Weekly Challenge, Small Things, Photo month, My own list

I love Toni at A Bowl Full of Lemons, first she scheduled a daily organizing challenge right when I started getting that late pregnancy "nesting" feeling. And now, she is keeping us going with a new weekly challenge, right when my energy levels are lower and expecting my little bun to come out of the oven in the next few weeks. Worked perfectly.


If you weren't around when she started the challenge, I would like to challenge you to join the new weekly challenge, or go ahead and tackle any of the daily challenges the rest of us worked on throughout January. You wont regret it!


Loving the idea of the daily challenge before Toni's even started, I did some blog searching and came across Home Sanctuary, where Rachel Anne inspires us to do some small thing everyday. I wasn't sure what it was all about and didn't want to commit to 2 daily things, but after following her blog for about a month, and often participating in the small thing, I decided to actually keep track of the small things I do, and rack up some points. I have found that usually the small thing is actually multiple choice of several themed small things (candy inspired, "dispenser inspired and pirate inspired to name a few), so I can chose to do one, or more, small things from a list. I like that because I can personalize it to me. Also, with a new baby, I can pick whatever small thing best fits my energy level, household needs or just fun.


In addition to the weekly challenge and the daily small thing, I have my own to-do list. I wont be stressing over it, as the last few weeks of pregnancy should be stress free and enjoyable, with my amazing husband by my side, the entire pregnancy has been pretty great. But I also want to stay motivated to do what I can, when I can to improve our living quarters both before and after we get our new little roomie.


My ever-growing sometimes shrinking list:
THE OFFICE/CRAFT ROOM this is a big one, I have done some work on it but its a big job and I was kinda stuck because I needed some more book cases, my darling husband assembled one of them last night and him and a buddy moved another one up from his old bedroom in his parents house a few days ago, so that should give me some place to put a bunch of stuff. I really need to pull stuff out of the room, to give me room to work in there, and were having company over tomorrow, so that can wait for Monday.

THE PANTRY WALL (within the office/craft room) This gets its own place on the list, because it needs doing just as much as the rest of the room.

DECORATION IN THE BATHROOM
other than the paint on the walls, the shower curtain and my little jars on the counter, the bathroom is very plain. It hasn't bothered me because I had some holiday stuff in there for fall, Christmas and now Valentine's day, but my decorations have been limited to the counter top, or hanging from the medicine cabinet door handle. I need stuff up on the walls. I think a few shelves or a closed shelf/cabinet would be great for some additional storage.

SCRAPBOOK JANUARY PAGES
I really want to stay on top of scrap booking this year, Its our first year married, Ellie is due in February and of all the scrapbooks I have made over the last few years, NONE have been for me, all were gifts. Its time to focus my paper crafting on my new little family and me.

A SYSTEM FOR PARTY SUPPLIES
we throw a lot of parties in our home theater/shop. More than 1 a month on average. Most are low-key, monthly UFC fight showings, various football games. Then there are some bigger ones, including SUPERBOWL(there is a box of decor, someplace that needs located this week), Daytona 500, Thanksgiving, Christmas etc. Our wedding was held here last October and there are plans to host my nephew's wedding in a few months as well. We have quite a few party supplies, bowls, trays, extra silverware, table clothes, mass amounts of paper products, condiments, coffee supplies, cups, coolers etc. We need a good system for storing it all so that when party time comes, we can get out trays we need for our food and when someone brings a bag of chips or something, we know right where to go for a bowl for them. We also need to know how we are doing on supplies so we don't buy a new stack of plates for each party, or run out of hot dog boats because we thought we had another package, somewhere. There is a perfect closet in the shop I would like to house a shelving system for everything, but its currently used for other stuff.

ORGANIZE THE ATTIC
our little attic holds all the long term storage for our loft, (there are other storage areas throughout the building for business and collections etc) all of our holiday decor and long term misc stuff is up there. Its KINDA organized but could use a better set up.

MEAL PLANNING
this is something that I know would benefit us, both health wise and budget wise. With our new baby, we plan on staying at home more and therefore eating at home more. We are really bad about eating out and take out, fast food and sit-down restaurants. We enjoy eating out and it has been part of our lifestyle for a long time, but it is a habit that is costing us a lot of money and makes it hard to eat healthy. I would like to set up a meal plan, including calorie counts for both of us and cost counts so we can better plan food into our budget. I have been putting off meal planning because my appetite has been so unpredictable during this pregnancy, but I'm motivated to eat healthy for breastfeeding and soon, weight loss.

ORGANIZE ELLIE'S EXTRA STUFF we have been given lots of great hand me downs, and they need sorted so that as she grows, I can easily find the next size up clothing, supplies and toys. I have pulled out all the newborn-3 month stuff, but I have a feeling shes gonna be a big baby and I will need the 3-6 stuff soon enough, currently everything past the 3 month mark is all jumbled together in a few bins. I also want a good organization system for when she grows out of stuff It can be stored for another baby a few years away.

PHOTOS
ahh yes, I know that was one of the days of the 21 day challenge this month, but I knew it would be a big job, and that I had higher priority stuff to do getting ready for baby, so I skipped it. Jen at iheart organizing is focusing on photos as her February Challenge so I will ideally, participate in that challenge as well. I really like how she broke up the PAPER storage challenge in January into managable steps. I got most of my mom's photos a few years ago, after we gave her a scrapbook for mothers day, she let me take all the rest of her pictures, so I could organize them, make digital copies and more scrapbooks with them. I would love to finish that project and give the photo boxes back to her.

I am not giving myself a time line for all of the projects, (except Ellie's bigger clothes, and the photo challenge) I will use my blog, and the above challenges to keep me motivated.