I think this is going to be another crafty week, because darn if I haven’t been feeling like a crafting QUEEN lately.
As most of you know, I was home for 16 days STRAIGHT for a sweet combo of work being closed (yay for working at a university) and a couple vacation days. SIXTEEN DAYS in a ROW. That’s kind of a lot.
And no, I’m not complaining because I loved having time off to hang out with Jack and Ollie. And yoga pants. And Christmas cookies. But mostly Jack and Ollie.
Keeping Jack entertained for that much time really forced me to be a little crafty, which is why I decided to do two different painting projects while I was home. The first project was from this month’s Citrus Lane box – it was supposed to be a handprint project, but turned more into abstract art. And I totally love it and hung it on my ‘Jack projects’ wall!
Our second painting project was inspired by some wooden snowflakes on clearance at JoAnn’s.
The snowflakes were on clearance for 50% off, which brought them to just $ .70 each. I also picked up a cheap paint pots kit for $1.50 and used some paintbrushes I already had at home. Then, I covered Jack’s little table with some kraft paper and stripped him down for some painting fun.
And it was SO MUCH FUN! I can’t believe how long Jack concentrated on painting the snowflakes… and believe me, doing anything for more than 15 minutes with a kid this age is impressive! When he was finished, I just threw the paper away and stuck Jack directly into a bath (the paint washed off easily).
Once the snowflakes dried, I stuck some thread through the holes and hung them up in my kitchen window. I also wrote the date on the back of one of the snowflakes so that 10 years down the road I remember when we made them.
I really like my happy little snowflakes because they’re not “Christmassy” but more “wintery” so I can keep them up for the next couple months. This is especially nice since we took all our Christmas decorations down over the weekend and I’m totally going through withdrawal.
Do you have a super cheap and fun craft project for toddlers that I should try? Feel free to leave me a link below! Also, are you suffering from Christmas decorations withdrawal too? I kind of wanted to leave my tree up for another month…
I always begin with great intentions… like never eating fast food again, losing a ton of weight and getting an extra million followers for my blog. But within a week or two, I’m right back to normal – PLUS I’m feeling defeated and depressed that I started the year out as a failure.
I haven’t really even bothered making resolutions the last few years, instead just vaguely intending to do better. I’m not really sure what “better” I’ve been aiming for though, because it’s just the sensation that life is slipping away too quickly and I need to make some kind of changes.
For 2014 though, I’ve decided to give myself some goals. Not resolutions. Actual goals that I want to complete within the next 12 months. And to keep myself on track, I’m only going to have 6 goals on my list.
New Year’s Goal #1: Use my camera more and my iPhone less.
Last year, I created a book for Jack’s birthday that showed his growth from month to month. It’s a really cool thing to have on our shelf, and we both love paging through to see how big Jack has grown. I started grouping my photos for this past year’s book (to be done in February when he turns 2) and I realized that the majority of my pictures are from my iPhone. I HAVE a nice camera and I love using it! So, for the upcoming year I’m going to make it a point to pull out my REAL camera when capturing memories.
New Year’s Goal #2: Make a workout habit.
Notice that I’m not saying, “Lose 40 pounds” or “Go to the gym 7 days each week.” I really want to have a goal that is attainable and frankly putting myself on a crash diet simply doesn’t work for me. My goal for this year is to create a workout program that works for ME and my life. So that instead of looking back on this goal in a month thinking I’m a failure, I’m hopefully in the midst of keeping up with my new healthy habit, whatever that may be.
New Year’s Goal #3: Eat out less and home more.
Travis and I ate out A LOT when we first got together (almost 8 years ago) and we continued to eat out very, very often once Jack joined us. In the last month or so, I’ve been trying out more recipes and purposely cooking enough for multiple nights. It’s really helped on those nights where you’re coming home late from work and just want to throw something in your mouth (aka McDonalds). My goal for this next year is to keep up the good work – more new recipes, more ‘simple’ meals, and maybe even do some group cooking with my friend so that we always have something yummy in the freezer.
New Year’s Goal #4: Take Jack somewhere new each month.
Life is busy. Both Travis and I work full-time and weekends frequently become the only time I have for catching up on the laundry, grocery shopping, house cleaning, and more. With my new schedule of working from home two days each week, I’m hoping to get some of those chores finished in the morning before my workday even begins (since I have to be up by 6:30 to get Jack out the door anyway). With freed up weekends, I’d love to bring some more fun into our lives by exploring a little more. Whether it’s visiting the zoo, the aquarium, the Smithsonian museums, a new park or even a neighborhood pool, I want to make sure to take Jack someplace new every single month!
New Year’s Goal #5: Be more like the ant.
You know the old fable about the ant and the grasshopper? The ant works and works on collecting food, while the grasshopper tries to convince him to stop working and have fun. Once winter comes, the grasshopper is starving while the ant has plenty of food from when he was making his little stockpile like those people on Extreme Couponing. The lesson of the story is that it’s fine to have fun today, but you have to prepare for the future. Travis and I have very similar views on money and saving, with neither of us really being that frivolous with our purchases. However, we can certainly do better. My money goals for the coming year are: grow our savings account, start a college savings plan for Jack, and pay off our last vehicle loan. Yes, that is actually three goals, but I think that they are all reachable with some small adjustments.
New Year’s Goal #6: Be the best blogger I can be.
I love my blog. I LOVE having this outlet for my thoughts, DIY projects and random things that make me laugh. I will be reaching my three year blog-anniversary in the spring, which is kind of incredible. Sometimes though, I take myself way too seriously and this blog brings out a bad side of me. I get super jealous when I see other bloggers doing way better than I am. I get really competitive and whiney and depressed and jealous. Just really, really jealous. And it sucks. This blog is not about making me feel like crap, it’s about celebrating the silliness of life. So for the next year (and beyond), I will STOP hating on myself and my blog. I will stop focusing on page-views and all the random crap that is thrown at me in Google Analytics. I will instead focus on all the amazing parts of blogging… like friends I have made, readers who comment so awesomely that I WISH we were friends in real life, and so much more.
There you go, my SIX goals for the New Year! I have to admit, I do feel pretty energized and excited when I look at them all typed up like this. Like, maybe I might actually accomplish them this year… which would be pretty darn cool!
How about you? Do you make resolutions or goals each year? What is one resolution that keeps appearing over and over and over again?
I hear it all the time, “Joules, you NEED to make time for yourself” but let me tell you that when you work full-time and you’re a mom full-time you don’t really GET time to yourself.
Errands with an (almost) 2 year old are their own special brand of challenging. Forcing myself to exercise at 6:30 in the morning is darn hard when my body would prefer to sleep and my tummy would rather be filled with cookies. Even my sleep is interrupted by an 8 pound fluff-ball trying to snuggle into that little area behind my knees.
My mom usually watches Jack three days each week, so I don’t feel comfortable asking her to do any more – especially an overnight slumber party. However, the perfect storm lined up where my mom had almost three weeks of a babysitting break (due to my work vacation) and my husband had a Saturday off of work!
So we did something CRAZY… we had a 24 hour date!
Just us. No toddler. No dog. Just US.
And it was WONDERFUL!
6ish
My husband was able to get off of work a little early and we checked into the 1840’s Carrollton Inn at 6:00 pm. The parking garage was a few blocks away, so he waited in the truck while I did the registration thing and threw our overnight bag into our room. From there, we parked in the Old Bay garage (got to love Baltimore!) and walked around Little Italy to find somewhere fun for dinner.
7ish
We wandered up to Amicci’s and hung out in the bar for a little while until a table was available. I had the Pomegranate Martini and it was delicious…like lick the glass kinda good.
And yes, I may have licked the glass. It would seem by the yummy noises coming from everywhere that everything on the menu was amazing. We had an appetizer of The Pane’ Rotundo, which was basically a huge hunk of Italian bread covered in garlic, shrimp and a creamy scampi sauce. So. Darn. Good. I had the Chicken Marsala for my meal, while the hubby had Penny’s Tortellini. For dessert, I insisted on a homemade cannoli and I’m not going to lie…I ate the whole thing because Travis didn’t want any. Worth it.
9ish
After stuffing ourselves so full of delicious Italian food that we practically had to roll ourselves out the front door, we walked back to our B&B. We finally had a chance to check out the room and bathroom and HOLY MOLEY was this place nice. The room was HUGE and the bathroom…well, that was huge too!
The bed was so incredibly comfortable and I kind of wanted to shove it out the window and take it home with us. The huge Jacuzzi tub was amazing too… and we (of course) had to keep calling it a Jacuzzzzz like on How I Met Your Mother.
Do you see how HUGE everything is? I look like a little girl!Yes, I opened the wardrobe and checked for Narnia. It was not there… just a television.
8ish
Before we went to bed for the evening, we had filled out our breakfast menu and chose to have coffee delivered to our room at 8:00. We had a nice little seating area on one side of our room, so we didn’t have to worry about balancing coffee on our laps and spilling it all over the bed.
Normally at a B&B, you would be sociable and eat breakfast in a main dining room with the other people who are staying there. However, we decided that we weren’t letting anyone bother us on our 24 hour date and had them deliver our breakfast to our room at 9:00. Honestly, I expected to be blown away with an amazing breakfast (as we have been at other B&B’s), but this one was just…fine. I mean, there was nothing wrong with it, but nothing that made it extraordinary either.
11ish
We hung out in the room until 11am, when we had to check out. Once we left, we just walked around Baltimore for a while and I picked up a few things from Anthropologie, while Travis patiently waited on the “husband’s couch.” After getting my shop on, we decided to grab sushi at one of our favorite places, Ra. We’ve been there a few times and every time we leave in a satisfied sushi coma. Hmm… I realize now that most of our date has been eating…
Look, we’re not eating! For now.
2ish
Since we rarely are able to see movies in the theater, we went to see Anchorman 2 at the Baltimore Landmark Theater. It was funny. I mean, I laughed pretty hard at different parts of the movie, but I also was wishing it would go a lot faster at other parts. That’s kind of what you expect with Anchorman though, right?
4ish
Eating again. Travis wanted some ice cream and there is a Haagen Dazs right next to the theater. Okay fine, it’s not like I just WATCHED him eat ice cream, I had one too and it was yummy. After ice cream we walked back to our truck in the Old Bay garage and by time we got back up the road, it was almost exactly 24 hours after we left!
It is amazing how just 24 hours away from real life felt like an actual vacation. We actually had the time and energy to just enjoy ourselves. While Jack is a master at eating out in public, it is still so much more relaxing to just have a little grown up conversation once in a while (without picking up a discarded fork off the ground, occupying a kiddo with crayons, helping him sip from his cup without drenching himself in water, and sharing any piece of my food that he decides he wants). We had so much fun and hopefully will be able to do it again sometime. Sometime sooner than two more years!
Did you have a chance to get away at all when your kids were young? Where did you go and what did you do?
The snowflakes were on clearance for 50% off, which brought them to just $ .70 each. I also picked up a cheap paint pots kit for $1.50 and used some paintbrushes I already had at home. Then, I covered Jack’s little table with some kraft paper and stripped him down for some painting fun.
And it was SO MUCH FUN! I can’t believe how long Jack concentrated on painting the snowflakes… and believe me, doing anything for more than 15 minutes with a kid this age is impressive! When he was finished, I just threw the paper away and stuck Jack directly into a bath (the paint washed off easily).
I really like my happy little snowflakes because they’re not “Christmassy” but more “wintery” so I can keep them up for the next couple months. This is especially nice since we took all our Christmas decorations down over the weekend and I’m totally going through withdrawal.
