I’m writing this on November 1st which means that I have 2 months left to work on my (rather lofty) 2020 goals. Seemed like a good time for a check in so I sketched it all out in my bullet journal and I’ve actually made more progress that I thought!
I left a spot for a check in on December 1st and then a final update on Jan 1st. To my surprise, I’ve actually completed 8 of the 20 goals! And I think it’s totally possible that I could finish 4 or 5 more before the end of the year.
I’ve really enjoyed this. So much that I’m considering doing 20×21 in 2021. lol.
I realized that it’s July and thought it might be fun to see how I was doing on my 20x20in2020 project!
20 months of Project Life. I thought this was the least likely goal to have made any progress on, but to date I’ve actually gotten 9 months of Project Life done! And I’m still making progress. This goal is actually almost on track and I figure I have a good shot at completing it. 🙂 I’m working on February 2020 today (2 weeks to go!) and then I just need to fill in the October-December 2019 gap.
20 months of scrapbooking. I actually have 7 months done! I’ve done March 2020 to the present in real time and I’ve also gone back and done August-October of 2018. Currently I’m working on editing photos for a massive planned print order then I’ll try to knock out a bunch more. I’ve been doing huge batches of mixed media backgrounds which makes it much easier to complete a layout when I have a few minutes. I’m also giving myself permission to scrap fewer pages.
20 nights of hexies. Done and then some! And in fact, I have finished my last super hexie and have gotten fully half of the quilt assembled! I’m still plugging away on it. I spend so much time on zoom calls now, and it’s an easy mindless project to work on. 🙂
20 new adventures with my kids. Not gonna lie, quarantine has thrown a wrench in this plan. But, I sat down with my instagram and actually came up with 13 things that could legit be called an adventure! So I’m ahead of schedule! <3
20 new Montessori Trays. This is a case of “be careful what you wish for” lol. But with Corona Academy in full swing over here I’ve actually already made more than 20.
20 activities with my Girl Scouts. ::whomp whomp:: We had such a fun spring planned and it was cut short. 🙁 But even with that, I managed to get 8 activities done with the whole troop.
20 blocks for my Texas Forever Quilt. I actually just sat down and did a little quilt inventory (which is what prompted this post) and discovered that I’ve gotten 9 more blocks done! Which brings my total up to 30 of the 63 and puts me pretty close to on track for this goal.
20 new blog posts. This post brings my grand total to 18!
20 new recipes. I’m failing pretty spectacularly on this one. I’ve only tried 2 new recipes. But it looks like we’ll still be in quarantine for Thanksgiving so I imagine I’ll be trying out some new things. 🙁
20 Liturgical Living activities. We’ve actually done 6 things, but I would like to put more of an effort into these going forward.
20 home projects. We’ve managed to do 9! I was shocked when I went and added it up. We still have a loooooong way to go, but we’re making progress!
20 butterflies/ caterpillars/ fruit. Well, April has come and gone again without me finishing this quilt, but I have made some progress! I have all 32 butterflies appliqued and ready for embroidery. I also have all 9 caterpillars appliqued and ready for embroidery. And I’ve gotten 9/14 fruit blocks done! I still need to do 2 olive blocks, 1 grape block, and 2 blueberry blocks. 🙂
20 nine patches done. All of the nine patches are done! Honestly I had forgotten about the pinwheels. lol. Perhaps I should start work on those?
20 date nights. Well. we actually managed to go out on one REAL date night this year before quarantine hit. It was so exciting. 🙂 We were to a restaurant and everything. I’m glad that I set a goal for at home date nights since obviously now we go nowhere. lol. Michael ended up getting me a “murder mystery” and we had so much fun solving it together! So we’ve actually gotten a few more and they are so much fun for a date night. 🙂 I figure we’ve gotten a good 7 date nights in? #winning
20 plants from seed. Well, we haven’t had great luck with seeds, but we have had loads of fun with our garden this year! We’ve got 2 massive cherry tomato plants so we’ve been having fresh tomatoes for our morning snack almost every day. And we did get quite a few things to sprout even if they ended up dying in the heat as soon as we transplanted them outside. So I’m calling this a success! But I think that we might give it another go this fall? Now taking suggestions on what might live!
20 hours of staff development. Whoops. I’ve done a big fat zero on this. I should probably take stock of how many hours I have and figure out how many more I need.
20 new books. I haven’t been reading much this year, but I think I’ve read about 12 books? Nothing spectacular, just some mindless romances which is exactly what I need right now.
20 bags of trash gone. Well, I haven’t kept track, but I figure I’ve gotten rid of about 10 bags of trash? Still loads to go.
20 boxes to the caring place. I just took a huge load of stuff to donate which brings my total up to about 8 boxes? Felt great to get rid of stuff, but as always there is still so much more to go.
20 pounds gone. Ugh. I gained 15 corona pounds. Then I worked really hard in June and lost like 12 pounds only to gain almost all of it back when Michael broke his finger.
Man, it has been a long time since I have had any real scrapbooking mojo, but I think it’s back! It started when we went into lockdown and I decided that I needed to work on Project Life in real time. So now I have a system and it’s actually working! Each Sunday night, I go through my phone and choose photos from the week and email them to myself. Then on Monday, I squeeze in little pockets of time to print the photos and get them in the album. They are not the most creative layouts that I’ve ever done, but I think it’s way more important to get the stories captured in real time than to agonize about which embellishments to use. Week 11 was our last week “in the wild” so during week 12 I completed the week 11 layout. And it was like a dam broke! I’ve now completed weeks 11-16 in real time, and then I got inspired to try to fill in the gap. So I went back and did weeks 1 and 10. AND weeks 32-37 in the 2019 album! I think this is actually a doable way to stay current and catch up. Fingers crossed! I have 8 layouts in 2020 to do and 16 in 2019.
Then I decided, what the hell, maybe I should give scrapbooking another go. lol. And it was super fun! I ignored my huge backlog of layouts in favor of scrapping some pics from March. I’m enjoying doing Project Life in real time so much that I think I’m going to keep focusing on current layouts. It would be amazing if I could actually finish the previous month’s layouts in real time!
So what does this mean for actual goals? Well, first priority is to keep doing the previous week’s Project Life layout on Monday. Then work on both the previous month’s scrapbook layouts and filling in the gaps on Project Life. Once Project Life is up to date, I’ll think about a plan to catch up the actual scrapbooks which is going to a huge undertaking. I think I’m currently on August of 2018. ::sigh:: But, I made a scrap list for March 2020 and I’ve started working through it. I also got out all of my mixed media goodies yesterday and made 9 background so that should speed up the process. 🙂
Y’all! New Year’s is always my favorite. I’m so motivated to clean up, get organized, and tackle a million projects! This generally lasts for about 2 weeks, lol. But I’m not about to let my abysmal track record stop me from setting some truly ambitious goals for the year! Since it’s 2020, I couldn’t resist being a little extra and setting 20 goals for the year. And each goal has 20 parts! Let me preface this by stating that I know there there isn’t a chance in hell that I get all of this done, but even a fraction of this would be awesome, so without further ado here are my 20x20in2020!
20 months of project life. I am so far behind on this project which makes me sad because it’s one of favorites to look back on. Also, I get a beautiful kit every month! I am currently working on June of 2019, so even if I get all the way to December 2020 that’s still only 19 months. My work around is that I’m going to count the ending page of 2019 and the opening page of 2020 as a month. I think that to make this goal happen I’m going to have to just sit down and do a huge batch of photo editing which is not my fav… but needs must.
20 months of scrapbooking. I have fallen so far behind on the kids’ scrapbooks… I’m currently on August of 2018. ::cringe:: 2019 was the year that I really fell deep into the quilty rabbit hole and the majority of my free time went to that hobby. I don’t regret that decision at all, but I think I want to do a combo of things to make sure that I am still scrapping the most important memories that I don’t want to forget. 1. I think I am going to dedicate one of my 2 preschool days a week to scrapping/ project life. I think I am also going to cut down on the number of stories I am trying to tell a month. I mean, do I really need 15 pages from August 2018?
20 nights of hexies. Ah, my poor neglected hexies. I enjoy doing handwork in the evenings, but lately I’ve been reaching for my applique. I would like to devote 20 nights to my hexies over the course of the year. If I do that, I feel confident that I can finish up my last super hexie block and then hopefully I will be motivated to finish!
20 new adventures with my kids. This breaks down to roughly 2 a month which seems super doable. These could be as elaborate as my scheme to convince RaptorDad to come with us to the Grand Canyon over spring break (jury is still out on that one) or as simple as a picnic dinner at the park.
20 new Montessori trays. This is roughly 4 news trays for 5 new themes. And recycling materials is fair game!
20 activities with my Girl Scouts. This seems like a lot, but I’m anticipating starting a troop for Mia this fall when she starts kindergarten. (Please excuse me while I go have a panic attack at the thought of the babies starting kindergarten!)
20 blocks for my Texas Forever quilt. I currently have 21/63 done so getting 20 more done seems doable.
20 blog posts. That’s roughly 2 a month. Surely I can manage that! lol.
20 new recipes. In my mind these are all healthy recipes. Who wants to bet that next December they were all desserts. lol.
20 liturgical living activities. The kids and I really enjoy these when I manage to pull them together. I like to build on what we started last year and add a few more.
20 organization/ home projects. If I’m honest, these are probably going to take place in the fall once all of the kids are in school full time. I really want to install a backsplash in our kitchen. I’d also like to repaint our kitchen and guest bathroom. Also, want to do another big purge reorg of our kid art supplies/ games closet. And I would love to get rid of 85% of the crap in our master bedroom and make it a soothing retreat. Also, big kid room for the twins.
20 butterflies/ caterpillars/ fruit. Yikes. I really want this done for the twin’s birthday in April, but I’m just not sure it’s possible without paying to have them quilted. The first hurdle is to finish the tops though!
20 nine patches for caterpillars. I got a bunch of these done in December, so I’m not even sure that I need 20 anymore. Still, the plan is to have a row of pinwheels at the top and bottom so maybe I’ll say 20 nine patches/ pinwheels.
20 date nights. Maybe my favorite on the list! These are for at home date nights. I want to come up with some creative date nights for us. New board games? Cooking class? Wood working? Book club? Only time will tell.
20 plants from seed. This spring I want to plant a garden with the kids from seeds so that they can watch them germinate. I’m hoping for some tomatoes!
20 hours of staff development. Boring. So boring. But I need to keep chipping away at this.
20 new books. I’m actually thinking I might find some list of books and try to read them?
20 bags of trash gone. Self explanatory.
20 boxes to the Caring Place. (It’s like goodwill, but local.)
20 pounds gone. Alright, I’m cheating a little on these last 3 because since Christmas we’ve already gotten rid of a bag of trash, a box for the caring place, and I’ve got a nasty post Christmas cold that has helped me drop 4 pounds. I’m not letting that go to waste!
I’m going to track these on the sidebar for my blog, and I’ll also post some progress pics on instagram with the hashtag #20x20in2020 .
