Happy New Year! I hope you’ve had a fab Christmas holidays and New Year celebrations. We’ve just about recovered from our 4.30am wake up call on Christmas morning now. Did your kids do any worse? We’re all looking forward now to going back to school next week and getting back to our normal routines, especially our eating ones. I think even the kids are starting to crave an apple for their pudding now (well maybe not, but we certainly are!). 
We’re kicking off 2015 on the blog with an exciting new project. This year my number one resolution is to make more productive use of my time. This includes time with the kids, around the home and on my. Towards the end of last year, I felt that I had begun to lose a bit of focus in my day-to-day life. I have been wasting far too much time flitting from one thing to another before finishing anything off properly. This year I have decided to try and structure my time better by setting myself targets each month. I am going to write them down in my new diary and then tick them off as I do each one. Now setting yourself goals is all well and good. but sticking to them is the hard part. So when the opportunity arose to become a co-host on the “Monthly Goals 2015” linky, I jumped at the chance. This feels like the perfect way to help keep motivated and has the added bonus of being able to support others with their own goals as well. In January my goals are:
Create a Family ScrapbookI kept a diary last year charting key milestones for each of the kids, new things we experienced together as a family; details about the kids birthdays; new Christmas traditions we introduced etc, along with photographs and things the kids have drawn and written about. I now plan to collate all of this precious information together in the form of a scrapbook or memory book. I began to research my family history last year and whilst it is great to find out who lived where and when, it would have been even better to have learnt more about their day to day lives. I’m hoping that by creating these scrapbooks each year. we will be able to leave a record of our lives for future family members to read about. |
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Be more thrifty with our craft supplies
I admit it, “I am addicted to buying arts and crafts supplies for the kids and for myself”. I literally have cupboards bulging with stuff, so this month I am going to try not to buy any new arts and crafts supplies and work on just using the ones we already have, alongside some more ordinary household items as well.
For example we have a load of cardboard and other packaging materials left over from Christmas which are ideal to make and create with. My sons in particular love to be given a stack of supplies and then be left to their own devices to make something, so I plan to do lots of this type of making with the kids this month.
Bring back my cleaning schedule
Last year we moved into a new house and whilst it started out all spick and span, it has been a hard job to maintain the high standards that we set when we moved in.
In the past I have written out a schedule for myself detailing all of the jobs which needed doing weekly and monthly and this really helped to keep things on track, so I am definitely bringing this back out again.
It will be good to get the kids helping out a lot more this year with chores as well. My sons are 5 and 7 now, so they are definitely able to help out with a few more things now and even my 2 year old daughter can do some things to help now.
Stress less on the school run
Getting out of the door each day to take the kids to school and then collect them all at different times to get them back home again, does leave me feeling frazzled by the end of each week. I need to start to give myself a bit more of a break though and calm down a bit in the morning when I’m yelling at the kids to get their shoes and coats on.
I hate being late for anything, but I have to realise that we don’t have to be first in every day and if I have to park a little further away from school at collection time, then it’s not the end of the world.
What goals are you setting yourself this month? If you have written about them on your blog, then please add them to our linky or if you’d just like to join in by commenting then sometimes just writing them down can be the first step to accomplishing them.
I'm being more thrifty with our craft supplies! My husband asked me not to buy anything for 3 months. I'm hoping I can do it.
Wow 3 months is a long time, i m not sure I could manage that! Good luck with your challenge. I look forward to hearing about how you get along with this.
I love your family scrapbook idea!