life lately + our april goal progress.

april. oh april. i feel like april is always a tough month for us/me. the weather is wacky (its hot! its cold! its raining! its hot again!) so physically and emotionally im a total wreck, james typically starts working more, school is at its peak busy-ness, and.... right at the tail end we have jamess birthday. looking back, it seems like every april has been this kind of madness for us, but every april we still manage to make it out alive. 

this april was no exception. overall it was much mellower than march was: no weddings or showers or family trips, and work has been picking up slowly for james so weve still had a lot of free time at home (though obviously not a lot of extra money). it had its moments though: i did a really great craft fair, we finally got our new bed, and of course i proceeded to have a psychological breakdown because for whatever reason i just cant handle changing the furniture. 

but really the big event for this month was jamess birthday, which, thanks to being absurdly pregnant, i was not able to make an embarrassingly huge deal about like last year or the year before. and i have to admit this, as well as the fact that BOTH of the things james asked for (a new tattoo and a new padres hat in a size that apparently no store ever has) werent things i could buy and wrap up for him to open made me feel like a pretty crappy wife for not doing enough birthday-ing. but, as usual, things turned out just fine. 

i basically just ended up badgering james over and over about what HE wanted to do for his birthday. and i have to say, james was obnoxiously low maintenance with his birthday requests: he chose sleeping in. obviously i wasnt taking this as an answer so (after he slept in, of course) i told him to pick an outing or activity that HE wanted to do. it took him all day to decide on going out to dinner. it was a lovely lazy day. and like i said, everything turned out just fine. (also, he did get his tattoo and his hat is on its way). 

so how about our goals? it seems that april was really the month where we hit our stride in this department. as i was looking over them just now i was reallysurprised at how much progress we made in how many categories, because honestly a lot of the time it felt like we werent doing much. but apparently we were. so how are things going? 

blog:

if you havent noticed, im totally getting back into the whole regular posting groove, AND the majority of posts have been planned, written, AND scheduled in advance. ive also been working harder at finding new ways to connect with bloggers outside of my normal "circle", and thats been totally awesome. 

shop: 

as i mentioned earlier, i did another craft fair! so thats two so far for the year, AND doors have been opening for even MORE opportunities in the coming months. i really wasnt expecting this since i had been feeling so bleh about what i had going, but you know what i REALLY wasnt expecting? being able to buy a new serger with the money i earned from selling a bunch of our old crap from around the house! so yeah, craft fair type things are moving along, and some new designing will probably be happening soon too!

family: 

im really happy to say that weve gotten to a point where weekly family time is becoming a habit, and james and i finally got our date a couple weeks ago we were able to sneak away for a quick lunch before making the baby registry (hopefully the next date wont take so long to happen). ive still been struggling with homeschooling, but ive decided to spend some time focusing on more tactile activities (painting, play dough, cutting shapes with scissors, etc.) which alice is doing really well with. 

home:

living room credenza: check. new bed and mattress: check. thorough decluttering of the entire apartment: almost check. if there was any category of these goals that i thought was going to drag on all year round, it was this one. so imagine my surprise that this is the area wed breeze right through. 

financial: 

here were dont doing as well as i had hoped, coming up with a new budget plan hasnt been easy: even though weve mastered functioning when we have NO money at all, and i feel like we did pretty well at handling when james was making a lot of "extra" money, this middle area weve been in is surprisingly difficult to navigate. and while our savings account hasnt gone down (except for the money we spent on the bed that had long been earmarked specifically for that), work was still on the slow side for james so it hasnt gone up either. as much as i want to be really discouraged here, im doing my best to keep things optimistic, and even though our attempt at a "no-spend" month for march was a total flop, were still going to try it again in may, and hopefully that will help us out in BOTH the budget and the savings account departments. 

personal: 

this semester is almost over (only two more weeks!) and at this point im really confident that im acing both my classes (which would make three semesters in a row with a 4.0!), i also registered for next semester (im only taking one class because baby and because theres literally only one class for me to take next semester), so thats exciting. also those recipes ive been talking about (if you havent noticed) have been slowly making their way onto the blog, which has been super fun and really helped to keep me motivated in breaking out of our dinner-rut. and as for jamberry, well, ive been giving it a LOT of thought, and talked jamess ear off about it way too many times, and i think weve come to a conclusion as to whats best for our family. however, i dont want to do anything rash so as of right now, im wrapping up one last group of parties before taking a couple months of maternity leave before making a final decision. 

so long story short, april = surprisingly productive month for our goals. lets do this, may.