We're getting ready to go on our vacation soon. Family vacations with grown children are difficult. When you add in adult children who hold down real jobs, you make it even more difficult! We finally found seven days when we will all be together. More than anything, I'm looking forward to hanging out with my kids. Getting out and hiking will be great, but I really want to just spend time with them, play some games, and hear their news.
1) Remodel the Hall Bathroom
Silly girl. Third year in a row this has been on my list. I'm still not certain this is going to happen this year. Our kitchen became a priority this year, and now that we've started it, we need to finish the final touches so that it's not coming back to haunt me in a couple of years!
You can follow the tale of kitchen woes here:Kitchen Woes
We Have Running Water in the Kitchen
Progress
Progeress of One Kind and Another
It Only Looks Like We're Not Making Progress
One Step Forward, Two Steps Back
2) Improve My Health
Looking beyond the numbers on the scale, I am going after the big picture numbers that add up to an overall look at my body chemistry and how my body is functioning as a system. This led me to three separate categories:
a) Lose Inches Off My Waist
My goal for this year is 3 inches. Still not at 3, but I have lost over 2! HOORAY! Slowly working towards 3 inches.... very slowly.
I'm up to 100 Bosu Ball crunches now. Working on adding in those wicked twists with a medicine ball. How long before I get to that elusive three inches I've been trying to work off?
YES!! 120/60! No lecture from the doctor this year, instead I got a hearty "Keep up the good work!"
This time last year, my blood pressure was at 140/80. Danger, Will Robinson, Danger!
For me, this is pretty phenomenal!
3) Restart my Vegetable Garden
This spring has been so wet, everything that I put into the ground was drowned. For now, this is just not going to happen. My herb pot is a success, though! We went from too wet to super hot with no transition in between. This is going to be an epic fail.
4) Learn to Pressure Can
SO, we have a glass top stove. Pressure canners do not work on a glass top stove because they can't consistently keep the temperature up high enough. This one will be a wash. Another epic fail. If I ever do put in an outdoor kitchen, I'm going to make certain I have a propane or gas stove so that I can pressure can - and I'll be able to do it outside and keep the heat out of the house.
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| Bandanas for the quilt. |
5) Daughter's Quilt
I finally have decided upon a format for daughter's quilt! I kept putting it off because I never could make myself happy with the fabric I had chosen. While we were cleaning out her room, we found all of her old bandanas from Girl Scouts. Guess what I'm going to do? Make a quilt from the bandanas! I've picked up some extra bandanas that match her history (the cow print bandana, and the John Deere bandana are part of her history). So, I've got the fabric, and I've got the time! I'm going to get all of this sewn together this week! This is going to be one very bright and unusual looking quilt! She has a t-shirt that was her favorite - with cat facts written on it. I'm going to embroider the cat facts on one of the bandanas, maybe two of them. We'll see what happens! I'm looking forward to having the best time planning this quilt out! Putting this quilt together is going to be a lot of fun! I can't wait to see what the finished product looks like!
The kids did this for me when they were all home the weekend after Mother's Day. Thanks guys!
4 or 5 days every week. Even better, I'm now keeping a hard copy journal with me when I go. It's an old composition book that daughter had used in school. She had written in maybe 3 pages? I confiscated it before it went out to Goodwill. I keep track of what I've done, how much weight I'm lifting, and how many reps. My workouts have gotten more effective now that I'm no longer guessing how much weight I lifted the last time I did that particular exercise. #progress.
Originally, the goal was to clean out 23 things a month. Then I changed it to 23 things a week. For the entire 52 weeks of the year, that would have required me to get rid of 1196 things for the year. I met that goal in May. I spent this month going through the crap on the floor of my closet. Another 50 odds and ends went to the thrift shop. I went through my dresser drawers and threw out unmatched socks, old underwear, etc. I didn't even bother counting how many items I got rid of. It's just nice to have nicely organized drawers!
I sent 50 things to the thrift shop.
Total number of items out of the house this month: 50
Items out so far this year: 1718.
Thank God I did this, both in February and in March. It has literally saved our asses as things continue to break and fall apart at an alarming rate. I originally found this challenge on the Frugal, Debt Free Life Blog. Bless your heart, Lydia. Because of this challenge, we have not yet gone down the rabbit hole of massive credit card debt with the huge expenses we've had in 2016: 1 abscessed tooth requiring a root canal. 1 crown for said tooth. The van needing huge repairs not once but TWICE, (once for the a/c, once because it just stopped working late at night when husband was on his way home from choir practice.), AND 1 leaking, moldy mess under the kitchen sink.
I'll be doing another no spend challenge in September. We have our savings built back up, but I still want to get the smaller debt paid off, finish remodeling the kitchen, and remodel the bathroom.
10) Visit one Place on My Bucket List
Phase One: Completed (We know where we're going.)
Phase Two: Finished
(Everyone will be capable of going. Vacations have been requested and approved by everyone.)
Phase Three: Completed Reservations are made.
Phase Four: Later this month!
12) Scrapbooking
I need to catch up. I know I had years that I didn't do this. I went through all of the albums and found the years that I have not yet finished. These are the years I am in search of:
2006
2009
I'm chugging along on this! I've been using Shutterfly, which has a powerful tool for digital scrapbooking. I've then been holding onto the albums until they offer a deal on pricing, and then I order the books. I love Shutterfly! (In the interest of Full Disclosure, they are one of my Affiliate Links, but I was using them LONG before I even began blogging.)
I'm glad I have the opportunity to catch up on my scrapbooking. When we went to a digital camera, and then I began compiling the kids' albums for graduation and their elementary and middle school memory albums, and my in-law's 50th wedding anniversary album, I fell well behind on the family albums. As I'm working on 2009 now, I'm discovering why that's such a bad idea. I don't necessarily remember who all of the people in the pictures were, and I don't always remember what we were doing at the time.
Lesson Learned: Finish albums within 6 months of the event - whether it be an anniversary, vacation, or family year.
13) Walk or Bike a portion of at least 6 Rail Trails
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| A Lime Kiln on the NCR Trail. |
1) NCR Rail Trail
14) Pay off
The big debt is gone. It's nice to have one monkey off my back!
The payments on the smaller debt have accelerated. My goal is to have this paid off by December, but it very well might be Feb. or March of 2017 due to the extenuating circumstances we've had this year.
I nicely fixed up the recipe tab so that it is easy to find recipes that I've posted on here before. For me, this is my online recipe book. Some of the recipes are my own. Some, I post direct links to other sites. You might or might not choose to use it, but I use it on a pretty regular basis, and I've found out that one of the boys does, too. He likes the fact that most of what I've listed is food he already loves and that everything is fairly easy to make and budget conscious. (Hey Kiddo! Glad you stopped by for a while! Call your mother sometime. She'd really like to hear from you!)
So how are you doing on your resolutions for the year?
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