Five on Friday - April Goals

Happy Friday, y'all!  Today is my birthday!  Woop woop!  Yesterday, in honor of my birthday, I posted 37 random facts about myself that you probably don't know.  There are some weird ones, some funny ones, and some embarrassing ones.  You can read the post here if you missed it.  Now onto the monthly goals!

Oh March, you pretty much sucked.  Between hospitalizations and allergies and asthma and reflux issues, I reeeeally struggled this past month.  I did still manage to have a pretty productive month, although, not quite as productive as I would have liked.  Let’s see how I did, shall we? 

And as always, I’m using a Y for YES and N for NO to indicate whether or not I accomplished my goals.

March Goals – How I Did

Personal

N  Positivity, worry less, complain less, be kind, patience, relationships. – Uh no.  I was under tremendous stress this month from massive  tornadoes hitting right down the street from our house and health issues and lots of other crap that happened this month and I pretty much worried my head off.  Thinking you’ve had a heart attack at the age of 36 will do that do you, so I’m giving myself grace with this one.

Y  Plan and have a girls’ play date or dinner. – Margarita nights with my girls are good for the soul! 

Y  Find a new bathing suit for the summer. – I found three that I loved, but I couldn’t keep all of them, obviously.  I did keep, two, though. 

Y  Start researching and pursuing my new interest… sorry to be so vague! – YES!  Remember this one?  This was all about my interest in essential oils.  As I’ve said before, I have been researching for two years but this was the month that I finally bought my starter kit and started using them.  Spoiler alert, I’m completely and utterly obsessed.  They are so good.

Health

Y  Drink 4 thermoses of water most days.

Y  Eat an apple most days.

N  Go to the gym or work out at home at least 2 times per week. – Well, I started the month out on the right foot and I worked out so good for the first two weeks, but then I had my whole “heart attack” situation which hopefully was just an esophageal spasm, but until I have my stress test with the cardiologist I’m not allowed to do anything too strenuous.  This one was also out of my hands, so again, GRACE.

Y  Eat less sugar overall. – I did pretty good with this one all month.  I did splurge a good bit in Atlanta this past weekend, but that was vacation and I never count sugar intake on vacation.  :o)

Y  Moisturize my neck and chest every day. – Yep, every single day!

Y  Start newly recommended allergy meds from ENT doc to try to decrease ringing in ears. – Yep, took all of my steroids as prescribed (except for the last day because that just so happened to be after my ER visit) and I’ve been diligently taking my Zyrtec D.  Unfortunately the ringing has only gotten stronger because my allergies are apparently trying to kill me this spring.  Back to the drawing board.

Family

Y  Continue working on kindness and good manners with the kids. – Jacob is so good in the manners department.  Olivia still needs a good bit of work. 

Y  Create habits of asking to be excused and taking plates to the sink for the kids. – They are both doing pretty well with this.

N  Label everything that they take to school, take two. – I give up on this… school is almost over for the summer anyway.  Haha.

Y  Try a new restaurant, take three.  Haha. – Yes, we ate at Rock’s Chicken in Atlanta.  Not exactly what I had in mind when I said to try a new restaurant, but hey, it still counts!

Y  Attend the Mother Son Dance with Jacob. – Yes, and we had a great time!

Y  Start taking family walks after dinner again since the time will change! – Well, technically, we haven’t been able to take family walks since B injured his ankle earlier this month, but we have been soaking up lots of time hanging out on our street and in our culdesac!

Y  Encourage Jacob to ride his bike more. – Yes!  We got out there several times this month with the kids and they have both been requesting to ride their bikes a lot!

Y  Encourage Olivia to ride her new bike so she will get comfortable with it. – Yes!  She is riding like a BOSS!

Y  Take a little trip during Spring Break and do some fun stuff. – Yes!  We went to Atlanta for a long weekend and had a blast!  Candytopia, Zoo Atlanta, Stone Mountain!

Y  Start preparing for Easter – décor, kids’ baskets, etc. – I bought several things for their baskets and I only need to get a few more things!

Y  Start preparing for summer – summer camp, swimming lessons, VBS. – I have already gotten the paperwork ready for summer camp… all the kids have to do is pick the week they want to go!  I also emailed our swimming instructor and I’m just waiting to hear back from her about dates for swimming lessons!

Home

Y  Start uploading clothes to sell on Poshmark. – I got a few things uploaded so it’s a start!  You can follow me here.  I still have tons of kids’ clothes and maternity clothes to post so stay tuned!

N  Complete my office makeover. – This is so close to being done that I feel like I can almost check yes.  The only reason it’s not done is because I don’t have my new desk or desk chair, or a comfy chair to put by the window.  Since we’re budgeting carefully my office is as complete as it can be for now until I can buy my last couple of items.

N  Complete Olivia’s bedroom makeover. – This took a major hit because I was due to start on it the weekend that I ended up in the emergency room.  It got put on the back burner and I just plain ran out of time because of that.  It’s 90% done, though, so I feel like I can almost give this one a yes, too!  Yet another thing to give myself grace on, since it was out of my control.

Y  Master bedroom refresh – new bedding. – We surely did do this and I shared the update here.  It looks fantastic!

Y  Clean out kitchen closet under stairs. – I got the whole thing cleaned out… there wasn’t a lot to clean out since I had majorly overhauled it last year, so it was nice to have it done quickly this year!

Y  Clean out master bathroom cabinets. – Yes!  I cleaned it all out, rearranged a couple of things for maximum functionality, and I moved the kids medication and band-aids in here, too, which I am LOVING.

Y  Do 20 things on Master To-Do list. – I didn’t just do 20, I did 40!!  However, as with prior months, I also added 18 new things (If you give a mouse a cookie…), so for the sake of cutting down the list for the year, it’s like I did 22 things.  Still beat my goal, though!  Woop woop!  A few things that I did this month from the list were adding new throw pillows to our living room couch, adding a boxwood wreath to the door under the stairs in the kitchen, putting all of our kitchen soaps in a little dish to get them off of the counter, changing out the flowers in the hanging baskets in our bedroom, switching around some shelves in our bathroom cabinet for better functionality, moving the kids’ medicine into our medicine cabinet, and lots of other things!

N  Clean off outdoor areas to get ready for spring. – I was a little premature with this one and should have saved it for my list for April because the pollen is still rampant so there’s really no reason to clean it off yet.  I skipped this one on purpose.

Blog

Y  Start planning content for May and June.

Y  Work ahead on blog posts so I’m not writing a post every single day.

Y  Complete one post for the summer.

Y  Continue working on other post ideas for the summer.

Y  Take 5-6 pictures for Instagram.

Y  Continue sharing all of my cleaning out and decluttering on Instagram Stories.

Summary

29 items accomplished

6 items not accomplished

Not too bad!  Now for some pictures of my March successes! 

Mother Son Dance!

Bike Riding

Spring Break fun at Candytopia in Atlanta

Spring Break fun in Stone Mountain

Olivia's new bedding

Master Bedroom Refresh

All of the junk we got rid of from the kids' medicine cabinet

All of the junk we got rid of from our bathroom cabinet clean-out

Alright, time for some April goals… and as a reminder, some of them will be the same from month-to-month as I try to create habits for myself for the year!  And since April and May are INSANE, I'm a little worried I might be setting myself up for failure, but after a lackluster March, I'm ready to kick butt in April!

April Goals

Personal

Positivity, worry less, complain less, be kind, patience, relationships.

Celebrate my birthday with my family.

Celebrate my birthday with my girlfriends.

Make the rest of my essential oils rollers and label them.

Set up new essential oils Instagram account.

Health

Drink 4 thermoses of water most days.

Eat an apple most days.

Go to the gym or work out at home at least 2 times per week once cleared by the doc.

Eat less sugar overall.

Moisturize my neck and chest every day.

Follow up with my ENT doctor about my ear ringing and congestion.

See a specialist about my TMJ.  My ENT thinks it could be causing the ringing.

Take a stress test at the cardiologist for my heart and get a clean bill of health.

Family

Continue working on kindness and good manners with the kids. 

Create habits of asking to be excused and taking plates to the sink for the kids.

Finish preparing for Easter.

Celebrate Easter.

Book summer camp and swimming lessons, and look into VBS.

Continue getting outside to let the kids ride bikes.

Home

Upload more clothes to sell on Poshmark.

Put together my new desk for my office.

Sell my old desk.

Sell a few other old items (to make enough for new DVD cabinet that I want)

Set up new DVD cabinet and hang artwork in living room to complete the room.

Complete Olivia’s bedroom makeover.

Clean out my dresser.

Clean out my nightstand.

Clean out wedding keepsakes and move to storage box in office closet.

Clean off outdoor areas to get ready for spring, take two.

Clean out kids’ closets, switch out seasonal clothes, see what they need for summer.

Clean out kids’ candy buckets.

Buy ferns for the front porch.

Develop new pictures for all frames in our house.

Do 20 things on Master To-Do list.

Blog

Loosely plan blog content for June and July.

Work ahead on blog posts so I’m not writing a post every single day.

Complete two blog posts for the summer.

Take 5-6 pictures for Instagram.

Pitch to three companies.

Research Tailwind and decide whether or not to join.

Continue sharing all of my cleaning out and decluttering on Instagram Stories.

Happy Friday, y’all!

*Linking up with A Liz Adventures and Carolina Charm for Five on Friday, A Little Bit of Everything for Friday Favorites, Meet @ the Barre for Friday Favorites, and By BMG for High Five for Friday.