Although 2014 was such an amazing year filled with wonderful blessings, The Boober household has great anticipations for 2015. The New Year always brings a fresh start to life.
Zachary and I set a few goals and resolutions last New Years and I want to chat about those for a minute and see if we accomplished them. Zak had two goals he wanted to achieve this past year; learning the art of butchering and picking up his dirty clothes. The butchering thing was a bust due to us becoming vegetarians. Those things just don't mesh well together. However, he has done an exceptional job at putting his dirty clothes in the hamper or the laundry room. I couldn't be prouder!
I made the resolution to stress less this year. Guess what? I did it!! After years of struggling, I finally received a diagnosis of anxiety and depression. Things actually made sense after that. I was given medication and that has helped tremendously at times! I don't enjoy taking synthetic medicine and I firmly believe Mother Earth holds what we need to heal ourselves so I embarked on a quest to learn how to holistically calm my nerves. Lavender has been a wonderful tool in this process! I'm still researching and testing herbs so please let me know if you have any suggestions! I also started therapy in which I was taught many techniques and tools on how to lessen the anxiety. It's amazing how well those have worked too! Overall, looking back on last year, I am very proud of myself for coming this far! I still have work to do before I completely overcome this, but I have made a huge improvement in the past year.
Once again, we have made more resolutions to accomplish this coming year. Instead of just having them on a piece of paper we decided to design a "Vision Board." This board will allow us to see the things we want to do on a daily basis. I think this will actually help push us and encourage us to have a stronger drive to achieve our goals.
Zak and I have a few shared goals between us and then we have separate dreams we wish to bring about. Together we will intensely seek after God! This past year has thrown us many trials and we barely made it out alive. We had tough struggles in our individual lives, in our marriage, parenting, finances, health, you name it and we faced it. And I hate to admit it, but we didn't include God in some of those struggles. We thought we knew best. We also found out we in fact didn't know best. We are determined to not have another year like that. My husband and I are both going to search after God like our lives depend on it. Well, they actually do. We are going to hold each other accountable and get back to the deep and intimate relationship we had with God when we first started dating. Wow, things were powerful then!
Together, we also want to eliminate our debt (everything excluding the mortgage.) I'm not putting a number on it, but we have a good amount. Last night we adjusted the budget and we are tackling this debt monster with every extra penny we have. It will be a hard year, but we will have every cent paid off by December! We cut up the cards, set a rigorous budget, and had real prayer together and we know this is our year to free ourselves from this slavery.
We also have made a pact to reduce, reuse, and recycle better. This includes limiting ourselves to one trash bag per week. Yeah you read that right, one. We plan to reduce by not buying as much. I will make more of a conscious effort to bring my bags when I shop and actually use them. Most of the time I have them with me and then leave them in the car. I reuse/recycle the bags, but I could be better about simply reducing the amount I have. As our family grows, we are realizing that the house doesn't grow with us. Our house is the perfect size for us so we are even further realizing we have too much stuff. I see a yard sale and some donations in the future. We have to cut down and reduce the amount of possessions we have.
Our pact includes reusing items. I recycle plastic containers, jars, things of that nature, however I should be reusing them. I always need small bowls for mixing herbs or bath salts in and I have to resort to using my kitchen bowls, so I will make more of an effort to save those and reuse them. There are other small things we throw out that can be saved and used also. We do a great job at recycling, but I will say we can do a better job at composting. Some nights when we take the trash out it is super easy to throw a few days of scraps in with the trash and just take it out. This will never happen again. We realized how much precious soil we could have had this past week when we mixed the compost into our raised bed. All in all, we will do a much better job at reducing, reusing, and recycling this year.
Two others things we have a vision for together are having awesome gardens (fall and winter) and finally starting up Food Not Bombs. Last year our garden did fairly well. We made some mistakes, we have learned from those, and we will create an even better garden this year. A winter garden is a must this year also, we are really missing out on some great food right now. If you haven't heard of Food Not Bombs, I highly encourage you to research it. This is such an encouraging cause that is near and dear to our hearts. It is basically just a free warm meal every week for anyone who needs it. The food is free (it comes from what would be thrown away at the end of the day by restaurants) and is prepared by volunteers. This movement was created to feed hungry people, stop waste and wars, and to change this society. It's an awesome way to protest wars and military spending. Now before the firing squad comes out, I want to address something. I support our troops 100%. I am very grateful for the men who fought and gave their lives so that I could have the freedom I have today. I don't, however, support our governments selfishness when it comes to war and military spending. We don't send our troops to other countries to fight for our "freedom" anymore. Those days are long gone. We send them to countries to protect oil and to show off our power. Truth. And I don't care how war hungry this country is, there is absolutely zero sense in spending 737 billion dollars each year on our defense. There is zero need for that while things like poverty and world hunger still exist. I'm not trying to start something so we will move on...
Zachary first discovered this movement in a book he read and became very interested in it. We talked for a while and decided to embark on setting one up in High Point. The past few months have been a blur and we haven't been able to set up anything so we definitely want to make this a priority this year.
Some of the resolutions I am making are as follows; blogging at least two times per week, waking up at/before 6 am at least five times a week, setting up my Etsy shop again, and writing an ebook. In order to take my blog to the next level I have to get my posts up on a schedule, they have been too sporadic lately. Waking up is hard for me some times. Some mornings I can get up at 5 and be ready for the day. Others I sleep in until Zaylen wakes up at 9. I always feel best when I wake up and start the day right, so one of my goals is to wake up and start my day at least five times a week.
I used to have an Etsy store set up to sell my scarves. Unfortunately I didn't sell any, but now that I've got a good amount of bath products started I want to re-open the store and get those on there. This year I also want to write an ebook. Since becoming a vegetarian I have had to get creative in the kitchen and come up with some recipes that fit our lifestyle. This has led to some unique recipes and I want to share those with other people. Instead of putting everything on the blog I thought I could write a simple ebook and try to make a little money off of it. (To put towards debt of course.)
The goals Zak has this year are pretty good ones. He wants to gain 5 pounds. Last year he lost over 40 pounds with his sickness and it has been very tough gaining any of it back so I think 5 is a good amount to work for. He also wants to stock up on ammo and target shoot twice a month. The way gun rights are going away, it's going to be hard buying ammo one day. We both want to be as prepared as possible in the event that something happens. I don't think we will have to worry as much once we are tucked away deep in the woods of New Hampshire, but you never know what will happen and when. He also wants to set up a two month supply of food. In the pantry right now we have about a week of food. Which is okay, but if anything were to go down we wouldn't have time to stop by Whole Foods. My husband wants to make sure we are taken care of and protected. I love that these are his goals for the year. It's the real things like these that give me comfort in knowing I have an amazing man.
Well there you have it. We have our Vision Board up and running and we are beyond excited to see what we will accomplish this year! Here are a few pictures from the past week I hope you enjoy...
Zaylen and I on Christmas morning...he wasn't too happy to be up yet
Zaylen being a baby dragon with the help of Tanner's arms and Alan's wings
Izzy and Zak
My three closest girlfriends, we finally had another girls night
Zaylen playing with his blocks
Look at those curls!
Sweet baby
Nap time for everyone
Zaylen has mastered getting off the bed...this is how I found him one morning
Zak and I celebrated New Years Eve by re-writing the budget and sipping on some grape juice
We enjoyed the classic New Year's dish tonight
I encourage you to make a list of what you wish to accomplish this year and hold yourself accountable to it, this is a new beginning for us all!
xoxo
Cursty
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