October’s Goals {and a Look Back at September’s}

Sooo…last month I wrote down my goals. In this post I will be going through those and also writing my new goals for October.

Clueless with Claire

• Yes, I am returning to the garden! Having gained confidence by keeping two house plants alive for the last seven weeks, I feel buoyed on to even greater things outside.
• My main goal is to clear the area beside my art studio/office. Right now my studio/office looks out on the messiest part of the garden and I really like the idea of creating a little haven which will be a sort of extension of my studio/office.
• After clearing it, I’d like to consult with the real gardener of the house (aka Gaz) and put together a plan of action to create much beauty and nature on this little plot of land. As an aside, I have very low expectations of my ability with all-things-green so won’t be expecting too much…

I did not achieve any of my gardening goals. I had low expectations and I did indeed reach those very low expectations of not really doing anything in the garden!

Home Business

• Add one product a week to my shop
• Create a second set of notebooks with Amazon
• Have my sticker sheets printed and ready to sell
• Look into setting up a shop on my blog
• Publicising my Etsy Shop once all my cards are up

I have met most of these goals. Setting up a shop on my blog is something which will cost money so I think this will need to be a goal for next year perhaps. I need to publicise my Etsy on my blog and social media, which I am scared to do….

Seasons of Joy

• Clear studio/office
• Paint studio/office
• Ask Gary to put up shelves to give me storage space for my small business as well as homeschool and resources for my master’s degree
• Organise studio/office so that it is functional and beautiful

Met all of these goals, thanks mainly to my incredible husband ❤️

Health Goals

• Re-establish a good, productive morning routine
• Re-establish a good lunch time routine
• Continue with my night-time routine
• Continue taking Harvey for a walk five times a week
• Only eat vegetarian food on three days per week
• Lose another four pounds
• At the end of the month take my cholesterol reading
• Take vitamin D supplements, as well as a multi vitamin/mineral and a bacteria for my tummy (y’know, sure to be sure, as they say in Northern Ireland)
• Have the dreaded cervical smear done

I can’t in all honesty cross most of these off my list. The last six weeks has been so incredibly busy with wedding stuff, birthdays, starting homeschool again and getting ready to start up my masters again. I feel over socialised and slightly out of whack. Things have only just normalised over the past few days. That said, it’s not all bad. Just because I didn’t manage things every day doesn’t mean I did not do them at all. I did lose a pound and I had three people comment on my weight loss # non scale victories!

Here’s to a better month next month!

Precious Moments

• Eat dinner together at least five times a week
• Hold two murder mystery dinners.
• Have one family night when everyone is available (try out new game)
• Celebrate Abigail’s birthday
• Have special back to school breakfast with stationary gifts
• Go out for at least one Girls’ Club when all the girls are around
• Have at least one date night with Gary 
• Go to the garden centre with mum
• Go to get a tattoo with Lillie for her 21st (we’re getting matching tattoos of a line drawing she has done of a Lily and a bee. Do I like tattoos? No, not really, but I knew it would be the single most special thing I could do for Lillie’s 21st! And I was right! She almost burst into tears and is SO excited for the 11th to come! Her twin doesn’t believe I’ll go through with it…I guess, watch this space!)

I did fairly well here. Eating together did happen but due to the busyness of everyone’s schedule all of us being in the house at the same time was quite the challenge. Also, I only managed to hold one murder mystery dinner rather than two. The second was going to be on my birthday, but the day was filled to the brim with normal Sunday activities and somehow we got to the end of the day without playing the murder mystery I’d got. Hopefully, we’ll squeeze it in next month.

Reading/Books

• My main goal here is to reach 75 books read so far this year. This is so I can keep on top of my goal to read 100 books in 2023. This means I will need to read more than 11 books.
• I would like my book range to cover all sorts of genres. I naturally go for non fiction books but just recently have been branching out into more fiction, which I am thoroughly enjoying. In September, I’d like to read some autumnal themed books, just for fun, as well as some classics thrown in for good measure. Thanks to all of your recommendations, which I put straight onto my wish list, said wish list is becoming ridiculously and satisfyingly long. I think this month will be an amazing reading month!

I did really well with my reading goal and am currently on track to read 100 books in a year! I covered lots of genres and enjoyed stretching myself a little and going out of my comfort zone.

Homeschool

• I’ve already mentioned that I want to have a special ‘first day of school’ breakfast for the girls and I. We will spend this day going through everything they will be studying this year and my expectations and goals for them.
• As we have many birthdays and other celebrations the first two weeks of September, I’ve decided we’ll just do bits and pieces and have a gentle start before going full hog on the 18th. We still have a little catch up to do from last term so these two weeks seem the perfect time to do it.
• The last two weeks will be spent settling in to all the different courses the girls are doing this year. I’m not going to set any specific goals this month because I think we all need time to just look over the courses and familiarise ourselves with how they are run and the expectations for each course.

Another successful area, although I kept our homeschool quite tame, it being our first month back. Next month I’ll be upping the ante.

Master’s Degree

• I want to have completed the reading of my text book before I start back in October
• The reason I am doing this master’s in Childhood and Youth is to help me become more prepared for the fostering (and possible adoption) Gary and I would like to do in the future. To this end, I would like to include some general books about fostering and adoption in my reading this month.
• I subscribe to the Adoption and Fostering Journal and would like to flick through the past 12 months of articles to familiarise myself with what is newly available for my assignments (We have quite a lot of scope within our assignments to focus on the areas of childhood and youth that we are interested in. I always do mine on looked-after children so that I can learn as much as possible).
• Another thing I would like to do is set up a Notions page for all my study. I tried to do this last year when I was studying but I couldn’t work it out. This year, I am going to give it another go!

I have done much better than it looks here! I did not read any adoption books but I have bought one for next month and I still haven’t managed to get Notion sorted out…It maybe that Notion is just not for me! I was given access to my master’s course website, which is early given the course doesn’t officially start until October 9th.

I may have been a little keen to start and so somehow have managed to complete weeks 1-3 as well as make a start on my first assignment. I honestly love studying so much, it is so easy to fit in an hour here and there, in addition to the two full days I have scheduled each week to focus on this course. I have to admit, I’ve overachieved on these goals this month!

Blog/Website

• As previously mentioned, I want to figure out how to add a shop to my website so I can sell stuff online here rather than pay Etsy to do it for me!
• I am still working my way through the 2000 plus posts I have written and updating the ones I think need to be updated. I would like to update ten this month which may not sound like many, but it does take me quite a lot of time to do each post and I don’t want to be over ambitious!
• I would love to get to the end of this month and say that I have posted everyday bar Sundays. I know myself well, though, and suspect that when I get back to schooling and studying I’ll probably struggle to find the time to do this. I’d really like to surprise myself though!
• As my blog is changing from being primarily a homeschool blog to being more about my life as a homeschool mum, I’d like to change the geography of my blog and make things a bit easier to find. This will be a long term goal though, so I’d like to have at least started it and made some progress towards this goal in September. Making this a little more specific, I would like to have rewritten the home page to reflect these changes.

I have figured out how to run a shop from my blog but it needs more money than I have at the moment so that will happen maybe sometime in the new year. I managed to update a colossal three posts so no where near ten! And I have begun changing the geography of my blog but as I’ve not completely finished it yet, I haven’t published any of the changes.

I have managed to publish a post every day bar Sunday, apart from yesterday, when, for some reason, the post I had scheduled to go out didn’t. This was my Mesopotamia post about tokens which I will post on Monday. Apart from that post, I did quite well!

Writing

• I am still plugging away at my Mesopotamia Unit Study and this month I just want to carry on. Specifically, I’d like to make two videos, demonstrating an activity which goes along with the curriculum. I’d also like to write a corresponding post to go along with each video or videos (sometimes I do a couple of videos around the same topic). The videos and posts together take me a lot of time (think hours) but I want to be chipping away at this project throughout the next year and I think two videos is doable.
• This point links back to another one further up and that is I want to write in my blog each day. 
• Each month I try to read about writing from one of the greats (I’ve done C. S. Lewis and Stephen King). This month I want to finish Into the Woods by John Yorke and make my way through Phillip Pullman’s Daemon Voices. I will also listen to as many of The Best Seller Experience podcasts as I can. These are podcasts about writing a best seller and they all contain an interview with someone who has done just that.
• I’d love to have the courage to publish my novella, but this has been my goal for months now and I just don’t seem to be able to do it…

I have made two videos and two posts, although one will be published on Monday instead of its scheduled time of yesterday. I did not manage to read Phillip Pullman’s Daemon Voices but I did read an alternative called Stein on Writing: A Master Shares His Craft, Techniques and Strategies by Sol Stein, which was very good. I have not, as predicted, published my writing.

Art

• I don’t ever really push myself with my art. I tend to finish around one piece per month so I guess that seems to be a good goal for September.
• Another relaxed goal I have is to do a few smaller art pieces whilst I’m watching television in the evening. I’ve mentioned before that my sticker sheets need bulking out sometimes so doing the odd small painting means I have smorgusbord of drawings to use.
• In the past I have done lots of art journalling and this still appeals to me. However, looking at my list of goals above I’m thinking it might not be sensible to add to the list and fail before I’ve even started. But I have never claimed to be sensible, so I’m adding in an art journal page just for fun!
• Last but not least is to make a memory book for Charlotte. 

I’ve done well art wise but have not art journalled (which was a bit of a wild card anyway) and I haven’t created a memory book for Charlotte. I need to get photos printed out but haven’t been anywhere I could get that done.

Goals for October

I’m not setting any gardening goals. I may surprise myself and go out and do some…but I doubt it. There’s no point setting myself up for failure!

Small Business Goals

• Add one product a week to my Etsy shop
• Publicise my shop (I am definitely back-pedalling on this)
• Go through my notebooks and make sure each set are exactly the same colour
• Create a third set of notebooks
• Buy in ten of each of the sealife notebooks

Seasons of Joy

• Clear the downstairs hallways/Abigail’s desk area
• Repaint
• Create an area under the stairs for Gary’s music stuff
• Neaten up around the door frame
• Neaten up all the leads from my office to Abigail’s office
• Clean the stairs carpet

Health Goals

• Morning Routine
• Evening Routine
• Lose four pounds
• Eat between 10am and 6pm and stop snacking at nighttime
• Walk over 10000 steps each day, every day
• Get out in sunlight for at least one hour per day
• Take supplements

Precious Moments

• Birthday dinner for girls’ 21st birthday
• Go to garden centre with mum
• Girls’ club at least once
• Have at least one date night with Gary
• Have one family night when everyone is available and play the murder mystery I bought last month.
• Eat dinner together at least five times per week

Reading Books

• Read at least ten books
• Try to include classics as well as some academic texts and adoption/fostering books
• Read The Golden Bull by Marjorie Cowley to review

Homeschool

• Rebecca to have completed one booklet each for Mixed Media, Photography and Textiles and for me to have sent them off for marking.
• Abs to complete two lessons each of Sociology, Psychology, Chemistry, Biology and Physics

Master’s Degree

• Completed this term’s work by the end of October, which is doable if I work really really hard.
• Read the two academic books on Neuroparenting and governmental intervention I’ve bought
• Continue critically analysing the article on Neuroparenting for my assignment
• Begin building an annotated biography of all the articles I’ve read.

Blog

• I would like to update four old posts this month (aim for one per week)
• I would love to get to the end of this month and say that I have posted everyday bar Sundays.
• As my blog is changing from being primarily a homeschool blog to being more about my life as a homeschool mum, I’d like to change the geography of my blog and make things a bit easier to find. This will be a long term goal though, so I’d like to have at least started it and made some progress towards this goal in October

Writing

• I am still plugging away at my Mesopotamia Unit Study and this month I just want to carry on. Specifically, I’d like to make two videos, demonstrating an activity which goes along with the curriculum. I’d also like to write a corresponding post to go along with each video or videos (sometimes I do a couple of videos around the same topic).
• Each month I try to read about writing from one of the greats (I’ve done C. S. Lewis and Stephen King). This month I want to read Phillip Pullman’s Daemon Voices. I will also listen to as many of The Best Seller Experience podcasts as I can. These are podcasts about writing a best seller and they all contain an interview with someone who has done just that.
• Organise my curriculum into folders and write a list of things left to do

Art

• Create one art journal page
• Create an ocean themed pattern which I can use to make washi tape and wrapping paper – products I am considering making for my Etsy shop.
• Make designs for book marks and ‘This Book Belongs to…’ stickers

I love October and am so looking forward to enjoying every moment reaching my goals and feeling very productive on all fronts!