Monday, January 28, 2013

Goals Update

Purge and Tame: The dining room is still pristine. We are maintaining a clean kitchen table.  We are still making babystep progress in the office, both of our "shred" piles went up the chimney this weekend.  While I was painting yesterday afternoon and evening Bruce spent his time attempting to make sense of this mess:
Workbench closeup!
All I can say to wrap this up is a giant contractor bag came up the stairs and to the curb.
Blogging: I did get last week's progress up, but it was pretty late.  Guilt blogging at midnight on Sunday,  Monday is going to be rough, I still need to shower before I make it to bed.
Health and Wellness: I'm still boycotting the gym.  Bruce is not. Maybe I'll make it this week.  Thursday night we had a date so we ate out, we left our phones at home, this falls under the category of relationship wellness which is so important.  We came home and went through a giant box of Bruce's photos from high school and the beginning of college.  I might have said about photos of his high school girlfriend "Can I send these back to her 'Love Bruce's wife?" he said no; it was still a great night. I also bought lunch one day but it was a salad.  We're eating lots of home-cooked meals and breakfast everyday.  I have so much more energy and when I get home from work I'm ready to DIY and organize.

Saturday, January 26, 2013

Meatballs Required

I've been working on painting our hallways and after painting all day I definitely don't want to cook. Tonight it will be spaghetti and slow cooked meatballs.


Friday, January 25, 2013

Cleaned and Decorated!

I'm making serious progress with my organizing goals.  I'll have the kitchen progress up soon, we've made serious progress in the living room and babysteps in the office.  The dining room is done.  To remind you this is what I was starting with.
 Christmas decorations still up, leaf still in the table (from Thanksgiving) table littered with presents and present wrapping supplies, and the sideboard an over-flow for the table. After putting decorations and presents away, all that was left was the table, I took the leaf out, spread a clean table cloth, vacuumed and dusted.  It looked very empty.  So I found my little box of Valentine's Day supplies and spread them around, it took all of ten minutes but gives the room a bit of character.
I swapped our stainless steal cocktail shaker for the red-wrapped one, ornaments in the vase for Valentine's garland with silver hearts and ornaments around the candle for more candles.  The red bow was left-over from Christmas. The red garland also went around the candles on the table centerpiece.
It makes such a big difference to have clean, organized spaces in our home; it energizes me to do some projects around the house now that I don't feel like we live in a pit!

Thursday, January 24, 2013

Goals Check-In

Purge and Tame: Still working on an organization system for the kitchen as you saw last Friday, definitely making some headway in that department. Saturday I got the rest of the Christmas decorations away, picked up and cleaned the living room AND totally cleaned the dining room. Because we all love a good before and after shot.
Before
After
Blog: Still blogging, even if the second week update is halfway through the third week.

Health and Wellness: We managed home cooked meals, for every meal. To keep cost down I'm dipping into my well stocked freezer and pantry hitting the grocery store for only lunch supplies and fresh veggies.

Friday, January 18, 2013

What if AWAY doesn't exist?

Our kitchen has a weird layout, which makes it a weird space complete with a weird, door-filled hallway.
  Now, one might think there is plenty of cabinet space and for your average domestic goddess it might be.  But not for one that has a love for kitchen gadgets.  Avocado slicer, got it. Corn stripper (here we are referring to a small device that removes cooked corn from the cob not dancers in the Mid-West), got it. Every attachment for a Kitchen-Aid stand mixer, not quite but I'm pretty damn close.  You get my point, lots of kitchen stuff and things weren't always getting AWAY because AWAY didn't exist or was to hard to get to.  This is compounded by the size of our cabinets, the shelves aren't adjustable and they aren't deep enough. Something had to give.  So we started a pantry downstairs, which helped get every attachment known to the cooking gods (but the grain mill) into the cabinets and off the dining room floor. But then the newly acquired ceramic non-stick weren't playing nice in the pot cabinet and one didn't fit at all.  So I started hanging it over the pizza peel which as you can see is on our weird hallway to the office.  
Then we got a massive carving board for Christmas which need a home also. I decided that weird hallway wall was a great place to hang them.  
Bruuuuuuuuuuce can we hang more stuff on the wall? 
Yea babe just tell me where to hang them.  
Fast forward eight weeks.  While making dinner this week I was planning.  First I tried to eyeball it. No dice.  So ala YHL I cut the shapes out of paper and stuck them on the wall until I found an arrangement I liked, then said ok put the hooks there. 
And he did. Now the ceramic non-stick plays nice, beautiful wood looks beautiful.  Most importantly we used dead wall space and things are AWAY.

Wednesday, January 16, 2013

One of those days

Kenny tried to run away, I left late for work, I realized half way to work that I had forgotten my ID and phone, went home and then . . .


got stuck behind a cavalcade of plows and it took twice as long to get to work.  

Hope your day started better than mine.

Monday, January 14, 2013

First Week Goals

I'm checking in to tonight to update you on the progress of my 2013 goals.
Purge and Tame the Mess: I've been working on a better organization system for the kitchen table all week. It's a dumping zone by our back door and if things are going to live there they need a place to be AWAY. I will give them one. I also picked up a planner for this year and found surface area on both the kitchen and coffee tables.
Blog Weekly: Hey look it's a new week and a post!
Health and Wellness: Last night we stayed home to watch he game, this is a big step. I made nachos and hot wings. We spent a quarter of what we would have at the pub, ate a quarter the nachos made with less (and 2%) cheese, the wings were grilled not fried and we did that in our PJ's. I also re-implemented breakfast and lunch; multigrain waffle peanut butter sandwich, roast beef or buffalo chicken sandwich with pirates booty and water for Bruce and special K breakfast flatbread, hummus carrot cucumber with cottage cheese for me. Full disclosure: we went to a happy hour Friday night and picked up two large pizzas on the way home, which we ate as leftovers Saturday and Sunday; also lunch was 4 out of 5 days.

Friday, January 11, 2013

Goals for the Year

I've been participating in the 31 days to Better Health and Wellness over at Modern Alternative Mama (this name is a little deceiving it's not all about being a mom) and step one was goal setting.  Hmmmm goals for the year.  This one was a bit tough.  I wanted to be specific, no broad BS goals for me so here we go:
Purge and Tame the Mess: We have too much stuff, there is no reason to have a stack of Cooking Light from 2009 taking up valuable real estate on the bookcase when I can find the recipe faster on my iPhone.  Purging will free up space to put things AWAY. AWAY was such a pet peeve when we lived with other people but now that it's just us, things are never AWAY. Case in point; left to right, top then bottom: kitchen table, office, dinning room table, one of the couches.
Blog Weekly: I need to set realistic blogging goals, not sure how some ladies out there work full time and blog full time. Not me.  I'd like to post once a week, more than that is gravy.
Health and Wellness: We got married and went on a bender; enjoying life, not watching what we were eating and eating out to much = drinking more = I've gained 10 pounds since our wedding in May.  Go food shopping weekly, plan meals, eat at home and stop having a beer or glass of wine with dinner every night.  Maybe go to the gym. Maybe walk the dog. Maybe do Wii Yoga in the morning.

Hopefully striving for these goals will enable us to have more energy and get more done around here. Wish me luck!