Here’s my January 2011 roundup. If you want to learn more about the roundup tool, see this post.
- What books and/or magazines did I read this month?
As always, most of my reading was for homeschool. I especially enjoyed history with my daughter this month because we learned about several interesting people like John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, Mother Jones, and Theodore Roosevelt. We have the BEST textbook set for history – I just love these books!
I’ve also been reading a really interesting book (Guided Imagery for Healing Children and Teens) to help my kids with a few issues. It’s mainly geared toward parents with teens and younger children, but some of the visualizations are great even for adults. We are getting really good at using our minds as powerful healing tools around here.
- What movies, television shows, plays, etc. did I watch this month?
My kids and I discovered I’m in the Band on Disney XD – a very silly show that is probably aimed at a 10 year old boy’s sense of humor. We got some good giggles out of it though, especially the episode (Spiders, Snakes, and Clowns) about one of the character’s fear of clowns. (Remember that I hate clowns?) If you watch it, don’t think less of us for thinking it’s funny. lol!
Just to show you I’m not completely lacking in the culture department, we did go to a play at the Hale Center Theater. We saw Born Yesterday and it was a delightful production. We took my Mother-in-Law and Father-in-Law with us (that was our Christmas present to them).
We also went to Gulliver’s Travels at the movie theater. It was just ok, but my son really liked it.
- What fun things did I do with my family and/or friends?
My daughter made sugar cookies and decorated them in her very own creative tie-dye style. They turned out so cool!
We played a few new Lego games (Hogwarts & Creationary). Both are really fun!
We went out to dinner with my in-laws (all of them) and celebrated the 5th birthday of my twin nieces. They are such cuties!
- What gifts did I give and/or receive?
I bought the little girlies (above) some Barbie clothes.
I gave my Mom a gift certificate to OScraps for her birthday so she can do some digi shopping.
- What special or unusual purchases did I make?
New pants for my kids (growth spurts for both of them!)
- What illnesses or health concerns did I have?
I was pretty healthy this month, except for a few upset tummy issues. I made some important steps in my journey toward “healthy” this year (it’s my one little word) by seeing a GI doctor and getting off of Advil.
I also had several things taken care of at the dermatologist. I’m still waiting for the pathology to come back on a lump that was removed from my leg. I’m hopeful that it will come back just fine. It was a bugger to get removed though, and I have multiple layers of many stitches in my leg right now. It’s been much more painful than I thought it would be.
- What were my accomplishments this month?
I always just feel good about getting through a month. Is that weird? Between homeschool and all my other activities, the months are pretty full and it feels good to turn that calendar page sometimes!
I cooked many homemade meals for my family. I even made my own salad dressing and made macaroni & cheese from scratch.
I did the NEW 52 project all month and worked on several other long-term items in my own curriculum.
What were my disappointments this month?
I’m not sure I would consider this a disappointment because I still feel good about my choice, but it’s worth mentioning that I had the opportunity to go to CHA and was not able to swing it with my schedule and responsibilities. I’m ok with that though, because it just wasn’t the right time for me to leave my family.
- How did I do on my goals for the month? (Or any current short or long term goals)
This is the best I’ve felt about my goals in a long time. I’m taking gradual steps to work on many ongoing projects. I’m being more realistic about my goals and focusing on overall outcomes instead of getting hung up on the little steps. A good example of this is my approach to being healthy this year. In the past, I would just feel bad about not losing weight during this month. This time, I’m feeling good about the things I did work on and the changes I did make. I’ve gone to bed earlier and gotten more rest this past month. I’ve eaten at home more instead of eating out. I’ve paid attention to feeling mentally healthy by staying positive. I’ve filled my bucket, more than I’ve depleted it.
- Anything else noteworthy to include?
Here are the 4 layouts I created in January. Each one is linked to the original blog post where it was featured on The Daily Digi.
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I actually did all of the following tasks!
- Upload all digital pictures to my hard drive and clear off memory cards in camera. Place all photos for the month in a computer folder labeled with the month and year. Make a backup copy of the photos from the month on my external hard drive and a dvd. I also upload all photos to my flickr account (you can use any offsite photo storage site, but here's why I love flickr). Ideally, these activities should be done every time you process any pictures through your computer so you don't lose any precious files, but if you have lapsed during the month, now's the time to get it done!
- Choose photos or digital layouts to be printed out and get it done while I'm thinking about it.
- Backup any other documents or files as needed. I use an external hard drive, I also upload many documents to Google docs. I don't like to lose stuff.
- Backup my blog. It's easy to do if you have one, just use Typepad backup or blogger backup.
- Clean off my work area, empty my inbox, and clean up my computer files. Here's a link to my digi organization post.
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P.S. the font I used for the roundup titles is shadowed serif available for free on dafont.com.
This post contains a few amazon affiliate links, but I don’t link it if I don’t love it!
