Monthly project update

Well in February my goal was to finish as many of our ongoing house projects as possible. You know, those projects that you get to the 'good enough' stage then forget about. Except you never really forget about them, cause every time you take a bath you notice the streaky edges of the paint job you said good enough on and didn't go back and do the second coat... Or the taped plastic covering the join between the kitchen's old laminate and the new wood floor in the rest of the house... My list goes on and on, and if I think about it too hard, I get totally mired in all the stuff that needs to be finished! But enough rambling...

I keep my photos sorted by month for the current year, and after the year is over I combine all the monthly folders into one yearly folder so that the folders don't get too overwhelming. This month, whenever I sat down and felt like the to-do list was still very overwhelming, like I wasn't making any progress, I would look in my February 2011 picture folder and look at all the projects I made progress on or finished. It was so encouraging!

The baby pictures scattered in the monthly folders encourage me too!

I think I have been quite successful in making progress and getting things done this month. On the home reno/organizing/decorating front, I finished the bathroom trim and made serious progress on the livingroom/diningroom/hallway trim. I purchased enough trim to finish the doorways in the hallway, and more than enough for Little M's room. I purchased wood to start working on the trim on the windows and patio doors. I moved my desk from the nursery to the guest bedroom closet, making both spaces so much more functional!

On the garden front I got exciting mail -  my order of seed packets, and planned my seed starting & garden layout. I found an old shop light left in the garage by the old owners, and moved it to the sunporch to use as a seed starting light. And I restarted a pot of herbs on my kitchen windowsill that was looking rather sad and old, and started some new basil seeds in it.

On a personal front, we went across to the west side of the state to visit my husband's family and have a late first birthday celebration with them for Little M. At the last minute I knitted a toque (or, as my American friends and family say, a hat) for a good friend's son for his first birthday. We got new renters moved in to our rental house, and put it on the market. We even had someone go through and look at the place! Our carefully tightened down budget survived having no renters from late January through early February, and we were even still able to put a teensy little bit into our emergency fund. We aren't up to our 3 month goal, but we're slowly but surely getting there. Hopefully with our tax return we'll get it finished and can move on to retirement, college, and paying our house off early!!

I guess, when I look at all the things we accomplished and see such a great list, I can ignore the things I really meant to do but didn't... The manuscript that I promised would get submitted by the end of the month (really, I still have tonight!!)... The monthly chore list that I only finished one task off of... The sunporch that I keep meaning to finalize a new plumbing plan for... But I guess that's why there is next month! And luckily I have a lot of the prep work done on some of my outstanding 'to-do's', so hopefully next month I will manage to make even more progress :)

I'd love to proclaim a 'no-new-things-added' policy in regards to my to-do list, so that I get all those almost-done projects finished before starting (and not finishing!) new ones, but maybe for next month I'll stick with trying to limit new things as much as possible, or at least not adding 2 new things for every one old thing crossed off! :)  I may even put up a monthly goal list, like one I've been admiring by Kim of NewlyWoodwards.