Browsing the archives for the resolution check in tag.

Week Nine Resolution Check In

Churchy, Crafty, Domestic, Healthy, Homeschooling, Kids, Marriage

Wait a minute! Nine weeks already?!

It’s almost like time passes even faster when you’re watching it. Or at least when you’re tracking what you’re trying to accomplish and finally really realize how quickly a week can fly by. We completely lost week eight to a nasty bug that tore through our sinuses. Since moving to California, we have had about one cold a year, and this year really hurt. Two out of five have sinus infections, two went mostly unaffected and the last one to catch it is still fighting it. Week nine was mostly a week of doctor and pharmacy visits and recovery and I am so grateful that we live nearby to our general practitioner, our pediatrician and a 24 hour pharmacy!

Not much was accomplished in the way of working on the blog or editing the family photo site, though I’ll go over that stuff anyway. I was sick, so guess what? I knitted a lot! Yay sick knitting! The one upside to being sick is that since I am fairly on top of things otherwise, I can slack a little when I’m sick and our lives don’t fall apart.

Here we go, week nine! I am still striving to get this out on Fridays, though that has only happened once so far. 😉

1. stay at least one week ahead of our homeschool schedule
We were almost exactly a week ahead and then last week we were all attacked by the worst head cold we have ever had and cashed in all that extra work! So once we finish Monday’s work, we’ll work a little on Tuesday until we are ahead again. It was such a blessing to be able to not stress over school work while caring for sick kids and dealing with a pounding sinus headache.

2. celebrate everyone’s birthday (local and long distance) with a card in the mail.
Doing several things rushed or halfway is worse than not doing them at all. So, yeah. I give up on this one guys.

3. keep our family photo site updated (in the 10 years we’ve had that site, we’ve always been about 3-5 months behind)
I made no progress at all this week, but last week I actually did get most of the index pages up for each section that was missing one and I converted a load of wmas. Maybe I’ll even end up uploading them next week! HA!

4. start a ‘what we did today’ journal (index card version is cute)
I love it. It’s so neat!

5. quit social media that’s not blog related basically I just wanted to quit Facebook
Ok so I am still not on Facebook. My issue is that after three months away from it, I can see how it was bad for me but I can also see that a lot of the ‘but how will we keep in touch?’ concerns from friends and family were true. I spent a lot of unnecessary time on Facebook when I’m sure I should have been doing more productive things. Closets usually need straightening, bathrooms need scrubbing, that kind of thing. At the same time, I miss seeing my Texan girl Jennifer’s posts of her kids who I miss so so so much and I miss getting rando messages from my uncle in law about everything that is going on in our absence. There are a lot of friends and family that are just not on other social media and either don’t have a smart phone or don’t use an IM apps on their phone. Who does that, right? Most of our family, that’s who! I’m not sold on rejoining Facebook, but I’m leaning towards a totally locked down profile with no extras.

6. blog 3-5 times a week
I only blogged once this week. Ahem.

7. make a lightbox and get better at food photography
My shopping trip to Home Depot was postponed so I could nurse my sinuses but I know what I need for the lightbox and staging! I may just give up on actually going to Home Depot and order it! This tile is meant to be a backsplash but a few of them together would make a pretty backdrop for a black plate. I also really love this black and grey tile for bright knitting. I am going to get these and a couple others to play with this month and see how they look.

8. a portrait of my children, once a week, every week, in 2014
Week One
Week Two
Week Three
Week Four
Week Five
Week Six
Week Seven
Week Eight – not posted
Week Nine – coming later

9. bake a cake every weekend
Week One – Nutella Icebox Cake
Week Two – Orange Creamsicle cake
Week Three – White Chocolate Strawberry cupcakes
Week Four – Pink Lemonade cupcakes
Week Five – Red Velvet cupcakes (with cream cheese icing)
Week Six – Dark Chocolate cake with Strawberry Filling
Week Seven – Pink Strawberry cake with Strawberry Frosting
Week Eight – Dutch Buttercake

10. participate in sockdown 2014
One upside to my sinus infection over the last two weeks has been a lot of knitting! I am almost finished the socks I casted on in January and then promptly dropped for school and life in general. Then I can cast on and knit the socks I should have knitted last month. Whoops.

11. finally finish my knitted beekeeper quilt
Still working on puffs!! Making a dent in the additional 100 that I need for the quilt.

I also said I was going to replace alcohol with coffee and I still haven’t had any alcohol since just before Christmas! I get my bloodwork done every 3 or 4 months to make sure my thyroid medication is still doing what it’s supposed to so I’ve been trying to meet my vitamin and mineral levels since I get to see them a few times a year. I had my bloodwork done in January and I will go back in April so we’ll see then how I’ve done so far.

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Week Seven Resolution Check In

California, Domestic, Healthy, Homeschooling, Kids

Here we go, week seven! This is only my second time posting this on a Friday which is what I had originally intended to do! Thinking about my resolutions every week it’s crazy how fast the weeks fly by! Seven weeks already?!

1. stay at least one week ahead of our homeschool schedule
We are about 3 or 4 days ahead of schedule right now. There are some other long term projects (like my 8th grader’s research paper and my 3rd grader’s science project) that they have been working on overtime since they were assigned, they’re not due for weeks and they’re both almost finished. This is really helpful for both freeing up days for field trips or other outings and for covering sick days throughout the year.

2. celebrate everyone’s birthday (local and long distance) with a card in the mail.
I have been horrible at this! Usually I’m really on top of this until March or so, and then I sputter off into oblivion. This year, I’m so caught up in other things, I have been late with every card I’ve sent and I’ve even missed sending notes as well! I hate the idea of scrapping this, but doing something poorly is worse than not doing it at all. :/

3. keep our family photo site updated (in the 10 years we’ve had that site, we’ve always been about 3-5 months behind)
Making progress!!

4. start a ‘what we did today’ journal (index card version is cute)
I’m so glad we are doing this, it’s so sweet!

5. quit social media that’s not blog related basically I just wanted to quit Facebook
While I am still fielding ‘why would anyone ever leave Facebook?’ emails and messages from well meaning family and friends, I am still happily not on Facebook and I only use social media as So Very Domestic.

6. blog 3-5 times a week
I only blogged twice this week. Boo!

7. make a lightbox and get better at food photography
I finally know what I need! Right now optimum photo taking happens between 11am and 2pm by my kitchen window. With a lightbox, I can take lovely pictures whenever, like you know, at 1 am when I am most likely to be finishing up some crazy kitchen creation. I’m also looking for large tiles as backgrounds!

8. a portrait of my children, once a week, every week, in 2014
Week One
Week Two
Week Three
Week Four
Week Five
Week Six
Week Seven coming tomorrow!

9. bake a cake every weekend
Week One – Nutella Icebox Cake
Week Two – Orange Creamsicle cake
Week Three – White Chocolate Strawberry cupcakes
Week Four – Pink Lemonade cupcakes
Week Five – Red Velvet cupcakes (with cream cheese icing)
Week Six – Dark Chocolate cake with Strawberry Filling
Week Seven – Pink Strawberry cake with Strawberry Frosting

10. participate in sockdown 2014
I’ve been pretty terrible at this as well so far but there is more than enough time to recover. I casted on for January’s lace socks and life got in the way and I haven’t touched them much at all, but technically I have until the end of February to finish them and as long as I cast on for February’s socks before the end of February and finish them before the end of March they count!

11. finally finish my knitted beekeeper quilt
Ugh. So many puffs to knit still! I have almost 400 hexipuffs but it looks more and more likely that I will need 500 before I can sew it together and actually use it.

I’m replacing alcohol with coffee this year! That means late night coffee drinking with girlfriends instead of wine fueled knitting and so far, so good. Even just a couple glasses of wine with a full meal can make the next morning not so fun for me. This life is way too busy for me to spend Sunday morning nursing myself back to health. Also, I think I get more knitting done this way, even if I have yet to prove that this year!

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Week Six Resolution Check In

California, Crafty, Domestic, Homeschooling, Kids

Every week, I’m looking at my goals for the year and going over my progress one at a time in an attempt to help me achieve them. I intend to do these on Fridays, but I’ve only managed to get it out on a Friday once. This weekend marks the end of the 6th week, the year started on a Wednesday so for this purpose and for counting cake weeks, I’m totally ignoring that week. 😉

I skipped last week because the transition from homeschooling through the local school board to doing it through California Virtual Academy has been more challenging than we had anticipated, but I think we are ironed out the issues in our schedule.

1. stay at least one week ahead of our homeschool schedule
This was my original resolution related to school and then we started a new program (which we love, hooray for California Virtual Academy) and our goal became to stay on top of the new schedule. After two full weeks of this program, we’re finding a groove and we are able to get a little ahead of schedule to allow for some wiggle room and we have found time for review to make sure the new concepts are really sinking in. Today we were working on some assignments due on Tuesday (we don’t have classes or assignments this Monday), so we are barely one day ahead, but given how challenging the move from standard to advanced curriculum has been I think a day is pretty good. Hopefully in a couple of weeks we’ll be an entire week ahead. 😉

2. celebrate everyone’s birthday (local and long distance) with a card in the mail and a little letter an email.
I hate to admit that I can’t follow through with something but it’s so much worse to do too many things half way. I’m learning my limits and I’m changing this resolution to sending everyone an email on their birthday. The idea behind the resolution in the first place was to stay in touch with long distance family and friends outside of holidays.

3. keep our family photo site updated (in the 10 years we’ve had that site, we’ve always been about 3-5 months behind)
I went to start working on this last week and I came across a whole lot of messy code I had left for myself. My husband made it easy to include php files for me (because he is the raddest) making updating so, so, so much easier, but I am going through my folders of pictures to untangle the mess. It should be another few days of sorting through it all before I can actually start adding new photos and videos.

4. start a ‘what we did today’ journal (index card version is cute)
Still doing it, it’s so cute!

5. quit social media that’s not blog related basically I just wanted to quit Facebook
Still not on Facebook! It’s funny though how many people are almost personally offended and ask how we’ll be able to stay in touch without out it! You can just email or text or even use Instagram or Twitter or Tumblr! I have also been asked what triggered the decision to quit, like it had to be some big event and my solution to it is quitting. Really, it all boils down to a pretty simple concept that we all already know. Without Facebook, the shelf life of some friendships (and most acquaintanceships?) would be a lot shorter. It is such a cultural norm to add acquaintances on Facebook from your neighbors to people you haven’t seen in 10 years to randos from the gym and on and on. I had quite a collection of acquaintances that I really didn’t want to have, but every time I deleted someone, I’d get a message from them asking why I deleted them. As if knowing that we haven’t spoken, even online, in years isn’t reason enough.

6. blog 3-5 times a week
Yikes, I only blogged once this week!

7. make a lightbox and get better at food photography
I have been looking online at Home Depot to find some plain tiles to use as backgrounds in food photography. Still need to research more.

8. a portrait of my children, once a week, every week, in 2014
Week One
Week Two
Week Three
Week Four

9. bake a cake every weekend
Week One – Nutella Icebox Cake
Week Two – Orange Creamsicle cake
Week Three – White Chocolate Strawberry cupcakes
Week Four – Pink Lemonade cupcakes
Week Five – Red Velvet cupcakes (with cream cheese icing)
Week Six – Dark Chocolate cake with Strawberry Filling

10. participate in sockdown 2014
I mentioned last update that January’s techniques were lace and intarsia, and that I went with lace since I’m still fighting with epic intarsia socks. I have hardly knitted at all in February – I haven’t even finished January’s socks! Tonight is a marathon knitting fest, if I finish January’s socks this week, I’ll cast on and try to finish February’s socks.

11. finally finish my knitted beekeeper quilt
I have knitted about 10 more puffs for this blanket, maybe another 90 or so to go? I laid out my 360 puffs to see how big the finished blanket would be with just that many and decided I’d need about 100 more. I’ll check again when I have another 100 to add.

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Week One Resolution Check In

California, Domestic, Healthy, Homeschooling, Kids

I thought checking in once a week would be a helpful way to stay on top of my resolutions. Or maybe make me feel like an epic failure. Only time will tell – stay tuned!

1. stay at least one week ahead of our homeschool schedule
School in our district technically doesn’t start until Monday, but I started the littles this past Monday, so goal #1 of being one week ahead of our homeschooling plan is in full effect! Maybe I can get even further ahead at some point so we can take longer breaks? I’m sure they’d love that!

2. celebrate everyone’s birthday (local and long distance) with a card in the mail and a little letter
There are six birthdays in our lives in January. On Monday, I got out cards for the first two – my dad and my good friend Melissa. Yay!

3. keep our family photo site updated (in the 10 years we’ve had that site, we’ve always been about 3-5 months behind)
Ok so when I made this resolution last week, I didn’t realize just how far behind I was with it. The photo section is updated to Jan of last year, the video section is updated to May of last year, the house tours page is updated to 3 houses ago. The mobile galleries and blog pages are totally bare. This week I fixed some code that was making it take longer to make new additions so hopefully I can make some progress next week.

4. start a ‘what we did today’ journal (index card version is cute)
I just got 365 index cards and a date stamper. I’m hunting for the perfect box to put them in still. I was using The Happiness Project but I need a little room to ramble. 😉

5. quit social media that’s not blog related (this is part of a bigger move to be more present in all of my relationships)
I am officially only using social media for the blog. Though to be honest, I am still chatty on Instagram and Twitter with some friends and family, the main objective was to get away from Facebook as the world’s biggest time suck and I accomplished that! It was pretty tricky actually. Facebook doesn’t allow a page (like the one for this blog) to exist without a Facebook user as an admin. I read a lot of blogs explaining different ways to go about doing this, so naturally I thought I knew what I was doing. I converted my personal profile into a ‘page’, and the instructions I was following said that after I did this, I’d be able to merge this page with my existing blog page. Buuuut, I had no such option and was the proud owner of my So Very Domestic’s FB page, and also a page that looked similar but had my name instead. Ugh. I poked around the settings on my personal ‘page’ and changed it’s status to unpublished. This way, I am not on Facebook as a person, but my blog can still be there.

6. blog 3-5 times a week
Today makes 2! This was our first week back doing school and dance and jiu jitsu. Hopefully, I’ll find a groove!

7. make a lightbox and get better at food photography
I have been reading about lightboxes and I love the idea of getting tiles to use for backgrounds and all kinds of fun stuff I want to put into play. I’m still researching and learning.

8. a portrait of my children, once a week, every week, in 2014
Every Saturday morning, I’m going to post the best picture of each kid from that week.

9. bake a cake every weekend
Week 1 – Nutella Icebox Cake

10. participate in sockdown 2014
Sockdown is, essentially, a knitting challenge within the Sock Knitters Anonymous on Ravelry (which is sort of like Facebook for knitters). Each month there are different sock knitting techniques, sock pattern designers and every other month there is a mystery sock (it’s a mystery because you’re given the pattern  but no pictures). For example, this month the techniques are lace and intarsia and the designers are Stephanie van der Linden and Heatherly Walker. I am casting on this afternoon a lacey sock. I think probably this one or maybe this one. Hopefully this will get Work in Progress Wednesday happening again. 😉

11. finally finish my knitted beekeeper quilt
My beekeeper quilt is sitting in a bag, in about 360 pieces. I am not going to like writing that every Friday until I put it together. This weekend, I am going to lay out all the hexipuffs I have knitted and see what it looks like. I don’t think I need more puffs but I will make sure, and if I do I will estimate how many I have to knit and start knitting them. If I don’t need to make more, I will work on piecing it together. So exciting! I started knitting this before we left Canada!

The two other things I’m working on are replacing alcohol with coffee and working on my vitamin levels and cholesterol and 10 days in, I’ve been successful with the coffee over alcohol! Though really, I haven’t had any alcohol since a Christmas party in mid-December. As far as my vitamins and cholesterol levels, I had my bloodwork done on the 2nd and yesterday I saw my doctor about it! Only my D is low, everything else is good so maybe this is a short lived goal haha. I guess it’s about keeping my levels good, my cholesterol is actually higher than it was! I think I got kind of cocky when I first had it checked in July and when it came back good I thought, hey look eating just ok is perfectly healthy for me, and then I started eating even less than just ok. Ahem. I am having my bloodwork done again in April, so I will compare numbers then.

So far, so good I think. I’m off to a decent start. Now, to edit that pesky photo site!

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