So, here we are with my week 3 roundup of how I'm getting on (or not) with my New Year challenges. It was a bit of an all-or-nothing week - I made great headway with some and didn't make any progress at all with others, which makes sense, as there are only 24 hours in each day so I can't do everything!
1. Get Fit(bitting) !
This week has been absolutely rubbish for getting active - I only hit my 10k step target on two days and a couple of days were ridiculously low (3211 on Sunday, 6328 on Wednesday, 4108 on Friday). This makes sense though - on Sunday, we dropped Sophie off for her school trip to Italy so we were up at 5.45am and felt knackered all day. On Wednesday and Friday, I was stuck indoors with a poorly Pierre and ended up playing with him, baking and watching DVDs. In terms of what I've been eating and food tracking, I've been OK.
2. Get cooking bookmarked recipes !
I've mainly been having a #KitchenClearout this week, doing a stocktake of what was cluttering up the kitchen cupboards and finding ways of using them. I got through a few bookmarked recipes - Chicken Plasas, Merluzzo con spinaci (cod with spinach) and a Polish poppyseed roll that I'll blog about next week. But, I did also bookmark about a dozen new recipes that caught my eye so my to-do total has gone up, if anything !
3. Get geocaching !
Nothing doing this week - but firstly, Pierre was off school feeling icky and secondly, it was absolutely blooming freezing. Temperatures dropped as low as -6°C so getting outside was not a priority !
4. Get comping !
I've entered loads of competitions this week (the advantage of having a couple of sick-child bonus days off !) and tried to find creative comps to enter but they seem to be very thin on the ground at the moment. Absolutely no wins this week though.
5. Get reading !
I finished Nordic crime fiction Medusa by Torkil Damhaug (which turned out to be a bit of a disappointment - click through for my review) and have started reading a children's novel, Charlie on the Case by Paul W. Robinson.
6. Get FLYing !
This week's zone was the bathroom and I only made a very half-hearted effort. To be fair though, one of the missions (dejunking the towels and throwing out any old moth-eaten ones) was something I did just before Christmas and another (throwing away empty bottles in the shower or on the side of the bath) is something I keep on top of anyway.
8. Get bloggy housekeeping !
After reaching the symbolic milestone of checking, repairing and/or removing all links that could look dodgy from 2010 (two years down, seven to go !), I decided to put in a reconsideration request on google, expecting it to be refused. If you're not a blogger, you'll have no idea what that means. Basically, as a blogger, whenever you link through to a website in a blogpost, you can choose a "follow" or a "no-follow" link. If you have been paid to add a link to someone's website, it should be no-follow and if you don't respect this, google can remove you from their listings (which means nobody finds your blog to read). I was hit with a penalty last October, even though I don't do paid-for sponsored posts. In the first few years of blogging, nobody had ever heard of follow/no-follow so all my links were automatically follow. This is what I've been going through mending (a thankless task !) and google have now accepted my reconsideration request. It hasn't made the slightest bit of difference to my blog stats yet but hopefully this should improve. The question is, will I find the motivation to go through repairing the remaining broken and follow links now that it's less urgent ?!
9. Get French !
I totally took the bull by the horns this week and spent all of my Monday afternoon off online, dealing with the various bits of paperwork that I needed. I contacted three different officially recognised translators and paid €38 to get my birth certificate translated into French. I requested birth certificates for all three kids, plus a copy of my empty criminal record. I received most of them (just the criminal record needs to arrive) and the rest is easier to get hold of so I've done the most complicated and time-consuming part - phew !
What about you? Have you set yourself any targets, challenges or new year's resolutions this year?
sounds like a reasonably good start. i wanted to sort out my diet and start eating better but i have made no moves to do so yet.
ReplyDeleteI find that menu planning helps - especially if you write your shopping list at the same time so that it's easier to stick to because you actually have the ingredients you need !
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