One small change and New Year hopes...

I have joined Hip Mountain Mama in her "One Small Change" Challenge. The idea is that small changes can make a big difference. We live fairly lite on the earth here at Fleecenik Farm but it is so easy to slip, it is easy to take the easier road, dismiss the one plastic bag because it is only one bag. But it all adds up ( as the cache of plastic bags in the cupboard prove) So for the month of January my one small step will be to be very diligent about bringing my fabric bags with me everywhere I go and to remember to bring them into the store when I do go to the store. It is the small changes that create better habits.

As for New Year's resolutions I am going to take a different approach this year. Each year there is a list of things I hope to do. You know the typical stuff: exercise more, eat better. Well, inevitably, I do not fulfill these goals. It is January and my natural inclination this time of year is to hibernate. This hibernation is always a good time of year for me. I feed my creativity, explore and learn new things. I nap. I play. I bake. I read cookbooks. Why would I want to deny the pleasure I get from this yearly rhythm?

Instead, I am going to strive to improve what is working already. This is not to say that there are not goals I want to accomplish. I want to open an Etsy Shop this year. But the shop is just an extension of a family goal.

Anyway, in the effort to improve what is working already, there are several areas in my life as a domestic goddess that I would like to refine. We have been doing really well with eating from food storage these past couple of months. What has not worked, in this regard, is my documentation on this blog. So I will be making a weekly post about how we are managing this, with recipes! Sometimes I have found that we spend more on food when we are on the road. So I would like be more diligent about cooking food to take with us.

Money is an area of our lives that we have been looking really hard at lately. If you have been reading this blog for a while, you have been following our family's travails as hubby lives two hours away during the week. He has been home for 2 weeks and goes back to work on Monday. We have accepted that this may be the way our lives are for the rest of the school year. But we don't have to be victim to circumstance. We have found a potential home that we can owner finance. We need 10% down for a down payment. We will have the needed amount by June 1st if we follow a very austere savings/ money management regimen. We have been paying attention to every penny and find that there is all sorts of extra money in our budget if we just pay attention to where is all goes. I plan to write more about this as I share some things I have discovered over the last month.

I would also like to give more attention to working with what I have on hand. My handmade Christmas did not require the purchase of vast amounts of materials ( partially because I have a bit of a yarn stash). Anyway, I have several home projects I would like to work on this winter that require me to use paint and fabric I have on hand. I would like to explore kid crafts while working with what we have on hand.

I have learned to embrace hibernation and the introspection that comes with this time of year. I look forward to sharing our continuing adventures this coming year!