Goal Three

You guys remember my New Year's goals? {How could you forget? I bring them up at least once a week, I think.} My third goal was to re-do our living room and kitchen, and I've been meaning to talk a little bit more about my plans.

About our house: I love this house we're living in. It's such a blessing to our family. I wanted to buy it the moment I saw the listing when I was casually browsing for houses, four months before we started seriously house shopping. I knew it was the perfect home for us when I first set foot in the living room. It was as though could feel the emotions {the love} that we would experience in that room echoing back and resonating in my heart. {Sappy? Maybe. But I'm unapologetic about that this year. Deal with the sappiness, guys.}

I love this house, but also I love what this house could become. I am constantly making plans for how I could improve our home, even though I know that we don't have the time, energy or money to make most of those plans a reality. Add a garage! Increase the counter space! Move this wall! Tear down the shed! Replace all major appliances!

You may think I'm kidding, but no. I have shouted all of those orders at imaginary work crews. I am the kind of person who likes to dream big in her head before facing practicalities. HOWEVER, I have trimmed my ideal down to a few goals that I think are actually accomplishable. After all, I just want to re-do the living room and kitchen this year, not our entire property inside and out.

I took the opportunity on Thursday to snap a few pictures of our living room {in its natural state; don't mind how everything is a disaster}, since it's the room I want to tackle during the first half of the year. I've made a few notes on what I'd like to change as a kind of to-do list for myself.



It's a little overwhelming at times, how much I want to change. I'm trying to take it one step at a time. First, we need to take down that popcorn ceiling {gross}.

Have you done any house updates lately? I'd love to hear about your projects.

Goal One

{ print by Emily McDowell on Etsy }
Last week I made five goals for myself in 2013. The first was to read one new book each month. It's a modest goal as far as reading goes {at least for someone who still likes to brag about the fact that she first read Gone With the Wind when she was 12}, but I'm taking a slow-but-steady approach to my goals this year.

I've always considered myself a reader {I am one who reads}, and then about two years ago I read an amazing book and afterward kind of just stopped cold. I can't explain it, it's inexplicable. But just because I can't put a name to a problem doesn't mean the problem can't be fixed. Reading is important to me, so in 2013 I will start trying to read again.

I've decided I'm going to start out the year by finishing Life of Pi in January. {If you're thinking, I thought everyone had read that book already, then I'm pretty sure you're right. Everyone else has, just not me.} I started it for the second time several months ago, and so far I absolutely love it, but I'm still only 46 pages in. Yikes.

Subsequently, I've planned: The Corrections {February}, The Kite Runner {March}, A Thousand Splendid Suns {April}, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time {May}, Mystic River {June}, The Architecture of Happiness {July}, A Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy {August}, The Right Stuff {September}, On The Road {October}, One Hundred Years of Solitude {November}, and A Visit from the Goon Squad {December}.

I'm marking my progress and I'll be posting my reviews on Goodreads, if you'd like to follow along.

Have you read any of the books on my list for this year? {I'd love to hear your thoughts! Just no spoilers, please.} And do you have any recommendations for me, should I finish my list early and find myself with extra reading time?

What I Am Is an Optimist

{ image by StefanyAlves }
I've been sitting here tonight, browsing Pinterest for an image that accurately reflects my general mood and writing this post in my head {much better than how it will actually turn out, I'm sure}, trying to find the right words so that this doesn't come across as entirely cheesy and cliche and opportunistic. Because I find myself, for the first time that I can remember, deeply and sincerely in love with the opportunity that the changing of the calendar year brings. I'm excited to set new goals for myself; my heart feels thirsty for achievement.

And maybe that's overly dramatic, but maybe this year I'll stop apologizing for being overly dramatic. Maybe this year, my wildest dreams will come true. It's possible, right? Certainly it's more possible if I believe it's possible, and other similar pseudo-paradoxical motivational sayings.

Am I rambling? I feel like I'm rambling, but maybe this is the year that I stop apologizing for rambling. Maybe this is the year that I stop apologizing for the person that I am, and I just become more of myself. I think that's my overarching goal for 2013: less of doing nothing, being nothing, trying to be other people, and much more of becoming a bigger, better, more ME version of me.

I've also set some smaller, more tangible, more check-off-my-list-y kind of goals. To give me direction and boost my morale. Here they are, both those that I've been thinking about for weeks and those that I'm making up right this very minute:

1. Read a new book each month.
2. Take this course.
3. Re-do our living room and kitchen.
4. Read my scriptures every day.
5. Blog at least three times a week, and {for better or worse} start accepting sponsors by July.

Honestly, I'm a little bit afraid right now. I'm afraid of setting goals, I'm afraid of failing {and with an audience}. Last time I was excited about setting goals for myself, this happened, and I started 2010 feeling more confused and lost from myself than possibly I ever had before. It was terrible, but I know that not trying is worse.

And I'm interested: what goals have you set for yourself this year? Do any of them involve books? {I'm going to write more about my first goal in another post -- there's a lot I want to say.}

P.S. I'd like to thank these two sweethearts for helping me find the courage to write this post.

This Is Not a Goodbye Post

{ image via }
You've probably noticed that I haven't posted on this blog in a month. {If you haven't, go look at the date on my last post. If you're too lazy to look, you'll have to take my word that it's September 4th.} There's a reason I haven't posted in a month, and I've spent the better part of this month trying to figure out what that reason is and how to articulate it. As I write, I'm still trying. Please bear with me.

A lot of it started when I noticed that I was getting traffic from a certain site. Nothing terrible or hurtful was being said about me, but I ended up letting myself get sucked in for a few days nonetheless. I realized {suddenly, starkly, like a slap in the face} how many things I was doing with my blog just because of the thought, everyone else is doing this, therefore I should, too. And why? How the heck does that make sense as a way to function?

I've realized during the past month that I have a kind of love/irritation relationship with blogging. On the positive side, I enjoy blogging. It's been a wonderful emotional outlet for me. I enjoy writing, and I enjoy that others read my writing. I love the relationships I've formed with other bloggers. I love reading blogs; I admire beautiful and well-written blogs, of which there are too many to count. I think blogging is an amazing, inspiring form of media.

However, I feel irritated when I see bloggers who seem insincere, blogging solely for the purpose of gaining money and popularity. I won't expand any more on those feelings - they're ugly and I'm trying to do better about just being my best self without judging others. {And maybe I need to stop pretending to know what motivates others. Please know that I'm not trying to insult anyone; I think it's amazing when bloggers can make money doing what they love.}

More to the point than all that mess I just typed, during my unintentional month-long blogging hiatus, I found that I've been happier. I've had less stress in my life, and I've been able to accomplish more. {I've made dinner more often in the past three weeks than I have since Christian and I were first married four and a half years ago.} I sometimes find myself in a position where can either blog or... fill in the blank, and whatever fills in the blank always seems to take priority. Especially if it's letting Lucy stay sleeping on my chest, because that's just the best way to spend time ever.

And so I feel conflicted. I want to promise myself to let my little blog be its own thing, and not to feel pressure to do anything a certain way, but I honestly don't know if I can do that. I want to let go of the negative feelings I have towards others, but I don't know if I can do that either. And if I can't do either of those things, then what I'm giving up to blog {my time, which is more precious to me now than it's ever been} seems better spent on something else.

By now it seems that there's only one logical conclusion to this post: stop blogging, move on, just live my life. But that's not the conclusion I've reached.

Here's why: Tuesday afternoon was rainy. I had had thoughts earlier in the day about going to the park, but we were stuck at home. To stave off restlessness, I got out a little jar of bubbles and started blowing them in our living room. The ceiling fan was on and the bubbles practically danced around the room. My children were incredibly, adorably delighted. Max and Maggie laughed and waved their arms around. Maggie fell backward more than once, trying to reach a bubble floating over her head. Lucy cackled from her seat in the Bumbo; I don't know if she found the bubbles themselves or the general air of excitement more hilarious. Max came over and tried to blow some bubbles by himself; he got the idea of what he was supposed to do, but wouldn't blow unless the wand was touching his mouth. I looked around at my happy kids and I thought, I want to do this forever. It was a perfectly perfect moment. And even though I told myself I would always remember that moment, chances are that if I didn't just write it down, I would have eventually forgotten.

This blog is my journal right now, and I can't bear to forget all the moments. I can't capture every memory - there are too many, and some are just for my heart alone - but I can keep enough that when I re-read these posts, I can feel a little of the essence of how our lives used to be seeping out. Like hugging a sweater that's been packed away and getting a whiff of the smell that's still inside it.

I have to keep trying, I have to keep going. I have to learn to be myself and not worry about others, make time to record memories and still cherish the moments I'm in. It's a little cheesy maybe, and certainly nothing ground-breaking, but this has been my thought process over the past month. And heaven help me, I'm glad it's finally out.

Resolutions

When Christian and I discussed our family's goals for 2012, we decided on three. Three seems like a good number for us. Considering how we fall onto the couch after the babies are asleep in their beds and sigh our grateful sighs that the most stressful part of the day is over, three is enough to be thinking about.

For the first half{-ish} of the year, we want to work on welcoming a healthy and happy newbaby into our family. We know that we only have control over this to a certain extent, but it is our dear hope that newbaby will come into the world in an entirely unexceptional manner. No early labor, no extended hospital stay, no superfluous thumbs that need to be surgically removed later.

For the second half, we want to try very hard not to get pregnant again. A large family is our dream, but three children every fourteen months is kind of a break-neck pace, and not one we want to keep up. {Christian did the math. At this rate, it would only take us six years to have 15 kids. Yowza.} Let me emphasize, we are so incredibly grateful for the blessing of children in our lives. We just also want to partake of the glorious blessing of successful family planning.

Our third goal is to watch all 15 seasons {and 331 episodes} of ER.

*image from The Glow

Book of Mormon Goals & Neon Crayons

Christian is doing an excellent job helping me reach our New Year's goal of reading the entire Book of Mormon again before the babies come. He created and printed out a calendar to track how many pages we should have read by the end of each day, and is even letting me color in the days with crayons. You can't tell from the pictures I took {I went more for interesting than informative}, but we haven't missed a day so far!

There's a good chance the babies will end up coming before our scheduled finish, which is set for April 15th. I told Christian he could read me the last chapters as I'm in labor in the hospital, but I think we all know that I don't know what I'm talking about when it comes to labor. I might end up throwing things at him if he tries to read to me. And really, as long as we do our best, I'm going to consider this endeavor a success. {Mostly to the credit of my awes-credible husband. I don't brag on him often, but I wanted to take this opportunity.}

One final thing I've realized while coloring in the calendar: I seriously hate neon crayons. I try to pick out the colors I use randomly, while still not using the same ones too often, but I feel like 50 percent of the time I come up with a neon color. And I hate neon crayons. They don't look nice with other crayon colors. Mostly they don't look nice at all. Why does Crayola even make them? I think next time I go to color in a few calendar squares, I'm going to pick out all of our neon crayons and throw them away. And then I'll bias our children against neon crayons.

Fruit

I went out into my garden today and found a few tiny green tomatoes and a growing cucumber.  I feel so proud of my little shaded garden, struggling to create vegetables for me.  {On the downside, somehow I ended up planting pickling cucumbers.  How did that happen??}

I have also been hard at work lately, designing blogs.  Here are a few of my favorites.  I work very slowly, which is overwhelming sometimes.  I take breaks to watch the last few episodes of The Biggest Loser, which is entertaining, and read David Copperfield, which is even better.  I also take breaks to let my body rest from this chair, which, despite its new cushion, is still not comfortable after a few hours.

And now it's time for me to get back to work.

Living Room Makeover, Step 1

As I previously mentioned, I spent a good deal of last week painting our living room. I am now going to talk about it in great detail, which I understand has a good chance of being very boring, but I just painted a whole room by myself, and I want to brag about it.

I picked out the paint on Wednesday. I knew I wanted a yellow-green color, a compromise between Christian's preferred green and my desire to have our whole downstairs in different shades of yellow. I looked at all the choices at Lowe's, and, true to my color-picking philosophy, picked out a color and went with it before I had time to over-think. I also cleaned the outside of Christian's desk, clearing it of years of dirty finger marks and pencil scribblings -- the difference is incredible; I only wish that I had taken a before and after shot.

I moved all of our furniture into the center of the room first thing on Thursday morning {except for the couch, which I put on its side and slid into the hall, where I ended up continually walking on it all day}, and took down pictures and curtains. Then I cleaned the baseboards, taped {because I know I'm not good enough to paint without tape}, ran out of tape, bought more tape, and finished taping. I painted two coats -- cutting in twice, and using the roller twice. I let it dry overnight; Christian and I went to his parents' house in the evening so as not to be bored out of our minds without the TV.

On Friday I took down all the tape, did some minor touch-ups {I learned from the dining room fiasco and kept extra paint around for that specific purpose}, majorly touched-up the baseboards, meaning I gave them an entirely new coat of paint, and installed new electrical sockets and light switches. Christian came home early {thank you, summer hours!} and helped me put the furniture back into place. He also helped me figure out all the cords to hook the computer and TV back up, which made a job I could have done by myself so much easier. We put the pictures back on the walls, re-installed the curtain rod, and I even {for the first time in two years} washed our sliding glass door.

Here's how it looks now:

If I could go back and do it again, I would probably pick a lighter, yellower shade, but I'm really very happy with it. You can see the seat cushion I got at World Market for our computer chair; my butt has not stopped thanking me since. And, I know this isn't everyone's taste, but I love how the green of the cushion clashes with the green of the wall. Love it!

I would also go back and not wash our curtains, which were in the house when we moved in. They were seriously grody before, but after putting them through the several dryer cycles necessary to get them entirely dry, they are now a good six inches shorter than before. And they look ridiculous. And we didn't realize they had shrunk until Christian and I had each spent 20 minutes ironing them. Blerg.

This is only step 1 of our living room makeover because of two things. Well, actually now because of three things. 1: The wall around the TV looks very blank; I need to figure out what to put on that wall. 2: A new couch would really help our room look awesome. I am working on acquiring one, but it still might take a while. If you would like to take pity on me and speed up this process, you could always hire me to design your blog. All proceeds go to my new couch fund. 3: I don't know what to do about our curtains.

Thoughts on Last Year's Goals

Three hundred and seventy-six days ago, I wrote this post describing my goals for 2009.  I don't really like to read it; failure isn't a pleasant thing to face.  I probably wouldn't ever read it again, except that I feel the need for closure on those goals before I make new ones.  And since I was so public in my declaration of my 2009 goals, I want to be equally as public in evaluating how well I followed through with them.  It only seems fair.  I'm going to do them in reverse order, though.  It only seems easier that way.

Goal 5: Watch the entire Seinfeld series.  Completed.  I expected this goal to be incredibly easy, and it was.  Excellent.

Goal 4: Maintain regular personal scripture study, journal writing, and morning prayers.  My accomplishments in regards to personal scripture study and journal writing have not been satisfactory.  On the other hand, I have, finally, for the first time in my life, managed to establish a pattern of regular morning prayers.

Goal 3: Wear my retainer every night.  I began wearing my retainer again until I started experiencing daily migraines and jaw pain.  I then decided it wasn't worth it.  Adult braces, here I come.

Goal 2:  Read all the books on my "to-read" list.  Number of books read in 2009: one.  This one.

Goal 1:  Make all A's in school this semester.  This goal in particular is the one that I've been avoiding thinking about.  I don't really have words to express how terribly I messed this one up.  I could say things like "I almost failed most of my classes" or "I didn't try hard enough," but it doesn't really describe the situation very well.  I'm very disappointed in myself for doing so poorly.

What a depressing post; I'm sorry it's such a downer.  But 2009 wasn't all bad.  I'm going to collaborate with Christian and post a {quite belated} 2009 Year in Review, highlighting all the fun times and good moments.  Check back for it soon -- it'll be worth it.

Goals for 2009

I know that some people may consider it completely cheesy and cliche, but I'm making Goals for 2009. I've actually been thinking about these goals for a while, and the fact that I'm committing to them right before the New Year is a coincidence.

Goal 1: Make all A's in school this semester. Not that I haven't tried to get good grades while I've been in college, but I certainly haven't tried very hard. I was content with the thought that I could do very well if I put my mind to it, only I haven't put my mind to it since my freshman year of high school. And I feel like that's not good enough any more. So my goal is to do better. Specifically, my goal is to get straight A's.

Goal 2: Read all the books on my "to-read" list. Right now I have sixteen books on the list, some of which I have lost interest in reading, some of which I have been meaning to read for several years, and some of which have gotten excellent reviews from all the people whose literary taste I respect. I have neglected them all so far, but I intend to read them all in 2009. In fact, it seems like I have too few books on the list. You can check out the list on goodreads.com, and feel free to suggest a book in the comments section (I'll take suggestions for another week before the list is officially closed).

Goal 3: Wear my retainer every night. I've started to work on this goal already, and it has not been easy. I stopped wearing my retainer a few weeks after Christian and I got married, and after a while I forgot about it, and then I was cleaning up in our room one day and I found it, but I didn't start wearing it again for so long because I was afraid. Afraid of the pain. Anyone who has had a retainer that they left off wearing for even a few days (so basically, everyone who has had a retainer) has an idea of the pain that I've been experiencing the last few nights. Only, I haven't worn my retainer for eight months. It's awful. Still, I'm committed to wearing it every night.

Goal 4: Maintain regular personal scripture study, journal writing, and morning prayers. Personal scripture study will be more enjoyable since Christian got me new scriptures for Christmas. I always love new scriptures that haven't been marked up yet. I also recently gave up on the old journal that I've been writing in for years (with the excuse that that phase of my life is over, and it's weird to write about my life with Christian in a journal in which I also wrote about the crushes I had on other guys), hoping that a new journal would entice me to write more often. So far, it hasn't worked as well as I would like. And I tell you what, I have the worst time in the world remembering to say my morning prayers. I know it's something that's very important, but it's something that I've never gotten the hang of. I really need to work on that.

Goal 5: Watch the entire Seinfeld series. Christian has them all on DVD; it shouldn't be too hard.