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?

Tuesday Trimmings

Well, today is another sort of "catch-all" day for what I've been thinking "I should post about that," but haven't made time for.

One of those things is a quick update on my goals.

My SCOBY is growing nicely and should be ready to start culturing its first batch of kombucha by the weekend! I'm so excited. If this works I'll be saving us a lot of money. As soon we tried it we became hooked, but at $3.50 per 16oz bottle, it's been one of my budget-busters for several weeks.

I've been taking my cod liver oil daily, but DH still won't touch the stuff. Silly man.

We finally, last night, decided that my scheduled driving lesson time is going to be after church on Sunday afternoons. Yippee! First lesson is this weekend.

We haven't talked about our budget yet because our budget meeting was cancelled due to respectively crappy days had by both committee members. Boo. We're rescheduling and will still get it done within January.

I have completely failed at getting anything crafty done. Of my lofty goal I set for this month, I have accomplished about 4%. Yay me.

We have not gotten a realtor yet. I think I'm going to start asking around to see if I can find a friend of a friend or at least someone who one of my friends used and had a good experience with. Also, I saw a house I *loved* online but when I called about they said it was already under contract. Sad.

I did finalize my plans for my balcony garden this weekend! And my seeds came on Friday. I still need a few basic gardening supplies like bone meal and probably clippers and gloves, but my plan is ready. Oh, I also still need dirt. Detail, details.

I have sold 2 books on Amazon so far, and hopefully tonight after work I can post the rest of the stuff I'm going sell on Craigslist and hopefully I will get some of this crap out of here. I am still determined to get rid of all of this crap on February 1st regardless so, I really need to get moving if I want to make a few bucks instead of just pitching it.

I have started on my posture, but not full-on yet. I'm more aware of it now that I've listed it as one of the things I'd like to resume, but I haven't resumed my mini goals with it. Maybe that will be for tomorrow as well.

Also, I've been toying with the idea of posting my meal plans to help keep me on track. For those of you who post your meal plans, do you think it's a useful reminder or is it just a nuisance?

I've also been thinking I need to get back to posting about my groceries. Like I said I've been awful lately and kind of ashamed at the amount I've been spending (hence the lack of grocery posts). I've been kind of putting it off until we have our budget meeting to figure out where we actually should be with groceries.

PS, our Christmas tree is still up. This needs to happen by the end of January. Seriously.

Tuesday Trimmings

Well, I have no particular agenda today, so I thought I'd give you random updates about what I have been cooking and scheming. I don't really know where else this stuff would go, hence the "trimmings." Lame, I know. Deal with it.

Cooking
I've actually started a number of cooking projects lately. :)

Sometime in the last week or so I turned almost 6 lbs of cabbage into sauerkraut. It's "sauering" on my counter as I write this. I love love love sauerkraut now, which is crazy because I used to think it terrible. The first time I made sauerkraut, I wasn't that crazy about it, so it languished in the back of my fridge for months until December when I pulled it out again and tried it and "yum" was the only word-sounding noise I could get out in between mouthfuls. So I now I am making a big batch and I am excited. I'm also a lot less paranoid about leaving food out on the counter this time around. (Eating fermented food cures you of some paranoia, apparently).

I also bought a bottle of kombucha and started growing my own SCOBY so I can make my own. If you don't know, kombucha is basically a superfood. It's filled with good bacteria for digestion (like yogurt) along with all kind of other stuff for energy, etc. It's really good for your liver. It's slightly carbonated and my husband says it tastes like beer (what? he's weird). Read more about this good stuff, here. Or you can google it and come up with hundreds of other sites. Unfortunately it takes like 3 weeks to grow a SCOBY so it will be at least that long before I can make my own. *Sad*

Just this weekend I made a huge pot of homemade chicken noodle soup with real bone broth that I left to simmer overnight on Saturday. The soup is delicious and hopefully just what the doctor ordered to help us sickies get over the rest of this annoying cold... Hmm, I should post a recipe.

A week or two ago I made pasta which turned out better than ever before. This is ironic since 2 things happened differently: for one, I set out to follow the directions, for two, life got in the way and I left it abandoned in the "resting" stage for about 6 times as long as the directions say to. Haha, I love irony. Seriously, best pasta I've made. So much flavor and it kept its shape really well even when being cooked extensively in soup. I'll be making more soon, I bet.

This weekend I made 2 casseroles and froze them for those "menu plan, menu shman." nights. It's a recipe I adapted from my mom--who knows where she got it. It's basically an egg and bread casserole, but with yummy things like mushrooms, cheese, and onions (and for me, spinach). I love it. I had a hard time not chowing on the filling when I was layering the casserole because it tastes sooo good. It turned out really well this time. (another recipe? ... Hmm)

This weekend I also made another loaf of sourdough bread, as well as quasi-sourdough sweet potato "quick-bread." It tastes amazing. This all started because I had half a sweet potato from like, 3 months ago that I put in the freezer with the intention of "getting around to it." Ha! Success.

Finally, this weekend, I made a half-batch of yogurt--Much more manageable. I'm doing it this way from now on. I also used the whisk attachment on my blender to mix in my yogurt starter and it was convenient. Good trick for next time.

^Most of the above things fall into my "continue eating better" annual goal DH and I set a week or two ago. A "sub-goal" beneath that was to eat more fermented foods--both sauerkraut and kombucha fall into that category, yeah! We noticed a huge difference in our digestion and general well-being when I bought several bottles of it from the store and were drinking it everyday. At a little over $3 per 16oz bottle though, it's definitely not in the budget. This was also one of my January goals. So far I think breaking down goals into "baby steps" to do each month is going to be great. Sauerkraut is great for you and it's also got good bacteria for digestion. It's also stupidly high in vitamin C, yay. And yogurt, well, that's another healthy food, especially since it's just milk, bacteria, and a little sugar.

Ah well, I was going to post about other stuff, but it looks like I've got more than enough random stuff to talk about just with food so I'll save the others for another day...

(This post wound up being much more focused and much longer than I was expecting...)

What about you? What cooking have you done?

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).