As I mentioned in my last post we’ve been dreaming about some things that we would like to accomplish this year. I love dreaming and goal setting, however I can very easily get caught up in the to do list and ruin all the joy of the work. I wind up frustrated and rushing around to get things done and basically am a crab to my family and a horrible example of godly living. Not what I want to be. However, this year we have learned a lot about the sovereignty of God. Beginning with our garden that we put so much work into and because of a drought and vine borers got little produce from it and of course ending with our inability to find a house to rent. So many times I think “If I just work harder….” but sometimes it doesn’t matter how hard we work, God has other plans for us.
So this list is not about working harder, it’s about doing some things that we believe God would have us do, being willing to change plans and even accept that some of these things probably won’t get done. Hopefully the important things will.
As we set out our goals, we listed out the things that are happening this year that will require extra time on our part. Our spring and summer will be filled with an Eagle Project, drama performances which involves a lot of costume sewing for me, a high school graduation and preparing to go off to college. I also want to start only those projects that I think we can do reasonably well. For instance, we would really like to raise some meat chickens, however given all the things we have going on I don’t think this is the year to try that.
Many hands make light work when you’re working on projects. We’re almost done with the flooring and trim. |
{Home}
There are so many things I want to do here at the house…most involve paint and fabric. However, those will probably not happen this year. We need to focus on function not looks right now.
- Build a garden shed
- Build a smoke house
- Pull up carpet in dining area and lay laminate flooring in dining area, kitchen and older boy’s room. (all we have left is 2 entryway boards, transition pieces and the trim…but I want it on the list so that the project actually gets finished, not almost finished.)
- Fence in the chicken yard
- Put up a clothes line
- Put another shelf in all the closets
- Finish Christian and Josiah’s room – we’re converting the mudroom into their bedroom, so this room will get painted.
- Put radiant barrier in the attic
- Build a solar panel for the water well – we’ve never done anything with solar so there will be a lot of learning involved
- Determine a schedule to do all our home maintenance chores, like cleaning out the rain gutters, cleaning the underside of the refrigerator, dryer, etc.
{Garden}
This is a hard one for me to goal set, because what I really want is to grow enough to never have to buy produce from the store, but that is probably unrealistic. So I’m only listing the things that we can control – not the actual “growing” of the produce.
- Have 10 beds (5’X20′) tilled up and ready to plant this spring
- Get the soil tested
- Lay mushroom compost on all the beds – there’s a mushroom farm about 45 minutes away that sells their compost
- Propagate some blueberry bushes from the ones that I have and get cuttings from a friend so that we can have other varieties
- Plant black peppers in a pot (and keep it alive – I’m terrible with potted plants) Growing Tasty Tropical Plants is the inspiration for this.
- Graft a grapefruit cutting – a friend has a grapefruit tree and we’re hoping to get a cutting and learn how to graft a tree
- Plant our citrus and pomegranate trees in the ground
{Livestock}
OK, so all we have is chickens, but hopefully that will change this year.
- Fence in chicken yard
- Get 12 more hens
- Begin beekeeping – this will be Gabriel’s project
{Financial}
Over the last several years we have seen the benefit of having multiple streams of income and so here’s some things we would like to do this year to increase those streams.
- Open Etsy Store – actually, we’ve had a store for about 2 years – but we’ve never listed anything.
- Write a couple of ebooks – we’ve had several ideas floating around for about 6 months and would really like to get a couple of them written.
- Keep within my grocery budget each month – this area is the easiest for me to justify going over each month.
- Track all income and out go
{Personal Development}
At the end of each day, I like to snuggle on the couch and read for a while before going to bed. I usually only read one or, at most, two books at a time. Honestly, sometimes it’s all about the pictures. If a book has amazing photos I will look through it – it’s very restful for me. If the book doesn’t have great content I’m probably not going to finish it. I’m not one to suffer through a book that doesn’t inspire me. I’ve gotten into the habit of just perusing the “new” section of our library to find books I want to read instead of being intentional about it. I’ve found some great books this way but I also have some books on my list that I really want read and never get around to because I’m not very intentional. So I thought I’d pick two books for each month and schedule them. For accountability’s sake, I’ll list the books I’ve read each month with any thoughts I might have on them. So here’s the books for the first half of 2012
Bible Plan – Chronological Bible Reading Plan
January- 7 Habits of Highly Effective People (I’m teaching this at co-op)
One Thousand Gifts
February – How to Win Friends and Influence People (another co-op book)
The Home Orchard
March – Rework
Crazy Love
April – EntreLeadership
Kisses from Katie
May – Quitter
The Rhythm of Family
June – Bringing it to the Table
Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day
I’m sure other items will come up that we’d like to do this year and we’ll add them to the list. Whatever doesn’t get done this year we’ll just carry over to next if it is something we feel like we still need to do.
What are some of your goals for this year?
SchneiderPeeps
Wednesday 4th of January 2012
Rachel: It does seem like a lot, some of them are for me specifically but most will be for our family to work together on. I'm hoping the list will help me stay focused on the the things that really need to get done, like the garden shed, instead of spending our time and dollars on the things that I just want to do like paint and make curtains.
Alison: Other than the book list, all the things I listed are things that we have been talking about wanting to do for the last few months (or a couple of years) and so I thought I'd write them down. That way I don't have to keep all that in my head. I'm excited about the Artison Bread book, but I have to get through the school year before I will have time to really experiment in the kitchen.
Alison
Tuesday 3rd of January 2012
I'm impressed with your goals.I have never made such a detailed list before, so I'm going to start working on that.
You will love Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day. I have enjoyed using this method. So easy!
Rachel E.
Tuesday 3rd of January 2012
That's a lot of goals. But, I am sure you can work your way through some of them. Good luck in it all and God bless your family this new year.