Goals & Recipes Reviewed

On October 1st, I posted some goals for the month.  I had never done that before on my blog, but decided, what the heck.

I had the goals in the back of my mind all month long.  Some days more so than others, but I was trying to give it my best shot.

How did I do?

1. Financial

Save money.  I have a specific amount in mind and I’ll let you know if I meet it or not.  I paid off my debt and have been saving money all year, but I’d like to save more before the end of the year.  And no, I won’t be going too crazy with holiday gift purchases.  At all.  Guess I can write off Thursday Things if I want to save more, but I’d rather have zeros in my bank account than random trinkets and knickknacks that don’t amount to much.  I think.

I did okay with this.  I didn’t save as much as I wanted to (who ever does), but I did save about 80% of what my goal was.   Had I not bought this lens or donut pans and cookie scoops I could have had more in savings but sometimes it’s more important to live a little than to save, within reason of course.  We all have our own internal line of what’s ‘living a little’ and what’s excessive and unnecessary.  Overall, I am fine with my spending and saving for the month.  Success.

2. Exercise

Do different yoga poses than the ones I usually do; work on poses that I don’t like as much or that don’t come as easy.

I have a tendency to practice the same poses over and over at home because I have my little routine and I whip through it.  I need to push myself to practice asanas that are not in my current repertoire.

I have really tight quads and forced myself to do poses like virasana and kapotasana even though it would have been easier for me to just do other things like inversions or forward bends and skip the quad work.  Overall, success.

3. Health

Get more sleep.  At least 5.5 hours every night.  Yes, I get less than this most nights.

This has been goal of mine for ages, including on my 2011 Goals & Intentions list, i.e. New Year’s Resolutions as some people call them, but I have continued to fail at it, miserably.

I’d like to work on this for my overall and longterm health.  I don’t necessarily think it’s healthy to go without consistent sleep even if I can function “fine”.  I’ve trained myself over the years to function on less and less sleep.  I used to be a I have to have 8-9 hours girl.  But life changed, a baby happened, demands come up. 

I always say, “I’ll sleep when I’m dead.”   But I would like to sleep a little more now.

Sleeping was up and down.   There were nights that I got less than 5.5 hours but there were also nights I got 7 hours, which for me, is huge.  Overall, I think I got slightly more sleep, on average, than I had last month, so that’s a success.

4. Cooking

Develop, photograph, and blog about two new original dessert recipes

Success!  I have loved creating and blogging about more recipes this past month and plan to continue with that trend.

Butterfinger Bars

Samoas Bars

Caramel Pumpkin Whip Dip

Candy Corn Cookie Dough Pretzel Bites

Peanut Butter Oatmeal White Chocolate Chip Cookies

Blueberry Banana Recovery Smoothie

Caramel Maple Pumpkin Pie Smoothie

Oatmeal Raisin Cookies

Pumpkin Peanut Butter Oatmeal Bars

Caramel Apple Bars (end of September but close enough)

5. Photography

Give myself another self-assigned project and just get out there and take pictures.  And not of food.  People or things.

Fail.  I have taken lots of pictures but most of them have been food and I haven’t done a full-on self-assigned photography “project” like I had hoped.

6. Blogosphere

Comment on less blogs.  I know many people want to comment on more blogs and I think that’s great.  It mirrors my own journey with reading one blog and commenting on it, to reading and commenting on more and more blogs until commenting has taken on a life of its own and has become a full time job.  And it keeps creeping up.  It’s also one thing that prevents me from getting sleep, which is when I know that I change is imperative.

With me, it’s a time management issue because I can read in stealth about 5 times faster than if I comment.

I’m still reading, just not commenting.

Overall, I am commenting less.  However, I have found new blogs to read that I am loving.  But I have stopped reading some, too.  Baby steps but success overall.  My blog reading has been replaced with Pinterst reading.

7. Family

Spend more time with Scott and Skylar.  At least two extra hours per week of family time over what we have now.  Just being together is the most important thing in my life and I want more.

Fail.  Scott was traveling for work for about half the month of October and so it was impossible to spend more time together.  Just spending any time together was all we could muster.  However, we have our family trip coming up and soon enough we will have plenty of happy-family-togetherness.

8. Friends

Get together in person with a friend at least once during the month.  That doesn’t sound like much, but I have said before that it gets harder and harder to make time for friends when you’re not in school, and when you have a job and a family, but I need to do this for myself to recharge my own batteries so that I can continue to give to my family and others.

A coffee meetup does wonders for the soul.  Even just an hour.

Fail.  I am disappointed that I didn’t make this happen.  Do long email chats with Katie and phone calls with Marla count?  I have realized that many of my friends and I do not live in the same city, including friends I’ve made through blogging, and I wish we could get together in person rather than email.  One day I hope it happens.

Overall Tally:

Success = 5

Fail = 3

I’ll take it.

Questions:

1. Did you set any goals for October or for November?  Do you have over-arching life goals that you’re mindful of? 

How did you do with them or how are you doing with them?

The year is almost over.  Wow.

If you set any New Years Resolutions or set New Years Intentions you better get crackin’ on anything you hope to accomplish, tackle, or check off your list for 2011.

The things I’d like to work on and my goals include:

more time with my family

more time with my friends (real life).  One day I’d like to meet my “blogging friends”.  These friends are just as “real” as in-person friends and I want to spend time with them one day, too.

more cooking and kitchen time

sharing more recipes on my blog

improve my photography

What’s on your to-do list?  Or goals list?

2. What was the best thing you cooked (or ate) last month?

I’ll go with the cookies.  Or the bars.  Or the Butterfingers.   Ok, I can’t pick.

Thanks for the $25 Gift Card Giveaway entries

And could I ask you to please Vote for Me in the Delta/Biscoff Bake-Off.  Just takes a second to click.  Thank you!