Thoughts & Plans for 2009

I never really make any big life-changing resolutions, apart from doing well in school (while I was still in school) and other general things that I had no problem keeping. This year I have a few different things in mind:

Cooking - Last year I began meal planning. It's helped me to stay organized and save money. So this year, I'm making it my resolution to make more new recipes. I bookmark recipes all the time and never make them, and I end up making a lot of the same things over and over. So this year I want to make at least one new recipe each month. I'd love to do more than one. But I figure if I just make it my goal to do one, then it will be just super if I can do more than one.

Home Improvement Projects - We have several projects that I want to get done in our house. It's hard to say how much we can get done this year, because it really all depends on my husband; I need him to help with all the heavy lifting and stuff. Plus we've already put a lot of time & money into making improvements on the interior (which I still need to post about). But I hope we can get at least a couple of projects completed this year. I hope to paint & fix up the front porch area, re-stain the front door, and build & plant some new flower beds for the front yard.

I've also got to do a little more decorating in the house. I've been shopping around for stuff, but I still have some things to buy and things that I've bought & haven't put up yet.

I'd also like to paint the cabinets in our kitchen. Upon getting the house, we installed new floors, lights fixtures, and a new stove/fridge, and we replaced the countertop, but we kept the cabinets. The one's we have were installed not too long ago, so they didn't need to be replaced, but they could use a little touch up paint.

Budgeting & Bills - For the past two years I've been keeping account of all our expenses on a spreadsheet. (which is something I highly recommend, by the way.) So I'm going to continue to do that, and as we expect to make more money this year than last (& neither of us are in college anymore) we plan on starting to pay off our debts this year.

The Blog - I'm looking forward to another great year of blogging. Some time this year I hope to get a new design for the blog. I've been looking around for templates & designers for a while now, and hopefully I'll have something in the next few months. I've also been thinking of some other changes for this year. One small change that I plan to make is the Recipe of the Week. I still plan on featuring at least one recipe each week, but I plan on posting it early in the week so that I can submit my link to a couple of carnivals that I've found. I'm also working on an idea for a new feature, which I'll announce at a later time. I've also considered reorganizing & restructuring the posts so the blog will be more cohesive (for lack of a better word), but I just can't decide exactly what I want to do. Hopefully in this new year, I can figure it all out!

I hope you are all having a great 2009 so far! I look forward to talking to you and sharing new ideas with you this year!



-Jerri