Goal's

As of lately I have been setting little goals for myself. Such as using my cookbooks a couple of times each week and taking on at least one household task each day. Yesterday, I made the goal to clean our up stairs floors. So I swept, vacuumed, mopped and even steam cleaned the carpets. Today, my goal was to do more laundry, which I have procrastinated on and I am still avoiding doing as I write this.

Ive been doing a pretty good job at the cook book goal. These two are currently my favorite books.

They are from Taste of Home. Both of them are basically the same book, they just have different recipes in them. The cool thing about them is that they give you a weeks worth of meals and then the shopping list for that week. We very rarely eat red meat so I don't follow the books as it was intended to be followed but last week we had Chicken Wellington, Spinach Turkey Burgers, and Southwestern Skillet Burgers.

Last week was my second week and I really got into the whole thing. I have wanted to do meal planning for a long time, I just haven't been disciplined enough to follow through on it. Last week was so nice to have it all figured out before hand. I just looked at my list in the morning each day and if I needed to take something out of the freezer I did so then. I didn't have to think about it again until 4 PM came around. (We eat early sometimes. The earliest we eat is on Wednesday at 4PM and the latest is on Mondays at 6 PM.)

Last night I sat down and did the same thing that Ive done the past two weeks, only this time I tried to plan a week of meals needing the least amount of groceries. So far, my grocery list has seven items on it and that's including a gallon of milk and a loaf of bread. I am actually pretty proud of that. I never knew I was this domestic, but to me, its kind of fun. I really like cooking for my family. I like making new meals and hearing how much they enjoyed them.

This week our menu has four things from my Taste of Home books. Monday we'll be having BBQ Jack Chicken Breasts. On Tuesday we'll be having Chicken Shepherds pie. On Wednesday we'll be having "Tex-Mex" Turkey Burgers and on Thursday, because we don have red meat much I threw this in for Justin..., homemade Salisbury Steak. The recipe calls for noodles but im using mashed potatoes instead. It just sounds better. On Friday I am taking it super easy and using up the Hamburger Helper that is in our cupboards. The weekends are kind of free-for-all's in our family. So I don't meal plan for those days.

Another goal I have is to take time doing something for myself each day. Right now I am obviously blogging. Last night I read a little. I went to the Chiropractor sometime last week and I am going again this Monday. I am also making myself take daily vitamins and I have not one, but three exercise videos. My goal with those is that I do one at least once a week. I don't know how you mom's do it everyday with multiple children, but i'll have to work into that over time. (I used to run a few miles each night before I got pregnant, but then that was when Justin was working a different job and he was home every night.)

Usually, I am pretty scatterbrained. I am hoping by setting goals to be able to mellow out a bit and actually accomplish something more than going in circles!