When I wrote about my goals for this year of being 30, I made my Decem­ber goal to knit (and fin­ish) a Christ­mas present for a fam­ily mem­ber.  I had a spe­cific pur­pose in pick­ing this.  I’m not too con­cerned about the improve­ment of my knit­ting skills.   If it hap­pens, it hap­pens.  I’m not going to be mak­ing a career out of it any time soon, but I wanted to be dis­ci­plined enough that I would start and fin­ish a project in a rea­son­able amount of time.

Hav­ing read my list of goals, you might guess that I don’t always fin­ish what I start.  I started a quilt for K over four years ago.  I got about 80% of the way done, and I basi­cally stopped.  I’ve picked it up a few times over the years, but I haven’t made any sig­nif­i­cant progress on it since before K’s birth.  I also own mate­r­ial to start a baby quilt for A which I no longer intend to make.  The mate­r­ial is very pastel-y and only enough for a small quilt.  I don’t think that is going to be very prac­ti­cal any more.  I have a blan­ket I started cro­chet­ing when I was preg­nant with A that is about 1/3 done.  I also have sev­eral other craft­ing sup­plies that are wait­ing for me to fin­ish sev­eral dif­fer­ent projects.  In our effort to get the house less clut­tered and get rid of things we didn’t use, I gave away a full rub­ber stamp set with three col­ors of ink ear­lier this year.  That was part of my big plan to make my own Christ­mas cards.  I bought the stamps and ink in 2003.  Never used.  I didn’t even cut the stamps out to put them on the blocks!  Not a great track record.

So, knit­ting.  I had been hear­ing so much about knit­ting from friends that I decided to take a com­mu­nity ed class to learn.  I also decided to stop leav­ing half fin­ished projects all over the house, so I am com­mit­ted to fin­ish­ing this project in time to give it as a gift.  I am doing alright.  I have a decent start, but it’s def­i­nitely not ready to give yet.

How about you?  Are any of you like me? Do you ever start a project get 40–60% of the way into it and decide it’s too hard/boring/expensive/time con­sum­ing to fin­ish?  Do you ever feel guilty about it or are you okay with that decision?

Dur­ing the time I was eat­ing dairy free, I found out just how impor­tant meal plan­ning was.  If I planned my meals, most of the time I was sat­is­fied, healthy, and con­tent as far as food was con­cerned.  When I didn’t and tried to wing it, I ended up unhappy, hun­gry, and gen­er­ally miss­ing some sort of hid­den dairy.  That also meant I ended up with an unhappy baby.  It was not worth it.

Since I wrote about eat­ing dairy free, I have been notic­ing that many of the search results that lead to peo­ple find­ing my blogs are those related to dairy free eat­ing while breast­feed­ing.  Because of that, I decided to com­pile some food and meal ideas here in one post.  So, here it is a sam­ple meal plan of what we might have eaten in a week while I was dairy free:

Sun­day:

• Break­fast — Steel cut oats with apple and cin­na­mon and a lit­tle brown sugar (You could use a sprin­kle of brown sugar and some almond milk or rice milk, too, if you want.)
• Lunch — Tor­tilla wrap with peanut but­ter, honey, and banana
• Sup­per — Spaghetti (Every­one else ate cheese, I did not)

Mon­day:

• Break­fast — Smoothie (Rice milk, banana, frozen of fresh fruit, honey if you like it a bit sweeter, and if you are look­ing to add pro­tein; tofu)
• Lunch — Black bean soup
• Sup­per — Stir fry (Before I stopped eat­ing meat, we would throw chicken, broc­coli, beans, peas, car­rots, and cau­li­flower into our wok.  Now, we would skip the chicken and use chick­peas instead.)  Some­times I used this recipe, but some­times I just used Kikko­man Soy Sauce to fla­vor it.

Tues­day:

• Break­fast– Peanut but­ter and jelly toast (Made with home­made bread — If you’re very care­ful you can find bread at the store with no dairy.  Another option would be to look for bread at your local bak­ery or nat­ural food store.)
• Lunch — Taco salad (No cheese or sour cream) — Let­tuce, taco meat (if you eat meat), toma­toes, black beans, salsa
• Sup­per — Beef Stuffed Peppers

Wednes­day:

• Break­fast — Scram­bled eggs with salsa
• Lunch -   Spinach Straw­berry Salad
• Sup­per — Slow Cooker Chicken Taco Soup

Thurs­day:

• Break­fast– Morn­ing Glory Muffins I didn’t have apple but­ter, so I used apple­sauce.  I’m not sure if that’s a great sub­sti­tu­tion or not, but the muffins turned out well.
• Lunch — Lentils and rice with fried onions
• Sup­per — Hum­mus pizza (with no cheese in my part, but chopped toma­toes over the top to keep the other veg­eta­bles moist)

Fri­day:

• Break­fast– Smoothie (Almond or rice milk, banana, honey, and peanut butter)
• Lunch — Span­ish rice
• Sup­per — Corn flake chicken — Chicken dipped in rice milk and cov­ered in crushed corn flakes

Sat­ur­day:

• Bunch — French toast (use almond or rice milk instead of cow’s milk) and eggs, sausage, or bacon
• Sup­per — BBQ Chicken in the crockpot

Snacks:

Fruit Salsa with cin­na­mon chips

Nuts

Dried fruit

Nuts and dried fruit together to make trail mix

Hum­mus (I used chick­peas instead of black beans) for crack­ers or vegetables

Fresh fruit or vegetables

Apples (or apple sauce) with cinnamon

Desserts: (The desserts required some substitutions)

Hershey’s Choco­late Cake — Sub­sti­tute almond or rice milk for the cow’s milk in the cake and frost­ing.  For the frost­ing, you can use a soy mar­garine.  If you pre­fer not to do that, you can melt dairy free choco­late chips in a dou­ble boiler and use that to driz­zle over the cake.

Apple Cake

Triple Berry Sorbet

I hope this helps, and check out my other posts on breast­feed­ing while eat­ing dairy free.  Also, if you have ques­tions, leave me a com­ment.  It’s hard get­ting started, but it’s easy once you get going.  It’s also so worth it.

Last week when we were menu plan­ning, I got the urge to make some muffins.  This fall, I have been LOVING any­thing with pump­kin in it.  When I was try­ing to decide what muffins to make, I thought about mak­ing banana muffins which are our reg­u­lar around here.  Then, I remem­bered my friend Erin telling me about these pump­kin choco­late chip muffins she had found on Money Sav­ing Mom’s blog.  I decided to make those, but I also remem­bered Erin say­ing that she had found them to be a lit­tle oily, so I decided to make some changes.  Some turned into many, and here is the result.

The orig­i­nal recipe (my changes in bold)

Pump­kin Choco­late Chip Muffins

4 eggs
2 cups sugar  (I changed this to honey, and I reduced it to 1 1/2 cups plus 2 Tbsp of honey**)
1 (16 oz.) can pureed pump­kin  (Because of my change from sugar to honey, I took out 6 Tbsp of pump­kin)
1 1/2 cups oil  (I used 3/4c. apple sauce, 1/4 c. oil, and a banana)
3 cups flour  (I used half all pur­pose and half whole wheat flour)
2 tea­spoons bak­ing soda
2 tea­spoons bak­ing pow­der
1 tea­spoon ground cin­na­mon
1 tea­spoon salt
1 pack­age choco­late chips  (I used 1/2 pack­age of choco­late chips and a hand­ful of raisins)

In a large mix­ing bowl, beat eggs, sugar, pump­kin, and oil until smooth. Add in dry ingre­di­ents and mix well. Fold in choco­late chips (and raisins).  Fill greased or paper-lined muf­fin cups 3/4 full. Bake 16–20 min­utes (I found about 17 1/2 min­utes to work the best for our oven)at 400 degrees. Makes 24–30 muffins.

**One web­site I found said to add a pinch of bak­ing pow­der to neu­tral­ize the acid­ity of the honey.  Since I was already adding it, I didn’t add any­more.  I’m sure I could have though.

Results:

They turned out really well espe­cially con­sid­er­ing what I did to them.  I think next time the only changes I would make are tak­ing out all the oil and using the pump­kin instead.  I also found them to be plenty sweet, so I might exper­i­ment with less sugar and more flour.  My kids really enjoyed them, and even though they are gone, I am still get­ting “mump­kin puf­fin” (accord­ing to A) requests. 

Melodie at Breast­feed­ing Moms Unite put together a great list of blog car­ni­vals that cov­ers top­ics like breast­feed­ing, real food/whole foods, attach­ment par­ent­ing, green liv­ing, and other related issues.

Not sure what a car­ni­val is?  Well, dif­fer­ent car­ni­vals work dif­fer­ently but the gist is that sev­eral blogs are writ­ing about sim­i­lar top­ics on the same day and there is a link on at least one to all oth­ers who are par­tic­i­pat­ing.  Some car­ni­vals are monthly.  Some are weekly.  Some are irreg­u­larly.  Some­times there is a place to add a link to your blog post, and some require sub­mis­sion of your post ahead of time.  In addi­tion to find­ing some really great blogs to read and hav­ing an oppor­tu­nity to explore dif­fer­ent top­ics, if you join car­ni­vals it can be a way for oth­ers to get to know you.  I have writ­ten posts for the Breast­feed­ing car­ni­val a cou­ple times in the past.  It was a great way to get to know some new blogs and have some input on posts that I wrote.

Do you par­tic­i­pate in or host any carnivals?

Some­times when I’m read­ing posts on oth­ers’ blogs, I read them, maybe leave a com­ment, and don’t think much more of it.  Some­times when I’m read­ing posts, the same topic comes up again and again or a topic hits close to home.  That is what hap­pened to me this week.  First, I came across this post on facil­i­tat­ing children’s play by Allie from No Time For Flash Cards.  Then, a cou­ple days later, I was read­ing her blog and Amy from Media Mac­a­roni had posted this!

For awhile now, I’ve been feel­ing like we had too many toys (just like that post by Amy!).  This sum­mer, we moved from a house where we had play areas in the liv­ing room, fam­ily room, and in the boys’ bed­room to an apart­ment.  Also, both K and A have had birth­days since.  AND, with Christ­mas com­ing up, I have been feel­ing over­whelmed with all of our stuff.  I know that we will be receiv­ing many gifts from friends and fam­ily, and we will have to find a way to incor­po­rate the new books, toys, and activ­i­ties into our rou­tine and space with­out com­pro­mis­ing access to some of my kids’ favorites.

Lately, I’ve been rem­i­nisc­ing about our days in our old house.  When we decided to put the house on the mar­ket, I packed up (and/or gave away) many of the things that we didn’t use.  We had some in bins in clos­ets.  We put some in stor­age, and we gave some to good­will.  Even though we had less stuff, it seemed to me that there was much more play­ing going on.  The boys fought less.  There was less mess, and they seemed to enjoy their stuff more.  So, between my nos­tal­gic mem­o­ries and now read­ing the posts I men­tioned above, I think our play spaces will be under­go­ing some seri­ous trans­for­ma­tion.  If I get brave, I may even take a pic­ture today to post as a before pic­ture and con­trast with my after pic­ture. 

Also, in addi­tion to want­ing less mess and stuff around, I also want to start focus­ing on Christ­mas more with the boys.  I want to talk about Christ­mas and what it means to us.  I want to do things for oth­ers dur­ing this sea­son.  I want to spend more time together and less time wor­ried about our stuff.  I am try­ing to fig­ure out ways to move the focus from presents and dec­o­ra­tions to love, car­ing, giv­ing, and Jesus’ birth.  I’m hop­ing that by start­ing to get our stuff under con­trol, we will be able to do more of that.

A few weeks ago, I wrote a post talk­ing about turn­ing thirty and feel­ing a lit­tle bit unsure of what that meant.  When I was 25, I felt sim­i­larly.  I was no longer a stu­dent, and I was mov­ing out into the real world.  Now that I’m 30, I am actu­ally moved out of my first house and back into an apart­ment.  We do, how­ever, own both of our vehi­cles out­right and have very lit­tle other debt.  I am now eat­ing as well or bet­ter than any time in the past.  I feel more com­fort­able in my par­ent­ing beliefs and prac­tices than I have any time before.  I think part of the rea­son that I felt like I was going to have issues with being 30 is that it seems like you are no longer “young.”  I’m no longer in my care free 20’s.  I’m now a real adult.  I have real respon­si­bil­i­ties, and I am get­ting older!  Also, I have heard sev­eral peo­ple say, “I want to be done hav­ing kids by the time I turn 30.”  I never wanted that.  But, some­how, as I got closer to 30, I started to feel more pres­sure to hurry up and be done hav­ing kids even if it was going to be a bit past 30.

I had also been look­ing around our apart­ment lately and think­ing about all the things I had either started and not fin­ished or intended to do but had not done.  I decided that one thing that would help me to feel bet­ter about this year was to be able to look back on it and feel good about what I’ve used my time to do.  So, here it is, my list of goals for my 30th year.

My 30th year goals

Decem­ber — Kit­ting — I recently learned to knit.  I took a com­mu­nity edu­ca­tion class.  Orig­i­nally, I’d hoped to learn to knit a sweater by Christ­mas time for either my mom or Jason’s mom.  Unfor­tu­nately, that seems to be too hard and too time con­sum­ing for me right now.  My goal is to make a dif­fer­ent Christ­mas gift.  I’ll (hope­fully) post pic­tures after the hol­i­days are over!

Jan­u­ary — Fin­ish K’s quilt -  When I was preg­nant with K, I started a Noah’s ark quilt.  I got most of it fin­ished dur­ing the sum­mer and fall before he was born.  He was born about 4 weeks early, and after that my progress on the quilt stalled for the next 4 years!

Feb­ru­ary — Going to bed by 10:30 and get­ting up by 6:30 — I would like to take a month to prac­tice get­ting to bed ear­lier and get­ting up about 30 min­utes ear­lier than I need to be up and going.  I’d like to take that time to do a reg­u­lar quiet time and pray for the upcom­ing day.

March — Read -  I love to read.  I love to read.  I love to read.  In the midst of every­thing else I have to do or get done, I often feel as though I miss sit­ting down and get­ting lost in a book for hours.  I love dis­cov­er­ing new authors and rush­ing to the library to get the next book in a series or a new book by that author.  Because so many of my goals for this year will take time away from read­ing, I wanted to make sure I take time to focus on some­thing I enjoy so much.

April — Exer­cise –Right now, I exer­cise irreg­u­larly (usu­ally the min­i­mum of 3 times a week) at Curves.  It’s fine, and it’s nice to get a full body work out in just 30 min­utes.  I’m hop­ing to use this month to incor­po­rate more car­dio into the work­out.  Hope­fully it will coin­cide with spring???  Dare I make that wish?    Ide­ally, my goal is to work­out at Curves 3 times a week and do car­dio 2–3 times a week.  If I end up doing the 5k in May, I’ll need to be run­ning that often anyway.

May — Run a 5K — I know!  Those of you who have read this blog for a while know about my strug­gles with asthma, run­ning, cough­ing, and the frus­tra­tion that comes with those things.  I would love to run (yes, run the whole way) a 5k.  If I want to run the Fargo 5k in May, I would attempt the Couch to 5k plan again.  This time, I have a new plan of attack.  Instead of leav­ing myself 1 or 2 extra weeks, I want to start in Jan­u­ary and do each week of the plan twice.  That means if I get sick, I’ll have a buffer.  If I have trou­ble with a week, I’ll have a buffer.  Hope­fully…    Hope­fully, Jason will be run­ning the half marathon again and I’ll be run­ning (yes, run­ning the whole way) the 5k.

June — Doing new things as a fam­ily — Because my boys are young and close in age, I some­times make excuses for not tak­ing them places or try­ing new activ­i­ties with them.  We haven’t gone to the state park that is about 2 hours east of here.  Many of our friends have reported back about how great it is.  We haven’t even gone to the park that is 30 min­utes west of here with them.  We also have not taken a fam­ily vaca­tion nor have we stayed in a hotel room since A was born (not with the boys any­way).  My goal in June is to do 2 new things each week.  One activ­ity I would like to do as a fam­ily and one dur­ing the day when I’m by myself with the boys.

July — Orga­nize clos­ets and stor­age unit –Before we moved, our house was neat, clean, and orga­nized.  We got rid of a LOT of stuff we no longer needed.  Once we moved in here, we put things where they seemed to go.  We put the rest of the stuff in a stor­age unit.  I can see we don’t need much of what we kept.  Dur­ing July, I want to go through clos­ets and cup­boards and get rid of what we no longer need or want.  I also want to spend some time at the stor­age unit orga­niz­ing that and mak­ing sure every­thing in there is some­thing we will want or need at our house when the time comes.

August — Orga­nize pho­tos and make photo books — I am ter­ri­ble at this.  I have done noth­ing since I met Jason.  We have a wed­ding album, but that’s it.  I think my mom put that one together.  We have a drawer of pic­tures and thou­sands of pic­tures on the com­puter.  I want to make photo books for the boys (like the ones at Snap­fish or MyPub­lisher) and put together one for our fam­ily, too.

Sep­tem­ber — Noth­ing — After hav­ing goals for the entire year, I want to relax.  I want to sit out on our deck and read if I want or sleep if I want or do noth­ing if I want.  I want to round out my 30th year by think­ing about how great it was.

As if I didn’t have enough going on, I have a cou­ple other goals I want to make ongo­ing.  I want to do bet­ter at tak­ing pic­tures.  Jason’s sis­ter par­tic­i­pates in a photo project called Project 365 where the goal is to take one pic­ture each day.  I’m not sure I want to com­mit do doing that, but I would like to think of some way to get bet­ter and more con­sis­tent pho­tos of the boys and of us as a fam­ily.  Lastly, as if I hadn’t sched­uled every moment of my life from now through next Sep­tem­ber, I want to con­tinue devel­op­ing my idea for the Inno­va­teND com­pe­ti­tion.  Maybe some day I’ll even be able to share it!