Week One Thursday To Do Lost

I can't believe that I was able to cross everything off my list yesterday!

Lunch with mom

Sign up for Weight Loss Wars

Go buy bacon for dinner

Make dinner

Alek travel hockey

Read Gary's book (goes away Saturday)

Make blackberry jam with Regan

Clean master bathroom. 

Potato Ham Chowder

I love Pinterest! I find lots of recipes that I wouldn't have thought to look for on there. Alek and I have been on a corn kick lately, so when I saw this recipe I had to pin it.

Original Recipe can be found at Damn Delicious 

Potato Ham Chowder

Ingredients

4 slices bacon, diced
1/4 cup butter
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 white onion, diced
1 1/2 cups frozen corn
1/2 teaspoon dried thyme leaves (next time I would use fresh instead)
2 tables flour
3 1/2 cups milk
2 potatoes, peeled and diced
7 ounces left over ham, diced
salt and pepper, to taste

Instructions

1. Heat a large skillet over medium high heat. Add bacon and cook until brown and crispy. Transfer to a paper towel-lined plate and set aside. (I used left over bacon from breakfast and crumpled it)

2. Melt butter in a large pot over medium heat. Add garlic and onion, and cook, stirring frequently, until onions have become translucent.

Stir in corn and thyme until fragrant.

3. Whisk in flour until lightly browned, about 1 minute. 

Gradually whisk in milk, and cook stirring constantly, until slightly thickened. Stir in potatoes.

4. Bring to a boil then reduce heat and simmer until potatoes are tender, about 15 minutes. Add ham a few minutes more to warm the ham.

5.  Serve with crumbled bacon on top.

Day 1 Weight, Measurements, and Picture

I had the delightful pleasure of measuring myself today. Not!!!!! But it must be done so I can measure my progress. 

Chest: 42"

Right Upper Arm: 11"

Waist: 42"

Hips: 44"

Right Thigh: 23"

Weight: 175

Before picture

My goal is to lose 35-40 pounds by next Christmas. 

Week One Dinner Menus

One of the things that I love most to do is my weekly menu planning for dinner and then going grocery shopping. This is my ME time! I could spend hours doing both. I use to do it all by hand, but now I use the Pepperplate website and app. It allows me to store my recipes, create menus, and most importantly it has a shopping list function that lets you check off your items as you shop. AWESOME!!!!

Week 1 Dinner Menus

Wednesday Potato Ham Chowder

Thursday: Regan's Alfredo Pasta with Brussels Sprouts

Friday: Confetti Quesadillas (shrimp)

I will be posting recipes and pictures daily of what I actually end up cooking.

My goal is to start including lunches and breakfasts as well as dinner in my future menus.

Week One Wednesday To Do List

My first daily To Do List! I'm not quite sure why I am so excited, but I am.

• Create new blog
• Post about goal
• Down load blogger for my phone
• Watch Lost Season 2 finale
• Fold laundry
• Play cards with family
• 
  
• Text Alisha with 8th grade Reading instructional calendar for Week 19
• Make dinner: Potato Ham Chowder
• Watch Red Wings play Toronto in the Winter Classic with the kids
• Read a couple chapters from The Spider (have to give back on Saturday!)
• Measurements, day one weight, and before photo
• Post weekly dinner plan

Week One Goals

Week One is all about organizing my mind and life vision.

• Write out my vision for life (or just for this year) Done in my first post!
• List my goals for the next year  Also done in my first post
• Get a minimum of 7 hours of sleep
• Starting off great with 8 hours
• Start my day by writing a short To Do list
• Start a journal Did this when I started this blog!
• Limited the amount of TV I watch (this will be a hard one, especially since we are still on break)
• Schedule a 2 minute me break two to three times a day
• Practice meditating
• Schedule time to exercise
• Plan more "me" time to do something I love
• Eliminate energy drainers
• Take control of my time by setting goals and priorities

Through out the week I will be coming back and crossing off items as I complete them or change them.

2014 Goals and New Blog

I thought linking up with First Grade Nest would be a great way to start my new blog! I have a teacher blog (Being Elementary in Middle School), but it doesn't cover all of me and I feel odd posting personal items on it, so I never update it.

This blog is a way for me to be accountable to me. My mom gave me a book titled organize now! by Jennifer Ford Berry.

As the subtitle implies, it is a week-by-week guide and has some awesome ideas. Each week has goals for you to accomplish and a checklist. It has you writing down and keeping track of different items through out the 56 weeks. I kept trying to come up with a way to do this that wouldn't be expensive and wouldn't require me to carry around multiple journals and notebooks along with all my teacher stuff and it wasn't working. I woke up in the middle of the night with the thought that I could do it all on a blog and I would have it where ever I went. So Year of the Robyn was born.

The first item on week one's checklist is to write out my vision for my life. After I read the first week chapter, I checked my Facebook newsfeed and on it was an update from my friend Andrea at Reading Toward the Stars about a Goals and Resolution Linky for 2014, so I thought this would be a great start for me.

So here are my resolutions or my vision for the upcoming year for me:

And now some goals:

This year I would like to make more hands on activities for my students. I teach writing (yes, I know I make lots of mistakes) to 6th, 7th, and 8th graders at an inner city school. My students hate to do any work and I can't count on anything that goes home coming back. I started using an Interactive Notebook this year and the kids love it, but I have a limited amount of copies that I can use each month. Hence my goal of more hands on activities. 

Goal One leads into Goal Two. I want to create more items on Teachers Pay Teachers. Last year my amazing neighbor helped me to create two items and I made more than $45 in 6 months from the one item that costs money. My goal is to have 10 more items up by the end of the school year.

Goal Three is to be healthier. I would love to lose 40 pounds this year! I have already started getting everything lined up to accomplish this too! My mom and I are signing up for a 10 week program at our local gym. It starts in two weeks.

Goal Four is to be more organized and clean. My husband does most of the cleaning and this year I want to do more! And I've already started. I decided yesterday that I needed to start off the year with a clean oven. After spending more than 3 hours spraying, waiting, and scrubbing, I have decided that our next oven must be a self-cleaning oven.  And of course the book my mom gave me will be a great help too!

This summer my mom is planning on renting an apartment in London, England for a month. The kids and I are going to go over for two weeks and one place I would like to visit is Stonehenge. I've been to England before but didn't venture very far from London. 

I love trying new foods! This year I would like to try more vegetarian entrees. I have several friends who are vegan and a couple of weeks ago my daughter and I spent a weekend with them. Since we were staying with them, we ate to their diet. I haven't felt that full or that good in a long time. 

My children and I love to watch cooking shows. This past fall, my daughter and I got caught up in Junior Master Chef. We were both amazed by what they were able to make. One of the dishes that the children had to make was homemade pasta. My daughter turned to me and asked if we could learn to do that. So this year I want to learn how to make homemade pasta. 

Every year I try to give up pop (soda), but this is going to be the year. I am already on day 5 of no soda!

I want to spend more quality time with my family this year. One way I want to do that is to start having Family Game night on Fridays. We just taught the kids International Rummy and they love it.

I want to be healthier and more organized this year! And hopefully this blog is a great start towards all of my goals.

Happy New Year and good luck on your resolutions and goals for 2014!