We started up the wood stove this week. We have electric heat, and we try and hold off as long as possible on turning on the heater. This week, we fired up the wood stove. All of those branches that came down over the winter last year are helping to keep our house cozy this fall!
Mom has been doing better, and the doctors are beginning to talk about releasing her to Rehab soon. Hooray! It's a step forward!
The farm stands in the area are closing down for the season over the next couple of weeks. I've found some absolutely fantastic deals on produce at the stands. I am working on a peck of bell peppers I picked up this morning for $10. First I wash them, then slice them, then I freeze them in a single layer on a cookie sheet and store them in a large, gallon size freezer bag during the winter.
I'm even working on boxing up the multitude of items I have pulled out of the basement over the last few months. The White Elephant Sale at church is coming up soon, and I am determined to have a hefty load of stuff to donate to the sale!
Resolutions:
Back at the beginning of the year, I set a list of resolutions that I wanted to accomplish over the course of this year. Since it's the beginning of a new month, it's time to check in and see how I'm doing on them!
1) 365 Grateful.
This is a project where you write or take pictures of things you are thankful for. I have kept a gratitude journal, but with the arrival of fall and the autumn leaves, I have switched to more pictures. I've been posting them on both Instagram and Flickr. I don't post every day, but I do post something every few days. I LOVE fall!
I've lost a total of 22 pounds. I was thrilled to see I could lose more than 10! I now have this crazy goal of losing 3 more pounds before the end of the year so that I can say I've lost 25 pounds this year. That's an awesome goal!
3) Run
I believe my motto has become "Only if something is chasing me." Between the death of my son's friend at the end of September, and the horrendous health scare we've had with my Mom this month, I really have not gotten out at all. When I'm in the hospital, I do walk up and down the stairs. I keep telling myself the food in the hospital is better than most things, but I really don't think it is.... I did get out this morning with hubby. We were going to walk around the lake, but it is cold and rainy, so we compromised and found a mall to go walk in.
4) Get Out of Debt
Working on this. I set up a fantastic spread sheet over this past week that I posted about . I am hoping to track down the last of the little money suckers so that we can get the mortgage and other little bills paid off. We also have a Honda Civic with 200,000 miles on it. I'd really like to get a new car soon - and put down a significant chunk of it in cash - so we're not financing any part of a loan.
5) Finish Cleaning Out the Basement
BWah-Ha-Ha. I should just bring a dumpster in and dump it all. A lot of stuff is headed out to the White Elephant Sale later this month.
6) Finish Oldest Child's Quilt
I've spent most of the last month in Virginia, at the hospital with Mom, or driving back and forth between here and Virginia. No progress has been made on this thing. I don't think this is going to end up being a Christmas present this year.
7) Spend More Time With My Family
I've spent a lot of time with my family. Not with my children, but with my Mom, my sister, her kids, and some of Mom's sisters and brothers. What an unexpected and wonderful gift it's been to spend so much time with people I rarely get to spend a lot of time with! Got to treasure that. Mom is 83 - and her siblings are anywhere from 65-98. Who knows when we'll all get together again?
8) Finish the Book I Keep Saying I'm Going to Write!
The book itself is written. I've edited it. Right now, I'm in the process of attempting to format it for self-publishing. The problem is that I've included charts and tables, and I'm not certain how they'll translate. Gotta spend a little more time working on this. I have some gorgeous full color pictures I've added to the book, but I'm pretty sure that nobody wants to buy an overpriced book for a small handful of color pictures. I'm just going to have to deal with black and white.
9) Finish the Hallway Bathroom
This is a recurring theme. I really want to get this fixed, and I really want to pay cash for it. This is part of why I'm working on the spreadsheet and finding the money suckers. I need to root them out so that I can get the money set aside to fix that bathroom!
Done and done. Singing in the church choir, weekly. Love practice and love singing. Both husband and I are singing in the choir. It's where we met, so it's a little nostalgic to be doing it again.
I'm making some serious progress on this list. I've only got two months left to go before the end of the year. I am beginning to think I'm not going to find the cash for the hallway bathroom before the end of the year, and I'm not going to get the basement cleaned out before the end of the year. We'll see. If I'm not making multiple trips down to Virginia every two days, and every weekend, I might see some progress made on the cleaning!
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