hairyshoefairy

Goals time again.  I’m sure all of you are thrilled for the update.

• Fit Into My Clothes Again - I haven’t been exercising like I should.  I’m having a hard time making time for it in my day.  I know it’s a problem and I’m trying to figure out a new schedule that will work better for me.  We’ll see how it goes.  I finished nursing Wingnut at the end of May so some of my clothes that were fitting, uh, snuggly up on top are getting back to normal.  I’m not sure if I should be sad or not.  Also, since I no longer have nursing hormones coursing through my body I’m hoping my body will respond more quickly to exercise when I get back to it.  Again, we’ll see.  Feeling a little discouraged about this one right now.
• Organize my recipes and get rid of my magazine collection - I only have 4 more magazines to go through which won’t take long.  I’ve also been getting the recipes I have saved on my computer in order.  Next up, get everything into binders.  Yay for progress!
• Pare down and organize my photos - Squee!  Done!  I finished this just a couple of nights ago.  ODD was gone for a few days for a Youth Conference.  While he was gone I reverted back to my night owl ways and in true HSF fashion I dove into organizing my photos in an all or nothing way, staying up until 2 one night and 4 the next to just get it done already!  To give you an idea of what this really involved, in addition to tossing duplicated and superfluous photos I also looked at every single photo, relabeling them, and organizing them by date.  The last 4-ish years were almost all already organized by date but also I still had to go through over nearly 16,000 photos and sort them to determine what I wanted to keep and toss.  The years preceding that didn’t have as many photos (these are pre-kids years) but they were all disorganized and put in random folders all over the computer.  To add to the work we also recently scanned all the prints we have and I had to organize those as well.  All in all we’re talking about almost 20,000 photos.  It was a huge undertaking but I’m happy to have it done now and it makes finding photos much easier because they’re all in the same place.
• Publish my blog again - Although I found a quick, easy way to do this I decided to wait a little bit until ODD got a raise at the beginning of July.  Now, instead of making roughly $8/hour he’s making $9/hour!  Woo!  Anyway, at the same time blog2print was also having a deal for 15% off which was nice.  I printed my blog sans comments and the past two years were still roughly 250 pgs.  The photos are smaller than the ones I had printed through QOOP but I don’t mind and I’m so happy to have them in hard copy.  I ordered them in hardback and they were around $100 each.  The only thing I was kind of sad about what they didn’t have an option where I could design the full cover myself.  Not really a big deal, though.  I’m thinking I need to get my first two years redone now so they all match.  I love looking at them all together.  How cool to have four years of our lives in print!

• Sew at least one project each month - I can’t remember if I posted about May’s project but I made a little make-up bag for my mom for Mother’s Day.  Now both Teeny and Kermit want one too so I need to get some time to sew them up.  They don’t take long, I just need to do it.  For June I made a new skirt for myself.  I still need to add some big, red rick rack to it but you get the idea.  I also went to a quilting shop hop last month and bought a great new pattern so I can make a jacket for Peanut this fall.  I’m very excited about it but I’ll post more about it when the time comes.

Over all I’m making pretty good progress on my goals.  I’m so happy to finally be completely finished with two of them!  Now I just need to get myself in gear with exercising which will probably always be a constant struggle while I have little kids who like to “help” if I exercise while they’re awake.  All in all, though, not too shabby.

It’s time again for me to reassess my goals.  I didn’t do much with them at all through all of April since I was out of town basically the first 11 days.  After that I was just a slacker.  ODD started his Internal Medicine rotation the week after I got back and with the upheaval in our schedules I never really got back on track after our vacations.  Even this first week of May I’m still not really back on track yet.  ODD has only one more week of this rotation so I’m hoping once he has a more consistent schedule again I’ll be able to get back to it in full force.

• Fit into my clothes again - This is one goal I’m doing really well with.  I’m back to my pre-pregnancy weight again and almost back to my pre-pregnancy shape.  I’d still like to lose a little more (though I’m sure the entire bag of Gardettos I ate this evening won’t help in that plight) and will keep working on that.  In addition to working out I decided to change something about my diet that really seemed to help.  I try not to eat anything after 9 pm.  Obviously with the bag of Gardettos at midnight I didn’t follow through tonight but I’m usually good about it.  I still eat pretty much what I normally eat but by not eating late at night I’m not consuming calories then not burning them off because I’m sleeping.
• Organize my recipes and get rid of magazine collection - This, again, took a backseat because of my getting off track thing.  I was able to work on it a little but not as much as I’d like.
• Pare down my photos - I’m doing fairly well with this one.  The process is slow because I’m also renaming everything as I go as well.  It’s a nice way to unwind at night, though, while I watch a movie or something.  Again, it isn’t as much as I’d like, but I am making progress.  The other thing that took my time away from this was redesigning my blog.  I only have so many kid-free hours in the day so I have to pick and choose how I spend that time and I was more motivated to redesign than weed through photos.  Now that the redesign is done I’ve been getting back to it.
• Sew at least one project each month - My March project was Peanut’s Easter dress.  It’s not my favorite thing I’ve made but I still like it.  As for April, I totally dropped the ball.  I still have another pillowcase to refashion into a spring dress for Peanut but haven’t managed to get it done yet and what’s more is I haven’t even touched my sewing machine since finishing the Easter clothes.  I do have a project for May that I’ve been thinking about for a while.  It’s a cosmetics bag for my mom for Mother’s day.  I’ve been thinking about how I want to make it for a while and just need to actually get it done now.  It shouldn’t take long and I’m hoping to tackle it tomorrow after ODD gets home so he can sleep entertain the kids while I sew without having Wingnut interrupting me every five seconds as he’s apt to do when I try to actually get something accomplished.  He’s the sweetest, yummiest boy, but not especially helpful when I’m trying to focus on something.
• Publish my blog again - I discovered such happy news about this!  I don’t have to use Blurb after all.  I like Blurb for some things; like designing a book from scratch.  My issue is, with my blog, I have several hundred pages and have already put all this effort into formating it for my blog.  I don’t really want to do it all again for every single post which is what I’ve been spending all my time doing whenever I work on it.  It’s frustrating and tedious.  Tracy M posted about wanting to print hers again and asked for suggestions and somebody mentioned Blog2Print.  It’s basically what BlogPrinting was like (which I used for my first two years) which is ideal for me so I’ve decided to drop the whole idea of Blurb for my blog book (I’m still using it for a couple of other projects) and am going straight for Blog2Print since it’s what I really wanted in the first place - slurp and go.  When I looked around online for something to use last year I couldn’t find anything that did what BlogPrinting had done and was getting so frustrated.  I’m so happy I found out about Blog2Print before I got too far into Blurb.  It’s much more my style for a project like this.

So that’s where I am now.  Yeah, I have a lot I still need to work on and really just need to suck it up and get back on track.  I’m hoping once ODD’s schedule gets better I’ll be able to pull myself together more regularly and plan my time better so I’ll have better things to report next time.

It’s been almost 2 months since I posted my destinations (goals) for the year.  I thought it was about time make a little stop to check out where I’m going and make sure I’m still on the road to getting there.

• Fit into my clothes again - I’ve missed a few days here and there but for the most part I’m keeping up with my workout goals.  For cardio I’ve been running on a treadmill.  I’m doing the treadmill as opposed to running outside for a couple of reasons.  1, It’s the middle of winter so it’s freaking cold outside, and 2, on the treadmill I’m better able to track my speed and time and I’m more likely to keep going instead of taking rests.  Let me just state right now, I hate running.  People talk about getting a runners high and how it’s a time they can focus on things and clear their thoughts, etc.  Yeah, for me?  Not so much.  I still have some anxiety left over from pregnancy.  It isn’t nearly as bad as it was when I was pregnant but it is still there so when I have time to just think about things, if I don’t have something specific I’m trying to figure out it isn’t a good thing for me.  The time I spend running is a time like that.  So I pulled out my good old MP3 player and began listening while I ran.  I rather enjoyed it and would sing along as I ran.  It didn’t sound great because, well, I was running but I didn’t mind.  ODD did, though.  He said if I was still able to carry a tune well enough he could tell what it was I probably wasn’t working hard enough.  So I tried reading while I ran.  Can I just say, it isn’t very convenient to read while holding a book and bouncing up and down.  So what I’ve finally settled on is watching things on my computer while I run.  Sometimes I catch up on episodes of The Office or House but lately I’ve been watching the recent BBC Emma.  BTW, if you haven’t seen it you must.  It’s lovely.  Watching something while I run makes running much more enjoyable which, in turn, makes me much more likely to keep it up.  As an aside, one night I was running when Fuffy came over for a visit.  ODD let him in and told him where I was.  When he saw me running he laughed and said, “You’re running!”  Doesn’t that just say it all?  I thought so.  For strength training I’ve been doing some weight lifting.  Stop laughing, Lacey, I know you’re probably remembering that hysterical 5 lb weight incident our Sophomore year.  Wow that was pathetic.  Anyway, it’s true, I am doing some good weight lifting and I love it.  I never thought I’d say that but it’s true.  I use light weights and do lots of reps because I’m not trying to build huge muscles.  I also do a lot of ab work.  The first few times I did it I was sore for the next 3 or 4 days and my legs were jelly.  I still felt good, though, and love feeling like I’m getting stronger.  As for my weight it is going down.  It isn’t super fast which is kind of annoying to me since I like instant gratification, but it’s enough that I’ve noticed.  I still don’t feel comfortable wearing all my regular clothes but I am feeling better about wearing more of them.  One night while complaining to ODD about not losing weight fast enough for my taste he pointed out that with the weight training I’m building a lot of muscle which, as we all know, weighs more than fat.  I guess I’m okay with that.  Plus, if i’m losing it slow and steady and building muscles along the way I’m more likely to maintain it.  Another thing I realized is I’m still nursing so I probably still have some hormones bouncing around helping me hold on to some weight so I can feed my babe.  I don’t know how scientifically accurate that is but it makes sense in my brain.  I am only about 5 lbs away from my pre-pregnancy weight so that paired with slowly working my way back into my pre-pregnancy clothes makes me happy.
• Organize my recipes and get rid of my magazine collection - See below.
• Pare down my photos - See below.
• Publish my blog again - I’m lumping these in together because they all suffered for the same reason.  I was really good about all of these in January until I got a new laptop.  Our old desktop finally kicked the bucket and the one laptop shared between ODD and me was making us both crazy.  We also like to back up all our stuff on Carbonite but didn’t have enough space on just the one computer to fit all of it so after finding out we were getting a nice tax return we decided to splurge a little and get a second laptop.  It’s been awesome but required some time to transfer everything over.  I’m a bit anal retentive about the way things are filed and now that I have my own computer I can do it my own way without having somebody else move things around without telling me.  So instead of spending time working on some of these things goals I took a break from them for a while so I could spend that time getting my computer the way I want it.  It’s pretty much where I want it now so I’m hoping to get back on track with my original goals.
• Sew at least one project each month - Sewing with Wingnut has been hard.  I can’t remember how I did it with Peanut but Wingnut doesn’t like it when I sew.  Part of the problem is his crib currently resides in the sewing room.  This makes it hard to sew while he naps or sleeps (when I suspect I sewed when Peanut was a baby) so I end up trying to do it when he’s awake and fussing at me.  Because of this it takes me a million times longer to sew anything than it would if I did it while he was sleeping.  I’m still trying though, and being more selective about my sewing projects since they each take so much time.  January’s sewing project can be seen here and February’s can be found here.  For March I’m planning to make Peanut an Easter dress.  Despite some of my frustrations actually sewing I’ve liked taking the time to really plan some of my projects before diving right in.

Though I decided to take a break from a few of my goals in order to get my computer organized I’m still feeling really good about my progress.  With two months down already I think the things I’m choosing to shoot for are do-able and by tracking the things I’m doing on my blog I feel like I’m being held accountable.  I’m proud of the work I’ve done so far and have every intention of continuing.

I’ve been thinking about this project for several months now.  It’s based on a bag Teeny has.  For February’s project I’m planning another one with a different appliqué.  I’m making one for myself and one for Teeny for her birthday.  Don’t worry.  We’ve already talked about it so it’s not a surprise or anything.

I’ve been wanting to move back to a purse instead of hauling around a massive diaper bag so this seemed like a good project for me.  It took me forever to track down some of the hardware and I looked around for just the right fabric and was even able to use a coupon for it so it was a pretty good deal.  I considered a couple of bag shapes and styles before settling on this one.

My new purse.  It’s already packed with all my crap but it all fits so I’m happy with it.  I’m considering making a few little bags to go inside, like a coin purse and a little bag for my lotion, sunscreen, hand sanitizer and that sort of things.  Perhaps that will be a project for another month.

I wanted the lining to make me smile when I opened it up so I chose a bright green zebra print.

The strap is adjustable, it has three big, deep pockets, and a boxy bottom.  It makes me happy, and now I don’t feel like a big geek dragging a diaper bag everywhere regardless of whether I have kids with me or not because I’m too lazy to move all my junk from one bag to another every time I go out.

I didn’t include my goals in my last post partly because I didn’t want to make an already long post even longer but also because I was still fleshing out my plans and wanted to have them straight in my brain before posting them for all to see.  Now that I’ve got them figured out it’s time to share.

• Fit Into My Clothes Again - I know “exercise” is, like, the biggest cliche of all New Year’s resolution cliches but there it is.  Since moving from California over a year and a half ago I haven’t really gotten back into a good exercise habit despite a few half hearted attempts.  Some of that is because I was pregnant and, well, during pregnancy I’m either not moving so I don’t barf or I’m not moving because I’m so big it’s unbelievably awkward and uncomfortable.  Wingnut is now eight months old.  I’ve been nursing which I believe helped me lose a lot of the baby fat but I seem to have reached the point where that luxury is gone and I’m still left with an extra 10-15 pounds I didn’t have before getting pregnant.  I can still actually get into most of my clothes but they don’t fit well, make me uncomfortable quickly, and they pull in all the wrong places.  I’d like to be able to wear all my clothes again and feel confident doing it.  Yes, this goal is pure vanity and I am not ashamed to admit it.  I’m not really overweight but I have acquired a bit of a tummy and am not in good shape anymore.  Getting back to my pre-pregnancy weight would be great but I’d like to go even a little further.  I used to spend 20+ hours a week rehearsing for shows and when I wasn’t doing that I was taking a couple of classes that kept me moving.  When I went to beauty school I stopped doing that sort of thing and my weight fluctuation went up about 10 pounds.  By working out again I’d like to get back to my pre-beauty school weight and shape and once I do I’m going to treat myself to a new head-to-toe outfit.
• My Plan of Action - ODD is setting a similar goal (for different reasons) so this is something we’re going to work at together.  I think working together will help us both stay motivated.  We’re planning to take turns every other night doing cardio while the other does strength training.  We’re planning to do our workouts after Peanut is in bed but we already know that is going to have to change when ODD begins his ER rotation because he’ll have late nights for those five weeks.  In that case we’ll change to earlier mornings.
• Organize My Recipes and Get Rid of My Magazine Collection - I know these are seemingly unrelated but in my world they are.  A few years ago I typed up a bunch of the recipes I had floating around on scraps of paper, printed them off, and put them in page protectors in a binder along with printouts of recipes I’ve collected from The Food Network, Allrecipes, Epicurious, and lovely online friends who are kind enough to share.  Since then I’ve printed off even more recipes as well as cut a bunch out of magazines and they’re floating around my kitchen, some loose, some in folders.  I have several years of Real Simple, the occasional Martha Stewart Living, and many random copies of Better Homes and Gardens in bookshelves just taking up space.  I know there are more recipes in these magazines I’d like to get out so I can recycle the rest of the magazine and free up some valuable shelf space.  Once all these are pulled out I’d like to sort them in some way and get them into binders so I can easily find and use them.
• My Plan of Action - I’m going to set the timer and spend an hour each week looking through as many magazines as I can in that time.  I will cut out the recipes I want and put them in a file.  Once a magazine has been looked through I will either throw it in the recycling or put it in the craft closet to be used for collages at a later time.  When all my magazines have been perused I will spend my hour sorting through the clipped recipes, organizing them, and putting them in binders so they can be put to good use.
• Sew At Least One Project Each Month - My sewing motivation goes in waves.  Sometimes I spend days or weeks in my sewing room working on little projects.  Other times my sewing machine will sit for months just gathering dust.  I want to make at least one project each month.  It doesn’t have to be big.  One month when I’m more motivated it may be a quilt or a dress for Peanut.  Another month when I’m less motivated it may be just a little needlebook.  My point is to keep my eyes open for things I want to try so I can continue building my sewing skills and add new methods and tricks to my mental sewing basket.
• My Plan of Action - At the beginning of each month I will spend some time planning out what I want to make.  Throwing things together is still perfectly acceptable but I also want to look at the supplies I have and use some of them for projects instead of just letting them look pretty on a shelf.  If I need something I do not already have I will go to the fabric store with that project in mind.  I will also purchase at least one high quality pattern this year and give it my best shot.  I will publish my creations on this blog whether they work out or not.
• Pare Down My Photos - ODD and I have had a digital camera since 2004.  We took quite a few photos but nothing compared to what we began taking when Peanut was born in 2006.  Usually I’m in such a hurry when I dump my card on the computer I don’t look at my photos very closely and, going back through, I find I have many almost-duplicates that could easily be deleted without really losing anything.  We have a big hard drive but even so it’s getting rather full.  Since photos can take up a lot of space I’d like to weed out any photos we don’t need.
• My Plan of Action - I will set a timer for 30 minutes once a week and sort through our photos which are filed by date, weeding out any pictures we can do without.  I will not be a computer pack rat.
• I Will Publish My Blog - Again - December wrapped up my fourth year of blogging.  Of my four years I have printed two. I used a company connected with QOOP called blogprinting.com.  It was simple and fast.  All I had to do was select the dates I wanted, choose a size, do the cover, and pay the money.  It was easy peasy and I was happy with the product.  Last year when I went to publish I discovered blogprinting.com was no longer in business.  After looking around I discovered QOOP could still print it but I had to export it, turn it into a PDF, upload it to their site, and do a few other things to get it all together.  I also considered using Blurb.  When I first looked they weren’t able to slurp my blog because I use Wordpress.  After a while I received an update telling me they had changed that and it could be slurped after all.  So I slurped it.  Then discovered it would take a considerable amount of time because I’d have to change all my photos, rearrange all my stuff, and choose different page layouts for every. single. page. of the book.  Being tired and pregnant I was not willing to devote that amount of time or energy to a book so it didn’t happen.  Now I have two years that aren’t published and I’d like to get it done.  My first two books are pretty simple - almost like I printed my blog out on nice, semi-glossy 8×10 paper and had it perfect bound.  It’s great for what it is but I think I’m ready to devote some time to turning my archives into really nice hardback books through Blurb.
• My Plan of Action - The two most recent years are my priority but I’m hoping to also re-do my first two years so they are all the same because I’m anal retentive about things like that.  I will set a timer for 45-60 minutes at least three days every week during Peanut’s quiet time and use that time to work on my blog books.  I will need to upload my original photos into the books because the ones I post on Flickr and the ones I posted ages ago on Blogger have been compressed so they load more quickly online and because of that have lost some resolution.  I have come to consider this part of my family’s history so I think it deserves some time and effort.

Now that this is all written out it seems a bit daunting to me because most of these things can only be accomplished a little at a time.  Usually I’m an all or nothing kind of girl.  When I work on a project typically I begin it and do pretty much nothing else until it is finished.  Anything that gets in my way is just an annoyance and that includes eating, sleeping, and unfortunately taking care of my family.  Honestly, I’d like to spend an entire weekend with no children or husband around and just devote the whole time to organizing my recipes or photos but that is not really something I can do at this point in my life.  I’m still a wife and mother and still have things I’m responsible for.  This method of doing things little by little is going to be a big stretch for me but I think if I can keep myself motivated and see the progress I’m making, as little as it may be, I can reach my goals.  After all, by small and simple things are great things brought to pass.