Changes

It's a rainy day. But it's not snowing so I will take it. My roommate, Elizabeth, and I want to try our hand at having a garden this summer so right now we are just waiting for the snow to go away! We look forward to growing our own food and canning it for the winter months next year.

As the seasons change, so do things in our lives. I am ending a chapter of my life this week as I leave my role as Mid Maine Regional Coordinator at Youth MOVE Maine and begin a new chapter at Margaret Murphy in April. I am excited and nervous about the change, but feel that it is the right for me at this point in my life. It will have a consistent schedule (M-F 8-4) and they are fine with me leaving a little early to teach my Zumba classes on Monday and Wednesdays at the YMCA. I will be moving my Zumba Kids class at Park Ave from 3:10 to 4:10, so I will still get to keep all my "other" jobs and will no longer "need" to have Saturday's off for work and can be more flexible with the swim lessons schedule on Saturdays. I will miss the kids that I work with and hope to stay in contact with them. I will also miss my awesome coworkers and wish them the best, as well as all of the committees that I have had the honor to serve on over the last two years.

I am heading out on my cruise in less than a month and am ready to get a way for a little bit, although I am leaving people here that I will miss terribly. I am counting down the days until the 4th of July and the trip to Seattle with Tim for Kathryns wedding in August. 

I am also continuing to work on me. Health wise and other. I am so lucky to have my supportive guy by my side. We have a plan and we are sticking to it. Including being careful with our money and saving as much as possible, eating at home more and spending time together on Sundays prepping food for the week. I am excited to stick to this plan and see how well we can do with it.

I can't believe that April will be here by the end of the week. It doesn't seem possible that it is already almost 1/4 of the way through the year.

Lists

Anyone that knows me knows I like lists. I like to be organized, (or at least pretend to be). So yesterday I was looking for monthly check lists to help me get certain things done every week/ month and I happened upon this website:
http://recipes.com/printable/personal-planner/

I printed off all the monthly forms. There is something about checking off a box that gives me some satisfaction. Each month gives you:

• a Monthly focus: What is IT that I want to accomplish this month?
• Top 3 things to do: what are the 3 things that HAVE to get done this month. What do you want your goals to be?
• A place for special dates: who's birthday, anniversary, party is happening this month?
• A place to write down chores. This is where I'm going to put down the things I want to get down every week or month.
• A place for 3 goals for the month and the steps needed to take in order to get there.
• A notes section to write down anything else that is important to the me for the month.

I also am trying to do one "big" shopping trip a month and budgeting for it. By eliminating several trips to the store I am focusing on getting items I need and planned for. I found this template online.
I just simply crossed out weekly to month. Over the course of the next few weeks as I run out of items or think of things that I would need in order to try out new recipes. It breaks the shopping list into sections of the store that you shop in, which I hopes me really focus on what I went to the store to buy.
Not to mention, it is also very colorful, which makes it pretty, and has those bullets to check off while shopping, that make it fun and gives a sense of accomplishment. I plan to use this for my shopping trip at the end of the month for the next month. I still need to make some smaller trips during the month, when/if I need fresh fruits and veggies, but I'm hopping that this will help me be focused in my planning, shopping and budget, which will help me save money in the long run, both at the store and with using less gas, because of less trips.

I'm a big planner and budgeter and so I am always looking at ways to help me be more organized. I don't believe in recreating the wheel, so if I can google something and find it online, and it works for me, then I will use it. If it's not going to work, then I am not going to spend time on it.

Happy Monday! Glad I could share with you today.