Saturday, January 31, 2015

My 2015 Resolutions

A few weeks ago I posted on the Review of My 2014 New Year's Resolutions and today I am following up with my 2015 Resolutions (and crossing my fingers that I keep most of them!) I hinted in my last blog that we have a lot going on in 2015! This year, hopefully, will be the year that we will remember for a long time! (Not sure if it will be a good thing to remember or not!)

So here are my 2015 Resolutions, in no particular order!

BE HEALTHY 

In years past I have always wrote I wanted to "lose weight" to get my pre-baby body back.Well, newsflash (probably more to me then the rest of you) it's not coming back! Gone are the days of tight skin on my tummy and a metabolism that allowed me to eat Jimmy Johns and ice cream multiple days of the week. This year my goal is to be healthy. Don't get me wrong, I am a pretty healthy person and workout 5+ times a week. However, my diet is BAD. I am constantly on this binge eating roller-coaster. You know the one...eating healthy for 4 weeks, then eating HORRIBLE for 3 weeks ...and repeat! I have decided for me and my family (probably against their choice) that we are going to eat healthier for good. What does this mean? It's very simple in three little steps:

1. Eat Out Less- We eat out WAY too much! We enjoy food and going out is a fun thing for us to do! However, it's so expensive and the food is never really honestly that great! The plan is to try to only eat out twice a month (maybe with the occasional Jimmy Johns for lunch.)

2.  Eat Less Sugar- Maybe it's because on New Year's Day I watched a bunch of food documentaries about the amount of sugar our nation is eating, but it was scary! It's very addictive and I know that I have a HUGE problem with sweets! My goal is to keep my sugar intake to only 30 grams a day and lessen the amount of candies, sweet breakfast cereals, and cookies my kids get.
3. Cook With 1-Ingredient Foods- Just like it sounds. It's really pretty simple. I am just going to try to make things from scratch myself more (which I do a lot anyways) and use less of the prepacked food items.

LEARN A NEW SKILL

Do you ever have something you have always wanted to do? Like learn a new language, learn how to fix a car, learn to not hit curbs when you turn corners? Well, 2015 is the year that I am taking up a new skill....or I should say I am learning something new. I find when you become an adult and have kids you end up hitting this wall where you have all these ideas of things you want to learn, but never really make time for them. This year, I am making time for it...uh really we are making time for it. My husband and I are doing learning it together. I really don't want to go into much details, but it's an activity my husband have started learning this last month (without the kids) and it's been a pretty fun time! I'll go into more detail on this later on in the year.

BUILD THIS TABLE

Yes, this was on my last post but this super cute table is from Shanty2Chic (or something very close to it) will be sitting in my dining room at the end of 2015! We have already started cutting the boards for it to make it happen.

BECOME A LANDLORD
My husband and I, for a long time, have been wanting to have a rental property. When a nice looking foreclosure came on the market, we put in an offer on it and it was accepted. The house has quite a bit of work to do on it, but overall is a pretty cute place. I'm super excited to get in there and rip out my THIRD set of shower doors! {see this post} I hate those things! I can't wait to post blogs on all the repairs we do to this place as well. Some day, hopefully soon, this place will be a cute little house for a family to live in....and when I say a family to live in I mean OURS! {Read More Below}

BUILD THIS HOUSE
It's almost been four years since I wrote this post on the house we moved into here in South Dakota. In short, we found our current house on a beautiful acreage with a pond, but the house has a lot of problems. We LOVE our land and after consulting over eight contractors on remodeling our current house, we made the decision to bulldoze and build a new house. The last four years we have saved, invested out time in the land, and waited for the time to come that we felt we should build. I am excited to say that the summer of 2015 we should break ground on building this house. (Barring any unforeseen circumstances.) Our plans are to move into our rental house and build a new one on our current land. We still have a lot of work to do before we can make this dream happen, but it's getting closer!

Well that's all my goals for 2015! I know I am a bit late on posting this blog, but my life is a little crazy right now and I am just happy I was able to write something up before 2016! 



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Friday, January 9, 2015

Review Of My 2014 New Year's Resolutions

It seems like every year I write New Year's resolutions but every year, I never really update the blog on how I did with them.  I have to be honest, most of my resolutions go right out the window within a few months...but doesn't everyones? I wrote this post last year about my New Year's resolutions and I thought now would be a great time to update them before I decide my goals for 2015.

Here are my 2014 New Year's resolutions in review:

1. Lose the last 10 pounds of baby weight.
Here's the same picture that I posted last year and still I find it a little embarrassing, that I gained 60 pounds while pregnant.
I lost most of the baby weight through calorie counting and working out 5 times a week, but the remaining (and elusive) 10 pounds I couldn't get rid of. So in 2014 I changed up my dieting plan and tried some "fad" diets out there. I did Paleo for a month, Power Protein for a month, 3 day Lemonade Diet, and 21 Day Fix Diet. Also, I increased my workouts to 6 times a week. So did I lose the weight....NO! And actually I am up 4 pounds, so that puts me at 14 pounds to lose. I will rant more about this in my 2015 goals. 

2. Build this table.
This super cute table is from Shanty2Chic and I couldn't be more in love with it. We had removed 39 trees from our yard two summers ago and we had some of the trees milled into boards for us. They have been sitting in the basement waiting to get the bark removed. In 2014, we did ABSOLUTELY NOTHING on the boards. However, January 1st hit this year (2015) and my husband and I got after cutting the boards down to size and remove the bark. We are making some progress on this! We are about 75% done with the bark on all the boards and my super sweet neighbor is going to let us borrow her shop tools to plane the rough boards smooth. 

3. Get organized.
Like most Moms, I felt completely unorganized in my life. 
Between all the kid things, the dishes, the toys, the puzzle pieces, the dog, the laundry my life is all sorts of unorganized. I spent the better half of 2014 organizing cupboards, toys, rooms, etc. and it worked out great! I created the cool puzzle organizer for my son's puzzle pieces.
I also created a cool Lego Table for my son's legos, that I have yet to post on. However, all my efforts of organizing this house will be wasted in 2015. More details on this in my 2015 New Year's Resolutions to come. 

4. Be More Present.
My friend Greta over at Modern Garden wrote the goal of being more present in life for 2014. What a great resolution!
Honestly, in 2014 I was more present. I had to be. I have a very precocious 4 year old son who wants to learn all the time. We spend hours with him reading books, doing math problems, writing, making science experiments. He takes a lot of my time and it sort of made me regret not starting him in preschool earlier then age 4. We also have a spirited, very independent daughter that has had her struggles this year with eye surgeries and stomach issues. Life of a mother is always busy right?? In addition to all my mommy duties, I still work from home and 2014 was my busiest year since having kids!

5. Climb the highest free-standing mountain in the world.
Yeah, I know crazy goal right and did it happen in 2014? NO!
I blame the US Department of State for issuing a travel warning to any American citizen going to Kenya and that pesky Ebola for getting in the way. It's an adventure I know my husband will make one of these days, but we would rather be safe then sorry on this trip! 2014 was not without travel, I feel like every year we go more and more places. In 2014, I went to Kansas City, Omaha, Dallas, NYC twice, Vegas, Colorado, Oklahoma, St. Maarten, and California! (Typing all that made me exhausted!) 2015 we have started planning our year trips, but trying to keep it down because of some major life changes we will be facing. Again, more on that in another post.

There's my 2014 New Year's Resolutions updated! As I predicted, many were not accomplished but I feel good that a few were. Even though I didn't accomplish all on my list last year, we did accomplish a lot of projects around the house. We finished the little bit we had left on the fire pit, we dug landscaping trenches around all of our 500ft of  bushes and filled it with wood chips, I added a new 150ft of landscaping to our side yard, we built a dock, and we stocked bass in our pond.

As I said above, I have some big plans for 2015 so stayed tuned for my upcoming post on my 2015 New Year's Resolutions and plans for the year!



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