Monthly Goals: Recap

How did I do with my monthly goals for September?

Make a wedding album/photobook

Wedding album complete!!! I finished and ordered it on Saturday night, the 29th.. I cut this one close. 

Give you all an update about the house and addition

I gave an addition general update and am working my way through the designs for each room.

Have a garage/yard sale
We had the yard sale and I came home with just one thing! Everything else either sold, or went to Goodwill, and just a few items went into storage for a spring yard sale.


Get a new wireless router.
New wireless router was acquired.


Can 18 quarts of tomato sauce
I failed at the tomato sauce. Canning just takes so much time and we were gone for several weekends in September, and had stuff already scheduled for the others.

Can 24 pints of diced tomatoes
I did make 24 pints of diced tomatoes though.

Fill you in on our dairy situation

 Dairy explained.

Ramp up my running training
Consider my running ramped up. I did a 9.25 mile training run on Saturday and felt awesome! My stomach did not so much for the rest of the weekend, but oh well. I have a 12 miler on Saturday and then taper before the half marathon.

Enjoy the first COLLEGE FOOTBALL of the season!! 
College football has been watched, but with the way the Hokies are playing this fall.. not so much enjoyed yet.


October Goals:
Can 10-12 pints of applesauce
Run & finish the Hershey Half Marathon
Develop and start utilizing a cleaning schedule
Clean up design schemes for the rest of the house/addition

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Goals for September

Not related, just funny. Source

 I have a bunch of things that I have been putting off for awhile and either NEED to be done by the end of September, or I would really like to get done just to cross them off my list. I am putting them out into the internets for a little accountability.

-Make a stinkin wedding album/photobook already! (yes.. over three and a half years later)
-Give you all an update about the house and addition
-Have a garage/yard sale to get rid of the pile in the cellar
-Get a new wireless router. Ours is from the dark ages of college when routers first became a thing and finally croaked.
-Can 18 quarts of tomato sauce
-Can 24 pints of diced tomatoes
-Fill you in on our dairy situation
-Ramp up my running training
-Enjoy the first COLLEGE FOOTBALL of the season!!

Would be nice to finish in September:
-A photo book of photos from our White House tour (back in Winter 2011)
-Make a photo book of our St.Lucia trip

And thinking ahead to a couple of things for October:
-Can 12 pints of applesauce!
-Run (and finish) the Hershey Half Marathon

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Working Out

So I realize that it is getting towards the end of April and I never updated on my March goals, nor did I post April goals. For the most part I completed all of my March goals- the baby shower went off, I studied and I worked out. I did not; however count calories, or workout as much as I would have liked.

April has been the same. I completed the exam, which was my main goal for the month. I have been going to my 8:30 am Saturday step aerobics class. For the spring session I signed up for ANOTHER aerobics class! I am now officially taking 3+ hours a week of aerobics classes.

...and I'm liking it. WHHHHATT? Who AM I!? I'm actually starting to look forward to them! The Tuesday/Thursday class (the new one) is not really what I was expecting and is much less intense that I had hoped. I often feel like my idol Kelly Kapowski (minus the sweet thong leotard and tights), jumping around and "dancing" but I am still getting my heart rate up and lifting weights, so I guess that is what matters.

Since the class is less intense than I would like, I have been forcing myself to jump a little higher or move double time. When it comes to the weight lifting portion, I use a heavier weight since it is a shorter amount of time.

SO that is the state of my workouts. Forced 3x per week and liking it. I can't believe myself. Now to just work on adding in the calorie count daily... I'm getting there...

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Recap - February Goals 2010

-Count calories daily

Fail. I did not do so well at this in February. I was still conscious of what I was eating, but there were so many occasions that we ate out for lunch at work (product reps really like to spoil us!) that it made it hard to actually keep an accurate calorie count. Plus... Girl Scout cookies came in. BAAAAD.


-Work out 3 times/week
Fail. I did okay, but there were definitely weeks with only 1 or 2 workouts.

-Get trim caulked and painted in the guest room
The trim is definitely painted, but I still need to do some touch ups. Also, we didn't end up caulking the crown that is pulling off of the wall since we saw that it will be a lot of work. We are going to have to cut away the peeling paint, re-glue the crown and then caulk and paint touch up. Yayy..

-Get guest room mostly put together (depending on budget)
Done!


I still need to make the curtains and hang them, get new fabric for the headboard, get frames for and hang some awesome prints that I have for the room and there are just a few more decorative things that I want to add to the room.

-Order seeds for garden
Done! They came in the same week too!



-Draw our bathroom in CAD & 3D
Done! I still don't know if we are decided on what to do. The floors are definitely going to be slate and then we are going back and forth between a white subway tile around the shower or more slate around the shower. John is afraid the subway tile will be too much of a contrast from the slate floor, but I don't think so. The tub is white, the toilet is white and not to mention, we will have a brown shower curtain closed most of the time.


Slate:



Subway Tile:


Also in the slate images, you can see an option for the window. Currently we have a shower curtain on that wall as well, to protect the wood trim on the window from the water. I definitely do NOT want to keep a shower curtain on that side of the shower, so one option is to glass block in that window and tile up to it. I am also going to look for vinyl windows or something.. I am not sold on the glass block- they seem so 80's.


-Order exam study materials & start studying!
Eh. The stupid exam administrators only made materials available like 2 days ago (for an exam in the beginning of April!). Not only that, but it looks like they are only providing practice questions... Apparently we are supposed to just GUESS what material will be included on the exam. Practice questions do not help with knowing WHAT to study. Ugh.

I bought the review guide from the previous version of the exam, hoping that it will help a little at least...


This has been my reading material on the metro for a couple of weeks now.. and will be my life for the next month.

-Develop an initial plan for s-humphreys


Pretty much done! I am working on a blog/website to communicate with potential clients, I bought the domain and am working on business cards.

PLUS, I got my first consultation and it is for pretty much a whole house! This will be a huge boost for my residential portfolio. Of course, I am doing this one for free in exchange for photos. I've also decided on introductory pricing that will last for 3-6 months depending on how things go.



-Only get carryout pizza once
Check!

-Order and send out baby shower invitations
Done! I've gotten a few RSVPs already too. Oh and I've definitely been in party planning mode. I've gotten some decorations and planned the menu!




-Have a clean house for 2 sets of weekend guests
Done! Of course when my parents came, I was expecting them a couple of hours later than when they showed up, so the cleaning hadn't been done yet. I ran around the house real quick when I got home from work, after they had been here for a couple of hours already!

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Recap - January Goals 2010

-Count calories daily (except for the long weekend we are in CA)
Success!! I downloaded a calorie counting app for my ipod touch and it makes counting SO much easier than trying to do it on the computer. I added my meals for the day while I was on the metro and if anything changed during the day, I just did it right then!

-Work out 3 times/week
Another success! A couple of weeks I even did 4 times! As I mentioned, I started a step aerobics/toning/weight lifting class at the community center. The class is Saturday mornings, so not only am I getting a workout, but I get up and productive!

In conjunction with counting my calories, working out helped me to lose SIX POUNDS this month!! I am so excited about that. It makes it so worth it to see results.

-Fix guest room layout
Done and done!
The guest room started out looking like this:

And now looks like this:

The bed jutting out into the room just took up too much space. Turning it and moving the bookcase makes the room so much bigger and makes it much easier for me to ride my stationary bike or Shred (when I get around to that). PLUS, as you can see, there is a good spot next to the sewing table for me to move the bike to when not in use.

Take a good look at this plan, because changes are coming to this room!

-Pick seeds & plan my gardens for the spring
Done! I started by making a dream/wish list of all the veggies I would LIKE to have.

John measured the existing chain link fence that we have in the yard. We decided to use that area as my garden for this year at least. The fence is 22'x30'- a good sized garden!

Once I knew the size of the future garden, I grabbed some graph paper and figured out how many rows I could get (10) and what would fit from my wish list.

The result:

Pumpkins (Cinderella), corn, carrots, beets, salsa/canning tomatoes,

potatoes, onions, peas, peppers, zucchini, cucumbers and pickling cucumbers

-Draw our bathroom in CAD & 3D
Semi-completed. I started drawing the house in Revit (which is also modelling in 3D at the same time). I have not completely finished :(

-Price out the bathroom re-do
Semi-completed. I priced out everything, but since I didn't finish the 3D model, I am not quite certain what tile we will be using. Changing up the tile could change the pricing a bit. Otherwise, it looks as though we will come in right around what we were expecting to spend, if not less!

-Order exam study materials
Fail. But not on my part... the people who make the test aren't going to have the study materials available until MID MARCH! The exam is April 9-10.. um hello? How the HECK am I supposed to study in that amount of time!? Not only will the material not be available until March, but it will be solely online... yeah I am a highlighter/note taker. Not going to work.

I've decided to order the old study materials and hope that helps until I can get the up to date ONLINE material. I'm also going to read some of the suggested study material that I already have.

-Complete at least one section of my business plan
FAIL. I didn't even look at it.

-Only get carryout pizza once
WIN! We only got Dominos once! A big difference from the 2-3 times a month it used to be.

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