willette's joy of love: day 1

Read about the joy of LOVE here.

Day one: take a picture of your loved one doing the thing they do.

Okay, so this was a dud. Nothing about February 1 was normal. I had something important to do in the morning, so there was no time for pictures. Then I worked late. Then my sister showed up when I got home. The only thing I really saw my husband do that day was do dishes, so I snapped a few photos. In my pictures you can't really tell what he's doing and the lighting is all wrong, but I figure it just leaves room for improvement.

Here's my day one photo:

January down!

2011 is 1/12 of the way over, so I wanted to update my progress (or lack thereof).

1) Take a photography class: I'm about 2/3 of the way through my photography class. I am learning a lot. I need to put what I learn into practice more. I have also signed up for willete's joy of love online class, which runs the month of February. More on that tonight, hopefully.

2) Take pictures of the kids every month: well, I'm doing this, but still struggling to get the kids to cooperate. I have some great shots of them individually, but not a fantastic one of them together. Since E started crawling at the beginning of January, it has been so hard to get her to sit still or even stay anywhere near her brother. She is off and into everything! I plan to upload some pics tonight from home

3) Create - and actually stick to - a budget: I created a budget, and then blew it out of the water. It's not tragic because we also sold a car that we don't need to replace. The main cause of us going over budget was both of the kids outgrowing their clothes at the same time. I feel like I am doing better at keeping spending down though.

4) Plant a vegetable garden in the spring: Have the broccoli started, but I may have screwed something up. The Square Foot Gardening book that I am using said that you could plant 5 or so seeds per cup when you start the seeds. I tried that, but I put 5 seeds all in the same little hole in the cup, so I think they are too close together. I am going to try to salvage at least one of that plants this weekend by moving it into another cup. I am not too hopeful since I am a first-timer, but we'll see how it goes. I am also going to start my onion seeds this weekend. Hopefully they will fare better.

5) Build a bookshelf for E's room: I haven't started this yet. Still haven't finished the ledges I am building for the kitchen. We have all the supplies needed for that project, but our garage is too messy.

6) Organize the garage and bonus room. My sweet husband is working on these two tasks. I really wish I had taken before pictures of each. Sunday he tore down a huge, not-functional-for us shelving unit in the garage. Our hope is to put in shallower shelves and a work bench in another part of the garage. Right now we don't really have any work space, so it's difficult to do some projects. The bonus room looks a lot better since we move all the Christmas decorations and boxes into the attic, but it still needs much improvement.

7) Run a 5K. This is off the table until June. I don't run while nursing.

All in all, I am pretty pleased with our progress. The kids were sick for a couple weeks and my husband worked non-stop for the first couple weeks of the month, so I'm happy we accomplished what we did. Heck, I'm just happy to have survived this month.

Bring on February!

Seeds purchased, broccoli started

I ran to the local home improvement store to buy what I need to start my seeds. I purchased 11 seed packets, some peat trays and 8 quarts vermiculite. I spent $25.65.

Yesterday, B and I planted to broccoli seeds. He doesn't quite understand yet the time that it takes to grow plants. He was expecting the seeds to shoot right up.
I am only planning to transplant one plant, but I figured I ought to start four just in case we don't have great luck.

Still working on getting a good January picture of the kids. Got some cute ones of them individually, but it is very difficult to get them where I can see both of their faces at the same time. My photography class is going okay. I actually skipped it on Saturday to sell my car. I think I'll be able to make it up though. I was disappointed in the last class I attended. The information was very basic and not what I expected from the description.

This weekend we'll see how the next class goes. I also plan to clear out the space for the garden. It's been very cold here and the kids have been sick, so I haven't been motivated to get outside. I'm starting to get over that though. I'm ready for some vitamin D.

11 days in

I am doing really well with my goals!!

1) Take photography classes
2) Take pictures of the kids every month

I had my first photography class this weekend, and I learned a couple great tricks. I also have been taking a lot of pictures, mostly of B playing in the snow. I haven't gotten a great picture of both kids together for this month, so I need to keep working on that.

3) Create - and actually attempt to stick to - a budget

I have been doing really well sticking to our new budget. I haven't bought hardly anything except food, and I have even dialed my food spending way back. Hopefully we can keep this up.

6) Organize the garage and bonus room

My husband's Christmas present was a work bench for the garage. Well, it was supposed to be, but we decided to wait until it warms up a bit and we clear out some space for it in the garage. This is moving way up the priority list. The bonus room is a wreck. Christmas decorations need to be put away, as does our luggage from our trip to the west coast over Christmas. My sister is coming to visit on Friday, and that's where she sleeps, so maybe I'll be motivated to work on it later this week.

Planned our garden!

I received the All New Square Foot Gardening book for Christmas, and this weekend I planned out our garden. We are going to be two 4'x4' beds, so 32 square feet. I am planning to start with these plants at first:

basil
beets
broccoli
carrots
cucumbers
lettuce
onion
oregano
pepper
potato
spinach
tomato
winter squash, probably butternut
zucchini

It sounds like a lot, huh? We'll see how it goes. I also created a calendar for when we need to start seeds, transplant into the garden, etc. When I saw the calendar, it didn't seem as daunting. I am really looking forward to it. I hope it works out for us.

Our next steps are to start our broccoli seeds indoors (mid-to-late January) and build the beds (will need to move the broccoli outside by mid-March). The area where the beds are going to go needs to be cleaned up a little as well. This is what it currently looks like:

The picnic table is moving over to the patio. It needs some love, but we can't decide if we're going to refinish it or get rid of it and buy something. We should probably do the former since 2011 is going to be all about saving money.

I can't wait to see the garden materialize. I also can't wait to eat some of that (hopefully) tasty, fresh produce. YUM.

Budget has been created!

So I finally sat down and created our 2011 budget today. I also balanced our checkbooks and updated all of our account balances. I had a certain number that I wanted our net worth to be by the end of 2010. It didn't happen. Partly because I realized that our house is worth much less than I had been figuring, but mostly because we've spend a lot of money this year and haven't saved much. We should be able to reach that milestone by the end for 2011. We'll see what happens.

The new budget includes a pretty aggressive savings plan. We didn't spend any money today, so we're under budget for the year. Woo hoo! However, we need to go to the grocery store, Costco and Lowe's tomorrow. All of these things are very dangerous for us, so hopefully we can stick closely to our lists.

Building: Goal 4

About 6 months ago, I discovered Ana White's blog. This fall, my husband and I build a farmhouse bench from her blog. We had a lot of fun with it, and we currently have the supplies to build some Gallery Ledges for our kitchen and the kids' rooms. After we finish those ledges, my next project is a bookshelf for E's room. I am leaning toward the Cara Console. It's a little more complicated than the other things we have built because of the cuts on the sides, but we have inherited a saw recently that should allow us to make those cuts.

I actually have a ton of projects from that site that I want to accomplish. I may do some before the bookcase. I'll be sure to keep you updated with our progress.