Month: January 2018

I came up with 7 daily goals for the first week of January as some mini resolutions.  How did it go?  Really well!  My goals were to 1.  take a photo a day with my DSLR, 2.  do a scrapbook layout a day, 3.  fill up either a trash bag or a goodwill bag a day, 4.  get 10 thousand steps a day, 5.  drink 8 glasses of water a day, 6.  clean the kitchen every day, and 7.  work on my hexagons.  Overall, I did really well with photo a day, cleaning the kitchen,  and my water, succeeding every day.  I did pretty good with my steps, my layouts, and my hexies.  I failed miserably at the trash bag a day.  lol.  I thought I’d share my photos!

Monday:  The babies playing with their sensory bin!

Tuesday:  Kate doing research on owls.  Just for fun.  lol.  She wanted to show the babies a video she found.  I loved having her home on break.  I can’t believe she has to go back to school tomorrow!  🙁

Wednesday: It was so cold today!  The babies were tired and they laid down on a blanket pallet in the floor and alternatively snuggled and fought over books.  I love seeing their twin bond.  One of my biggest fears when we got Mia’s diagnosis was that they wouldn’t have that twin bond.  Boy was I wrong!  They are 2 peas in a pod.  🙂

Thursday:  Ice Skating with our Girl Scout Troop!  Kate loves Girl Scouts so much.  I’m glad we have such a great group of girls.  🙂

Friday:  Playing at the park!  The pretty weather came back, thankfully!!!  We met up with some friends and ended up feeding some ducks.  So much fun!

Saturday:  This is actually a different plaid shirt on Xander.  I <3 plaid shirts.  lol.  Here we are at the park in our neighborhood.  Notice the ever present car.  😉

Sunday:  Cousin day!  Love family time!!!

I’m totally doing this again this week!  I especially loved taking pics every day with my camera!  But I dropped the trash bag goal.  Ain’t nobody got time for that!  lol.

Field trip time!

Kate was working on her painting badge for girl scouts and one of the steps was to “get inspired” and look at different paintings by different artists.  I think the writers of the badge requirements envisioned us spending the day at an art museum, but y’all, this was way more fun!

Plus, we got to play with spray paint!

To say that is wasn’t double stroller friendly would be a massive understatement, but we still had loads of fun.  We just stayed on the bottom level.

I’d love to come back one day without the babies and climb up to the top!  There was so much cool graffiti to check out.

And Kate was thrilled to finish up her painting badge!  All in all, 2 thumbs way up for the Hope Outdoor Gallery.

I love New Year’s Day!  The possibilities always seem endless.  🙂  And it’s my favorite month to do goal setting!  Let’s see how we did in December.

1.  December Daily.  I’m up to day 9!  So, I have a long way to go, but I’m making some progress.  I’m hoping to wrap this up by the end of January.
2. Jake’s Stocking.  I am so close to finishing this.  My sister wanted me to change the clouds from “Happy Holidays” to “Merry Christmas” but I finished pretty much finished everything else and gave it to her a week before Christmas so she could hang it up.  I should be able to finish it in about a week next November.  I’m officially taking a break from felt for a while though.  lol.
3. Order Christmas Cards.  Done!  And they turned out super cute.  🙂  To be honest, they were cuter on the computer; the colors were a little off when they got printed so the pinks turned to reds and the aqua is more blue, but they were super cheap so I’m not complaining!  I’m so glad we got these pictures taken.  <3 <3 <3 
4. Address/ Send Christmas cards.  Done!
5. Take some Christmas pics.  Also done!  I even got a cute cousin pic.  🙂
6. Road trip book.  This one didn’t get done, but we did have loads of fun on both of our road trips.  🙂  Luckily Kate does not get carsick at all so she can just read the whole way.  I’m so glad she takes after RaptorDad in that respect!  I can barely look at a map without getting carsick.  lol.
7. Decorate Christmas tree.  We decided to go with a tiny pink Christmas tree this year and it was perfect!  My stress level dropped by 200% when I didn’t have to worry about Mia eating pine needles or breaking ornaments.  
8. Christmas menu.  Y’all.  We went with a retro menu to go with our retro tree and it was so much fun.  I love it when my family is willing to play along with my crazy ideas.  🙂
9. Cookie Booth plan.  Well, I have a plan, but I haven’t done anything to execute it.  lol.  I need to get on this one big time!
10. Planner Stickers.  Still a work in progress.  lol.

I’m toying with the idea of trying to learn something new each month this year, but it’s still just a rough idea.  My initial idea was to have 12 projects already decided on, but I’m having a hard time coming up with them.  Suggestions?  lol.  Some projects that I know I want to work on include:

1.  My hexagon quilt!  I now have 14 hexagons stitched together.  Unfortunately, that’s just a drop in the bucket.  I found a hexagon calculator and it informed  me that I needed over 4,000 hexagons to make a king size quilt.  lol.  I might end up making a quilt for bitty baby instead.  😉  I will say that I’m having tons of fun with this project though!  I love playing with all the different fabrics.  🙂
2. Cross Stitch.  I want to design a cross stitch with some song lyrics that I love.  I need to figure out how to do the design work though.
3. Interview Books.  At this point, I think I just need to redo the files.  I need to buy the actual albums and embellishments as well.
4. All the scrapbooking.  lol.  December Daily, Project Life, 12×12 layouts…
5. Some kind of embroidered map.  This is still in the conceptual stage.
6. Learn to can!  In my fantasy land, I figure out how to grow tomatoes, grow a massive crop of them, and then can salsa and tomato sauce.  hahahahahahahaha

And that’s where I run out of steam.  lol.  Shall I come up with some actual January goals?

1.  Clean all the things!!!  Hmm…  Maybe the trash bag a day challenge?  So either a bag of trash or a box to goodwill every day.
2. December Daily.  I’d really love to finish this by the end of the month.
3. Cookie Booth Decorations.  We start selling cookies on the 17th and I need to jazz up our table!  I think we’re going with a super hero theme, but I need to get my behind in gear and make it happen.
4. Swim!  RaptorDad and I have been doing good with the swimming.  I think I’d like to set a goal to swim laps 3 times a week and take the babies swimming one day a week.  That’s a pretty lofty goal, but I think it’s doable.
5. Salads.  We’ve been eating healthier since August, but I’m getting a bit sick of the same old salad every day for lunch.  I’d like to try 4 new salads this month that are tasty and healthy.
6. Recreate files and print pages for interview book.
7. Hexagons!  I toyed with the idea of trying to do 31 flowers (7 hexagons in each flower) in 31 days, but that seems a bit insane.  Maybe I’ll try to do 10 flowers?
8. But speaking of a daily challenge, I think I’m going to do a photo challenge.  I’d like to try to take at least one photo a day with my DSLR camera.
9. I think I’m going to do a LOAD challenge as well, that’s LayOutADay.  So 31 layouts in January.  Oh my, I’m giving myself an awful lot of crafty projects to work on.  lol.
10. Blog!  I’d love to get back to blogging 3 times a week.  🙂

I have no delusion that I’m actually going to accomplish all of this, but I figure go big or go home.  lol.