July 5 2018

2nd Quarter Goal Checkin

Here is the list of my 2018 Goals.

FAMILY/FRIENDS
Spring Break Cabin Trip (March 23-30) (Read More Here)
College Avenue Stitchers (1st Saturdays) (5/12)
FlyFests (2nd Saturdays) (6/12)
Knit & Crochet It Forward (2nd Saturdays) (6/12)
YarnSlingers (3rd Tuesdays) (6/12)

HEALTH/FITNESS
Sleep (6 hours/night) (71/91 this Qtr) 78.0% (much better than last Qtr)
Water (6 cups/day) (82/91 this Qtr) 90.1% (better than last Qtr)
Cardio (21/91 this Qtr) 23.0% (no excuse, really)
Strength (3/91 this Qtr) 3.2% (improvement!)

HOUSE
Finish Cleaning Office (no progress yet this year)
Backup Floppy Disks to Iomega Drive (ALL 434 DONE! as of 4/24)
Paint Table for Porch (DONE! as of  4/29) (See proof here)
Master Bedroom (work on it) (no progress YET this year, plans are in the works!)

We have decided to Reclaim Our Home, one room or area at a time.
We turned the bedroom our daughter used into our Reading Room.
We decluttered and cleaned the Landing, Garage and the Basement!

FINANCES
Pay Off Car Loan (making monthly payments) (6/12)
Pay Off TAN (making monthly payments) (6/12)
Pay ALL Bills on Time (so far, so good) (6/12)
Save $6,000 for London Trip (not quite 10%)

We cut the cable and will save over $200/month!

GIVING
Donate 36 Crocheted Hats (21 done so far)
Donate $ to NaNoWriMo (November) (no progress yet this year)
Gift Wrap for DAR (December) (no progress yet this year)

I have also added crochet edging to 5 baby blankets (30″x30″) this year and taught a great group of ladies how to do this as well. All blankets will be gifted to family or charity. I made 10 soap sacks too!

FUN/HOBBIES
Get Family Tree Maker (upgrade from 2006 version) (no progress yet this year)
Update My Genealogy Websites (ALL DONE! as of 4/16, see Karen’s Kin)
Setup a Way to Sell my Crochet Online (got Etsy Store up and posted 30 listings/49 pcs total)

Got a My Heritage DNA test kit for my birthday (review to come)

PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT
Read 100 Books (55/100) (see GoodReads for specifics)
Complete Modern Mrs. Darcy Reading Challenge (4/12)
Read 3 Personal Development Books (21/3)
Update Resume (DONE and currently job hunting)

BLOG
1 New Blog Post/Week (Thursdays) (27 +1 book review) 
Continue Five Minute Friday Posts (24)

YOUTUBE
Continue to Add Content (13 video clips posted this Qtr) 
Try to Film Bullet Journal Flip Through (I filmed it!)
Try Being On Camera with Someone for a Virtual Write-In (still thinking about it)

I did test Google Hangouts with my adult son who lives in another city
I took a free class (5/11-15) to learn how to edit videos and have posted a few to my IG feed

WRITING
Complete NaNoWriMo (November) (no progress yet this year)
Read 3 Writing Craft Books (DONE 4/3)
Take 3 Writing Classes (1/3)
Submit 3 Guest Blog Posts or Magazine Articles for Publication (DONE)
Write 3 Contest Entries (DONE) I won for the state on a DAR essay contest I entered but didn’t make it past that level.
Thursday Night Writing Group (23/52) LOVE this group!

Word counts are steady but not as much as I’d like. Pretty much just writing blog posts, resumes, and cover letters these days.

How are you doing on your goals so far this year? Is there anything we can help you with? Let us know in the comments or email me through the contact form.
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Category: Goals | Comments Off on 2nd Quarter Goal Checkin
July 2 2018

If (Five Minute Friday)

If is such a hopeful word! It lends itself to so many possibilities! If all goes well, by this time next week the plaster and lathing strips will have been removed and carried out to a dumpster in our driveway. If the group of college-age kids descends on our home as promised that job should be fairly quick and easy so we also bought the drywall to replace the materials they remove. If all goes well that will be delivered in a couple of days and the dumpster the day after that so it will all be ready. If the demolition goes well, the kids can carry the needed drywall up the steps and put it in the room where Hubby and I can install it. We have been told there may be twelve to fifteen kids to keep busy for the day and in exchange we just have to feed them. I can do that part.

If all really goes well, we (Hubby and I) should be able to finish the master bedroom and hopefully move back into it by the end of the year. Anything sooner than that is just a bonus. Any longer is still doable since we have been doing it for over four years already. We have been very productive with our working weekends lately. We have gotten so much accomplished around the house just since the beginning of April. We finished the Reading Room and Landing projects. We have made significant progress in the basement and garage. We got a ton of debris cleaned up off the driveway recently too. We have been eating dinner out on our nice clean porch at our Turquoise Table for a couple of months now and we just love it!

Not to worry, there is still plenty to do. Oh, the joys of home ownership! Stay tuned here folks for before and after photos and all the details. Also be sure to check my Instagram for more photos and shenanigans.

This post is part of the weekly Five Minute Friday link-up!
The prompt this week is: If
The assignment: Write for five minutes on the word of the week. This is meant to be a free write, which means: no editing, no over-thinking, no worrying about perfect grammar or punctuation. Just write.

Category: Five Minute Friday | 1 Comment on If (Five Minute Friday)
June 28 2018

Book Review: Vlog Like A Boss

Vlog Like A Boss Cover

I don’t often review the books I read. I read a lot and that would get old fast. When I do, it is because I want to have a record of it out there to help others find a great read. This is no different. Right now, I don’t vlog, though the idea is in the back of my mind that it could happen someday.

This is an excellent book. I’m not sure I will ever feel comfortable putting myself in front of the camera, but I read it thinking it would give me ideas on how to improve my blog. So many good ideas!

I loved the voice of Amy throughout the book. It was like watching her in video form in my head as I read her book. I highly recommend reading this book if you are considering starting a vlog or YouTube channel. At the very least, go to YouTube and subscribe to the Amy Landino channel.

If you plan to pick up a copy of this book, I would love it if you used the affiliate link below.

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Vlog Like a Boss: How to Kill It Online with Video Blogging

Category: Book Review, Reading, Review | Comments Off on Book Review: Vlog Like A Boss
June 23 2018

Ocean (Five Minute Friday)

ocean

When you look in the mirror, do you have an ocean of regrets? Do you see all the things you ate that you should have passed on? Don’t let these negative thoughts drown your good intentions now. Think instead of all the good choices you have made. The time you passed on dessert and had an extra serving of salad instead. Think of every time you chose to drink water instead of alcohol, fruit juice, or soda. Think of the times you chose the healthier option when having a meal out with a friend or your family.

We are presented with an ocean of choices that affect our health and fitness every day as we go about our life. If you choose wisely eighty percent of the time you are still doing good things for your body and your health. Please, don’t dwell on the twenty percent of the time when you just can’t resist that yummy dessert your elderly aunt or grandmother so lovingly made and offered to you. You won’t have the opportunity to bond with that relative forever and it isn’t a failure if one out of every five decisions you make is less than ideal. Give yourself credit for the four other decisions you made that were the good and right choices. You could have chosen badly all five times, but you didn’t. That is four successes for every one failure. Maybe if you change the way you look at it, you will make five out of five choices in a positive way next time.

You wouldn’t slash the other three tires just because your car had one go flat, so why give up on trying to make healthier choices just because you chose the less than ideal choice this time? You don’t have to drink an ocean of water all at once. Just get a glass and drink it one cup at a time. Add a little more each day until you are consistently drinking water more than anything else. Make a healthy choice as often as you can and keep stacking those good choices up and eventually, the stack of good will far outreach the stack of bad choices you make in any given day. As long as you make more good and healthy choices than bad and unhealthy ones,  you ARE making progress and you CAN continue to do better each day.

What choices have you been making toward building the stack of good choices? Please share them in the comments below so we can all learn from your example.

This post is part of the weekly Five Minute Friday link-up!
The prompt this week is: Ocean
The assignment: Write for five minutes on the word of the week. This is meant to be a free write, which means: no editing, no over-thinking, no worrying about perfect grammar or punctuation. Just write.

Category: Five Minute Friday, Weight Loss Journey | 3 Comments on Ocean (Five Minute Friday)
June 21 2018

Restore (Five Minute Friday)

Restore

Ok, here we go again. It is Thursday and I’m not sure what happened to all the time between last Friday and now but I am determined to get this entry written and posted before the linkup closes and the word prompt for tomorrow is posted.

This week, I have spent many hours helping go through the photos of an elderly family member. This helps restore my faith in the family because the memories this person chose to save were mostly those of family members. There was a huge collection of all the birth, marriage, and death announcements for this family going back at least sixty or seventy years. It was sad sorting through everything knowing it couldn’t all be kept but being able to help make the decisions on what did get to be kept and who to give the photos to when the person no longer has use of them. In many cases, the photos were those taken of scenery on vacations over the years. Some of them were amazingly good considering the cameras they must have been taken on at the time. I found myself wondering what could be done with them other than having them end up in a landfill somewhere. They really were pretty but had no meaning to anyone who wasn’t on that vacation with them. Most were of interesting flowers or animals taken mostly so they could remember the experience of the trip.

I began to think that maybe digital photos are the green way to go because, to be honest, most of us take loads of photos with our smartphones but very few of those ever get printed out at all and even fewer in the way we used to get prints when we had the film developed.

Some of the photos saved were blurry or of some indistinguishable object or place. Those were the easy decisions to make. One of the hardest things about the task was that very few of the photos had anything at all written on the back to tell us who the people in them were so we had to guess in many cases. PLEASE, I beg you to date and label your photos! At least write the date of the trip and the location on the envelope from the film developing. Someday, even YOU might not remember anymore.

PLEASE, I beg you to date and label your photos! At least write the date of the trip and the location on the envelope from the film developing. Someday, even YOU might not remember anymore. Click To Tweet

Well, time is up for this post, but you will likely see another one in the next day or so unless I let it fall through the cracks like I almost did with this one. Thanks for reading my ramblings. Hopefully, I can restore my sense of timeliness and get back on track with these. I hate to get behind or miss posting one completely.

This post is part of the weekly Five Minute Friday link-up!
The prompt this week is: Restore
The assignment: Write for five minutes on the word of the week. This is meant to be a free write, which means: no editing, no over-thinking, no worrying about perfect grammar or punctuation. Just write.

Category: Five Minute Friday, Genealogy | 1 Comment on Restore (Five Minute Friday)