Project Time

I cannot believe that we are already ten days into the new year. Time sure does seem to fly around here.

The kids started back to school on Monday. Pumpkin's class is starting to learn cursive handwriting. Princess's class is doing more challenging read activities. Both of their report cards came home yesterday. We need to work on handwriting with both children. Princess needs to work on count to 100 by 5s and Pumpkin needs to work on his spelling skills.

I have been doing good on some of my January goals and falling a bit behind on other. Ha ha! Good thing goals can be changed and modified as needed.

We had a glitch with our kitchen plumbing starting on New Year's Day. I did take a laundry basket full of dishes to grandma's house last weekend. We hand washed the dirty dishes and had a nice conversation. Hubby attempted to clean out the p trap last weekend to no avail, so we called a plumber. The plumber replaced some pipes and attempted to clean out the line to no avail, so we called the sewer service. The sewer service got the issue resolved on Wednesday. Thank goodness! It is sort of hard to cook when you cannot use your sink. It is also kind of hard to work on eating more healthy if you have to grab a few meals out.  But, I have managed to lose two and a half pounds. 

My greatest accomplishment so far has been the southwest quadrant of the great room. I used Christmas money to purchase a small cube unit to help organize the room better. It is so cute!  Below are before and after pictures. My next project is the northwest quadrant, it will probably be more time consuming since Hubby has to help me with some parts of it. That is the same area that I would like to set up the reading nook in.

We did test out the proposed reading nook area today. We have a green swivel rocking chair that I had moved from the southwest quadrant. Right now it is temporarily in front of the mantel.  Both kids brought home flyers from school this week that they were excited about. It is a reading challenge of 360 minutes by February 23 to earn tickets to a fun amusement park. I figure that if we read 30 minutes every Saturday and Sunday, we will met the challenge in time. Princess and I worked together and read Blue Hat, Green Hat and Put me in the Zoo for 30 minutes. Pumpkin read me the first 4 chapters of Roscoe Riley Rules #1: Never Glue Your Friends to Chairs for 30 minutes.

Well off to conquer the northwest quadrant! What are your plans this weekend?

January Goals

I find that New Year Resolutions really do not work, at least for me. So I have been thinking quite a bit and I think that monthly goals are the way to go. They can be modified on a month to month basis depending on what is working and what is going on in our unpredictable life. So without further audieu . . . 

January 2015 Goals

Health
- Lose five pounds and maintain weight reduction.


Nutrition
- Drink at least two glasses of water per day.
- Eat more fruits and/or vegetables.

Parenting
- Do the rubber band method with Pumpkin
- Create a reading nook for the kids

Housework
- Clean and organize the great room (Week 1: southwest quadrant, Week 2: northwest quadrant, Week 3: northeast quadrant, Week 4: northwest quadrant)
- Sell four items online to help declutter.

Self
- Buy myself one non-necessary item. (Extremely hard to do, always find things for everyone else in the househould)
- Schedule a few hours to spend with a friend.

Spirit
- Write down at least 1 blessing per week and place it in a jar.

Well, I am curious to see how much I accomplish by January 31. I am hoping to keep myself motivated and complete some of my items on the above list.

Do you have a goal or two for 2015?