Monthly Goals Update and This Week's Goals

Well, where last week was super productive despite depressing events on the home front, this week was...well not productive I guess is the best way to put it.

With having various appointments that just blew the day (orthodontist for daughter, allergist for son and dental visit for my husband on top of therapies) and then having to deal with a son who keeps breaking out in welts and hives on top of it, it would have been a lesson in frustration to try and get anything done.  So, the housework piled up because I wasn't home and I sure didn't get to work on the yard work I want to get done at all.

I'm hoping this week will be more productive as while I have my son home tomorrow (his class has a field trip, but it's all outdoors and the way his allergies have been going lately...um...no) and he has speech therapy tomorrow, the rest of the week we are free from appointments and therapies.  So I'm hoping I can get a FEW things done in the next five days.  Especially clearing some of the yard where the weeds will start to take over immediately if we get any rain (and I'm honestly hoping for rain...we've had a dry spring and summer so far).  I really need to clear the raspberry bank of dead wood as between the raspberry bushes the moose, heat and blight killed and the dead rose bushes...it's awful looking and really just needs to be tended to.

I measured out my All American canner.  It's going to be a kind of tight fit for a hot water bath canner for my pint jars (you have to fill it about 80% of the way up to go over the tops of the jars, but it does work), quart jars are out until I get my 27 quart canner back (although I was happy to note that the quart jars do fit if you use it as a pressure canner...I just couldn't get the jars covered with at least an inch of water in that sucker to save my life though to do hot water bath canning).  I'm missing my Presto already and I'm really praying the cooperative extension gal comes in quickly to check it.  If not I might be stopping by and grabbing it back from them at some point this week just to get some canning done and then dropping it off again.  My husband has even suggested just going and getting a new pressure gauge and installing it as that's the only thing on the canner that would be the least bit bad on it.  I know it still seals up fine.  I'd prefer not to have to replace it unless I have to though.  We'll see how it goes this week.

One of the things I didn't get to this week was canning dilly beans due to my schedule, so I went through the beans tonight and picked out the few that were turning brown and not looking like they were good canning fodder anymore.  I washed them well, dried them and put them in a bowl and will store them in the fridge tonight (seen above in process).  Tomorrow I'll attempt to can them in my All American canner and pray that it gets the job done as a hot water bath canner.  Fingers crossed!

I did, however, get all of the reams of paperwork filled out and to the proper people involved, so I feel good getting that off of my plate!

So, onto my goals for this week.

Sewing Goals:

• Work on gift for new niece.  I really got to get working on this or she'll be here before I get a chance to start on it.
• Work on mending husband's work jacket.

Canning Goals:

• Can dilly beans.  IF the new canner works well as a hot water bath canner, can taco sauce.  If not, maybe go and get Presto canner to get the job done.

Cleaning Goals:

• Clean house (after last week this needs to be done BAD!).  
• Scrub bathrooms.
• Scrub laundry room.
• Sort and put away laundry.
• Clean path to master bedroom closet (husband decided to pull stuff out of the closet one day and then didn't put it all back in so there's kind of a mess to clean up) and put up winter clothing I bought for kids earlier and their winter boots for next winter.
• Wash and put up winter gear for year (I can't BELIEVE I'm still working on that.  It's sad really).
• Scrub down kid's rooms (this is a priority item as I want to make sure this gets done by the time the kids are out of school and thus makes it harder for me to do at that point).
• Shampoo Carpets

Yard/Garden Goals:

• Work on yard.  Any area of the yard.  Just WORK ON IT!
• Plant more lettuce seeds and some basil seeds in the hanging planter.  Also plant some more seeds in the bare area of the garden to fill in holes where seeds didn't germinate and also in the one bare area that was saved to rotate planting.
• Start working on trellis for peas as they are taking off already and I want to make sure that's up before I'm caught with my proverbial pants down.
• Compost around rhubarb plant to see if it will help it grow better.

General Goals:

• Get kids through last week of school.
• Sit down and work out schedule for summer break (my daughter's stomach does better when the day and meal times are structured, so I'm hoping to stick with that for the summertime to help her stomach from cycling).
• Start doing a "write down goal" list every day (Scott Adams, the creator of Dilbert asserts that writing goals down 14 times in a day will help to reshape reality for you to meet those goals.  Heck, I figure it's worth a shot :).
• Get den cleaned out and put things in donation pile or out in storage (this goes for the master bedroom closet as well, but I'm thinking that one is waiting till next week for me to start).

And there you go folks.  My goals for this week.  How about you?  Got anything planned?