I’m all about fresh starts. I can’t start a diet on a Thursday, I have to wait until Monday. I can’t stop reading in the middle of a chapter, I have to keep reading to the end so I can start a fresh chapter the next time. So I always look at the start of a new year as a fresh start. I won’t talk about resolutions, because my resolution is the same each year (to lose weight; fingers crossed this is the year) but I do have a few things that I plan to start now that 2013 is upon us.
1. The Schedule Chart– We have a hard time going through the morning routine in my house. Each week day it’s the same, and each week day, my husband and I fight and plead and yell at the boys to follow the routine. We’ve changed it to better suit their needs (eat breakfast, then get dressed) and we’ve incorporated time for playing, but they still don’t move through the morning smoothly and most days it gets us off to a really rough start. Starting tomorrow, I’m going to give the boys a star for each task completed without any fuss. After a certain amount of stars under their name (I haven’t decided how many, 10 to start maybe), they get to choose something from the prize box.
2. Meal Planning– For the past few months, we’ve let meal planning go by the wayside. Because of the holidays and busy weeknights we haven’t prepared a menu or shopping list so we’ve been eating quick to prepare, not as healthy as they should be meals. This means lots of cheese and bean quesadillas and pasta without a side of veggies as there should have been. I bought my husband this for his stocking this Christmas. I hope it helps.
3. Read a book- Other than Downton Abbey (starting January 6, WOOHOO!!), there are not any shows that I look forward to watching. Yet night after night, I sit on the couch flipping through channels and ultimately watching Storage Wars well past the point where I should have gone to bed. But no more! New year, new book. Any suggestions?
So, Happy New Year! What are you hoping to make a fresh start on this year?
CT Working Moms 
[…] using them. (Nice, right?) To make all those hard things fun, I am taking a page out of Kris-Ann’s blog and starting a sticker chart with rewards. Prize bucket here I come! Keeping the end in mind, […]
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Love the magnetic meal planner for the fridge. Where did you get it?
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I got it at Pier One in one of their Christmas gift bins. Good luck!
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Beacause of our pay schedule, our work schedule and the fact that we have 2 babies to work around, meal planning is the most important thing I do for our household. I schedule meals for 2 weeks at a time and grocery shop based on that list. I don’t keep strictly to what I schedule each day but we do keep to the list of meals. And I can tell you that if I don’t do this we either a) don’t eat or b) waste precious money on take out all the time. It really is worth it to take the 30 minutes to plan meals and a grocery list. I use my crockpot 2-3 times a week and I find recipes on Pinterest.
Also, my absolute FAVORITE author of all time is Suzanne Brockman. Great books!
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