 has in store.
The annual year-in-review, which has been going for 11 years now, is my end-of-year time to pause and reflect, to review how I did on my goals for the past year, and to set new ones. I think this is one of the keys to success in anything you want to achieve. Identifying what you want, naming it, setting steps to get there, doing the things, and re-prioritizing as you go. Because we’re all fluid humans and life goes in seasons. This year, my first full year being a mom, was definitely different than any season before it.
Highlights
- Had a fairy first birthday for my baby-turned-toddler 🥹
- Trekked to Machu Picchu
- 🎤 Represented team web in the Google I/O Developer Keynote
- 👗 Really blossomed in my sewing skills
- Went to the Dominican Republic with the whole family
- 🌹 Grew a tiny flower farm in my backyard
- 📖 Read 24 books! Blowing away my goal
- 💻 Vibe-coded an app for my Dad that he still uses daily at work
Career
Over the past 6 years at Google, I’ve advocated for, and helped deliver some of the most transformative UI capabilities on the web platform. From the responsive design paradigm shift enabled by container queries, to native anchor positioning and customizable select menus (finally!), these features represent years of collaboration. Thanks to the dedicated work of so many talented folks and browser engineers, the web is now more capable and flexible than ever before.
I’m extremely proud that I was able to be a part of these technical milestones, but there is so much more to do. We’ve shipped so many great new platform capabilities, yet the actual experience of using the web hasn’t really improved much. In fact, it’s kind of gotten worse over the past few years 🥲. And that’s exactly what I plan to tackle in 2026.
It’s exciting to work on the bigger picture of how to make the web better for everyone, but as my role has continued to evolve and become increasingly high-level over the years, I have moved further away from hands-on work around evolving web standards and supporting more concrete advocacy for web platform features.
Lately, I’ve started treating that advocacy work like a passion project: returning to my roots of writing and speaking about ‘cool things you can do with CSS’ purely for the love of it, which I did for years before joining Google or working in Developer Relations. So I plan to continue experimenting and writing where I can in 2026, while focusing more of my day-to-day work on the bigger picture of evolving the web ecosystem as a whole.
Podcasting & Speaking
Bramus and I brought the CSS Podcast back for its 6th season, with 9 new episodes about all of the latest updates in the CSS and UI landscape. We talked about CSS custom functions, invokers, customizable components like the new customizable select element, anchor positioning, view transitions, carousels and scroll APIs, and state queries, which happened to the the most-listened to episode of the season.
Interestingly, looking at the stats, total downloads have almost his 4 million since we started the podcast in 2020! That’s pretty wild and feels like a nice milestone to hit.
In terms of conferences, I only spoke at 3 events this year, which is way less than previous years. This was for a variety of reasons, mostly around timing and logistics with a newborn. But it also enabled me to focus on quality over quantity for the events I did speak at. I’m really happy with how my talks at Nordic.js and Render ATL turned out this year, and organizers from both events reached out to me personally to let me know that my talks were top picks for attendees. Jonny’s really kind message after Nordic.js made my day:
“I’m also happy to share that the attendees (and I) really loved your talk. It’s actually one of the highest rated talks in Nordic.js history and many people mention you as the highlight of the entire conference. Completely wonderful!” - Jonny Strömberg, Nordic.js
Writing
This year I wrote 12 blog posts, reaching the goal I set at the start of the year. I think having this concrete goal really helped me focus on writing more consistently than I otherwise would have. There is an endless list of things I want to write about (and make videos around), so I plan to keep this up in 2026 as well.
I had a lot of fun with the posts on my personal blog this year because I get a lot more creative freedom here. I’m able to embed interactive demos, like this hoverable customizable select element diagram:
And this inline dynamic reanchoring demo:
Some of my favorite posts from this year include:
Personal
2025 is a year I will never forget. It was a year of many firsts and learning to adapt to a new normal.
Family
This year was mostly spent raising my daughter, now one, and it’s been such a wild ride. Exhausting, memorable, frustrating, full of love.
In the hard times I try to remind myself that this is where I’ll go in my mind when I’m 80.
Well, maybe not the newborn stage…
But this year I got to experience a baby’s first smile, first teeth, first time sitting up, first time trying solid foods, crawling, and now we’re standing and cruising. Her little personality is really starting to come out and I’m excited for the toddler year ahead.
Sewing & Crafting
2025 was the year my sewing skills really blossomed. I got into a great groove of spending my evenings sewing and listening to audiobooks after I put my daughter to bed. I challenged myself to make more complex garments and tried so many new techniques including installing invisible zippers, buttons, making lined garments, using bias binding, and creating rolled hems and “lettuce hems” on my serger. I also took a sewing class in person at my local community college to get some in-person feedback after learning everything I know from Youtube.
Next year, there are a few more skills I want to explore like tambour embroidery and pattern drafting. It’s just so cool to learn a new, technical skill and feel like a beginner again. I’ve gotten so much better over the past year but there is still so much to learn!
Reading
I read 24 books this year, a record I think for myself(!). I think what really helped is that I spent a lot of time sewing and listening to audiobooks while doing so. It was my way to decompress all year, and I really enjoyed it. I looked forward to both stretching my brain with sewing techniques and getting to sink into a good audiobook. Highly recommend.
I read some great titles this year, and here are my top five:
Travel
While travel has been much more limited with a baby, I did get to visit one of my bucket list countries this year: Peru. My husband and I dropped off our daughter and dog for a week at Grandparent camp (thanks Mom and Dad!), and we flew to Lima and then Cusco to drink pisco sours, learn about Inca culture, pet some llamas, and trek to Machu Picchu (we did a “2 day trek”, which was really a full day of hiking, starting with a 3AM pickup and then a next-day tour of the site). I haven’t worked out in a while, so I found the hike to be moderately challenging, but it was so worth it for the views along the way and the full experience.
Other than Peru, I also went to Amsterdam for CSS Day and Stockholm for Nordic.js. We also took a family trip to the Dominican Republic at the end of the year, which was an experience 😆 (if you have young kids you know). But it was great to see her be so social around new people, play in the sand, and swim with us at a very nice beach.
2025 Resolutions Review
Last years resolutions went on a bingo card, and while I didn’t hit a “bingo,” I did hit a lot of the goals I set for myself. Here is how I did:
- 🆗 Improve my video setup: I did have a slight improvement to my video setup by adding a little curtain to separate the space from the next room, but I could definitely do more here.
- ❌ Exhibit at a craft fair: This is one of those goals that I was pumped to do in 2025 but I just had to deprioritize it, and I’m okay with that! Maybe next year.
- ✅ Write 12 blog posts: I hit exactly 12, and I think having this as a concrete goal really helped me remember to write more consistently.
- ✅ Learn new sewing skills: I feel like I definitely hit this goal, and learned a ton this year!
- ✅ Visit a new country: Made it to Peru!
- 🆗 Speak at 4 conferences: While I didn’t speak at 4 conference this wasn’t for lack of opportunity. I had to really prioritize my time this year, so I focused on Google I/O and the two events when I came back from leave.
- ✅ Read 16 books: Definitely nailed this goal, and hit 24 books instead!
- ❌ Create regular video content: I feel like this is an annual goal I always set aspirationally but never hit. I did create a few videos this year, but not regularly. I’m still working on getting a system down that works for me and enables me to have time to do this consistently.
- ✅ Consume more tech content: I feel like I did a good job of this this year. I would watch Youtube videos and read blog posts more than I had in the past to keep up with the super fast-paced tech ecosystem right now. I also started getting RSS notifications to my email which has really helped too.
- ✅ Check into my goals monthly: I did an end-of-month check-in to my goals this year and successfully did it every month. I think this definitely helps me stay on track and make corrections as I go.
2026 Goals
- Host a quarterly sewing club with friends - Community is so important to me, and I want to create more opportunities to get together with friends in real like over shared hobbies and interests, so I’m setting a goal to host a bring-your-own-project sewing club every few months.
- Be on my phone less when with family - I am guilty of zoning out sometimes when I’m with the baby, and I want to be more present. So I’m setting a goal to be more mindful of my phone usage during wake windows.
- Learn pattern drafting - I really want to understand the technical side of garment construction better so that I can design my own sewing patterns. This is such a deep space but I’m so interested in exploring it!
- Write 12 blog posts - This one is self-explanatory, but I think its a great number to aim for and worked well last year.
- Read 20 books - I am upping my reading goal again this year because I really enjoyed it in 2025 and want to continue the momentum.
- Work out for 30 minutes at least 3x/week - One thing I really want to focus on again in the coming year is my health. Health is wealth. This is what enables us to do everything else in life. And right now, I feel like I could definitely be doing better. I’m 10lbs heavier than I was pre-baby, and I want to get back to a place where I feel strong and energized. So I’m setting a goal here to work out regularly again. I really want to prioritize this.
There are a few other goals I’m considering including like creating regular video content (again), but I want to keep this list more focused for now.
Conclusion
I’m ending 2025 excited for the year ahead. There are so many things I want to accomplish both personally and professionally, and I’m excited for what the future holds. If you made it this far, thank you for following along. I hope you have a wonderful start to 2026 and achieve all the goals you set out for yourself! Remember: writing down what you want to achieve is the first step to making it happen.
- Una