2010 Resolution Wrap-Up

I know I've been missing for about 4 months from this blog. I guess life caught up with me. The new job is still going great, but I am having a hard time balancing work, working out (which is pretty much non-existent at this point), cooking dinner and home life. I am going to make a greater effort to become better at these things in 2011. I thought I would go over last year's resolutions and see how I fared. I'll post new resolutions after this. Hopefully I still have some readers out there!!

These goals are simply for my own health and quality of life.

For my health:

• Continue to work on my strength training. My personal goal is to do shoulder presses using 20lb dumbbells! I got to this point, but have lost all my strength. I quit working out completely about two months ago. I got too caught up in my new work schedule.
• Work on my endurance through gym classes, cardio and running. Bonus: run a 5K.Make a conscious effort to reduce my sugar intake through sweets and processed foods. (Thank goodness the Christmas cookies are gone!) I did pretty good with the sugar for about half the year. I lost it all in the last part of this year. I tend to eat more sweets when I get stressed. No 5K for me, but I was good about the gym classes until I started this job. The times conflicted with my schedule so I have been lost as to what to do next.
• Plant an organic summer vegetable garden again. We planted, but it was late in the summer. We didn't plan this one out as well as we should have.
• Get a physical so I know my exact health statistics! Didn't do it!

The financial health goals are absolutely necessary and essential. These are more "musts" than goals.

For my financial health:

• Jason & I must both get jobs Bingo! We nailed this one! I started at a temporary place in March, then found a permanent job in August. Jason started a permanent job in August, but it turned out to be a bad fit for him. We are thankful that it got us through a rough year, though. Luckily, he found a new place to work and will start his new job on January 3. We are both excited about this opportunity!
• Once we are both employed, live off of Jason's salary. Put all of my earnings into our savings account to rebuild and start to pay down my student loans and mortgage. I'm paving the way to get those monkeys off my back! We have done surprisingly well with this one. While we are not living completely off of Jason's salary, we're close. We have a monthly goal to save and are doing it fairly well.
• Continue to prioritize the things that we deem important enough to spend our hard-earned money on. No blowing money unless we deem that purchase important. We more than aced this one! We are misers when we need to be. Our year of unemployment opened up my eyes to all the unnecessary things in life. It really helped us distinguish between the wants and needs.

Getting to the home health & fun goals will completely depend on the financial goals. Provided they are met, we can continue down the line to those below.

For my home health: These were put off most of the year because we were unemployed.

• The Massive Living Room Project will include: a ton of paint, the wood flooring we have already bought but needs installing, building a hearth for our fireplace, replacing the ugly tile with slate tile on our fireplace and hang up some darn pictures! Bonus = Buying more furniture. Didn't even come close to getting to this one done.
• The Kitchen: paint, deep clean the tile. Bonus = painting the cabinets We started this one. We got the kitchen painted and will stain the grout on the floor next. I am still undecided on what color to paint the cabinets.
• The Master Bedroom: paint and hang photographs Nope
• Bonus: Formulating a plan for the Master Bath Nope
• Extra Bonus: Attempting some landscaping Big nope!

For fun:

• Plan - and go on - another ski trip! Not a chance
• Go to a live concert that Jason & I really want to see (not including Texas artists since we've seen them a million times) Nope!
• Visit our friends more often! We tried, but avoided any functions that involved spending money for obvious reasons.

I know that most of my resolutions were a bust, but I'm not going to feel bad about it. Jason & I had a rough year together financially and we were able to pull ourselves out of it without any negative repercussions. I still have my husband, my family and my home so I have much to be thankful for in 2010 and much to look forward to in 2011!