Happy New Year!

I love the new year because it is like a fresh start. So is Feb 1st, March 1st, etc. And then so is every Monday. Before you jump on me and say Sunday is the first day of the week, my Sunday is like the day the project is due...it is a busy day...not a restful day. Monday is my beginning.


So every New Year's I come up with things I want to accomplish in the next year.


Getting Birthday & Anniversary cards to everyone on time is a reoccurring goal. However, seeing as my Aunt Laura and Uncle Mark celebrated their 32nd anniversary last week, I'm already behind! My Grandmother was so good with birthdays. She had the envelopes addressed and ready to go I think for the whole year. When she died in August, we still got a birthday card for Mikalah in September in her handwriting. What a special time!


And of course there is the diet and exercise goal. And the chocolate orange I ate yesterday threw that one out the window. But this morning I did get a skinny, sugar-free vanilla latte at Starbucks. That's a start.

But most of all this year, I have decided to focus on relaxing.

Not watching movies and eating ice cream, but deciding what is important and necessary and focusing on only that.

I want my house to be drop-in guest ready, but that doesn't mean the whole house. That means one bathroom, that living room/dining room and kitchen. It can look like someone lives there, but I'm not folding laundry in the living room anymore and making massive piles on the couch.

It will be some one's responsibility to load and unload the dishwasher after every meal, and the dirty dishes that need to be washed must be washed or fit in the sink.

My bathroom (the one everybody uses) will be wiped down every morning as I brush my teeth.

My desk in the kitchen is getting an overhaul and only the things that I use every day will stay. Everything else will find a home elsewhere.

The mail now has a sorting spot right by the garbage can and the kitchen counter (where it collects if I don't sort it immediately!)

Now I'm sure the rest of my house will be a bit scary. Like the fact that you can't walk through the basement without stepping over 1 million toys. That will be a project for another day.

Right now I have to get a handle on the immediate.

And the Christmas card that has now become the New Year's card and can not become the Martin Luther King Day card will be handled this week!