From the monthly archives:

January 2009

52 resolutions for 2009–update

by Sunny Daydreame on January 30, 2009

On December 31, I published my list of 52 goals for 2009 (also listed on sidebar) Since January is drawing to a close, it’s time for to review this month’s progress on my goals.

Scrapbook Wedding Album

I started out with lots of enthusiasm. On New Year’s Day, I spent the day sorting and scanning my wedding photos to work on goal #1 (scrapbooking my wedding album). When the baby was born, I decided to give up paper scrapbooking in favor of going digital. With digital scrapbooking, I can work for 3 minutes or 3 hours–whatever amount of time the baby gives me. I can also work the same way that I am writing now, with baby sleeping draped across my lap. I don’t have to worry about sharp knives or small choking hazards left out for for Baby Wiggles (yep, that’s his official blog name) to find. I have about 30 pages laid out, but I got sidetracked when it came time to pull out and scan some pictures that already got put into an album.

The program I am using to do digital scrapbooking is Creative Memories Storybook Creator Plus. I decided to go with this program because there is an easy learning curve. There is a free and a paid version of this program. With the paid version, you can use non-Creative Memories embelishments and kits (including freebies) and you can save the pages as a high-quality JPG file to print at a non-Creative Memories page printing service if you find a better deal.

My goal for February is to finish scanning photos, finish the page layouts and start adding embellishments (look for an upcoming post on my favorite sites to find digital scrapbooking freebies)

House Keeping

The other goals I decided to work on was my housekeeping group of goals: shine sink, make bed, keep house company ready. I’m probably hitting about 90% on making my bed every day and following a morning routine. My morning routine includes make bed, empty dishwasher, wash a load of laundry, and spot clean the bathroom. After I get that done, I sit down to make my daily to-do list of 7 things.

The best trick I’ve found to keeping the house company ready is to invite company over regularly. We had people over for dinner 3 time out of 4 weeks in January. The house was probably company ready 80% of the time (okay, probably 75% of the time). Hey, whatever it takes.

Blogging

I think I wrote on my blog 15 days in January. I never intended to use my weekends to blog (that’s family time), so there were 22 days in January that I intended to write. As the saying goes, “Two out of three ain’t bad.”

Other Stuff

Of course there is always other stuff that I have done a bit. We started planning our square foot garden and are probably going to be buying seeds this weekend. We checked out the Signing Times videos from the library to start working on baby sign language. I celebrated “my day” by buying a new dining room light fixture. I’m all set up for using cloth diapers (will start in February).

Even though I can’t mark anything off the list as completed yet, I made a lot of progress in January. Unlike the vast majority of people who gave up on their goals in the third week, I used this past week as a reminder to keep moving forward on my goals.

Each day is a new day…a clean slate. Even if you forgot to do something yesterday, you get another chance today. Stop saying to yourself, “I really should do X.” Get out there and do it TODAY! Worry about tomorrow when tomorrow gets here. “Each day has enough worries of it’s own” (Matthew 6:34)

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I’m dreaming of summer.

by Sunny Daydreame on January 28, 2009

in Simple Living, Writing Life

Raspberries The sun is shining in my dining room window. I’m watching the snow-melt drip off the roof above the window. The branches on the apple tree are also dripping as last night’s snow turns to liquid and drips down onto the snow below. The yard is blanketed in three feet of snow, and I’m sitting inside dreaming of the day (still a few months away) when I will look at my husband dreamily and say, “Honey, it’s time.”

He will shake the winter out of his bones, pull the shovel out of the back shed, and begin to dig up the soil to create a garden bed.

Together we will gather up the pile of bricks that somebody carelessly into the garden plot. We will dig out the slate rocks that got put in there too. The bricks will become the walls of a compost pile so I can create some garden gold. The slate will become rock pathways between our square foot garden blocks.

Two blocks this summer–four foot square. Two more blocks next summer. We’ll keep adding blocks, two at a time, until we have enough. As we add more blocks, hopefully we will be able to stay supplied in a variety of fresh vegetables all summer and even put a winter’s worth of homegrown produce up during canning season.

I’m dreaming of spring and our apple, pear, cherry, and plums trees being covered in blossoms, bees buzzing lazily about, the air heavy with the scent of lilacs. Summer trees heavy laden with ripe fruit. Cookouts and camping. Swimming and swinging at the park. I’m dreaming of long sunny days and stargazing at night. Firecrackers on Fourth of July.

I’m dreaming of summer, but today I’ll content myself with a warm patch of sunshine on my living room floor.

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Can you walk away?

by Sunny Daydreame on January 27, 2009

in Simple Living

I’m snuggling my baby today. He got his first shots yesterday, so he’s a little fussy today. He wakes up and squeals a bit; I give him some more Tylenol. My heart hurts for my little boy, but I ache even more for the mother who is holding her child while he dies from one of those preventable diseases. Unable to pay for a doctor or medicine, she rocks her baby hoping to provide some comfort.

My baby weighed at the 75th percentile for his age, but how many mothers around the world watch as their babies, toddlers, even teenagers never know the satisfaction of a belly full of food?

Sudanese girl stalked by vulture, March 1993, Kevin Carter

Images haunt me. The photographer, Kevin Carter, maintained his journalist principles after taking this picture. He walked away because a journalist is there to record the facts and should never interfere.

How could anyone, in the face of so much suffering, just walk away?

How much food could I buy for a starving child with the $2.50 I spend on a package of Oreos or the $1.50 it costs to buy a 2 liter of Coke?

How much does it cost to dig a well so that some other mother doesn’t have to watch her babies die from Typhoid (which is spread through contaminated water)?

Many think nothing of spending $50 for a new shirt when they already have a closet stuffed full of clothes they don’t wear. Five coats in the closet while elsewhere, children go barefoot in the winter. $3.00 designer coffee while families struggle to survive on $1.00 per day (that’s not just for food). Books (my own weakness), $20 or more for a hardcover while children are turned away from school because their parents cannot afford tuition and uniforms.

How can I see the suffering with my own eyes, and just walk away?

Kevin Carter won a Pulitzer Prize for this photo in 1994. He committed suicide shortly after winning the prize. In his final letter, he wrote that he was haunted by the memories of the horror and human suffering he had seen around the world.

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Building Cathedrals

January 23, 2009

Next time someone asks you what you do at home all day, you can answer, “I’m building cathedrals.” The text that follows is slightly different than the video, but the message is the same:
It all began to make sense, the blank stares, the lack of response, the way one of the kids will walk [...]

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How Not to Be a Writer

January 22, 2009

I dream of being a writer. I mean I guess I am a writer since I write, but I dream of being a writer whose work has the publishers stamp of approval.
“Write what you know.” That’s the advice all the writing teachers, magazines, websites give out. With that advice, all I feel like I am [...]