January Goals Update

Food:

• Stay under budget! Unfortunately, this was a fail. We were over by quite a bit, as we ordered another big jar of coconut oil, as well as a big box of diapers for Matthew and for Hannah.  That was $70 gone right there, since household stuff also comes out of our grocery budget and my Amazon money on Swagbucks was pretty depleted.  The total was $303.83. Our budget on paper is $200, plus whatever I earn on Swagbucks (usually around $50/month).  Seeing this though, I can tell that I need to reevaluate the budget, and I also need to keep tabs on the in-between trips, because our two big grocery shopping trips were $168.95, and the rest was deal shopping, coconut oil, and fill-in trips.
• Try 2 new recipes.  We tried a lot this month! We tried Crockpot Italian Steak with Mushrooms and Onions (pretty good, although I used a smaller chunk of meat and I shouldn't have skimped), Breadmaker Breadsticks (next time I think I'll leave out the sugar since they were super sweet), Pizza Pasta Salad (this seemed really bland to me, but Jonah loved it and asked for seconds), Ham and Apple Salad with Parmesan Dressing (this was the first time I made my own dressing, and it wasn't the greatest flavor, but I'm excited to try more kinds! the basic idea of a ham and apple salad was good), Black Bean Fajita Casserole (this was really good and fairly cheap), Sausage Zucchini and Potato Soup (I doubled this and it made a ton, but it's really yummy too!), and Black Bean Pizza (we've had something similar in the past, but not for a long time).

Crafts:

• Participate in Iron Craft 2014. I've at least attempted the first two challenges, so I'm off to a good start.
• Start an embroidery project. See Iron Craft Challenge #1.

Parenting:

• Make a list of homeschool research action items. Done.

Personal:

• Read through two folders of my 97 ebook bundle. Not done. I got about halfway through one folder.
• Continue to do yoga at least 6 days a week.  I've done yoga every day this month.
• Make sure I have all the Jane Austen books somewhere and start reading Pride & Prejudice for the Motherhood & Jane Austen Book Club. Since they are free access books, I already had them all on my Kindle. Score! I didn't start reading P&P though.
• Download GoodReads app and go through a few book lists to add books I want to read. I cheated because I actually did this mostly on December 31, but I refined my lists a bit and continued to add books this month, so it still counts.