The Kitchen Playground

Generally speaking, I am very anti New Year resolutions. An arbitrary time line is not a good time for goal setting for me. I need to feel motivation to achieve something to effectively set a goal. The bluster and flurry of Christmas/New Year lacks the focus I need to set my mind on achievements.

This year is starting a little differently. We spent 2 weeks of December in Northern Arizona, enjoying Christmas with the Bread Winner’s family. On New Years Eve, we arrived home. The (almost) 2 weeks since then have been busy catching up with Australian family and celebrating Christmas again and again. Sunday was the last of our 2009 Christmas celebrations.

Yesterday was 43 degrees. Stifling, crippling heat. Lil Miss was as fractious as only a nearly four year old girl can be. Meanwhile, First Born could whine for Australia and take the gold. Even an hour sitting in a couple of inches of cold water in the bath didn’t improve matters. As Scarlett O’Hara pointed out, tomorrow is another day and thank heavens it’s not as hot as yesterday!

Today I feel the urge to achieve return. So I am setting some resolutions. Blogging them will hopefully keep me accountable.

1. Blog weekly. I am not sure what day is gong to be the most sensible day for this. My routine will change a lot with Lil Miss starting Kindergarten and me working more so for now I will say it is Sunday night. This will be subject to change once term starts and I get the feel of the business end of 2010.
2. Increase savings. I think I can budget better in a way that will allow me to set a firm savings goal for 2010. Obviously my working more hours will help too. I have not set a figure or percentage for this yet. I need to go over our budget and talk it through with the Bread Winner.
3. Launch business website. I spent quite a bit of time late last year building a plan for an online business which I aim to launch by June 30 at the latest. Look at that. A lovely goal with structure and measures and achievability. No way I could have done that at New Years, I was far too jet lagged!
4. Craft more and better. I made some great headway with crafting last year and have joined a fabulous group of crafty women through First Born’s school. I want to increase my skills at both knitting and sewing. I would ideally like to create enough items of a high enough quality to stock a stall at an end of year Makers Market. The quality angle will be the biggest challenge but it’s not really a goal unless it’s measureable, right?

There are some other smaller goals too, mostly things I would like to achieve around the house like purging the Ankle Biters bedrooms of unused paraphernalia but these are short term things that can (and will) be achieved inside a week.  The big 4 above are my long term goals that you will, because of course my January 12 resolve is steely, be hearing more about. Well you’ll be seeing the blogging obviously, the business will be linked to the blog and I’ll even post about worthy craft endeavours. The savings you won’t be hearing so much about, that one is not the internets business.

I hope any of you who still pop by to read after 2009, the year of highly erratic blogging, had a wonderful, happy and safe Festivus period.

See you on Sunday!