New Year, New Goals

It's a new year and with that, new goals! I realize it's FEBRUARY now and I probably should have posted this the first week of January, but hey better late than never, right?

Some of my goals for 2011 are.....

• Run a 5K.  I know, I know.  Most of you are asking yourself "how's a fat girl like that gonna run a 5K?"  I CAN and I WILL!  I have a girl at work that wants to run with me and while we're (okay I'm) a little late getting started on the training, we WILL run a 5K this year!
  
• Keep a better checkbook.  I am probably one of the most organized people you will EVER meet, however, my checkbook is a mess.  Okay, maybe not a mess, but it sometimes takes me hours to balance it.  Yes, I still do paper and pencil balancing.  I know.  Dark ages.  Roll with it, okay?  Anyhow, I want to make sure I record every single transaction when it occurs, not 3 weeks later when I'm trying to balance.
  
• Continue my debt worksheet.  Because I'm a dork, I made an Excel spreadsheet of all our debt, our monthly payments, etc.  I want to make sure I can SEE the PROGRESS being made.  I want to make sure I continue putting all our payments, etc. in the spreadsheet.
  
• Pay off 4 "debts".  This ranges from credit cards to farm debt.  I'll make sure to do a blog post for each debt we pay off this year.  Hint--we are getting VERY close to paying off one big one in the next few months and a HUGE one in September!  An even bigger hint.  They're both green and yellow.  My husband is a farmer.  If you haven't guessed by now.  Please stop guessing.  ha-ha
  
• Learn to do my makeup better.  Yes.  I'm 30 and I am TERRIBLE about doing my makeup.  First of all, let me confess here and now that I HATE wearing makeup.  Perhaps if I were better at making it look good, it would be FUN, but I'm not and it's not.  HA!  I've been very fortunate in that as a teenager, I never had to wear a lot of makeup to cover up "teenager skin" so I never really learned how to do good makeup.  I'm lucky now to make it out of the house with lipstick on.  I can STILL hear my Mama in my head telling me to go back inside and "put on some lipstick-your lips are the same color as your face."  ha-ha
  
• The every year goal-LOSE WEIGHT.  30 lbs.  Minimum.  Need I really say more about this one?

Those are just a few of my 2011 goals.  Here's to hoping!

The circus goes to the Circus

We loaded our circus up and went to the CIRCUS on Sunday afternoon!  I had NEVER been to a real circus before and I was SO excited—maybe moreso than the monkeys, errr…I mean boys, were!

We drove to Jacksonville and met up with Cecil’s brother, his girlfriend, and her niece.

Let me ask you this!!  Since WHEN is a circus INSIDE?  My word, what is the world coming to?  This circus, the REAL Ringling Brothers, Barnum & Bailey, was inside the Jacksonville Veterans Memorial Arena.  I never in my life.  Sheesh.  Anyhow, it proved to be GREAT!

How could it NOT be great with this? 

Before the circus actually started, we were able to go on the “floor” and see the clowns, elephant, jugglers, etc.  They were doing tattoos too.  Not to be outdone by some of the “colorful” people in attendance, both my boys got a tatt on their hands. 

I LOVED that the start of the show was the Star Spangled Banner!  The Ringmaster came out to sing it and did SO GOOD.

Is this not the most GORGEOUS drape EVER?  It was even more beautiful in person!

There were elephant rider people (for lack of a better word).

Flame twirlers.

Super strong men that could pick up about 4 other people at once.

Tightrope walkers.

VERY intrigued children!  They sat like this for 2 hours!

Lion tamers.

More elephant tricks.

And 3 very happy children!

If this circus comes to your area, I most HIGHLY recommend it!

~CB~

That's Just TRASHY

My husband says he's not sure if we're the cleanest people in America or the dirtiest.  We produce more TRASH than anyone we know!  During my "great cleanout" and all my projects, I went through about 15 garbage bags!  Big ones, little ones, boxes, small bags, you name it, it got used for TRASH!

This "ain't" even 1/4 of what we went through!

Now that's just TRASHY!

~CB~

Freezer Fixin'

Another one of my projects for the new year was to clean out my freezer.  I figured since I did the fridge, pantry, dressers, closets, glasses, etc. I might as well add the freezer to my list!

This is our outside freezer.  It had gotten jumbled up just like the pantry!

For this project, even the hubs helped!  We moved items around, dumped boxes and organized!

Much better!  Now I can SEE what meats and veggies I have!!  After we did the outside freezer, we moved back inside.  This freezer was something awful too!Unfortunately, no "before" picture, but I'll leave it to your imagination.  Here's the "after" picture!

Well, y'all, I'm off to do more projects!

~CB~

Picky Pantry

Y'all know by now how much I like a good, clean, organized pantry!  During my "great cleanout" I had to do some SERIOUS work on the pantry!  I'm picky about my pantry!  I like boxes together, side by side, tallest to shortest, like items together, so on and so forth.

This pantry was SOME KIND of BAD.

 But...once I had a few uninterrupted hours, it came out nearly perfect!  It's amazing what you find in the pantry when it's CLEAN!

Ahhh..one more project down, several to go!

~CB~

Doing Homework

For the most part, Nolan is really good about doing his homework as soon as he gets home from school.  I happened to get a few cute pictures of him the other night at the kitchen bar.

Yes.  He’s sitting on a box of Capri Suns.  It’s the only way he can reach the counter. ha!

~CB~

Unders

I thought I’d give you a break from cleaning posts (don’t worry, there are more to come) and show you something that is TOO CUTE not to post about!

Round here, we call underwear “unders”.  I don’t know why, I just do.  Anyhow, Nolan got some new unders for his birthday.

 

 

Are they cute or what?

~CB~

Fridge

Yet another cleaning post.  You might be tired of these, but I’m feeling GREAT about how much I am getting accomplished in the new year!

While cleaning up my glasses cabinet and my dishes cabinet, I decided the face of my fridge needed a boost too.  We have LOTS of pictures that are on the fridge, and it was just getting out of hand.

I will say, it is hard though to get rid of certain ones, cause there are those pictures that just MUST be on the fridge so I can see them every day!
 

 

After lots of wiping down and organizing.  Here’s our new fridge face!

Much, much better.

~CB~