Monthly Goals Update and This Week's Goals

Well, looking at my goals for the month I'm kind of disappointed in that we're 21 days into the month and I have accomplished next to nothing on my cleaning goals for this month.  Ugh.

Although, bright side is that most of the cleaning I want to do, with the exception of things like washing down walls and things, won't take very long in the course of like a week, so I'm hoping to still get all of the accomplished by the end of the month.

I did manage to get my furnace room about 90% mucked out this week.  I still need to transfer the boxes of stuff into storage, but at least the room is pretty much empty at this point.  My plan is to then hang up a few items in the furnace room (like snow shoes) and then basically turn it into a mainly empty room with just a vacuum cleaner and the carpet cleaner in it.  That way I'll know for sure it's not a fire hazard in there and I won't have my carpet cleaner taking up part of my upstairs hallway.

I fixed a lot of different things this week (yay super glue!).  The biggest thing I accomplished was piecing the rim of my vase back together (seen up top there).

I know a lot of people wouldn't go through all the trouble of piecing this thing back together and I've done it a couple of times throughout the years.  But, this vase has sentimental value to me as it's the nicest gift I ever received from my brother-in-law, Clinton.  He actually bought it for my husband and I back when we lived in a tiny little apartment and I had to house it in the bathroom because it was the only spot in the apartment where we had an opening to stick it, but even back then I thought the vase was pretty.

Our then psycho kitten, Ginger, took it upon herself to try and destroy that vase, knocking it over constantly in her attempted conquest of anything breakable in the apartment, but she failed.  And then we moved to a bigger place and the vase was able to be put into a nicer looking location (once again, sadly, in a bathroom as that's how the house just happened to be laid out).  Then she really went to town trying to seek out and destroy her ceramic nemesis as she had so much more room to get speed up before smacking into it.  One day she knocked it over in such a way that it smacked off the toilet and broke a piece off the rim. 

She gave me such a smug look when I ran into the bathroom, like she'd finally succeeded in her quest at vase domination.  But, I had to prove her wrong.  I liked the vase darn it!  And so I sat and carefully pieced the pieces I could find back together.  It left a mark, but looked okay for the most part.

Oddly enough, after she broke that one piece off of the vase, she's pretty much left it alone ever since.  I keep thinking she just had to show it who was the boss.  Or she realized that I was more stubborn than she was and would glue the sucker back together no matter what she did to it.  Either way, she left it alone after that *laugh*.

Then last month my new psycho kitten (well, I guess she's more of a cat now, but we'll go with it) decided she wanted to attack a blanket that I was carrying downstairs to put in the laundry, skidded out of control and knocked said vase over where I have it in the corner of my landing, usually a nice safe place where it can sit out of the way and look pretty.  And thus another piece of the rim broke off, this time in small pieces.  I didn't have time to deal with the broken bits at that time, so I just kind of stuck them down inside the vase, rearranged the winter floral arrangement I had in it and decided I'd get to it when I had a chance.  Well, I finally got my chance this week.

And oy was that a lot of work!  The rim was broken on the one side in about twenty tiny pieces, so it was a lot of figuring to work out where the pieces went and then carefully super gluing one piece at a time back together to make one big piece to finally glue onto the vase.  And, once again, it left a mark, but it looks alright (when you look at it straight on anyway) and oddly enough for all the times it's gotten knocked over and broken throughout the years, it'll still hold water okay.  Ah the effort we'll go through for something we like.  Kind of amazing really.

I just find it so humorous that each cat has left it's mark on the vase, but it's still standing.  So far *knock on wood*.  I'm hoping to find where I put my black acrylic paint so I can touch up the obvious exposed bits of ceramic on the vase.  Hopefully I can find that in my cleaning endeavors this week.

On top of the vase I fixed my frog magnet, about fifteen thousand toys of my daughter's (okay, I might be exaggerating a BIT, but she keeps digging up more toys to fix!!!), a toy of my son's and I replaced a lot of his batteries this week in his toys as well. 

Overall as fixing things went I got a lot done this week.  Cleaning, not so much.

We did manage to scrimp and save enough to pay my husband's car insurance this week.  It definitely hurt to do it, but I also knew myself way too well in that when it comes to shelling out large amounts of money I'll just keep putting it off and putting it off until suddenly like three of said bills hit me at once and I have to shell out a HUGE amount of money and then I fight off multiple panic attacks and try to stop myself from having a stroke.  I figured it was just easier to swallow the worry in my throat and just take a bite out of the bills we have to pay by the beginning of April (since I totally misjudged the month the insurance was due, again...darn it).  This week we have to pay my husband's continuing education and his licensing renewal, so that's going to doubly hurt, but, once again, it needs to be done whether we like it or not.

And I got the cloth napkins embroidered last week too.  So, at least ONE sewing goal is done for this month.  Got a lot left to do on that front too, but hopefully I can get some of that done this week.

So, onto this week's goals!

Sewing Goals:

1.  Work on robe or dress (still up in the air on that one)
2.  Make slip covers for couch throw pillows. 
3.  Keep eye out for materials to redo couch or figure out something else (the cats have destroyed it using it as a scratching post the last bit).
4.  Work on quilt and other mending.

General Goals:

1.  Work on saving money as much as humanly possible to save last 400.00 needed to make bills by first week of April.
2.  Shampoo carpets (this desperately needs to get done)
3.  Clean and organize china cabinet (this is kind of a catch all cabinet for medicines and things as my son can't get into said cabinet so it needs to be cleaned and organized again)
4.  Clean wooden furniture and wax.
5.  Work on kitchen if I can find time (as I'm seeing the majority of my week being shot just trying to catch up on housework after the son has been home the last two weeks).

And there you are folks.  My goals for this week.  You up to anything?