Hello February!

I can hardly believe we're a week into February and I'm just getting around to saying hello! It's a lovely sunshiny (although somewhat cold) day here in Texas. We're enjoying relaxing and looking forward to watching the SuperBowl this evening, despite the fact that neither of our teams came anywhere close to competing in it this year!

As I look back on January, I'm pretty happy with my progress on the five focus goals I chose for this year (MOVE, LEARN, TEACH, SCRAP, CLEAN). Here's a look at what I did (and did not) accomplish in January.

MOVE - My exercise goal was at least 30 minutes each day. I actually exercised 27 of the 31 days in January, which includes 10 days of an hour (or more) of exercise! I'm extremely pleased with myself for getting back to regular exercise and am setting the same goal for February. I realize that realistically I will miss a day here and there, but planning it in for each day helps me stay focused and forces me to make a conscious decision on those days when I really do need to skip for some reason or other.

I'm also pleased with my focus activity for January - getting all my weekly house cleaning done in a 2-hour period on Mondays. It's so nice to start the week with those chores out of the way! I also spent a couple of days doing yard work - raking up all the huge acorns that fell this year, changing out a sprinkler head (well, kinda, I ended up breaking the PVC pipe and Robbie had to fix it the following weekend), pulling up the dead bushes in the flower beds, trimming the crepe myrtles, adding some mulch to the beds, and attempting to mow (but the mower wouldn't run, so Robbie had to fix that, too). This month I want to spend several more days in the yard, mowing, weeding, edging, and adding more mulch to fill out the flower beds.

I had planned a trip to our local nature & science museum as my January monthly adventure, however the month slipped away before I got there. I'll surely have that adventure later this month!

LEARN - I read four books in January and learned quite a bit about Charles and Anne Lindbergh as well as ideas for living a Wholehearted Life. I'm enjoying Cathy Zielske's FIT 2016 workshop and will be sharing my February update in a future post. Debbie Hodge's Teach What You Do e-course began in mid-January, but I have not had much opportunity to work with the materials. This is the first run of that course and I knew going in that I was not quite ready to begin work on an e-course. However, by the time the course re-runs in April, I'm hoping to have made some progress toward getting my website set-up and have a free course ready to complete.

I have several books I'm reading this month, however I don't have specific plans for any classes . . . although if I can fit it in my schedule I want to try making a sun-catcher at this month's library DIY class.

TEACH - This is where much of my focus has been over the past several weeks!

First, I taught a free class on creating Vision Boards at our local library. There were 12 ladies at the class, and it was a lot of FUN helping them create vision boards, some for the very first time. They were actually doing some filming that day, so I just might show up in the promotional video about the library, too! Here's a digital layout I created about the class.

The final weekend of the month, I spent all day Saturday at Personal Scrapbook. I taught an Intro to Bible Journaling workshop in the morning, then hosted a 6-hour Demos & Devotionals Bible Journaling "crop" that afternoon. There were 17 beautiful women in attendance and we had a great time diving into God's Word and practicing new Bible Journaling techniques. The first Saturday of this month (yesterday!) I had the same schedule again, this time at Scrappin' Goodtime with 13 lovely ladies participating. So, I'm having a great time teaching, which is keeping me very busy!

This month I'll also be teaching a Bible Journaling technique class (Gesso, Gelatos & Genesis) at Personal Scrapbook as well as teaching two classes to introduce Bible Journaling to the ladies at Tabernacle Baptist Church in Ennis, Texas. I'm so excited about the opportunities to teach and the doors that God is opening for me to share this FUN hobby with others! I illustrated this page in my Bible as I was studying and asking for guidance in my upcoming classes.

SCRAP - I created seven layouts in January, a few of which are the beginning of our 2016 chronological album! This month I'm hoping to add photos and memorabilia to the December 2015 mini-album I created last summer, scrapbook more stories and photos from our Spring Break vacation this past March, and create a photo book of our get-togethers with Robbie's brother and his family last year.

CLEAN - We were able to complete one (of the three) bookshelves we're building to house Robbie's trading card binders, however the other days we had to work on the shelves it was really too cold to spend all day in the garage. We'll hopefully make more progress on this project in February. I did not clean and declutter the laundry room, so will add that to this month's list, too.

However, I did work on simplifying and organizing my wardrobe (some more). I pulled out the few items that were still on the backward hangars from my Capsule Wardrobe Failure - those items (with the exception of a few dressy pieces) went in the donation bag that I dropped off last week. There were a few items that were stained that also went into the donation pile because our local community outreach takes those items and sells them to companies that recycle them . . . but don't worry, first I cut off the cute buttons and added them to my scrapbooking stash!

Did you accomplish your goals for January? What are your plans for February?