Cleared weekends, two books, and a PR campaign.

December felt easy as pie, but I fared about 50-50:

Celebrate a classy and on-our-own-terms New Years Eve.

New years eve was fantastic! We had a small group of friends for dinner, and then an even smaller one New Year Countdown. We brought in the New Year reading Goosebumps Choose-Your-Own-Adventure out loud and were asleep within a half hour…. that’s my favorite kind of party!

Visit our college town in style and on-budget this coming weekend.

We definitely visited in style by staying at a local bed and breakfast with a comfy bed and a fireplace, but when we got to our college bookstore we went a little crazy with alumni fever. We got coffee mugs, JHubbs got a school fleece, and I got a car sticker, which did not break the bank but was indeed an unplanned purchase. Next time it goes into the budget!

Exercise ten minutes per day.

Yeah… definitely didn’t happen. But I am proud of the natural and guilt-free habits I am building around food and exercise! I definitely feel like I am in a wonderful place to begin this new year making healthy choices because I want to, not because I am a bad person if I do not. For more information on getting free, check out anything by Geneen Roth (especially Women, Food and God).

Limit gluten and wheat products to once per day.

I almost completely gave up on this and it is the strangest thing that I did not notice a difference. This is such a weird thing! (For example, I had normal peanut butter and jelly sandwiches a few times this month and felt completely fine all day. Weird!). Right now it seems like sugar and white flour are the real culprits, so I think focusing on those foods will reap more of a benefit.

Overpay on our personal loan.

Dress up for work once per week.

Bam! And I definitely feel better/more productive in the office when I do so, though it may very well be because my jeans are a little tight so I don’t want to wear them. Also, I’m not sure if picking out an outfit and putting on jewelry should really be the highlight of one’s day…. and yesterday I realized I had my cardigan on inside out for at least two hours and no one at work said anything. Not the best sign for my fashion reputation, right?

Use my own photos on 100% of my posts.

Bam! This has by far been the easiest/most fun blogging goal. When I work on a project or recipe, I love taking a photo of it. When I have a new concept or key word, I love doodling about it. Win-win.

January Goals

Besides larger year-long goals, I have a few goals for January that I will definitely need some accountability for:

Say No to weekend plans. JHubbs and I are so, so close to finishing our goal of having a finished manuscript for our YA novel. It will take a few more days of dedicated keyboard pounding and we will have something concrete to be proud of. We are right now at 48K out of our goal of 60K. To meet this goal, we are each aiming for 1K words per day, with 2K on the weekend. Once we meet our word goal, we will have more intense sessions together to work out continuity, characterization, and any finer touches we want to include. Which breaks into the next goal:

Meet our 60K word goal. ‘Nuff said. (And don’t be alarmed at our word-count-only perspective. We are both aware of quality over quantity, etc, but right now we are working on pumping out our skeleton. Round II is for the finer points.)

Read two books. I am making my way through The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People very, very slowly because it is life-changing, but if I dedicate more time to it I will get the same results over less time. I also received Dave Ramsey’s EntreLeadership in our office’s secret santa (AWESOME right? Thanks, John!) and I want to read it this month.

Complete the content and schedule the PR/marketing communicationand social marketing for my first eBook to be released April 1, 2013. Consider this your first hint… April is going to be a very exciting month!

What have you got cooking this month?