February review

Is it March 1st already?  I know February is a short month but it seems like it just started!

I didn't do much in the way of getting projects done/goals accomplished so I'm just going to keep the same list for March, with a few changes to the Outdoors goals.

Two things I did do:  I had a GNO with my best friend!  It was the very last day of the month but it was the week that worked out for us so we did it.  We even made and FINISHED a craft project!  We had a great time and I am excited to keep up our monthly get togethers.

Also, I have been trying out a new idea to help me with my breadmaking.  I bought some containers big enough to hold the dry ingredients for my two favorite bread recipes.  I made two dry ingredient batches of each, giving me 4 altogether and stored them in my pantry.  So all I had to do when I needed to make bread was put in the liquid ingredients and then dump in the dry.  It worked really well and I haven't had to buy bread for 2 weeks.  So I will keep that up!

Goals for March:

Homemaking: 1.  Establish Flylady routines.  2.  Make daily lunches.  3.  Make daily breakfasts.

Church:  1.  Be at church at 10:45 am.  (I've done well so it'll be a continuing goal all year). 2.  Go the extra mile in visiting teaching (My companion didn't schedule appointments for some reason so that didn't get done. I'll have to make early appointments in March and do something extra). 3.  Keep up with RS birthday visits.  4.  Do at least 1/4 of my emergency list.

Spiritual: 1.  Do gospel study daily. 2.  Personal, meaningful daily prayer.

Mental:  1.  Read one classical book of literature (I'm almost done reading The Secret Garden).  2.  Write in blog minimum 3x/week.

Physical: 1.  Exercise daily!  2.  Limit sugar to weekends.  (I need to make a sign or something to remind me--I'm realizing that part of why some of my goals aren't getting accomplished is because I'm trying to change a habit--and I forget!)

Social: 1.  Date with Steven.  2.  GNO with best friend (March--it will be March 28th for the LDS General Women's Session).  3.  Invite family over for dinner

Outdoors:  1.  Clean up garage.  2.  Organize shed.  3.  Rake leaves from yard.  4.  Screw in north fence boards.  5.  Clean out dryer vent cage.  6.  Put lock on electrical panel.  7.  Label electrical panel lock key and put in safe place.  8.  Clear out front flower bed and plant flowers.  9.  Prepare garden boxes with compost.  10.  Plant early season crops.  (I know this is a lot but several are simply things that need to be done that will take 5 minutes each.  I just don't want to forget!)

Financial: 1.  Figure out card repayment schedule and WRITE IT DOWN.  2.  Get savings accounts for each child and deposit money. 3.  Get a savings account set up for vacation

Scrapbooking:  1.  Get almost-finished pages done and in albums.  This will probably be an ongoing project since there's quite a few layouts.  2.  Get funeral album done, printed, assembled and delivered.  3.  Get Georgia trip journaled.

Hope this month goes better.  I need to figure out a way to keep my goals in front of my eyes without advertising to the world some private stuff.

February goals

Homemaking

*  Establish Flylady routines.  I kinda have my own version of that.  I spent today making up a general calendar that can be reused monthly (no dates on it) to make sure everyone helps with work. I'll make up a Flylady calendar to guide my own work.   I really just need to follow through with my plans.

*Make lunches daily.  I think my biggest challenges with this has been: (1) I don't always have bread, because I don't always get around to making it.  So, I bought three plastic containers big enough to hold the dry ingredients for two of my favorite bread recipes.  All I have to do is put in the wet ingredients and dump in the pre-measured dry ingredients.  Maybe that'll help.  (2) CM and JJ don't always wake up with enough time to make their lunches.  So if it's sandwiches I'll have them make their lunches the night before.  I can also have a cooking day when I make up several salads or other non-sandwich lunch items that can be stored in the fridge til they're needed.  The challenge with that will be not snacking on them. :)

*Make breakfast daily.  Again, biggest challenge has been not enough time to make stuff.  So, again, baking day to make quick breads and muffins, and stuff like waffles that freeze well.  I've also seen a recipe for homemade egg McMuffin-type sandwiches that can be frozen.  And I need to actually follow through on my plan to make breakfast casseroles for Fridays and Saturdays.

Church

*Be at church at 10:45 for JJ to do his priesthood duties.  The biggest thing to this will be: making sure I follow through on my plan to make sure everything is ready for Sunday on Saturday:  clothes ready; anything we take to church put in the car Saturday night; any food we need for Sunday taken out of the freezer.  Also, taking my shower and getting mostly dressed immediately on waking up, instead of messing around reading news, etc.  And getting everyone up at 9 and getting going on showers.  If we can't make our departure time of 10:40, then we'll have to go to waking up at 8:30

*Go the extra mile in visiting teaching.  Doing visiting teaching itself hasn't been a problem--I have a great VT companion and we work well together.  So my goal will be to go the extra mile.  February will be my turn to teach the lesson, so I can prepare lessons with the sister in mind; take each sister a little Valentine's Day something (two of my sisters are divorced and one is living separately from her husband due to job circumstances); follow up with them at church weekly, etc.

            

*Keep up with RS birthday visits.  I will contact the RS secretary to see who's left and then lay claim to 4 of them.  One of those February birthdays is the RS first counselor, so I will make her a special birthday card.  

*Do at least 1/4 of my emergency list.  This is simply making sure that the sisters of our ward know who their local emergency leader is, his/her contact information and knowing where to go in case of emergency.  I will email everyone I have an email address for and then follow up.  My goal is to get at least 1/4 of the list done.

Spiritual

*Do gospel study daily (Book of Mormon, Sunday School lesson, RS lesson, etc.).  Every day, twice a day (morning and evening) I will read several chapters in the Book of Mormon and get caught up on the 90 day reading challenge.  On Tuesdays I will read the RS lesson.  On Thursdays I will read the Sunday School lesson.

*Personal, meaningful prayer daily—remembering to pray for friends, family & ward members.  The biggest challenge I have had with prayer is that I am not making it part of my bedtime routine.  So I need to allow more time to get ready for bed, which includes washing my face, brushing/flossing my teeth, reading my scriptures and praying.

Mental

*Read one classic book of literature.  Instead of playing games on my Kindle, I'll read.  I think I'll delete my games from the Kindle.  Not just remove from the carousel but actually delete them.  I got the Kindle for reading purposes, not for playing games.  I need to look at the books I've downloaded to choose one.

*Write in blog minimum 3x/week.  I think I'll do this at 1 pm after dropping off AD at school and let NW watch a half hour of Disney channel.

Physical

*Restart exercise program.  I'm excited because I was able to order two of my favorite Jane Fonda workouts on DVD!  So I'm thinking I'll do yoga and weight training at home in the morning, then alternate nights between Jane Fonda workouts and gym C25K running.  When our year membership is up, I think I may drop mine in favor of running outside.  Not sure on that one yet.

            

*Limit sugar to weekends.  I know I'm eating way too much sugar, and too much in general.  So my February goal in revamping my diet is to limit sugar to Friday, Saturday and Sunday.  Sugar meaning things like candy, cookies, desserts, soda pop and sugary drinks (bye bye lemonade).  I will eat waffles with fruit instead of syrup.  I will find or make foods that are sugar free (i.e. make salad dressings without sugar instead of consuming store bought dressings with sugar).  Next month I will limit sugar to Saturday and Sunday.  Then in April, sugar only on Sunday.  After that, only for special occasions (i.e birthdays).  I'll see if I can refrain from eating sugar on holidays, or have just a small piece.

Social

*Date with The Writer.  We'll have a nice at-home Valentine's date.  Not gonna try to go out on Valentine's day on Saturday!

*GNO with L.  We'll try again to schedule something.

*Invite family over for dinner.  I have a family in mind--hope it can get scheduled.

Outdoors

*Keep driveway and walks clear of snow.  If it ever snows again this winter.

*Backup plan:  Clean up yard.  Rake up old leaves and sticks.  If ground is thawed, clean out flower beds.  Walk around property and make a list of repairs that need to be done.

*Clean up garage.  Throw away stuff that needs to be thrown away.  Put stuff that belongs in shed in there.  Gather stuff to be donated and get it done.  Take stuff that belongs inside, inside and put away. See what else I can get rid of.

Financial

*Figure out credit card repayment schedule.  This is more of a follow up to be sure we're on track.

*Get savings accounts for each child/deposit money. I just need to collect the money (it's already divided out into envelopes) and ID stuff and get myself over to the bank!

Scrapbooking

*Get almost finished pages finished and into albums.  That's going to be my only goal for scrapbooking for this month because I have a foot-tall stack of pages on my table that are waiting to be finished and put in albums.

I'm not going to set a sewing goal because I want to focus on the scrapbooking.

Well, there are my February goals!  Hope this month goes better!

another new start

February 10.  I haven't posted since January 2.  Not a great start to my goal to journal more.

This winter has been weird in a lot of ways.  The weirdest thing has been the weather.  It's been way too warm.  Which means no snow.  Before Christmas we had a few storms that dropped a couple inches of snow that only lasted a day or two.  Christmas day we finally had a storm that dropped significant snow.  As in, we had to go out and shovel.  That snow lasted several days which was great for the Christmas spirit. :)  Then the weather warmed up again and all the snow melted.  We haven't had snow since.  We have had rain, which means snow in the mountains, so that's good.  We depend on winter precipitation for our summer water so the fact that there's still snow in the mountains is great.

The other weird thing about this winter has been my health.  For the last two weeks or so, I've had something or other.  I started with a head/chest cold.  I got over that and was fine for two days, then got another head cold that turned into a sinus infection.  I'm still having sinus trouble.  

I never got around to posting my January goals but I'm going to do that anyway because I want to do a progress report.  

Homemaker

        Establish Flylady routines.  Nope. 

        Make lunch for The Writer, CM and JJ every day. I did this a few times but not consistently.

        Make breakfast for family every day. Again, I did this a few times but not consistently.  

Church

          Be at church at 10:45 for JJ to do his priesthood duties.   Well, we weren't there at 10:45 like I wanted, but we still were early enough for him to do what he needed to do.  Progress.

          Do visiting teaching.  Yep, visited all three sisters.  Really, there's no reason I shouldn't be able to do this every month.  I mean, it's one visit each for 3 sisters.  It's not a weekly thing.  DONE.

          Keep up with RS birthday visits. No.  

Spiritual

        Do gospel study daily (Book of Mormon, Sunday School lesson, RS lesson, etc.). I started out really strong with a 90 day Book of Mormon reading challenge that I'm doing with CM to help her with her Personal Progress.  Then I got behind.  But at least I did some.  

        Personal, meaningful prayer daily—remembering to pray for friends, family & ward members. Nope.  Really gotta do better on this one.

Mental

          Read one classic book of literature.  Well, I read, but it wasn't classical literature.  How should I count that?

          Write in blog minimum 3x/week. Obviously not.

         

Physical

        Restart exercise program.  Nope.  Partly due to illness.

        Bed at 10:30 p.m., wake at 6:30 a.m. Well, I sure was in bed by 10:30 p.m.  I usually woke up at 6:30, but went back to bed after CM and JJ were off to school.

       

Social

          Date with The Writer.  Yes!  Went out to dinner with The Writer then to a basketball game.

          GNO with L&J.  I tried!  We couldn't work out a schedule.

          Invite family over for dinner. Nope.

Outdoors

        Keep driveway and walks clear of snow. What do you call it when you don't accomplish a goal because there was no need to?

Financial

        Figure out credit card repayment schedule.  Yep.  Now the challenge is to actually follow it.

          Get savings accounts for each child/deposit money.  Nope.

Scrapbooking

        Finish Georgia book.  No to both of these.  HOWEVER, I did order some scrap supplies so that I could get to work on scrapbook projects.  And I got my work area cleaned up and organized so that I actually have space to work.

        Finish San Diego book

Sewing

          Finish two sewing projects. No.

Now, on to February!  Yes, I know the month is practically half over already but I'm going to make the last two weeks count!