New Year's Resolutions

Yeah, I don't do those.

But there are some things I've been meaning to do so I find that January is a good time to start them.

• I'm going to cook more.  I'm going to focus on recipes that I can make multiple helpings of each Sunday, either to reheat during the week or to bake in smaller portions as the week progresses.  Over the past few months I have found myself unmotivated to cook as some of the things I am doing at school to improve the learning process are keeping me there until 4:00 many days.  By the time I do a quick errand or two I am getting home around 5:30 and there isn't much time to cook anything time consuming.  Pre-made dishes should resolve this issue.  I will post up the recipes I am trying on my cooking blog An Egg Without Salt in case you are interested.

• I'm going to up the home improvement level.  If you have been following this blog you have seen my efforts on upstairs rooms with one room finished, one room two thirds finished, and the hallway coming along nicely.  I also have an ongoing project in the downstairs hall.  I started stripping the painted over woodwork about twelve years ago.  That effort lasted a few months and the frustration level resulted in my abandoning the project partially finished.  My front hall currently has about half the original woodwork stripped (mostly), with none of it looking particularly aesthetic and none of it looking close to being ready to refinish.  After watching some Rehab Addict over the break I am going to give it another go.  Over the past two days I've mostly finished one newel post and gotten a little further in cleaning up the trim on a window (you can see pictures below of the two pieces I'm working on).  I have decided that I will stain them once they are stripped rather than waiting for the whole hall to be finished so that I can see some progress and what it will look like as I go.  Here's a couple pictures of the current progress in the hallway.

• I'm going to hire someone to come in and sand and prep the master bedroom floor for refinishing.  I'll probably still do the finish myself (depends on who I hire and what they are willing to do) but I can't have my bedroom down for a year while I putter at it like the other two rooms.  This way it will get done and I can move on to the other projects I have waiting in the wings for the floor refinishing to be done.

I think that's not a bad list and doable.  They are things I have been thinking about doing anyway.  We'll see how long the motivation lasts but I think small achievements will keep me going.  I don't do well with large projects with few milestones so maybe achieving small successes regularly will keep me going on these.

Oh, if you are looking for a New Year's Resolution, how about resolving to buy your stuff from Amazon.com using the link at the top right corner of my blog.  If you go to Amazon using that link you pay the same for all your stuff but I get a little commission from Amazon for referring you.  Win win situation.