Pretty sure...

That the concoction I just stuck in the oven is going to cost me a LOT of running on the treadmill next week and that one bite will be equal to an entire days worth of meals.... but man does it look and smell good and I cannot wait to try it!

Which brings me to today's post. I.Am.Addicted.To.Chocolate.

There, I said it. The truth is, I have very little self-control with food. Even though I have made a lot of positive changes towards eating healthier in the last month or so, I cannot kick my love for chocolate and all things sweet. I am learning that the more I try to stay away from it, the more I desire it. So, I have changed my thinking and have decided that I need to try to limit it... but even that is more of a challenge than most anything else in my life. I am doomed and most likely forever relegated to a size 12 and up pair of jeans for the rest of my life because of this bad habit. Which led me to start thinking... is a size 12 so bad? How about a size 14? How big is too big?

God has been showing me that my size is not what matters. What matters is my heart and my willingness to give up unhealthy things in my life in order to be better fit to do what He has laid out for me. For example, chase my 20-month old daughter around the house all day. You see, my focus has been on the size of my pants ... not on the size of my heart. What I mean, is that I have focused so much energy on losing weight, only to gain more and more, that I lost focus on what is important in this area. What is important is that I am doing my very best to have self-control in every area of my life so that when my daughter, or a friend, or a stranger, sees my life they will see Christ in me. I am the one focused on my jean size and image.. God is focused on my heart. I need to be focused on what God is focused on.

Is my heart in the right place?

That is my focus. The rest will eventually follow if I am doing what I should be doing to follow Him first.

I love the Lord

I love chocolate

I love that God is continually teaching me and allowing me to grow in every way (no pun intended)

Awesome Inspiration

Thanks to my wonderful cousin Amy and her generosity and thoughtfulness, I have a new mission with menu planning!

No kidding, for more than a year, every time we are in the Christian book store, I browse through this book and want to purchase it but never do. To my surprise, included with my Mary Kay order from Amy was this menu and coupon organizer!

I am excited to try it and put it into practice in February and see how we do. Lately, our lives have centered around how we can save money and still give to others. I'm hoping this will be a tool that will allow us to cut back on food costs and free up some funds for giving and saving. 

Who knew that going down to one income would create these kinds of issues?  ;) 

In the meantime, Emma turned 20 months old today. I cannot believe my sweet little 8 pound baby is now a 28 pound toddler. She is so full of personality right now that every day leaves me laughing, exhausted and hopeful for what God has planned for her little life. 

Here's to saving money and to figuring out how to remove ink stains from everything I own!

Menu Planning

Does anyone have any experience with menu planning?

I feel like it should not be difficult to plan a weekly menu and stick to it, however, my husband is a picky eater and we eat kind of based on how the mood strikes him each day. Is it possible to menu plan in this situation??

This month has a been a big month of change for me, personally. I am working on a lot of different projects and am still continuing with my HTCI project and will be updating on that soon! So much to tackle, so little time...

Will be back later!

Goals and Projects

I am hereby declaring 2012 to be a year of creating, completing and completely embracing the fun challenge of setting goals for myself and achieving them.

Instead of creating general goals for the whole year, I decided to publicize what I have been doing the past few months with the help and encouragement of my best friend. We had challenged each other to create goals each month for that month only... we had to report daily to each other on how we did on our daily goals. This was SUPER helpful for me and so I am continuing it for all of 2012. I will post my monthly goals on here as well just as a double reminder of what I need to be accomplishing.

So, here are my January Goals:

Daily Goals

1. Devotions
2. 40 Minute Workout
3. 30 Minute Organization
4. Keep computer off until 1:00 (Emma's nap time)
5. Eat 2 healthy snacks (ie – fruit, yogurt, veggies, etc) and drink only water throughout the day

Weekly Goals

1. Complete a craft / project with Emma
2. Create a menu plan for dinners for the week and try one new recipe
3. Begin/Continue/Complete a project for the house (can be a craft, sewing, organization, or other project to improve the house)
4. Weigh myself and report my weight to Joanna at the end of the week

Now, for my BIG 2012 goals:

1. Make a road trip out to Iowa to see my Godson and cousins and the Phelps family
2. Run a 5K every month from April - October
3. Completely organize (in general, I realize this is never achievable) our house
4. Remodel guest bathroom
5. Re-paint and decorate guest room
6. Create Emma's toddler room and transition to toddler bed
7. Potty train Emma
8. Take a class with Emma (swim lessons?)
9. Have a date night once a month with just Chris
10. Plant something :)

New Year, Same Life

Well, 2011 ended in a flurry with some unexpected twists but overall ended as a good year. Lots of adjusting, growing, changing and challenge as well as blessings and good times.

2011 was a year of challenge for me and 2012 promises to be the same.

I was challenged Spiritually to go outside of my comfort zone in many ways, to go deeper into God's Word and to seek His purpose for my life in a way that I never have before.

I was challenged Personally as I struggled with the daily challenges of being a full-time stay at home wife and mother. It has been an extremely difficult challenge to adjust to this new job and I was challenged in every way possible... emotionally, physically, you name it... it was a challenge.

I was challenged Financially as I struggled to maintain time outside of the house without spending money like I did when we had two incomes and no children. I was challenged to find new ways to save money, spend money, pray about money and live with (or rather, without) money.

I was challenged in relationships as Chris and I experienced a new way of living in our 8 years of marriage, a new way of communicating and living as parents now instead of just a married couple with all the time in the world to spend doting on each other.

Yes, indeed, 2011 was a year of challenges. The challenges all continue but this time I am setting goals for myself. Not resolutions because I am no good at resolving to do anything and accomplishing it. Goals however are achievable but do not become broken promises. :)

So, my next post will be my 2012 goals... things I would like to accomplish on a grand scale as well as small scale, daily challenges to keep things moving in the right direction.

Happy New Year everyone!

HTCI Update

This is extremely embarrassing, but here goes nothing. Welcome to Step #5 - Gather Tools and Document Evidence.

For this step, I had to let my house go for 2 days in order to see where things end up in piles and such. This was really difficult for me, but it had to be done and so I did it. For 2 days, I watched as piles accumulated and my house turned into a complete disaster. Wow. I had no idea how quickly we create piles and how often they land in so many places!

So, without further ado, my documentation:

When you walk into our front door, this is what you see

After walking through the entryway, you end up in our living room

Then, you walk up the stairs to the next level (gotta love split levels!). To the right, is our kitchen:

On the other side of our kitchen, is our playroom/office/supposed to be a formal dining room:

*I cannot believe I am putting these out for the world to see*

Next, you climb the big set of stairs:

This lands you in the upstairs, the first door on the left is the guest/Emma's bathroom:

Keep on going and the next door on the left is our Master Bedroom:

Master Bath and walk-in closet are in this room as well

After this, looking straight ahead in the hallway is our hall linen closet:

To the right of this, is the guest bedroom/craft room:

Next, is the nursery but I could not take pictures in there because Emma was sleeping... suffice it to say that the nursery is clean so did not really need to be pictured anyway... 

After this, we head all the way down to the basement:

Looks dangerous doesn't it? It is. It's a disaster. Anyway, moving on... we head down into the basement into our rec room:

To the right of the finished portion of the basement is the unfinished portion with the laundry room and crawl space:

Next, we'll hit the last place in our house that you could possibly store all of your junk... the garage:

That concludes our disgusting and hoard-ish house tour. I can't believe what I saw when I took all of these pictures. In our defense, we are trying to clean out the basement and garage and have had a lot of work being done in these areas, despite the picture evidence to the contrary. Everything is in complete disarray and it's awful! I'm sick to my stomach just looking at all of this! How will I ever get this organized??? ugh...

HTCI Update

Today, I actually made progress on my House That Cleans Itself project, and all I have to say is:  WOW

Why? Because I did not realize just how messy, dis-organized and cluttered my home is. What an over abundance of stuff we have been blessed with. When looking at the house as I did my prayer walk and took pictures, I was struck by how much stuff we have and how much God has blessed us in our time in this house. I was struck by my laziness and my lack of willingness to do anything about the clutter and the mess. There have been improvements but man! this house is in need of some serious purging and re-organizing and cleaning.

HTCI Step 4:  Put God at the Center

This step was made up of completing a prayer walk through the house. I started in the basement and made my way up to the bedrooms, taking a grand tour of my own home and taking stock of everything in it. I stopped on the main floor and stood in the center of the play room and prayed for every room on the main floor where we do almost all of our "living". Since we own a split level house, I could cover almost every room. I need to do another more thorough prayer walk but I have decided that as we continue room by room with the next steps, that I will commit to praying while I am working on that room.

It is amazing how many things I was able to praise God for and it also amazed me how shameful I felt for not just having so much stuff (there is nothing Biblically wrong with owning things), but for having so much stuff that we do not use or have never used and have no need of. What a shameful waste of resources, God's money, and space in our home. Now, granted... much of what we have in the toy room was all gifted to Emma so I am not counting that room. We have been fortunate with Emma in that we have only purchased her a few (literally, less than 5) toys and most of that has come from thrift stores. We are SO blessed by the people that God has placed in our lives. Everything else, is our own failure. Purchases made with good intentions most of the time, but things that are just piling up because we are unwilling to part with them.

Today, in my Bible Study group, we were challenged with the thought that if everyone and everything in our life was taken away and we were left completely alone and without our things, would God be enough?

This prayer walk really helped me to see that although, in my heart, I believe that God is enough... I am not portraying that in my daily life and in my home.

Lord willing, I will have a long life with my beloved family and friends... but today I realized that I need to get to a point where God is enough.

Next step:  Gather Tools and Document Evidence.  Stay tuned because you are going to be flabbergasted by the photos that I took today. It may take a day or two to stir up the courage to actually post them on here!