Write a weekly meal plan

Lately, when I'm hungry, I'll walk into the kitchen, look through the cupboards, look through the fridge, and decide there is nothing to eat.  In fact, there's plenty of food in the kitchen, I'm just tired of having the same old, same old every day.

So before I go shopping each week or two, I need to know what we're going to be eating.  Then, hopefully, I can spice up the menu a little.  It'll also be nice to know what we're having each day, so I don't have to stand there, trying to figure out what to throw together before the children have a meltdown.

This will also be good for my goal to lose weight.  I can plan meals based on my caloric needs.  Plus, if I schedule my fruits and veggies for specific meals, maybe I will be more likely to eat them.

I guess I will:

• Come up with a format for scheduling meals (list, chart, whatever)
• Put all my recipes in one place
• Get meal suggestions from my husband and children
• Write out my meal plans
• Save meal plans from previous weeks, so I can use them again in future weeks

How do you plan your meals?  Do you like to know what you're having ahead of time, or do you like to just throw something together?

Merry Christmas!

I hope you have a wonderful Christmas!!!!

Make a quilt for each of my children

When I was about 8-years-old, my mom made quilts for all the children in our family.  I love that quilt.  I still have it, 20 years later.  It's falling apart, though.

So, I want to make some quilts for my children too.  (Plus it helps to have extra blankets in case one of the kids has an accident in bed, or something like that.)

About a week and a half ago, or maybe two weeks, I decided to make a quilt for my daughter for Christmas.  I went to the fabric store and starting looking around, but then I stopped and realized I was crazy to think that I would have time to make a quilt before Christmas.

So, this year, I'm going to make quilts for my two children.

I need to:

• Decide which patterns to use
• Decide on the color schemes
• Purchase fabric and other supplies
• Cut, cut, cut
• Sew, sew, sew

Do you like to sew?  Have you ever made a quilt?

Get organized

Hmmmm, now this is a tricky one.  Where, or where, do I even begin with this?  How do I want things done?  Where do I want to put everything?  What do I keep?  What do I get rid of?

I've got a lot of work to do!

I suppose I should start with my sewing and crafting stuff.  It would be really nice if it was all in one place, labeled, and ready to be used.

Let's see...

• Figure out exactly where to start
• Decide what kind of system to use
• Figure out a schedule for completing each area of organization

Yep, I definitely have TONS of work to do!

Do you need to organize anything?  How do you like things to be organized?

Get my daughter out of nighttime pull-ups

My daughter has been potty trained for a long time now, but she still wears a pull-up diaper for naps and bedtime.  I admit that part of that is due to the fact that I just don't want to deal with all the yucky sheets.

Unfortunately, I think wearing a diaper to bed is affecting her potty training skills.  It seems as though she holds it all in and goes to the bathroom less frequently because she knows if she waits long enough, I will put a pull-up on her and she can just use that instead of the bathroom.

Uggh!

So, I need to stop being lazy, and help her get out of those diapers once and for all.

I honestly can't really think of a lot of sub-goals for this one...hmmmm...

• Don't buy any more pull-ups
• Make sure that there are always clean sheets available, in case she needs them
• Really show her what a wonderful job she has done when she wakes up dry
• Don't get upset if she has an accident in her bed

Well, look at that, I did come up with some sub-goals.

How did you help your children with their nighttime potty training?

Write a will

Life is a wonderful, wonderful thing!  But we never know when we are going to die, so I need to make sure that I have written a will.

Now, I don't have tons of money, or tons of things that someone will inherit when I die.  I do have 2 amazing children, though.  This is why writing a will is important to me.

If my husband and I die, I want to make sure that our children are taken care of.

My husband and I both have great families, so I know that our children would be loved no matter who looked after them.  But it's nice to know that I can have some say in what happens to them.

Have you ever seen the movie "Raising Helen"?  It's about a woman who ends up taking in her 3 nieces and nephews after their parents die.  Here is a quote from that movie that explains how I feel:

"...when it comes to picking somebody else to raise your kids, no one seems right. No one is you. And so you choose someone who is most like you. Someone that will give the kids a taste of their real mom, the mom they lost and never really got to know."

So, I guess I should:

• Research will writing to figure out what I'm supposed to do exactly
• Prayerfully decide what I want included in the will
• Write any letters that I might wanted included in my will

Do you have a will?

Make a 2010 scrapbook

I got really into digital scrapbooking for a while.  I found a bunch of free kits, papers, and embellishments.  I organized my pictures.  I got Photoshop Elements for my birthday and played around with it for a while, trying to teach myself to use it.

So, how many scrapbook pages would you guess I have made?  40? 165? 400?

2.  I think with all of my fiddling around and finding freebies and adding paper to templates, I only ever completely finished 2 pages.  I have a bunch of other pages that are partially finished, but those don't really count, do they?

So in 2011, I am going to:

• Spend at least an hour every Sunday scrapbooking
• Complete a 2010 scrapbook
• Have the scrapbook published
• Organize my pictures as soon as I upload them to the computer
• Publish a post on my family blog every Sunday

How do you organize your pictures?  Are you a scrapbooker?  Do you prefer simple photo albums?  Do you have stacks of photos in a box in your garage (hopefully, I can tackle this one in 2012)?