Happy Halloween!  This was the last pumpkin to carve. It was getting mushy on the top and I waited until last night to do it.

This pattern was kind of hard to do. It’s funny that they look like a jumble when carving them and then when the light is in then you see it.

Sometimes it seems like  a month will go by fast, but for some reason October seemed really long. We both commented on that today.

Anyway, I did make a few goals for October and this is the result:

1. Move.  Done and never again. Ever.  Still have a lot of boxes to unpack and rooms to finish, but the worst is over.  Now if only the old house would sell.

2. Get back to the gym. I just got back this week, nothing like cutting it close 😀 , although I still need to get some kind of schedule going with it. It felt good to be lifting again and I wasn’t even sore the next day, which I think is because of all the physical work that we did on this house using all my muscles.

3. Get my eating back into some semblance of normal.  This is a work in progress. We are definitely cooking more, but I still have been snacking too much.

4. Finish the dining room. Done!  Other than hanging pictures.

Next up is the living room LOL!  I promise on Sunday I will do the before and after of the kitchen, too.

Have a great weekend and safe Halloween!

Well, this was a crazy month, wasn’t it?  You just never know what will happen.  From the job getting all whacky to the craziness of the tutoring situation and finishing my settee!  Life is never boring around here, I tell you.

So, Here were my July goals:

1. 400 bike miles this month. Done!  I actually got somewhere around 430.  The weather was a big help in this since pretty much every weekend had one or both days for big mileage.  Now I need to rebalance my exercise.

2.  Declutter and reorganize these 2 bookshelves.  I only got to one of them.  Before:

After:

I even tried my hand at purposeful styling!   I do like how that one book is kind of falling out of the side there.  This is not the best design for a bookcase 😀

3.  Eat more veggies.  I did a little better with this.  I am at least back eating the broccoli again.  I even ate some tomatoes and cauliflower this month. Go me! LOL

4.  Deep clean rooms. Yeah, that didn’t happen so much on my end.  All the extra work I have been doing (without extra pay…grrrr…)  took its toll on some stuff and cleaning got moved to the rank bottom.  John, however, made himself a little chart of cleaning projects.  

So yeah, this month had some stumbling blocks, but I am trying to stay upbeat.  We are really, really hoping we might get an actual closing date on the house soon.  There should be some news with the next extension we sign for August.  Keep your fingers crossed.

We finally broke out the downstairs window AC unit today.  We have had the unit in the upstairs bedroom window for a while now, but the downstairs usually doesn’t get too bad, especially since we got the new windows with the E glass a few years ago.  Anyway, it was 80 degrees in the living room by late morning and we decided it was time to put it in knowing it would only get worse.

That makes it officially feel like summer.

July Goals:

1. 400 bike miles this month. A biking goal! This averages out to be 13 miles a day or so, but obviously it doesn’t work like that. The majority of the miles will come on weekends, but this means dedicating myself to early morning exercise when it is cool.

2.  Declutter and reorganize these 2 bookshelves.  They are just a mess and a catch-all for stuff.

3.  Eat more veggies.  I have been pretty slack about the veggies lately. Even my beloved broccoli!

4.  Deep clean rooms. This is another one I am moving from the June list. It’s gotta get done.

I think I will stop at 4 because I really want to do a better job on acheiving these than I did with June goals. Not to mention finishing up my settee. I hope to be done with that this weekend. Yay!

Ahhhhh!!!! The end of June!  It seems every month I keep saying how fast the time goes.  I need something new to say.  We started off the month with the little weekend getaway to Portsmouth and here it is just about July!

Let’s move on to the goals, shall we?

1.  Continue the last stage of Female Body Breakthrough.  Done. I am ready to move on to something else now. I definitely am stronger, but I didn’t lose any inches after 4 months. 

2.  Be more disciplined with eating. Ehhh… some days okay, some days not. Stress eating really is getting the better of me lately.

3.Deep cleaning in rooms of the house. I did a little bit of this, but got waylaid by other things.

4. Keep doing my projects. Working on currently with my little settee find!

5. Try to write a couple garden how-to posts. I did not do this. I kept thinking about it, though.

Hoo boy, this was a strange month for the goals. Swing and a miss on most of them! But that’s what the next month is for, right? It’s just that feeling of spinning my wheels and getting nowhere in several aspects of my life currently, some my own fault, some caused by forces I cannot control. I love progress and it gets frustrating when I stagnate.

Anyway, here is some settee progress.  I had to paint it. After patching the wood, it just wasn’t going to take the stain and look good at all, so I went ahead and spray painted it (and my feet).

Now it is ready for spring tying and fabric! And welcome to my garage in all it’s glory.  😳

This is the fabric I got, which I have to say I love.

It has music, birds and flowers – 3 of my favorite things! I really hope I don’t mess it up LOL.  I also have to find our iron, which I think we still have.

Tomorrow is July and a fresh set of goals, thank goodness!

A little behind on this post, but it’s all good 😀   I did a lot in May, actually.  Biking really kicked into high gear and I finished a few furniture projects:

and the dresser!

I will post more detail on how I did this in another post. I am in love with it!

Here were the goals for May:

1. Continue with Female Body Breakthrough and continue my 45-60 minutes a day of exercise.  Done and done.

2.  Eat with my guidelines of 6 eats per day with protein for all meals and snacks. Sort of.  I started snacking too much later in the month. At first I lost my appetite with all the work stress, but then the stress eating came back. 

3. Make some doctor appointments this month. Ooopsie.  I didn’t do this.

4. Clean more windows. DONE!!!  Actually, I will confess that we finished them up on Sunday the 1st, but close enough. It was starting to become a joke during the month about finishing the windows, but now they are done and it looks so much better.

5. Participate in Photo a Day. I sort of enjoyed this, but then I felt pressure to follow the prompts and I tend to be a more spontaneous photo taker. Then I would also forget about it with work.

6. Attitude adjustment about the house closing. I think maybe I did better this month. We are sort of laughing about the house closing and making jokes about it that are almost funny, but not quite – if you know what I mean.  On that note, we just signed *another* extension.  The definition of irony? That would be this:

Now on to my goals for June!

1.  Continue the last stage of Female Body Breakthrough.  I will be only lifting 2 days a week on good weather weeks due to biking. I am enjoying my workouts! They are tough:

2.  Be more disciplined with eating.  I really need to buckle down with this and quite futzing around.

3.Deep cleaning in rooms of the house. After doing the windows, I noticed things like baseboards and other dusty stuff.  I am not going to set a particular number of rooms, but I will be working on them.  Something that would have to be done when we put the house on the market anyway.

4. Keep doing my projects. I really enjoyed doing the furniture projects, which really helped me deal with the work stress and house stress. Not waiting on these until we move.  I will do anything to keep my stress level down (which will help with goal #2)

5. Try to write a couple garden how-to posts. I have had a couple different requests and I keep thinking I will get around to it, so here it is.

Here’s to a great June!

April showers bring May flowers, right?  My garden is a few weeks behind where it was last year. A cold and rainy April didn’t help that along. I hope May is a little more promising.

Here are the big plans for May! 😀

1. Continue with Female Body Breakthrough and continue my 45-60 minutes a day of exercise.  This is very good for me to keep doing and really is what I should be doing.

2.  Eat with my guidelines of 6 eats per day with protein for all meals and snacks. Something has to give if I keep doing the right things, right? Hello??

3. Make some doctor appointments this month. I am overdue for some appointments, so this will make me accountable to get them scheduled.

4. Clean more windows. Only 14 more to go. Seriously. It’s not that hard. Just need to do it.

5. Participate in Photo a Day. I will be doing this on FB rather than posting them all on the blog since I don’t blog every day, but I will put some on here.

6. Attitude adjustment. I need to work harder on dealing with the Longest House Closing Ever with a better attitude. I think it comes down to control. I am a control freak and not having any control really, really chaps my hide. 

I am going to try to enjoy more things this month, too, and do little projects that I want and stop waiting until we move to do them.

Bring on the May!

One third of 2014 is done already. Can you believe that? Vroom…

April was a busy month. Work has gotten hellishly busy. It’s funny – last year at this time it was the same way. It’s cyclical, but my company can’t seem to stay ahead of it and now is the time morale sinks. I feel like I need another vacation, even though I had one in February.

So, here were the goals to work for in April:

1.  60 minutes of exercise a day. I pretty much rocked this goal. There were a couple days were I did 45 minutes, but all other days were 60 with more on biking days. Whenever I make an exercise goal, I pretty much always meet it.

2.  Clean the windows! Well, we have 17 windows and 3 got done. At this rate, they will be all clean by September LOL! This will be going on the May goal list.

3. Figure out my eating plan.  I started doing lower carb a few days a week and I added a morning snack so I have 6 eats per day in a calorie controlled context. This was added after reading Yoni Freedhoff’s book (which again I will review at some point, probably next week). No difference in my weight or clothing this month, which I have to admit is slightly annoying since I am working really hard.

4.  Experiment with my sourdough starter.  I made sourdough crepes again and a wonderful loaf of bread early in the month. I have the starter out now proofing to make crumpets, but have just been either too busy or too tired this week to get it done. I blame work for that one.

So, not too bad on the goals. At least the important ones for health were there. The windows won’t hurt anybody if they are dirty and no birds should fly into them when they are dirty  😉

Welcome April!  I don’t do the pranks on April 1st, do you?

I have to tell you about my bargain. A few months ago, I saw a chair at TJMaxx that I just loved the color of.  It was only $99. However, we were thinking we were going to be moving soon and didn’t want to buy more stuff. Every time I went to that store over last last few months, I would always look at ‘my’ chair. Finally, Sunday I was browsing after getting my hair cut and at first I didn’t see the chair, but it was moved and the priced marked down to $79!  Again, I didn’t want to buy a piece of furniture before we move, but since we don’t know how long it will be, I decided to get the chair. We went out last night and picked it up.

I think it is a pretty snazzy chair for $80.  Pixie loves it, too, unfortunately. I already had to brush hair off it.  I am in love with the color. Good thing we are moving because it doesn’t go with our living room wall color 😉  We have the next contract extension in the works for another 30 days, sigh, so no move in the near future.

On to April goals:

1.  60 minutes of exercise a day.  I don’t necessarily mean all out stuff for an hour every day, but on days where I am not lifting, I need to be biking or walking for 60 minutes. That’s my goal.

2.  Clean the windows! It’s spring cleaning time. John is enlisted to help with this, but I would like to get the winter grime off the windows this month. Just in time for pollen season 😀

3. Figure out my eating plan.  I am doing the FBB, which will continue, but I am not seeing the results that I want to see after 6 weeks. Strength is progressing, but no change in how my body looks or fits in clothes. I need to tweak something, which means the eating plan since the lifting is good. Not sure quite how yet, but I have set forth the goal.

4.  Experiment with my sourdough starter. Breadipus Rex is alive and kicking after being dormant in the fridge for a while.  Quite so – I fed him and he went and exploded all over.

It’s alive!! Gonna need a bigger jar…

5. Start my for-hire contractor business.  Okay, that’s an April Fool’s joke 😀

I think that is a good set of goals to work on this month. Have you got any plans for April?