New Year's Resolutions

New Year Resolutions for 2013

1.       Make a granny square blanket. I have a plan already in place to make this happen I hope that you will help me finish this goal with a follow along granny square blanket blog. That should help me stay motivated, and stay accountable.  

2.       Work on paying down our debt. With a little help from Dave Ramsey's books we should be able to do this.

3.       School I am going to take one eight week class at a time. Alright this is a cheater goal because I am already enrolled for most of my classes this year. I like to make sure I have one goal that I can for sure accomplish on my list.

4.       I am going to focus on exercise this year.  Sounds familiar? I really need to exercise more. So this year I will not be dieting. No fad diets, no pressure to make the scale bend to my will. I will work on running and yoga. By 2014 I will be able to run 2 miles in 24 minutes. That is a 12 minute mile.

5.       Lose a little weight to the tune of 12 pounds or so. Again I will not focus on the scale, I will eat healthy, I will drink less wine, drink more water, and exercise. I will not be doing a diet at all this year. 12 pounds is 1 pound a month so I will only weigh myself once a month. If by the end of 2013 there is no change in my weight but I can run a twelve minute mile for two miles than this is the weight that I am. No complaints. The goal is to be healthy and fit not skinny. I am happy with how I look at a size ten.

6.       Finish the projects I start. Right now I have about 10 unfinished projects. I want to finish them and more.

7.       Make the boys each a pair of Pajamas. Another little cheater one. I have the fabric, I have the pattern, and I have one halfway done.

8.       Sew two new dresses. This one I really hope I can make more than two new dresses this year but I want to be realistic too. I have fabric for both of the dresses I want to make. So it is all about make time.

9.       Get an updated Family photo. This one is important to me as we haven't had our family picture done in two years. So we need an updated one for our wall. New pictures of the boys.

10.   Get organized and get on a cleaning schedule. I need to do this badly. Maybe this should be the number one goal instead of number 10.

 

11. Write one page a day on my book. Yes, I am writing a book. I want to be able to say that I finished writing one. So if I write one page a day that is at least 365 pages by this time next year.

 

12. Be More productive. I want to accomplish more in my day. 

 

13. Finally Can more food for my family. I love homemade food and I want to do more canning this year. Everything from jellies, soups, beans, and pickles.

 

 These are my top ten Resolutions for 2013. Notice I included more things that I can and will complete this year. I hope that when 2014 comes around I can proudly report that I finished each of these things, or at least most of these goals. As long as I continue to move forward and learn and grow than I can be successful. I am hopeful and ready for the New Year. Welcome 2013!

I hope that your day is inspired, filled with love, and laughter. Be well my friends.

Goodbye 2012

2012 was a good year but when I looked at my goals for the year I cringe just a little.  Now I must face the music and asses how I did on my 2012 goals!

Here are my original goals for 2012:

 
I am going to focus on exercise this year. I want to be on the treadmill at least 30 minutes 5 days a week.

Um, fail here. I let my scale piss me off, dictate me, depress me, and worst of all it ruled me. Lame.

I would really like to lose that last 15 pounds.
The scale won this year I think I started the year at 168ish and when I reluctantly got on the scale today to update my goals the scale said 163ish. It was not the 15 pounds that I wanted but it was 5 down. So I am going to give myself an E for effort! Ha!

Start saving towards retirement. Remember our dream is to homestead or run a small family farm when Rob retires in 10 or so years.

This is a constant goal that never goes away. We did nothing new to save for our future goals but that doesn't mean we did nothing, it just means that we did nothing new. We got to farm sit in October and we realized that farming was really what we both wanted to do. So that is a giant step from maybe to definitely.  

No credit... Oops. No excuse. Epic Fail.

This year I want to give up eating out!

Dude. I got lazy. My husband does not like to cook but he likes to complain if I make something to many times or my dinner ideas does not sound appealing (I love you husband and we are both at fault here). Fail.

School I am going to take one eight week class at a time so that I do not get overwhelmed and can be a better mother and wife.

Ha Ha! Nailed it!

I would love to take a minute and explore a few things that I fell in love with in 2012:

Doctor Who

Canning

Dress making

Crochet

Milking a cow

Pigs

Reading glasses

Pinterest

I became Catholic this year with my family

Lucky for me a new is starts January 1 2013. It is time to put away the old goals and set new ones. I love a fresh start. A whole new year to discover a new hobby, a new class, there are endless opportunities, and chances to discover a whole new world. I am excited to greet the new year.  Have you thought of any New Years resolutions?  

I hope your day is filled with love and laughter. Be well my friends.

25 ways

Today I found a list of twenty-five ways to say Merry Christmas.

1. Alien: (transmitted directly into your mind)
2. Arabic: Milad Majid
3. Baby Talk: Merr Kissmus
4. Chinese: (Cantonese) Gun Tso Sun Tan'Gung Haw Sun
5. Chinese: (Mandarin) Kung His Hsin Nien bing Chu Shen Tan
6. Danish: Glædelig Jul
7. Dog: Arf Arf
8. Dutch: Vrolijk Kerstfeest en een Gelukkig Nieuwjaar! or Zalig Kerstfeast
9. English: Merry Christmas
10. French: Joyeux Noel
11. German: Fröhliche Weihnachten
12. Greek: Kala Christouyenna!
13. Hawaiian: Mele Kalikimaka
14. Hebrew: Mo'adim Lesimkha. Chena tova
15. Hindi: मेरी क्रिसमस
16. HTML:

Iraqi: Idah Saidan Wa Sanah Jadidah

Italian: Buone Feste Natalizie

Japanese: Shinnen omedeto. Kurisumasu Omedeto

Korean: Sung Tan Chuk Ha

Philippines: Maligayang Pasko!

Pig Latin: ErryMay IstmasChray

Russian: Pozdrevlyayu s prazdnikom Rozhdestva is Novim Godom

Spanish: Feliz Navidad

Vietnamese: Chuc Mung Giang Sinh

I hope that your day is filled with inspiration, love and laughter. Be well my friends.

On the first and second day of Christmas

Christmas is my favorite holiday. I am going to try and post something for the Christmas season everyday. I think this will help me to think of activities to do with the kids that they will carry with them.

On December 1 the kids made their Christmas ornaments. I used the salt dough recipe from Allrecipes- http://allrecipes.com/recipe/dough-ornament-recipe/.

Ingredients:

4 cups all-purpose flour 1 cup salt

1 1/2 cups warm water

Directions:

1.	Preheat oven to 325 degrees F (165 degrees C).
2.	Mix flour and salt well. Gradually add water, stirring with a large spoon. Finish mixing with hands. Knead until soft and pliable.
3.	Roll out on floured surface about 1/8 inch thick. Cut shapes with cookie cutters. Place on cookie sheets. With a toothpick make a hole in the top of the ornament for threading string. Bake at 325 degrees F (165 degrees C) until hard, about 1 hour. Decorate with paint and varnish to preserve I lowered the oven temperature to 300 degrees and only baked the ornaments for 1 hour then I just left them in the oven to cool. They turned out perfect. Then the kids painted them with acrylic paints from the hobby store. I did not get a good picture of them but here are a few on the tree. Then on December 2 we picked out our Christmas tree, brought it home, and finally decorated it. I opened a bottle of Pink Moscato champagne for my husband and I, a bottle of red grape sparkling cider for the kids, turned on Christmas music, and let the boys decorate. I love having a Christmas tree but I take a hands off approach to decorating it. The boys love looking at all of our old ornaments, hanging the new ones, and sneaking candy canes. I set up my Nativity set on the piano to remind of the true reason behind Christmas. When the boys finish the tree, they rush to turn off all of the lights in the house so that the tree is the only light we see. Their happiness fills my heart with pure joy. Merry Christmas, may your spirit be bright. The tree all dressed up. The tree all lit up. My favorite boys! I hope your day is filled with inspiration, love and laughter. Be well my friends.