I know I’m writing this as the first month of 2019 comes to an end, but to be honest I’ve just been cracking on with what I wanted to do in the new year. Do you want to see what my goals are? Here goes:
1) Weekly Meal Planning
I got this idea from Katy’s Decluttering Motherhood facebook group – to actually set aside half-an-hour each week to decide what we’re having for dinner each night. And I decided to try two new recipes each week, it’s easy to find recipes on the internet and BBC Good Food is a useful website. Then with the meals decided, I write a list of what ingredients I need and when we do the food shop, we get exactly what is on the list. My store cupboard is so much more organised now, as I’m using up ingredients rather than forgetting about stuff in the cupboard until they go out of date! The fridge and freezer are more organised now as I know exactly what we have now. It’s only been a couple of weeks, but the food bill has gone down by shopping this way.
2) Cook!
I used to love cooking, especially just after I got married, it was so exciting to have our own kitchen. But after I had kids, and to be honest since I became a blogger, cooking went right to the back. I’d do the same old easy food – pasta, spag bol, chili con carne, oven food, ready meals. Since I started meal planning and having the ingredients I need to hand, I have loved cooking interesting meals. I actually look forward to it! I’ve done lentil curry, thai fried prawns with pineapple rice, blackened salmon fajitas, and a harissa chicken traybake so far. I start cooking at 4.30/5 after Tyler does his homework, and the kids eat it too – I’ve stopping doing separate meals for them, I want them to try different foods and they have been interested – the lentil curry went down a treat!
3) Find extracurricular activities for the kids
In the first week of Jan, I was on a mission to find classes for the kids that they would enjoy. Inspired by this Instagram post by Fozia, saying she’d rather be in bed than take her daughter to karate, but she does it because her daughter loves the classes. And that really gave me a kick up the bum because I have been lazy when it comes to classes for the kids, preferring to have a Saturday lie-in at my parents’ house. But I’m not working, so I should be making an effort to take them to classes, I have no excuse! Lily tried a couple of ballet classes and we enrolled with the one she liked. It’s only be 3 classes so far, but oh my goodness does she love it! And for Tyler, who adamantly did not want to go back to Street Dance in Slough, I said try the Hip Hop class in Uxbridge and if you don’t like it, we can find something else. I fully expected him to hate it, and had planned for him to try football, karate, swimming. But he loved the Saturday morning dance class and we signed up for the term! He’s happy because there are more boys in the class and they’re around his age, it’s not too young in the class. Plus it’s near his grandparents’ house so he doesn’t miss out on Nana time. And they are going to do a show in May. So yay for the kids having a hobby and for it to be dancing!
4) Sit with Tyler to do his homework on weekdays only
We are keeping weekends free for fun things. His school gives the term’s homework in advance so it is up to us when we do it. I have designated 3 days a week after school and we do half-an-hour of homework where I sit with him. It does make it more fun doing the homework in bite-size chunks and I am learning new things too!
5)Keep going with 5 Woolworths posts a week
I started this crazy project to write about every single Woolworths store and I really love doing this blog! It brings out my inner historian, and I love hearing stories from former employees to include in the posts. Currently I’m at store 247, so by the end of this year I should by at around store 500, if I’m doing 5 a week (one each weekday).
6) Keep #sloughitsnotsobad going
My instagram hashtag for sharing the good in Slough has been such a feel-good project. I know if I was a really good blogger, I would have written ‘grow’ the hashtag, but I’m happy with the small community it has, and we’ll carry one sharing our pretty photos.
7) Restart a weekly Slough/local post
I had taken a break from the Slough blog posts over Christmas and am ready to get back into the habit of writing a weekly post about something in Slough, be it an activity, event, somewhere to eat. It’s what you readers like, according to analytics! And I like getting to meet local people and share what is happening in our area for the local community. I don’t do this blog for money, I just want it to be useful for anyone reading it.
8) Restart kids fashion posts
My blog is called The Mummy Stylist because I’m a mummy that loved styling her son. And I still love buying kids clothes and dressing them and photographing them. So I want to bring back ‘What the Kids Wore’ – just for fun, maybe once a month to be more realistic. Because I like writing those posts.
9) Book an actual RELAXING family holiday
This year it’s my 40th AND our 10 year anniversary. When we got married, we said we’d go back to our honeymoon spot of Hawaii with our future kids. Now that they are here, there’s no way I want to sit on a 23 hour flight with them. But we do want to one of those holidays, you know, at a resort where the beach is outside your hotel room and there’s a pool.
10)Film more Tyler videos
Maybe when the weather is not so cold, we’ll do the transport things he wants to do and I will film them because they are fun to look back on. We are not planning anything crazy like all the tube stations, but there are quite a few bus routes he wants to do. Yes, he’s moved on to buses.
11) Take ordinary photos
Whenever we visit my parents or my mother-in-law’s, I realise I don’t really take photos as it’s so routine if you know what I mean. But it is just as important! So I am definitely going to take more unposed photos of my kids with their grandparents. I already started on Sunday with photos at the mother-in-law’s – whoop!
12) Bake bread
My husband and I asked for a breadmaker for Christmas from my family. So we have it now, still in its box! We need to set aside time and actually bake some bread, maybe every second Sunday or something.
13) Bake cupcakes with Lily
I wrote this as a goal last year but didn’t do it! But I want to do this, as I love baking cupcakes, and I can take them to playgroups to share them out. Need to buy some sort of carry containers that will fit in the pushchair basket.
14) Eat more healthy
This has already started with the meal planning thing, and there is less junk food in the cupboard. It was healthy eating week at school a couple of weeks ago, and now Tyler is all about eating healthily, less sugar, more fruit and veg. I make sure I cut apples and cucumbers for snacks, and don’t automatically go to junk food when they want a snack. They do still have chocolate and crisps, I’m not cutting it out. This is about making sure there is fruit as well, and making it’s the first choice.
15) Walk everyday
My husband got me a FitBit at Christmas and it’s the best thing ever. It makes me do 10,000 steps a day. On school run days, I do that anyway. But on weekends, I can be sat down all day. This watch is making me be more active.
16) Keep on learning about photography
As you know I love taking photos, not just for the blog, but as a hobby, And I just want to get better, try different angles, make photos more interesting, nail action shots of people. I’d like to get a tripod to make self-timer photos easier, and maybe get another lens though I don’t really know what I’m talking about! I want to get angles right, especially photos for Instagram, and study other’s photos to see how they do it.
17) Keep on learning about photo editing
Last year was all about reigniting that creativity, and all those creative photos on Instagram. I was a bit ambitious last year and was convinced that I could be as good as the big Instagrammers and get to 100k followers. Yeah right, I’m not even at 5k! I also discovered that although it’s a very supportive community, it’s also quite clique-y and it almost felt like being back at school. This year I am not bothered about the numbers at all. All I want is to create photos I love and to improve my editing skills, study photos and see how others do it. I’ve realised lighting and shadows is very important when it comes to a photoshopped image not looking so fake. I’d also like to learn how to do moving photos.
18) The photo album project!
See last year’s post – I haven’t even started this and the albums are still empty on the bookshelf.
19) Get into teaching
I’ve left this goal last, but it’s the BIGGEST goal! It’s at the end because it’s something to start when Lily starts Nursery in September (eek!) I have such a passion for working with children, I absolutely love kids and I understand them, and I want to give something back to the community. At this stage, I want to work towards being a teaching assistant, ideally in Tyler’s school, and am hoping I can volunteer to get the experience. I need to properly look into this, but that is the goal – to be a teaching assistant!
So there you have it – 19 goals for 2019. I really want to achieve them all, so yeah, let’s see!
How about you, have you got any goals for 2019?
Sabrina x
