January 8, 2013

• A Challenging Year

  I swear, as if my resolution list wasn’t enough…!!

  First, my New Year’s Challenge group decided to keep going with new goals over at MyFitnessPal… so we are now aiming for Valentine’s Day.  My new goal is 10 pounds lost.  As you know, I aimed for 15 pounds lost between Oct/New Year’s, and I managed 13 of them, so I am pretty happy.  We’ll see how I do losing weight by Valentines.  But regardless… I’m on a weight loss challenge.

    Then my friend J directed me to a ‘January Cure‘ – a thirty day challenge to get our homes more organized, more comfortable, and more beautiful.  Now, praytell who wouldn’t want THAT?!  And while my house is lovely, comfortable, and fairly organized, there are some… well, I have things that I can’t seem to get a fire under my hiney to take care of.  So I joined the Cure.  Day One was making a list of three things each room needs.  Day Two was setting up an ‘outbox’ – things to donate.  Which is hilarious, because I have an outbox for recycle, an outbox for paper, an outbox for compost, an outbox for donation… yeah.  Day Three was buying flowers, Day Four was going thru cleaning supplies and restocking/discarding.  Day Five was the Mega-Vaccuum… which I actually am doing today, because Day Five at my house was painting the parlor and boys room, hanging trim in the hall, parlor, and Lydia’s room, and putting the parlor back together.  Vaccuuming comes AFTER all that.  But still… I’m on a cleaning/organizing challenge.

  Yesterday my friend Missy posted on her FB that she was doing a Reading Challenge at GoodReads.com.  Now you have to understand, she already wrangled me into getting an account there last year, so we could review things and share/recommend books.  I loved it, because I wanted a reading log, and it works perfectly.  But apparently the site also has a challenge app, and keeps track of where you are in your goals.  On my resolution list, I wrote that I want to read three books off my Kindle a month – that’s 36 books this year.  Why not use GoodReads to track me?  So… I’m in a book challenge.

  Then one of my homesteading sites linked me to a site called 13Skills… where you choose thirteen things from the list, and learn 13 new skills in 2013.  Since I already want to learn to count in 10 languages, and a bunch of other things from my resolution list fit, I thought I’d just plug ‘em in and see what I can do.  So I’m also in a skills challenge.

  In the same vein, I’ve ‘liked’ two preppers who are doing month-by-month prep challenges:  Backdoor did it all thru 2012, prepping people to handle a short-term situation, but for 2013 she’s going to do a more long-term plan, and I’m interested in seeing what she has to say.  And then there’s an LDS site (NoTe:  I do NOT endorse anything having to do with the LDS, EVER.) but from a prep standpoint, she’s got an amazing list that she is blogging thru, this year.  In case anyone is interested.

  When I first signed up at Pinterest, I found these papers… ’10 Ways to Play In _____’ (insert month) I printed them all off, and put them in the back of my school notebook, and forgot about them.  But over the winter break (when I was putting a bunch of stuff away), I found them again.  So I pulled them out, hung one up, and put a number on every third day of January on my calendar in blue.  So we’re doing the Kid Activity challenge, too.

  uPDaTe:  I forgot one!!  My friend Carrie (CHorsey) showed me this photo, and I totally fell in LOVE with the idea.  Basically, it’s a financial challenge… you put away the same number of dollars as is the week of the year.  So week one, you put away one dollar, week two, you put away two, etc.  By the end of the year, you have about $1300 saved up.  That is SO kewl… except I think I’m going to do it backwards, starting with week $52, so it doesn’t hurt so much.  And I’m going to do it twice for each child, so that I have $2700(ish) to give each child as a downpayment on their first car.  Otherwise, I wouldn’t be able to help them, and I like the idea of giving them something to help them out.  So I’ve printed this, and am going to be working hard on it! (/update)

  Is it me, or is that a LOT of challenges?  Part of me says that’s a lot to bite off and chew, but another part says that there are so many good apps and tools out there, if utilized properly, they could just make everything fall into place easier.   I guess time will tell!!

  • 10:36 am
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