Resolutions For A New And Exciting Year!

We had a wonderful, family-filled Christmas vacation all the way over in Ontario and are just now settling back into life at home. I've just caught up on reading other people's blog posts about New Year's resolutions, and feel like it's time to put mine out there in the world. Hopefully by sharing them with the vast audience of the internet (ha! more like my 2 regular readers!), I will be more accountable to following through on them. Time will tell!

Resolution #1: Have date nights with my husband once every couple weeks. We're still easing into leaving Ellie alone with a sitter (aka Grandma), but in order to get better at it we have to just do it! So our general plan is to start by renting a movie and watching it in one of the hotel rooms upstairs. Once we get more comfortable with that, we may venture out for the occasional date!

Resolution #2: Try new recipes. I got a cookbook for Christmas with lots of yummy, easy meals in it that I want to try. Not only that, but Adam and I really enjoy cooking together so hopefully this is something else we can do together in addition to date nights. We also really want to learn how to make our own sushi, so that fits in well with this idea!

Resolution #3: Work on my business idea. I'm still not quite ready to share it with the world, but if I can put more time and effort into the idea, I might be ready soon! One thing I was hoping to do was to use a babysitter a couple times a week and devote that time to working on my business plan. I would need to take my laptop and work outside of our suite (but still in the building in case I need to nurse Ellie), but it would probably be the easiest way to make some actual progress.

Resolution #4: Keep our home simple and clutter free. This is a huge challenge, particularly around holidays and events like Christmas and birthdays. Having a baby makes it especially challenging! People are always incredibly generous about giving gifts to babies and children, but what I need to be better at is proactively communicating to our family and friends about what we need/want and what we'd really like to avoid. We're currently in the middle of a big time decluttering of our house, so this is a step in the right direction. We just have to keep it decluttered! Ellie's first birthday might be a challenge!

Resolution #5: Pay off the car loan. Provided we don't have any major changes to our financial situation, this is completely feasible! It definitely means sticking to our budget and might mean forfeiting trips that we had hoped to take, but it would be worth it to have the weight off our shoulders! After the car loan is paid off, we would only have student loans remaining.

Resolution #6: Exercise. This isn't the typical New Year's resolution about losing weight or going to the gym X number of times each week. I simply want the endorphins! I have a hot yoga class coming up this week that I am absolutely DYING to go to. It's not the physical exercise that I care so much about, but the amazing feelings that I can't even do justice by attempting to describe. It's something I can do that makes my soul feel good!

It's always possible to make a million lists of things I want to do or change, but I want to stop there. If I keep it short, it will likely be even more manageable! Next I have to make my goals for January and see if I can work towards some of these resolutions in baby steps starting with this month...

A Passion for Pinterest!

The upside to being stuck on the couch recovering from surgery is that I get a lot of baby-free time to spend browsing Pinterest.

I'm trying to decide which recipe to try first - maybe something I can bring to our holiday staff party or as part of a cookie exchange with friends...

 

I'm also trying to decide which DIY project to take on first, likely after Christmas...

How do I decide what to do first???

Housewife Woes

Today I found myself in the midst of a very familiar meltdown. It was the "no matter how much I vacuum I can't get these dang floors clean" meltdown. You see, we have a very, very hairy dog. He's a yellow lab cross but his coat is more like that of a German Shepherd. So he has long-ish wiry hair that weaves into our carpets and a thick undercoat that seems to shed like crazy (I'm talking fist-fulls of hair everywhere!) for months out of the year. For the past 5 or so years, we've gotten by using Adam's beloved shop vac. Well, lately it seems to clog very easily in multiple parts of the hose. My floors are never clean and it's driving me crazy! Normally I wouldn't care quite this much, but with a baby who could crawl any time in the next few months, I just can't take it anymore. I'd like to be able to put Ellie down to play anywhere in the house without worrying about having her covered head to toe in dog hair when I pick her up. Not to mention how much of it she'd likely end up eating!

But that's enough ranting! If anyone happens to read this and has good recommendations of an affordable, yet pet-hair-busting vacuum, please comment!

Dishwasher Woes

I've never been thrilled with the quality of our dishwasher. But we're renters and it's a built-in, so we put up with it. At least we did... until a couple days ago with the bowl pictured above came out of the dishwasher after a 'heavy duty' cycle. Most of the other dishes were clean. Glasses on the top shelf almost always come out with stuff baked into them. Gross. But none of the other dishes ever looked quite like this. Wow.

I've since gone on a googling rampage attempting to figure out what's going on with the dishwasher.  So now I've run a cycle with just citric acid in the dishwasher, I've added vinegar to the rinse agent thingy, and I've checked all the filters and stuff to make sure they're not clogged with food. It's improved slightly, but we still have the problem with the glasses.

Any dishwasher experts out there want to offer some tips?

Paint. Dry. Repeat.

When looking for a photo to accompany this post I realized I hadn't yet uploaded my painting photos to my computer. On top of that, I don't really want you to see my kitchen without all its cupboard doors to hide the mess! So, a quick google image search turned up a photo from a pretty awesome blog, A Full Monte Life. I'm not keen on taking a photo of a half naked blogger and posting it here, but feel free to follow the link to see what I discovered! Obviously, that is not me in the photo, nor do I paint my kitchen while wearing only my panties and crocs.

Okay, back to the post. I started painting our kitchen a few weeks ago. I did the first layer and was very proud of myself as it was a lot of work. Then I got lazy... and a couple weeks went by... and I did a second layer. Now it's ready for the cupboard doors to go back up and yet they remain on the dining room floor. Also, a couple sections need another coat (didn't do so well on the first coat in those spots!)... but alas, that will be another week... or perhaps Friday.

Why is it taking me so long to paint our kitchen??

Small Space Storage Solutions

I got really excited about this post over at Apartment Therapy. Our new place is a similar size to our last place, but there is considerably less storage space. The post at Apartment Therapy was pretty cool, although a bit impractical for the renters among us. So, I post in hopes of feedback of solutions for storage in small spaces!

I already have a coffee table that is essentially a hope chest. It stores all our movies, gift wrapping needs, and a few extras. We've also resorted to getting a garment rack (read: basic metal rack to hang clothes off of, not at all attractive and not entirely stable) for our bedroom because our new place doesn't even have a bedroom closet. We are in desperate need of clothes storage.

We're also looking into raising our bed frame so that we can store our fitness equipment under it when it's not in use (we have a Total Gym). We could probably store a couple other things under there too, as long as they don't need to be accessed too frequently (maybe photo albums, board games, etc).

We also have a tv stand that has lots of shelving, but this is pretty much full with our dvd player and a few of Adam's toys (honestly, I don't know what they're called... some kind of contraption one can play video games on... that's the best I can do for you!).

Any other tips and ideas?

We will probably have a bit more cupboard space after the wedding when we can pass along the centerpieces and other tidbits we seem to have been collecting!