Category Archives: Lists

Jan4

Making Things: A Few Thoughts so Far

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Today’s project is still in progress, and I suspect it won’t be done until late, so I am taking some time now to reflect on how the project thinking smileyis going in general. I know, it’s only day 4, but what is the point of havinga blog if I can’t use it for a little navel-gazing?

My biggest takeaway so far? I need to go upstairs to go to bed earlier each night. I am not saying I actually need to go to sleep earlier, although I do. I mean I need to stop thinking of going upstairs to get ready for bed as actually going to bed. I’ve been trying to write in my journal each evening, just a bit with some ideas and general thoughts, and it is hard to fit that in AND read for a bit AND brush my teeth and wash my face AND get enough sleep if I don’t head upstairs until 10:30 or 11:00 PM. That would be a fine time to go to sleep, but it is too early to start a before bed routine that takes an hour or more.

Also, if I thought I was obsessed with making things before (and I totally thought that), I was underestimating how obsessed I could get. Everything I look at now, I think about what I could make with it. Every piece of art or craft I see, I wonder if I could do the same, or use the same technique. I WANT TO DO ALL THE CRAFTS! ALL THE ARTS! It’s a little crazy. I thought making something every day would calm that urge. If anything, I worried it would *limit* my making; that I would make one thing and then move on to slothdom in front of the tv. Not so. I hope I keep up this level of momentum and inspiration.

On a related note, this could get very expensive if I am not careful. I want to save some money for a cool road trip with my kids this summer, so I have to be careful. I am thinking that I need to focus more on reclaimed materials. Here are some ideas I have for that:

  • Make some t-shirt yarn with the pile of outgrown t-shirts in the basement from my children
  • Visit Habitat for Humanity’s ReStore for cool materials–I am particularly keen on doing something with old paned windows, but I also want to look at furniture and cabinets
  • Yard sales and estate sales in the spring are probably a good place to find all kinds of craft supplies
  • Do something with all the wine bottles and jars I have been saving from my own use–probably several somethings
  • Good will is another good place to look for materials

Where do you get cheap art and craft supplies?

Jun16

To Do List for Sunday

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I really need to get back to my weekend list making, so I know what I am doing. The weekend is half over now, but I am getting my list in for what is left

  • Make some crafts. I bought supplies today to make cool bracelets and necklaces I pinned on Pinterest, and I want to get that done (or at least started).
  • Play racquetball with the girl. My friend is still hurting from pulling a muscle in her leg last Tuesday, but I don’t want to lose my momentum.
  • Go swimming at a friend’s house. I know, that doesn’t sound like a to do list item, but relationships are important, and sometimes it is easy to stay home like a hermit and ignore them.
  • BBQ with my dad for Father’s day. He dearly loves to BBQ for us, so we are heading over there, even though he smokes like a chimney and I hate that smell. It’s father’s day after all.
  • Make a menu for the week. Hopefully one that doesn’t require me to buy anything after last weekend’s expensive Costco trip!
  • Go to bed early. The girl starts summer cheerleading practice at 6 AM Monday, and I want to give her a ride, at least for the first day, so I need to break my staying up ’til midnight summer habit.
  • Finish the blog post I started today. It is a bit more drawn out than this list, so I want to take a bit more time on it. I hope I didn’t raise huge expectations there! I have been mulling a bit this weekend on full engagement and doing what I want with my life rather than drifting through it, and I think that merits a bit more time, including an extra day for reviewing.

So far this weekend, I have taken the dog for a walk, made dinner last night and did a few errands. Not much, I know, but I am feeling pretty good about tomorrow. I am going to get a bit more crocheting done tonight as well, which is always relaxing and fun.

What are your plans for this weekend? How are they coming along?

May23

Summer Goals

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Today is the first day of summer vacation for my children. I still have to work, of course, but they have lots of free time on the horizon. Today I left them asleep while I headed off to work, and I didn’t give them any directions for the day. It is the first day of their vacation, they should decompress, relax and enjoy it. Especially since things will be changing soon.

Last summer, my kids spent so much time watching television, I had to prompt them to reply to anything I said.
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“I am really here in the room, not on TV entertaining you! Answer me! Have a conversation.” This year, I have vowed that things will be different. The TV will not be the primary form of passing the time. They will use their brains and their bodies for more than holding the couch down and watching other people far away do interesting things.

This is not the first time I have tried to get them to watch less tv. I work at home two days per week, but I am in the office the other three, and in the past, this has translated to at least three days per week of almost constant TV watching. To counteract that to some extent, I have decided that this year there will be goals in 4 areas:

  • Reading
  • Writing
  • Physical fitness
  • Science

The girl also needs to start thinking about a service project. She is entering high school in the fall, and she needs to start thinking about building her record for college applications. Plus, we need to do something to show her that the fact that I don’t buy her everything she wants as soon as she wants it does not mean she is disadvantaged, ;) .

I broke the news to the kids over brunch this past Sunday. They were not impressed. They became a little more enthusiastic when I said that they could choose their own goals (although I have to approve–they must be an actual stretch). So far, the girl has decided to learn to play golf with my dad, and the boy has decided to finish a story about dragons who live in the sewer system he is writing with his best friend. They are still thinking about the remaining goals.

For the science goal, I have decided we will do one science experiment per week as a family, so they don’t need to come up with a separate goal for that. They can find something they would like to do, or I can come up with one, but ev

eryone has to participate. Also, to make this whole thing slightly more fun for them and less heartless, I bought the family pool passes. If they are at the pool, they are doing at least some moving around, and they won’t be watching TV.

As for me, I am making a few goals as well.

  • Writing: Establish a daily writing habit. I need to post more regularly here and at Gaming Angels. I am also working with a friend to start a crocheting blog for her new business. And I keep saying I write fiction, or at least I want to write fiction, but not doing any writing. It is time to change that. Oh, and here of course.
  • Physical fitness: Since I got the FitBit, I definitely exercise more. I take more steps, and I am less sedentary. I could do better, though. For the past 30 days, my average number of steps is 5,612–not terrible, but I can definitely improve. I want to be consistently at 7,500 per day by the end of the summer. I know 10,000 is the usual goal, but I want to try to get there a bit more gradually; once I have mastered 7,500 consistently, I will raise the goal again. I also want to make sure my total active time for each day (lightly active, fairly active, very active) totals at least 4 hours every day, with at least 1 ½ hours in fairly or very active.
  • Crafting: I am substituting this for science, since that is covered in the family goal, and I have a ton of crafting projects I want to do. For now, I will be relatively modest in my goals: 5 crochet projects and 5 non-crochet projectscompleted before school starts for the kids on 8/14. 

You may have noticed I didn’t put a reading goal in there; I am not sure what to do. I already read a lot, and I don’t have a lot of spare time to devote to reading more. All those goals up there will take a lot of my time spent not working, eating or sleeping! I am still thinking about this one. I haven’t made the kids finalize their goals yet, after all, why should I be done with mine?

Do you do summer goals? Or is it all loose and easy at your house?

Jan8

Cooking Ahead on Sundays

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I have long known that preparing food in one big session is a great way to save time during a busy week. When I get home from the office at 6 PM, Itry to head right into the kitchen and start dinner, but sometimes that doesn’t seem to happen. Either the kids need something, or I decide to check one thing on the computer first–usually because I go to pull up the recipe and get distracted by other things–or I need to do a bit of a cleanup in the kitchen before I start cooking, I am embarrassed to say. That last one doesn’t happen nearly as often as it used to, but some nights we just don’t get the cleanup done before bed. You know what would help with that? Making dinner earlier, which leads to the explanation of the  whole cycle of cleaning up first, cooking and eating late, and not feeling like going back in to clean the kitchen again.

When my daughter was a toddler, I even did once a month cooking, which was great, but it is hard to fit that big cooking session in my schedule now that I am working full-time, and I don’t have the freezer space anyway.This week, though, I came across a brilliant idea through the Menu Plan Monday links: doing the prep work for one week’s worth of dinners on a Sunday afternoon. Even if I don’t prep everything up to the point of popping it into the oven (we do a lot of stove top recipes, and meals that start with sauteeing an onion and some garlic before adding everything else), some pre-chopping would certainly streamline the process of a week night meal.

I have also been struggling to make sure that we all get enough vegetables and less processed foods. I put lots of veggies in our dinners generally, but we could always use more. Some days, it seems like the veggies we eat for dinner are the only vegetables the kids eat all day. I am a bit better, but I could always use more. Pre-packing lunch snack packs with veggies could help here, and it would help a lot with our morning routine, too. Plus, anything that helps us move away from the processed foods we grab as a matter of course because they are so quick is a good thing.

Ideally, I would like to start making the following things on Sunday afternoons to make our week go more smoothly:

  • A veggie soup–soups are a fantastic easy way to get more vegetables in our diets. Plus, they are easy to reheat for a quick snack while dinner is cooking.
  • A large batch of slaw–I love a cabbage slaw, but a good carrot or broccoli slaw is a good option here. There important thing is to have a veggie that can handle sitting in a bowl with dressing all week, so lettuce salads are right out.
  • Something easy to grab for breakfast–We are always rushing though breakfast, it seems. It is downright embarrassing how many times we just eat a pre-packaged granola bar in the car. We do occasionally have the time to make smoothies in the morning, which I think is an excellent way to start the day, but it would be good to have something else relatively quick to grab.
  • Cut up veggie tray–the kids are more likely to eat veggies that are already prepped for them. So, broccoli florets, sliced bell peppers, and baby carrots on a tray with some hummus in the fridge might get eaten if they are ready to go.
  • Chopped veggies for the weekly dinners–it is faster to go ahead and chop five onions in a batch than one onion every night, and it gives a nice head start to meal prep. Also, I find that cooking with whole foods does really add a lot of time to my nightly cooking–it is time-consuming to chop all those veggies! Doing it all in one go at least means I only have to do it once. Maybe I can get better about suing my food processor to save me some work, too.

Here is what I made so far this week:

Cream of Baby Carrot Soup
Broccoli Slaw with this slaw dressing

The cream of baby carrot soup is actually one that we all like, or at least, will eat. I am going to serve the broccoli slaw and hope the kids will eat at least a little of it.

I am going to the grocery store soon, and I hope to make a few more things:

Veggie tray–bell pepper strips, snow peas, broccoli florets, carrot chips, edamame
Various preps for the week–chopping onions, picking and prepping kale from the garden, etc.
Ginger-Lime Slaw
A big pot of oatmeal

I know, I already made one slaw, but I really do love that ginger lime slaw. I already had the broccoli slaw mix, so I needed to use it, and I think I can handle two slaws this week. It will break things up a bit. I do already have the oatmeal ingredients here, but I want to get to the store before it gets too much later, or I will be tempted to buy convenience food so I am not cooking dinner too late.

Is anyone else doing prep work on the weekends to make the workweek easier?