November Update & December Intentions

[November Update]

HEALTH | 8,000 steps a day. I succeeded this goal 67% of the month, but was within 500 steps of my goal all but four days. Lots of walking in place in the evenings!

HEALTH | Only bake dessert once all month. I baked one glorious dessert with my sister – a maple glazed pumpkin cream cheese roll. Mike, Gabe, and I also went 12 entire days without eating sweets (not even one chocolate chip!), which was supposed to help me reset my cookie monster-sized sweet tooth, but then Thanksgiving weekend probably undid it all. Oops. My goal is to eat 2-3 days a week, which is kinda hard. (I unintentionally lost a few pouts

MARRIAGE | Make a jar of fun ideas. Made a jar full of ideas on popsicle sticks – and one for Gabe’s school activities! But we have yet to actually use the fun at-home date ideas. We are boring people who like Netflix, what can I say?

SANITY | Bed by 10:15 pm, up by 6 am. I was in bed by 10:15 pm 70% of the month and awake by 6 am only 59% of the month (though many days I woke up in the 6 o’clock hour). Definitely something I want to continue – helped me feel rested and get things done before the toddler woke up and terrorized the

MONEY | Have a budget meeting with Mike. We did this and came up with some goals and priorities for our saving – it was a great, but difficult (in terms of setting priorities, not in terms of differing opinions) conversation. We’ll probably try to do this once a month or so just to review progress.

[December Intentions]

I’m feeling pretty worn down after traveling for Thanksgiving break. I mostly just want to sleep for two days, but the kitchen is a mess and my inbox is bursting with urgent emails, so looks like that’s not a reality right now. Alas!

The primary focus of this month is obviously Christmas for us – we have memories to make and presents to purchase and travel plans to make! In addition to that, here’s what else I want to do:

HEALTH | Run 1 mile a day. Runner’s World does the running streak challenge every year and last year I did something similar (hosted by Sarah) and worked out for 30 minutes every single day between Thanksgiving and Christmas. 30 minutes a day seems small, but it was definitely a big commitment and took a lot of energy and attention with a baby. I’m aiming my goal lower – just 1 mile a day. (And I *can* do more, but most days, I’m planning to just to the mile.) Started on Thanksgiving day with our annual four mile run!

FAMILY | Limit my phone use to 2.5 hours a day. I installed a few apps to check how much I use my phone and the results are…high. I use my phone for a lot of really helpful, great things. Like reading the news, taking photos, catching up with my email when I’m away from my computer, listening to podcasts and audiobooks, tracking my exercise, texting my friends and family, and setting and monitoring goals. However, I also use it to escape or distract myself in a not-so-great way. So! I’m going to limit my active phone use to 2.5 hours a day (for the first two weeks, then 2 hours for the last two weeks). It still seems like a lot to some people, I’m sure! But it’s down from 3.5 or 4.5 hours for me. Eek.

BLOG | Launch the new Our Little Apartment. I’m redesigning this site (hi, hello, this one) to help new visitors explore the content a bit easier. I have 8 years of content buried in here – and you can only find it if you’re really into sleuthing around. Since 65% of visitors are new – that means a ton of people are probably landing here from Pinterest or Google. Anyway, I hope the new structure makes more sense. More soon*! (*ish. I still have a lot of work to do. And all that aforementioned holiday prep!)

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from Our Little Apartment http://www.ourlittleapartment.com/2015/12/november-update-december-intentions/