Week Four: 25 Things To Do Before My Next Birthday

Since I'm a little behind on the writing challenge, I'm going to skip around a little bit. The others are on Week Four this week so I'm going to write about that one and then do Week Three (a day in the life) in a few weeks. I really want to document a summer day as a stay at home mom and I'll get one last one of those next week.

Okay, so this week is "25 things to do before my next birthday." Since my birthday is in May, I have awhile to accomplish these things.

1) Finish reading through my Bible. I've been trying to read the Bible in a year for awhile now and am failing miserably. However, I'm about at the point where if I tried to just finish it before my birthday, that would be do-able.

My friend and I are trying to keep each other accountable for Bible reading and she got her nose pierced on Saturday. I went along for moral support, and not to get a second nose piercing :) My friend confessed to me that for the fifteen minutes she needs to sit every morning with a cloth up her nose to clean it is when she is getting her Bible reading done. Since it may help me with this goal, I am now seriously reconsidering that second nose piercing!

(Did you all know that I have my nose pierced? If you don't know that, then this story makes no sense!!!)

2) Insulate our attic. We've needed to put insulation in our attic for the past two years. I'd really like to get that done this fall so hopefully, our house is warmer this winter. We just need a free Saturday and that should be easy enough to arrange.

3) Paint our office. We painted our office before we moved into this house almost two years ago. Sadly, when we were pulling off the tape, some of the paint peeled away too. We just need to find a day or two, and the motivation to fix it.

4) Find a red accented necklace which I LOVE. I love necklaces. I love the colour red. You would think that finding a red necklace I love and adore wouldn't be that hard. You would be wrong.

5) Learn to embrace my cell phone! I have had a cell phone for four months now. I rarely use it. I would like to learn to make it a more essential part of my life. If I could embrace texting, I'd be able to communicate with some of my friends who use that tool in a more effective manner.

6) Get rid of the two potties in our house. Rachel is toilet trained (and has been for a year) so why do we still have two potties in our house? Part of the problem is that we have no bathroom on the main floor so Rachel goes in the potty rather than going upstairs. Now that she'll be in school full-time, this shouldn't be as necessary.

7) Play piano regularly. We have my grandma's piano in our living room, and truth be told, I rarely play it. I think it's because it hasn't been tuned recently and the sustain pedal is broken. Both of these should be easily fixable problems.

Random picture of Sam and Rachel playing the piano

from two years ago, just so this post isn't so boring.

8) Finish my quilt. I started making a log cabin design quilt about a million years ago, where "a million" equals "fifteen." I hand pieced it and I just need to finish quilting it. I have about forty squares left. Of course, by the time I'm done the lovely pink and green motif will go well in Rachel's room and I can make a new one for us. With a machine this time :)

9) Reduce the "To Be Read" stack of books on my dresser. I have all my library books piled on my dresser and then all the other books I want to read "someday" piled behind that. I should be able to get rid of that stack in the next nine months if I put my mind to it.

10) Catch up on the kids' school year books. I just need to take a few hours, sit down, and finish them. I only have about a year (or two) for each kid to do, and it won't take that long.

11) Host a fancy tea party for my friends. I have a Pinterest board dreaming about a fancy tea party. I want to host one some Saturday this fall. I think it would be a lot of fun and something just for me. I've actually been dreaming about doing something like this for about a year and a half now.

12) Sort through my second box of sentimental crap. I have two Rubbermaid bins full of papers, drawings, journals, old day books, and other random things. Some of the things in there date back to high school which ended twenty-five years ago. I went through one this past winter. Now it's time to attack the second one.

13) Clean off the table in the basement. We have a table in our basement which used to be Dave's desk. Now it's the table where all our random junk collects. It's time to clear it off and turn it into useable space.

14) Learn to make flossing a (daily) habit. I am not good at flossing, which is really code for "I never do it." 'Nuff said.

15) Finish our New Zealand photo book. We have had a photo book put together in my Shutterfly account for over a year. It's time to edit and order it. Also, Dave has done the bulk of the work on this so far and is really just waiting for my input.

16) Make a Southern US road trip photo book. We did a major Southern US road trip this past March. I'd love to make a photo book for it.

17) Move Rachel to a big girl bed. She is currently in a toddler bed. We have her big girl bed in our basement so it's just a matter of deciding to move her and getting a mattress. I don't want to do this right away but the time is getting closer.

18) Buy a queen bed for us! We have only ever had a double bed for our entire married life. It's a ton of fun when one of the kids wants to crawl in with us. It's time to update.

19) Get rid of the crib in our basement. And possibly the change table too. These came from our best friends, Tim and Janice, and we've toyed with getting them returned off and on for the past year and a half. It's time to get it done!

20) Take the kids to The Toronto Zoo. This is the major zoo in our area. I'm not really a zoo person, and it feels like the kids have been too little to make the price of admission worth it, but I think we're ready for it now.

21) Get my wedding dress from my aunt's house. My wedding dress has been hanging at my aunt's house since we got married. Now that we own our house, she would probably appreciate having that space back.

 More random pictures, this time to show off my wedding dress.

22) Write some letters to my grandma, possibly with pictures of the kids enclosed. My grandma doesn't have e-mail (shock!) nor does she read the blog (again, shock!). She would probably appreciate some random pictures of the kids, complete with stories.

23) De-clutter every room in our house. A few years ago okay, last year I did "40 Bags In 40 Days." Our house could probably use another one of those.

24) Run The Resolution Run again. I really enjoyed this way of ringing in the new year.

25) Have a stay-cation. We (unintentionally) did this a few years ago over Christmas and it was a lot of fun. I'd like to plan an intentional one this time.

Since Dave likely won't see this list until he reads this post, hopefully he agrees with the ones which involve him. And maybe I'll try and update in a few months and see how far I'm getting.