Weekly Goals ... Week of October 1st and Update on Last Week

Please note that I managed to cross off EVERY SINGLE ITEM on my list!  Just the fact that the list is sitting there next to my computer keeps me so much more accountable.  When the computer is being touchy or slow, I get up and do something.  Ingenious, Huh? 

Hope I can keep this up.  I might actually be ready for Christmas this year!


Last Week's Goals.... Week of September 24th

Family:

• Make copies of Bible Study Stuff.  Finally got this done!  Now to actually start the Bible Study with the kids next week!
• Write Gene a Love Note.
• Check four things off the Fall Bucket List. Johnny Appleseed Day Celebration with apple food at every meal, Johnny Appleseed videos on YouTube and a trip to the apple orchard.  We had hot spiced apple cider.  The kids didn't care for it.  I drank a half gallon by myself.  We made a fall wreath.  Cute, with glittery spiders.  And I got the porch decorated for fall with the help of my oldest minion.
• Check in with kids on school work every day. I need to make this a habit.  I think that the kids were a lot more diligent about actually finishing everything when they knew I was going to check each evening rather than at the end of the week.

Personal:

 

• Read The Five Love Languages of Teenagers.  I finished this book while exercising this week.  Excellent sugestions.  now I need to figure out the kids' love languages.
• Exercise four times.  I actually rode the exercise bike five mornings this week.
• Lose four pounds.  I lost enough that I was a half pound lower than my lowest weight when I went to the doctor on Thursday.
• Pedicure.  Who knew that painting spider webs on my toenails would be such a pain in the patootie?  I redid them three times and I am still not so happy with the results.

Homemaking:

 

• Fall decorations on the porch.  The cats seem to think that I put the hay bales out there just for them!
• Get out Abby's winter clothes.  They are out of storage.  The process of trying on everything and getting it hung up takes a while.  There aren't enough hangers to hang it all up until more of the summer stuff can get put away.  It will have to be a work in progress. 
• Make daily, weekly, and monthly cleaning check lists.  Done.  I like it.  I think that just having one list on a clipboard rather than three or four will make it easier to see what needs accomplished.
• Switch my clothes to winter. What a mess!  I got rid of a bunch of stuff that is just too big and sloppy looking.  Woot!  I hope all of the jeans I have will fit.  I didn't try anything on; I just stuck it in the drawer.  The bonus of it all was that I cleaned up my closet a bit and went through my Christmas Gift/Project tote and rediscovered a few things that I intended to do last year and can finish pretty quickly this year if I get on the ball.
• Make laundry soap.  Done.  I love the smell of Fels-Naptha! I have my own recipe that is a combination of lots of other people's powdered soap recipes.

Finances:

 

• Track all spending for the week.  I kept track and I was apalled.  Apparently every time I leave the house I spend a great deal of money.
• Write six blog posts.  I wrote five posts.  I am calling it a success!

Christmas Prep:

 

• Cross stitch for at least three hours. I worked on this for about five hours at the beginning of the week.  I need to get it finished so I can figure out about framing it!
• Start a Christmas Gift List.
• Crochet borders on nine squares.  I also got a couple of solid squares finished!
• Christmas gift budget.  I even made an excel spreadsheet to keep track.  Now I am going to have to make it a goal to keep it updated.

School:

• Post about interest in high school breakfast club.   No responses.  How dissapointing.  I think Marshall and his one buddy will just start meeting for breakfast once a week on their own!
• Co-op lesson.  Not my turn!  How nice is that?

Green items have been forwarded from last week's list.  Blue items are ongoing until they are finished or become a habit.

On to next week.

There are only 85 days until Christmas.  This is my favorite time of the year!

Weekly Goals .... Week of October 1st

Family:

• Start Bible study with kids.
• Write Gene a love note.
• Check two things off the bucket list.

Personal:

• Exercise four times (two on the treadmill).
• Lose four pounds.
• Three blog posts.

Homemaking:

• Organize sewing basket.
• Complete living room list.
• Put out Halloween decorations.

Finances:

• Make spending spreadsheet and update.
• Keep Christmas budget spreadsheet current.
• Menu plan around grocery deals.

Holiday:

• Nine squares completed and assembled.
• Complete cross stitch.
• Finish one gift.

School:

• Lesson for co-op on elections.
• Check in with kids' school every day.

Green items have been forwarded from last week's list.  Blue items are ongoing until they are finished or become a habit.

Here's to keeping the momentum going!

Happy Johnny Appleseed Day

Can you say "Good Sports?"

I love my kids.

I love the fact that even though they are teenagers they are willing to play along and do silly things, celebrate silly holidays, and enjoy being with me.

Attending a cyber school means that they spend almost all of their time with me.  We are all three at home together every day.  They almost never have an attitude, they do what they are told, and best of all, they enjoy having fun!

One of the items on our Fall Bucket List was to celebrate Johnny Appleseed Day, September 26th.  It was a pretty laid back celebration!  We ate apple french toast for breakfast, had apple pudding and dried cinnamon apple chips with lunch, and had apple crisp with caramel ice cream for dessert after supper.  We read about John Chapman on wikipedia, and we watched a Disney video on You Tube. 

As holidays go, it was pretty inexpensive and laid-back.  The kids might have groaned a little when I woke them up shouting "Happy Johnny Appleseed Day."  But, they got into the spirit of things.

Little things, done with a great deal of enthusiasm make for the best memories.

Especially for moms!

Spider Web Fall "Wreath"

Abby says it's not a wreath if there isn't a hole in the middle. 

I say it's a wreath 'cause we hung it on the door. 



We took an old, very ugly painting from the thrift store that had a kind of fancy looking plastic frame and transformed it into a webby home for some very glitzy spiders.

First I had Marshall spray paint the front and the back of the frame black.  For some odd reason, he was wearing a trench coat while he painted.  Unfortunately, I didn't have a chance to get a picture of that.  {My children are a bit strange sometimes.}

Next we disassembled the frame.  I was glad to see that there were two pieces of cardboard in the frame so we would be able to hide the back of the spider web.

I wrapped some cotton yarn around the frame for the base of the spider web.  I used some very attractive duct tape to hold the yarn in the position I liked.  Abby wove the yarn around the spokes to create a very effective spider web.  We used a little Elmer's glue at each intersection to hold the web in place.

As the glue was drying, we positioned the spiders on the frame.  I was all for just using one spider from the package of six that we picked up at Hobby Lobby, but Abby thought it would be lonely and she found places for all six. 

I made a big, loopy bow from black and orange mesh ribbon and tied it onto the frame.

After the glue was all dry, we carefully reassembled the frame, I struggled to get all of the pieces jammed back together.  Finally, it was all together!  We ceremonially hung it on the door and took a picture.

Another thing checked off the Fall Bucket List.


Super cute, relatively easy, and not so scary Halloween decor for the door!

Abby still says it's not a wreath!

Fall Bucket List...The Cute Version

Because a list written on paper is OK, but a scrapbooked, foofed up, cute one is awesome, I made our Fall Bucket List into a "Bucket" List.

I used a little metal tub that I found floating around when I put out the Fall decorations and some clothespins that had been painted with orange dots and stripes from back in the day when we used to do craft shows.  I picked up a fall scrapbook paper at Hobby Lobby, along with coordinating green, orange, and cream colored papers.  A chipboard shape left over from another project and some raffia that I think came off of an old candle rounded out the supply list.  Oh yeah, and a magnet I took off the fridge and pried the embellishment off of!

Talk about cheap!  The only thing I bought was the paper, and it was half off!

I glued tiny strips of paper in two colors to the clothespins.  Chalked the edges with brown to rough it up a bit and used a black Sharpie to write each item from the list on to its own clothespin. 

After I glued the leaf patterned paper to the chipboard, I added three layers of card stock and wrote "Fall Bucket List 2012 on the cream colored rectangle.

All of the clothespins got clipped on, the raffia got wrapped around, and I used the magnet to stick the chip board piece onto the bucket so that it would stay at the angle I wanted.

After we finish an item on the list, we will unclip it and put it in the bucket.

So far we only have one thing completed.  We have to get on the ball!

***Look at that picture of Abby and her Daddy on her second birthday.  Can you tell that her daddy likes her just a little bit?  He doesn't let us take his picture often so it is extra special to me!

Linked to these crafty parties:

Fireflies and Jellybeans

Happy New Year and New Recipe

We celebrated a Fun, Frugal and Fabulous New Year's Eve last night. 

Cards and Food! 

A very nice time with my mom, my oldest son and his girlfriend.  We had homemade pizza and some appetizers.  Pretty much our typical New Year's Eve menu. 

But .... as I was running through the grocery store to pick up the last minute ingredients I remembered a post that I had read here on Make It and Love It about Brownie Covered Oreos.  So I grabbed a package of store brand Oreos and a brownie mix.  A grand total of $4.00, (which could have been much cheaper if I had some couponed brownie mixes in my pantry ... shame on me!). 

When I got home I took some time to peruse the beautiful tutorial here at Picky Palate. 

Looked simple enough! 

I was a bit nervous because my muffin tin looks a little vintage rather shiny and non stick like the one that she used, so I sprayed the heck out of it with some cooking spray.  I dipped those bad boy oreos in the brownie mix and plopped them into the muffin pan.  The only problem that I ran into was that then mix I grabbed was an 8X8 pan size.  It was enough to cover two dozen cookies, but the last few were a little skimpy.  Next time I will get the family size brownie mix. 

I shoved them into the oven and baked 'em at 350 for 13 minutes.  Ran a knife around the edge of each one as soon as they came out of the oven.  Perfection.  They popped out of there just like a non stick miracle.

The recipe called for white chocolate drizzled on top, but for some reason my thoughts turned to powdered sugar .....  Which led me to a stencil snowflake. 

Of course, I had to root around and find a stencil.  I discovered one with the "Perfect Brownie" pan we got for Christmas last year, but you could easily punch one from cardstock or cut one out with a Cricut or some such device.

A couple of minutes later I had the cutest, yummiest cookies of the holiday season. 

None of them survived the evening.

Why Do Holidays Have to Cost So Much?

Every holiday has its own regrets and buyer's remorse.  Even little tiny holidays like Groundhog day seem to cost me more than I plan. 

Christmas always costs more! 

Poor planning, paying full price, and the ever present, "Oh, what the heck!  Christmas only comes once a year!" always take a toll on my budget.  Then, all too soon, the celebration is over.  All that is left is the clean up and the accounting.
 
This is the year when I will plan a plan, spend the time, do the shopping and get my act together.
 

Every month has its own special challenge.  Two January birthdays make for an expensive beginning of the year. 

This year my baby daughter will be eleven.  Practically a teenager.  That calls for a special, albeit frugal, celebration. Sixteen is the milestone for my middle kid.  He will get his driver's license this year.  Somehow we have to mark that historic occasion.  My oldest will be 23 in March.  A grown man, but he wants his celebration to be memorable too. (Or maybe his mommy does?) 

Valentine's Day, Easter, Halloween, the 4th of July.  The list goes on and on. 

My goal for 2011 is to get my act together, gather my resources and make every holiday special, memorable and especially FRUGAL!