Days 66-75: Well!

So I painted a bookshelf. And that's about it.

Well, actually that's not IT. Maybe as far as my goals were concerned, but in addition, I:

1. Did my civic duty and appeared for jury selection. I wasn't chosen for the jury but it was an interesting experience.

2. Attended the National Hearts at Home convention. I almost didn't go because I'm not really a crowd person, but decided it would be good for me. It was. I had a great time building relationships and attending classes to encourage and inspire me to be a better Christian wife and mom.

My wonderful husband stayed with the kids for 36 hours and did a fantastic job. I knew he would, but something has always scared me about leaving my kids for the first time.

After going over two pages of minutiae that I know instinctively but helps to write down for others (Big Girl has to take a leprechaun trap to school Friday, Little Girl drinks out of this sippy cup for meals but it leaks if you put it in the diaper bag so use this other one if you go out) I was on my way out the door.

"One more thing," I said. "There's a pineapple cut up in the fridge but if you run out, you'll have to cut up the cantaloupe yourself."

"We'll just have pineapple and bananas if we run out," he said, wide eyed at the concept of one more piece of trivia to keep track of. "I don't think I'll cut up a cantaloupe."

I'll admit that on top of leprechaun traps and sippy cups it might have seemed a bit much.

When I got back Saturday night, they were all bathed and fed (there was plenty of pineapple left over). Not only that, they had played outside a good portion of the beautiful day Saturday and gotten pizza and watched Charlotte's Web together on Friday night. The leprechaun trap made it to school, and as far as I know there was no sippy cup leakage.

Goals and plans are nice, but I intend to take a page from their book and enjoy my life (ironically the theme of the convention).

Maybe I only got one thing done this week, but there's no deadline.

This week, I tentatively plan to finish painting the entry way. If I get it done, great, but if not, there's always next week.

Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go cut up a cantaloupe.

Days 64-65: Short term goals

This week will be crazy. I will have roughly 18.5 minutes each day that won't be preoccupied with other activities. 

Still, I'm hoping to get quite a bit accomplished toward the remodel.

This entryway needs to be painted and maybe have a picture hung. Not sure yet as I'm trying to think what I own that would fit that spot.

Also, this bookshelf needs to be transformed from a splotchy, paint drip covered piece of furniture to a thing of beauty and a joy forever. Or at least a bookshelf with a much better paint job.

I have a feeling my evenings will be quite busy.

Goals for July

This has absolutely nothing to do with the post but I do love some well-placed irony...

I got a good start on my dining room (nothing picture worthy) and hope to finish this month.

I might be taking a lesson from Happier at Home by Gretchen Rubin (a book I read earlier this year) and give myself permission to abandon a project. I have a few flowers that haven't found a home in my yard yet and I may find someone else who wants them. They are annuals that will lose their blooms soon anyway so I don't want to stress myself over plants with such a short shelf life.

I forgot to update that I did organize my medical records--as well as the rest of my filing cabinet--but I couldn't take pictures because the top of the cabinet was being used as a painting stand for 12' baseboards.

I'm starting to run low on my generic beauty products so I think it's time to look at some of the pins for natural shampoo, body wash, etc.

So:

1. Finish dining room
2. Find a new home for my forlorn flowers
3. Make a few new bath products
4. Read two books

May goals

My goals:

1. Be more up to date on current events
2. Shop my craft closet
3. Organize our medical history
4. Make more of my own bath products
5. Be better about grocery budgeting
6. Organize my recipes and menu plan
7. Learn how to take good pictures

and ongoing: 


Read one fiction and one non-fiction book a month
Complete one major renovation project a month





So I said I would be back tomorrow and I am...if you consider "tomorrow" to be a term that loosely defines anything between 24 hours and one week.

We just got back from a road trip and during the approximately 26 hours we were on the road I think I met my reading quota for May, June and July. But I still want to try and read two additional books anyway. Overachiever here.

My goals for the house are to finish laying the floor (!!) and I would love to paint my dining room. We removed a damaged chair rail and patched the holes (of which there were many) about half a year ago. All that remains is sanding the patching job and painting so maybe when my floor is finished I can be single minded about getting that done.

I think I want to tackle the medical history this month. We have several doctor appointments coming up, plus Big Girl starts Kindergarten this year, so I think it would be helpful to have this organized soon.

Although this is a yearlong to-do list, I only made myself 7 monthly goals, not counting the ongoing ones, and I did two of them in one month in April. I think this is good because it leaves room to play catch up and also gives my list a chance to evolve and grow where necessary. I was thinking about adding on another item for consideration down the line: organizing my closet. Now that I'm out of the weird cycle of pregnancy-weight gain-birth-weight loss-baby spitting up constantly, I need to go through and see what fits and works for my present lifestyle. I tried to put away all my winter clothes the other day, only to have to pull them all back out. Hopefully by June this will not be an issue.

More spring resolutions

So back to my list of resolutions:

5. Organize our medical history. This has been bugging me for awhile. Any time I need quick access to records, I have to dig through tons of irrelevant stuff to find what I'm looking for. I want to have a file for each member of the family, organized by date, with the unnecessary weeded out. I think what's held me back is the fear of throwing out something important. I need to take time to find out what I should have as a hard copy and what can easily be obtained online.

6. Make more of my own bath products. I have to confess that I get fired up about doing this whenever I read a book/blog about green living, then I get swayed by finding a bottle of 25 cent conditioner. I love doing good things for the planet but especially in the early newborn days, my sanity and function as a mother seemed more immediate. As proud as I am of how nice and organized this is, I would love to be able to gradually replace with homemade. I made my own laundry soap a few weeks ago and it even gets cloth diapers clean so I think that's working out better than I hoped.

7. Be better about grocery budgeting. So here's another confession: I don't budget. I do have a set amount that I withdraw every month and use for "frivolous" things (kind of like an allowance). But on things like groceries, I've just been operating under the assumption that frugality is so ingrained in me that I'll instinctively spend within appropriate guidelines. I'm probably right, but I want to verify for my own peace of mind. Plus, I think this might help me be able to make meaningful splurges. For example, I have wanted to buy some chocolate covered gluten free pretzels for the longest time. But every time I saw them I would think, "oh, I'll just get those next time since I'm not sure where I am in the budget." Having no budget, that day never came. It might turn out I'm saving enough every week to justify spending $5 on pretzels every now and then. 

Hmmm while I'm at it, I can probably ditch the glutenated boxes of pasta. I have been GF since May of 2011. I wonder how old they are? I'm pretty sure the macaroni moved cross-country with us.

8. Speaking of cooking, I want to organize my recipes and menu plan. My husband occasionally goes on a no-flour, no-sugar diet which involves further restrictions than my everyday diet (most GF stuff has some kind of flour, whether corn or rice, and he can't eat either on this diet). Ideally, I would have 25-30 "regular" meals (meaning GF meals) and an additional 30 or so NFNS that I can swap in when needed. Some of these could definitely overlap. 

I really wanted to have 12 resolutions and focus on one a month, but since some of them are quite large and ongoing (reading and major renovations) I think I'll leave it at those eight. T-minus 3 days!

P.S. After previewing this, I think maybe I will go ahead and add a ninth: learn how to take good pictures! I took a photography class in college and really think I would have failed if not for a generous professor taking pity on me. 

Some spring resolutions

Unlike most people, I like to start resolutions at random times throughout the year. With the upcoming arrival of spring (?--my thermometer says 36, but anyway) I made a list of goals to begin on March 21st and continue through the spring of 2014.

I read the book "The Happiness Project" by Gretchen Rubin last year and am in the middle of reading the sequel: "Happier at Home." I was struck by the goals she set for herself with the end goal of attaining happiness. I realize that a lot of things that will ultimately make me happy won't actually be all that fun during the process (organizing medical records) but will bring me a sense of peace which will equal happiness. 

So without further preamble, here are my goals for the upcoming spring to spring year: 

1. Be more up to date on current events. Last night at church, I realized how woefully behind the times I am on the topics that polarize our country. I can tell you the top five ways to calm a crying baby or the arguments for or against "Ferberizing" or "attachment parenting" but I honestly could not discuss foreign policy with as much knowledge. I always said I didn't want to be a mom that completely lost herself in her kids to the point where she had no outside interests. So, while politics doesn't really interest me all that much, I think I need to know enough to be able to carry on a conversation that doesn't revolve around the best place to buy/method to wash diapers. 

2. Shop my craft closet. I have a habit of buying all the materials for a project, starting, then either losing interest, finding a substitute at a garage sale for some ridiculous price like a quarter, or moving on to another more pressing project and forgetting to go back. I want to finish up all those projects in my closet like the twin size quilt that was supposed to be a Christmas present, then a birthday present. Maybe it will be a Christmas present this year. Other than fill-in-the-gap supplies, I want to challenge myself not to buy any new supplies until my birthday (which is approximately six months from now and an easy way to remember).

3. Read one fiction and one non-fiction book a month. I kind of have a head start on this as I have been doing it since January, so this should be easy for me to follow through.

4. Complete one major renovation project a month. Notice I did not say one ROOM a month. At a different time in our lives, this might be possible, but for now I would like to set a goal to just finish one big thing. Our goal is to be completely finished by the end of 2014. So, toward this end, I've already started this goal as well. Past "big projects" have included painting my kitchen, removing 12x15 feet of old tile from our guest bedroom, and fixing damaged drywall in the same room and painting the walls gray (see previous post about my $12.50 paint). 

There are more resolutions but I'll save those for another post. These are definitely the more interesting of my goals, while the others revolve more around budgeting and organizing.