Resolution #8 is to post a portrait of my children, once a week, every week, in 2014.

I am trying to choose one picture of each of them that hopefully shows what their week was like

On the lawn of our local library, middle school is so much reading!

This was taken on the way to her first photo shoot. Super fun!

Sometimes, just sometimes, she sleeps.

Ha! A day late again. 😉

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 you know…

1. stay at least one week ahead of our homeschool schedule stay on top of our new homeschool schedule and attend social events
We have been struggling with wanting to send our kids to school so they have a ‘normal childhood experience’ and with wanting to keep them home because we have seen the benefits (both academically and socially believe it or not) that have come from homeschooling. We have finally found a hybrid alternative with an online virtual school. We finished up our last day with the LAUSD’s ISP program on Friday and we start the new program today! We have chosen this both because while the kids are still at home and have our full support, they are lead by teachers online which is especially helpful for our oldest who is in his last year of middle school and will soon be tackling subjects I’m a little rusty with. Trigonometry, anyone? And also because this program has field trips and social events with the whole group which is really the only thing lacking in the program we are were using. There is a high school graduation ceremony and even proms, sporting events and dances. Who knows if they will want to do any of that, but having the option is what matters. I’m changing this resolution because as far as I can tell, you can’t get ahead of schedule with this program. If one of the kids understands a concept already or catches on right away, they are able to move on to the next concept. Once we start I will be better able to know how to word this goal!

2. celebrate everyone’s birthday (local and long distance) with a card in the mail and a little letter
I think I will make a little page to keep track of the birthdays and the cards we send out to see it coming together. Last week we sent out cards to my dad and Melissa. This week we sent out cards to my husband’s long time friend Jon and the first friend I made online (waaay back in 2001) Nichole. I should note that these four always get birthday cards. I am usually really good about this until sometime in March or April. Then I tend to totally forget about it. I know, terrible! So far, so good!

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)
It is so embarrassingly behind! I haven’t touched it at all this year. :/

4. start a ‘what we did today’ journal (index card version is cute)
I’ve been keeping up with just writing a line about what we did each day! This will be especially cute next year so we can look back and see what we were doing a year ago. Cute! I got index cards and a date stamp, and have been pretty good about making notes every day.

5. quit social media that’s not blog related basically I just wanted to quit Facebook
I currently only use social media as ‘soverydomestic’ and so most of what I post and do is blog related (though really, since this blog is mostly about what I make and do, it’s kind of the same thing).

6. blog 3-5 times a week
I blogged 4 times last week!

7. make a lightbox and get better at food photography
Next week? I didn’t even think of this much this week.

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

9. bake a cake every weekend
Week Three – Neapolitan Cake

10. participate in sockdown 2014
This month’s techniques are lace and intarsia – and since I’m still working on my Ravenclaw Pride socks, I went with lace. The pattern, Anna, is a 10 row repeat with something a little different on the first row! You knit two stitches together, leave them on the left hand needle and then knit just the first stitch and slip both new stitches off. What? Really simple and looks good. It has a 33 row cuff which is something that would probably dissuade me from wanting to knit these socks, but once I saw the cuff coming together I loved it!

11. finally finish my knitted beekeeper quilt
I have knitted about 10 more puffs for this blanket

I also planned to replace alcohol with coffee, I thought it was a great idea and then my husband who drinks alcohol only once every few years, suggested we start having a drink with dinner. We had both recently read about a slew of health benefits to having one drink a day. So maybe we’ll alter that to having one a day and try to make it fun? I should note that 27 days into the new year and neither of us has had any alcohol so who knows which way we’ll go with that.

Resolution #8 is to post a portrait of my children, once a week, every week, in 2014.

I am trying to choose one picture of each of them that hopefully shows what their week was like

Caught having fun with his sisters in the backyard! Hazah!

We could all learn about life balancing from this one! Busy dance and school schedules and she makes time for fun.

She ‘invented’ a game where she throws a ball through a hula hoop held up by a sibling. So cute!

Only a day late on this project this week! Progress!!

Ack. Our tiny dancer had her first dance competition this past weekend so that’s what I was up to instead of blogging. Worth every second of all the planning, for sure!

Resolution #8 is to post a portrait of my children, once a week, every week, in 2014.

I haven’t done my resolution check in for last week either. If I don’t do it later today, I think I may just skip it. I’ll aim for the accountability of getting it done today. 🙂

A portrait of my children, once a week, every week, in 2014 – Week Two
I am trying to choose one picture of each of them that hopefully shows what their week was like

When he’s not feeling it, and I can’t get a decent picture, he’s stuck with one of him and his sister. 😉

All her hard work and training really paid off. She won first place for her jazz solo at Miss Dance Drill Team California.

This little lady is learning to read. Watching her start to understand and see it clicking is incomparable.

I reeeeally hope I develop the habit of posting these every Saturday instead of Monday!

Resolution #8 is to post a portrait of my children, once a week, every week, in 2014. I took the pictures in the first week and then totally forgot about posting them on Saturday. Ahem.

A portrait of my children, once a week, every week, in 2014 – Week One
I am trying to choose one picture of each of them that hopefully shows what their week was like

Our oldest is on the move so much it’s hard to get an actual ‘portrait’, but this is what his week was like

Our tiny dancer is seriously devoted to her training

Our littlest is madly in love with this baby doll she got for Christmas, she brings it all over South Bay with us

I hope I get into the swing of this self imposted challenge and remember to post these every Saturday!

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!

I’m a big fan of setting goals and working hard to achieve them. Some of the biggest goals I’ve had and achieved were not resolutions at all, but I do love the ‘fresh start’ feeling of January, even though it’s already 1/4 of the way through the school year and doesn’t really actually change anything. Ahem. I love January! Resolutions are fun and I usually set a few for the blog and for my knitting and so far I’ve come pretty close to doing what I set out to do. The only times I really fall short of the goals set in January is when I unexpectedly set harder goals halfway through the year and kick my own butt to reach them. You know, like moving to a different country or homeschooling.

Two years ago, I listed all of my goals for the year (2012) in my blog sidebar and achieved almost all of them. Last year, I blogged a list of goals for 2013 but I didn’t add them to the sidebar and I mostly didn’t do them. I think I need the visual reminder. This year I will add them to the sidebar and use that to keep track of them. 🙂

I think I will even set aside a day once a week where I post about them and how it is going. I have noticed that while most of my new visitors are not so into commenting, you’re there and knowing you’re reading is helpful motivation.

Personal Goals
1. stay at least one week ahead of our homeschool schedule
2. celebrate everyone’s birthday (local and long distance) with a card in the mail and a little letter
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)
4. start a ‘what we did today’ journal (index card version is cute)
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)

Professional Goals
6. blog 3-5 times a week
7. make a lightbox and get better at food photography

Fun Stuff
8. a portrait of my children, once a week, every week, in 2014 (inspired by Miss James)
9. bake a cake every weekend (hoping to match my record in 2009 when I baked more than one pie every weekend)
10. participate in sockdown 2014 aka knit as many socks as possible (technically it goes August to August, but you can jump in whenever)
11. finally finish my knitted beekeeper quilt, I have all my puffs knitted I just have to piece it together

Miscy changes that are not really resolutions…
I’m replacing alcohol with coffee this year. Which really isn’t much of a stretch for me since I used to never drink at all and now my California bestie is more interested in coffee than cocktails!
My doctor gives me a print out of my blood work, which is new for me as none of my other doctors have ever done that, and I’m a little obsessed with stats, so I’m working on my vitamin levels and cholesterol (it’s not bad but it would be nice to make it even better).

I hope you all had a wonderful New Years Eve full of whatever makes you happy. Over the years we have always either celebrated with my family, my husband’s family or just our little family at home. Since we’ve been living away from our families, we have been adding to and changing our traditions a little, and this year we added to something new we started last year. Last year we made all the kid’s favorite finger foods and got some miniature fancy glasses and had a cute party. The kids counted down to midnight on the East coast and were tucked in bed sleeping long before midnight local time. This year the two littlest wanted to stay up to midnight, so we came up with hourly activities to keep them busy. It was easily the best New Years Eve yet!

We started our countdown activities at 5pm and did something different every hour until midnight!

At 5, we made these countdown cupcakes with Twix clock hands. We used the Stir and Bake Chocolate Cake recipe that we all love so much (especially me because it’s so easy and always comes out right), and just some plain buttercream frosting.

At 6, we made a glittery photobooth and took about a zillion pictures. Then the girls got their American Girl dolls out and took a zillion more – I think it’s fair our son quit with the pictures as soon as the dolls came out!

7 was time for making (and breaking) the New Years crackers. All you do is wrap a cardboard tube with tissue paper, toss a few treats inside and tie the ends with curing ribbon. Each cracker maaaaybe takes 2 minutes to make and when you pull on the ends to open them the candy goes flying. They were a serious hit!

8 was party hat time! To make sure they were sturdier than the construction paper party hats of our past, we taped white paper on top of dollar store birthday party hats! Then the girls attacked them with pom poms and metallic sharpies. We attached them to cute F21 hair bands to keep them in place.

At 9, we made the traditional Greek New Years Eve cake Vasilopita. Growing up, I knew that most Greek families did this tradition because all of our extended Greek family did, but I didn’t know that who the pieces were cut for was up to the family matriarch. I cut the cake similarly to the way my mother does it, starting with the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Then it’s for all the impoverished, the suffering and then it starts with the oldest in our family (my husband’s grandmother) and down to the littlest. Since Chris’ family is really big, we cut for the ‘houses’ so his cousin, her husband and their new baby got a single piece. Once you’ve cut for all your family you move on to close friends. Last year, the impoverished got the coin in our cake and this year Jesus got it! My husband wants to keep this coin and always use it as the cake coin. Another new tradition!

We set out the dessert spread at 10, most of which the girls helped me make. We had the Vasilopita, mint chocolate pudding, vanilla pudding and really serious Oreo truffles. The truffles were big, covered in milk chocolate and sprinkled with edible golden glitter.

Not pictured was the 11pm picture of the kids tearing open their Christmas presents from their grandparents, delayed over a week by storms on the East coast and customs wanted to have a little look as well, but it worked out nicely for them to have a second little present opening session, these cute nightgowns are from Grandma and Grandpa! Midnight itself was toasted with ginger ale in plastic champagne glasses and honestly? It was perfect. Happy New Year!

Stuff from this post: Gold Curling Ribbon, 11″ Gold Balloons, Gold Metallic Fringe Curtain, Gold Foil Baking Cups, Tiny Pom Poms, Metallic Sharpies aaaaand I read them this book for a week before New Years and they got really into it (The Night Before New Year’s)

One of the things I really love about the date difference between Canadian and American Thanksgiving is that since American Thanksgiving is after Halloween the holiday season kicks off with Halloween and keeps rolling until New Years! So fun! In Canada since Thanksgiving is before Halloween there is sort of a whole lot of nothing going on in November and then BAM, Christmas. I always say I’m going to leisurely knit my Christmas projects throughout the fall and be done comfortably before Christmas, and then I tend to knit it all in December. Not so awesome. I’ve already made a decent dent in my list!

Halloween really ran away from me! My aunt came to visit from Canada and we ran all over LA showing her some of our favorite places and had such a blast I was exhausted and half asleep before reaching my bed each night. Tiring but so so fun. Our second Halloween in California was spent the same as our first, in Manhattan Beach and it was just as much fun as last year – if not more so since we know where we are going now. Our girls went as princesses and our son went as a Minecraft creeper! Since all of us play Minecraft it was an especially silly costume for him to wear!

We had a Halloween party with my girls’ besties, we made caramel apples, pumpkin donuts with eyeballs, creepy soft green cookies (with more eyeballs), and played so many silly Halloweeny games!

Now we are gearing up for Thanksgiving! I’m testing out some fun and festive recipes I’ve never tried and I will also make some tried and true family favorites and I have about a dozen bread recipes I have been waiting to try. It’s hard to get into bread baking when it’s 80 degrees, and now that it’s cooling off a bit I’ll have a chance to make a few loaves. I’m also hoping to knit some leaves and pumpkins to hang in the window, this is our second autumn in California and while I love, love, love life without seasons, not going through them makes me want to decorate seasonally. So funny to me, as I have never really had the desire to decorate with leaves or snowflakes or anything. I don’t want to actually deal with real leaves or snow though!

Have a story of a time you were Fierce? Want to help Clever Girls Collective support women and girls to be Fierce? Visit www.clevergirlscollective.com/fiercefund to learn more about this girl-power project and vote for the Fierce Fund Grant Winner!

I’m adding another little break to the Halloween countdown going on the blog today to talk about something a little different. Being fierce! The Fierce Fund was created after Clever Girls Co-Founder Sheila Bernus Dowd, was diagnosed with Stage 2 breast cancer. Not only did Shelia kick cancer’s butt, she did it while still working at Clever Girls, and carrying on with the rest of her busy life! This week, some of us ‘Clever Girls’ are posting about a time when we were fierce to bring awareness to our Traveling Blue Wig project! Search #fiercefund on Twitter to find more stories about being fierce!

When I was selected to blog about a time I was fierce, I wasn’t sure what I had to bring to the table, especially since this whole project began because of a woman dealing with breast cancer. I mean, that’s pretty heavy, right? I almost wrote about putting our lives on pause and moving to California for a few months (that has turned into 18 months and counting), because I had to give up the idea of planning and knowing what was happening next and just embrace what life was handing me each day. I scrapped that because people move to a new country all the time and then I almost wrote about homeschooling because I hadn’t intended to homeschool and then this move happened and I started with a child in 1st grade and a child in 6th grade and one about to start pre-K and now we’re almost two years into it. But guys? You know all about that stuff already and I can give you more than that. I like to keep it light and fun around here so I don’t bring it up, but here goes.

After I had Wee One #3 I slowly started developing postpartum anxiety, the lesser known, (and lesser supported) sister of postpartum depression. Everyone knows about PPD, our doctors all ask us endless questions at the 6 week checkup to make sure we’re doing well, but no one talks about the anxiety. I have always been a very, very chill person. I mean, I know I go about a zillion miles a minute and I’m always busy and you know, probably a little intense with all the coffee and multitasking, but when it comes to freaking out, or worrying (about anything), I just didn’t. So when I started panicking about every. little. thing. I knew something was up, but honestly it didn’t hit me right away.

Our first day home from the hospital, I felt really excited. Christmas Eve excited, even. My husband was hyped too, so I didn’t think it was weird. A week later, I was still roller coaster pumped and while he was obviously happy to have a new baby he wasn’t jumping the couch about it. My excitement slowly turned into worry and I would get really freaked out about stuff that I knew to be non issues. We had a hearing test at 1 month, and from the time she was a week old until the morning of her appointment, I was filled with dread about her having a hearing problem. Dread. My baseline is way, way calmer than that normally. The year before she was born, our oldest had a growth hormone deficiency test and I was moderately concerned. No dread then. That feeling you get when you lose sight of your child for a second? The way the pit of your stomach drops? I was feeling that every day! Shortly after the hearing test, I started having random physical symptoms and went to my doctor 3 times for various (imaginary) ailments before my doctor suggested that I might have an anxiety problem. My bestie, Talea, had some history with this so I texted here when I was having an anxiety attack and she totally relieved me, she came over and we talked, I felt less crazy (but still pretty crazy) and this whole time she’s been there and made me feel less crazy. The physical symptoms were weird like tingly hands and feet, or I’d feel light headed or like I couldn’t get a deep breath. She helped me either ignore or otherwise take the fear out of some symptoms, which made my life so much easier to live and then my doctor did a complete physical and I was fine. Perfectly healthy, nothing to fret about, all the physical things going on that I thought were unrelated issues are all just anxiety. I decided not to take anything for it, because even though it was so, so weird I felt it was manageable. My bestie was amazing at dealing with the random-hour texts about a tingly foot or tight chest or insomnia or whatever, and having someone I could count on that also totally understood what I was going through made it even more manageable.

The anxiety lasted about a year at the same level of intensity and it. sucked. It was manageable because I knew I was fine and that kept me from running back to my doctor all the time. I didn’t want to wait this out at home, hiding even though some days I really wanted to. I still ran around Toronto and took them to all the fairs and dinosaur exhibits and library activities and karate and gymnastics and the Y and and and….I put one foot in front of the other and just did it. At the time I was just doing what I had to do, and because I didn’t want to just ‘get through’ it, I tried to slow down and really step into the moment. I never thought in the middle of that, that I was being ‘fierce’. I had a wonderful support network of friends and family that all were there for me in different ways and I have no doubt that I needed every single encouraging person in my life to rally and they totally did. Thanks guys. 🙂

Then it got a whole lot better, I kept declaring myself ‘70% better’ and after a little under a year of that, I felt even better and that’s where I was until we moved here. The adventure to get down here from Central Ontario was pretty high strung, I think that’s to be expected on a trip like that, and once we found a place and got settled, I felt totally and completely chill. I have been fluctuating between feeling better and aaaalmost feeling better since we have settled into a full life and busy routine here. When I look back to that first year, I’d happily take almost feeling better forever than ever feeling the days-long dread again. I see now that while living under the great Piglet Cloud of Anxiety, making school lunches, running around Toronto with three kids under 8, making adventures for the kids on the regular and keeping up with chores were all fierce, even if (maybe especially since) I didn’t know it at the time.