March Goals / February Goal Review

Better late than never? I thought so, too.

February Goal Review

Eating Better: We've really slipped up on sugar intake. But we are getting back on track.
Eating Better: I haven't succeeded in getting DH to eat very many fermented foods.
Eating Better: Figured out what I was doing wrong with my yogurt. Yay! It was perfect last batch.

Finances / Eating Better: My garden progress is pretty pathetic. I've started a few seeds indoors, but I really need to get my peas started pronto! As in yesterday. Hoping to do that this week.
Finances: I kept a better eye on our budget. And I definitely used Mint.com weekly to help me succeed in that. Yes! For February we came in $3 under both eating out and grocery budget. After a month or two of struggling, this felt great!

Personal: I really did clean out the closet! What, you can't tell? But I did...
Personal: I did this... But my better system sits in the kitchen at this moment chock full. So full the lid doesn't close anymore. Sad.
Personal: Driving did not happen this month. I don't know what to do about this.
Personal: Posture. Ha. Funny.
Personal: I did not really do much brainstorming about simpler meals to do, but I did find a couple by accident. Wait, scratch that. I found at least 3 meals that are fairly quick to prepare which I have added to my repertoire. My subconscious did this without me even trying. Eat it! (I did. It was good).

House: We decided not to get a house right now. A lot of my friends are getting one and I really, really want one, but DH and I talked about it and we decided it's much better financially to pay off our debt first... And that leads me to our goal with which we are replacing our "buy a house" goal.


March Goals / New Yearly Goal

Revised Year Goal

Debt: Pay down 16.5k in debt by Christmas. This will be between 1/3 and 1/2 of our debt. I am really excited. We just sunk our 5k we had saved up for housing expenses into it, so that leaves 11.5k to go. Bring it, debt. I will own your a$$.


March Goals

Eating Better: Get better about DH packing lunches / meals to work so he eats good, hormone-free, junk-free food even at work. This also applies to my weight loss goal for DH. Yay.
Eating Better: Eat wild-caught fish or liver once a week. (Dreaming, probably)
Eating Better: If my book on raw milk ever gets here, read it and talk DH into switching. :)

Financial / Eating Better: start the rest of my seeds.
Financial: Continue vigilance on budget. Any time I can come under budget in a category, that means faster debt payoff which means less time until we get a house.

Personal: I'm really discouraged in this area, so I'm only posting 1 goal. Follow Project Simplify's weekly projects to whip my apartment into shape. I only found out about it today which means I am a week behind, but since I am almost done with all my homework for the week, I'll be able to do last week's project tomorrow and then have the rest of the week for the current week. I am really excited about this.




PS, our auto insurance almost cut itself in half now that we've hit the 6 month mark of having insurance with a "real" insurance company. More dollars to go towards debt!

February Goals

Already? I'm not done with January goals! Oh... You're serious about February being here, aren't you? Well fine. The first part of each goal is how it fits into my annual goals.. unless it doesn't. In which case, it's just a random monthly goal.

Eating Better: Continue slowly reducing sugar.
Eating better: Work on encouraging DH to eat more fermented foods; use up last of failed yogurt batch so I can make a new batch which he will eat. (I hate failed cooking).

Finances/Eating Better: Get dirt, start seedlings indoors.
Finances: Work on sticking to newly revised budget; Use mint.com at least weekly to keep an eye on spending.

Personal: Clean out the closet. Seriously. No ifs, ands, or buts. Get it done.
Personal/Sanity: Come up with a better system for recyclables.
Personal: Go on 4 driving lessons. One a week. Do it.
Personal: Seriously resume posture plan.
Personal: Start brain storming about simpler meals to free up time in the evenings for projects / fun.

House: Get a realtor (if this longshot doesn't pan out).

Weight Loss: Talk to DH about starting weight loss for him. Wish me luck!

January Goal Review

This is my first monthly goal review. I think I did ok, considering some other unexpected issues crop up that I've had to deal with this month. And some expected ones, like school and work. Oops.

Eating better: Start my own kombucha.
I did this! My first gallon is brewing on top of my fridge as I type. Hopefully tomorrow I'll get a chance to bottle it so it can carbonate.

Eating better: Take cod liver oil daily.
Um, I've been taking it every day, but DH won't touch it, the silly man (but I love him, so it's ok). I think it really has helped with my (self-diagnosed so probably wrong) SADness.

Work on getting my license.
Umm.. yeah. We've set a time to go driving twice now, but each time it doesn't happen. Basically we schedule a time and then we either fight or sleep in until we don't have time to do a lesson plus all the normal weekend stuff like groceries. It's actually pretty pathetic. I'm determined to change this!

Finances: Review budget for this year with Husband.
We finally had our budget committee meeting yesterday! I think we've got an ok plan for the year, but I think one or two of our spending categories is slightly unrealistic. We shall see.

Finances / Personal: Work on something crafty.
Um, I did a little bit of this, but honestly I just haven't had the energy to maintain this. I feel like I can barely keep up with the dishes (don't look in my sink right now) let alone make time for fun stuff. I need to, though.

House: Get a Realtor.
Ok, we haven't done this. Boo. But, we are (shhh) going to hopefully look at a house this week. So... we are working on our Annual Goal of getting a house, even if we haven't gotten a realtor yet. If this house isn't worth our time, we will definitely work on getting a realtor in February.

Finances / Eating Better: Finalize plans for balcony garden / order necessary stuff.
I have my seeds but still no dirt. Sigh. I really need to get moving on this. My plans are set, and I have my seeds, the only thing I'm missing is dirt. Maybe I can do that this weekend. (not hopeful)

Personal: Sell / donate unused items.
You know what... yeah I still have all that crap in my closet. I think this goal is going to get recycled for February. Time flies, sometimes. Is it true that it only gets faster the older you get?

Personal: Resume working a bit each day to improve my posture.
I've sort of halfway, maybe kind of done this. I really need to get hardcore about it.


In general, I'm really struggling lately with motivation and energy to do the things I want. This is bad. I want to start my seedlings for my patio garden soon. I want to clear out the closet full of crap I don't want, without taking a total loss. I want to take my pile of recyclables out of my apartment to the nearest recycling center, but there the pile sits in the middle of my living room floor. Plus more in the kitchen. I want to be awesome and blog every day, but I can't even do basic chores on a regular basis.

Overall, I haven't done that bad. I accomplished in whole, two goals, and made progress on the other seven. On the other hand, only accomplishing a 2/7 ratio is pretty pathetic. That's not even one third. But it's not a bad start to the year. Certainly not the worst I've ever had. :)

My biggest problem is organizing my days! I want to be structured and work on my crafty projects on Sunday morning before church, for example, but I never can get to it. I think I'm having a crisis of priorities. Too much daily crap in the way of my "goals," but so much of what I center myself around has to do with all the "daily crap." Bah, contradicting feelings.

How do you manage your goals against everyday life? How do you make time in the chaos known as life to do what you really want to do?

January Goals

Hello again. I know I posted about goals just a few days ago, but I also wanted to take a few minutes and talk about my personal goals for this new month. I got the idea for monthly goals from Cate at her blog. Each month I hope to be able to link my monthly goals to a particular yearly goal. I hope you'll join me in my journey to improve myself and my life one baby step at a time.

For January my goals are...
Eating Better: Start brewing my own kombucha. All I need is a bottle of "starter" tea, a box of green tea, and a gallon glass jar.
Eating Better: Take cod liver oil daily I already have it. I just need to get husband interested in taking it every day.
License: Set a weekly driving lesson time for me. I have lofty ideas of having my license before summer--can it be done?
Finances: Review budget for this year with Husband. This won't be too bad. My biggest problem is I'm still spending too much on food.
Finances / Personal: Work on something crafty. I've already started this! But I have a long way to go to reach my secret goal on this one (hey, you never know when a crafty project will turn into a birthday / Christmas present later on).
House: Get a Realtor. Hopefully this won't be too hard to do.
Finances / Eating Better: Finalize plans for balcony garden / order necessary stuff. I'm mostly set on my garden. I need to find (free) dirt, and I need to order my seeds. My goal is to spend around $50 for all the seeds I need.
Personal: Sell / donate unused items. I have a collection of stuff I keep meaning to get rid of. Anything I haven't sold or donated by the end of the month is getting unceremoniously thrown in the dumpster. :)
Personal: Resume working a bit each day to improve my posture. I feel like this won't be too bad. I already started a little bit yesterday.

Ok, I know this sounds like a lot, but I really fell behind at the end of the year..(hmm, September? Is that really the "end" of the year? Well, you know what I mean).

Goals...?

Well, I am currently battling a cold. I just took some nyquil, not thinking that I've also had most of a beer already tonight... Do not try this at home, kids. Actually, don't try this anywhere except maybe home, and only when you're not leaving home at all for the rest of the night. The drums in the music I'm listening to are definitely throbbing against all the congestion in my head. Drugs? Who needs drugs? I apologize in advance for the ludicrity of this post (yes, that is a word).

Um, apart from that, here's what I have going on in the way of goals for 2011. First off, my husband loves me, a lot. He hates doing "resolutions," but put up with setting "loose planning goals" for this year just for me. Yes I am very loved.

Our goals as a family include the following:
Continue eating better
Plan out / start the journey of weight loss for Hubby
Me to get my license!!!!!!
Move into a house?
Finance stuff
Personal Goals -- Me only

Each of these goals breaks down into different bits and pieces, which I feel is better than just leaving them as nebulous "eat better" goals. I want some meat to my goals, haha.

To continue eating better, I want to
eat more fermented foods for digestive / general health
reduce our white flour / white sugar intake
cut out soda completely
eat breakfast everyday
take cod liver oil (a supplement) every day

Weightloss
Still working on this.
I read an interesting thing which was 6 weeks of normal diet alternated with 2 weeks of weight loss diet. I liked the idea of it because it's not so much about crazy, dangerous dieting as it is for gradual, healthy weightloss. More to come as I learn more.

License
for this I intend to start practicing once a week (weather permitting).
Hopefully I can take my test in March by the latest.

House
This is sort of a dreaming goal and I realize that. I haven't told my family because I think they'll think I'm nuts. But we're slowly building our down payment...
If we don't move into a house by the end of December 31st, I'm really not going to flip a lid. But I do want to try.
Sub goals include getting a realtor, identifying "needs" and "wants" and reaffirming our price range. Also we want to find a reliable inspector.

Finance
We want to (obviously) finish our house down payment.
Finish our Car replacement fund. We are 1/3 to 1/2 way there.
Work on reducing food expenses.
Make more homemade Christmas gifts to reduce Christmas spending

Personal Goals
Ok this will change all the time, but for now this includes doing more crafty things and getting rid of extraneous things.