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.

April projects

I haven't been around in awhile because of this:

We got our house painted this month and had some siding replaced. We are installing a shower in the master bathroom so we covered the big picture window that was previously there.

We also finally got a swing set (this had been on the to-do list for awhile). I got one on Craigslist and the seller delivered and set it up (for a small fee). It was cheaper than new plus we didn't have to do any of the labor ourselves. The Big Girl loves it.

We are almost done with our guest room. The floor turned out to be a nightmare. After removing tons of ancient tile, we found several dips and cracks in the concrete that we are having to patch before we can lay floor.

I got my recipes organized and my last shopping trips have been simple. I have averaged about $100/week but I haven't blogged about them because they have been unusual weeks with some travel in there.

Tomorrow I'll figure out what my plans are for May.

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.