19 in 19 - January update

February is here so time for a review of how January went for my 19 in 19.

1.   Be more organised, plan ahead and waste less time

Wellllll I think there was slight improvement here.  According to my i-phone app I have spent less time on my phone and judging by the ever increasing amount of recorded TV programmes I have I've not been watching loads of television.  I'll have to watch or delete some soon or my storage will be full!

2.   Work on the garden

In January?  Not likely.  But also not necessary.

3.   Plan a lunch date/date night with Nick once a month (theatre/cinema/meal/outing)

We managed a couple of outings this month, a lunch and a meal out one evening.  Both quite impromptu but still good. Hmm maybe my planning ahead is not as good as I thought lol.

4.   Eat at 6 new-to-me restaurants

One down 5 to go.  I ate at a new Argentinian steak restaurant early in the month.  It's nearby and had only been open a month.  I went with some friends and will definitely be taking Nick there at some point.  We also ate at a new to us restaurant in Nottingham when we visited Grandson Noah and his parents but as we're unlikely to visit it again due to its location I won't count that in.  But we did have a very nice meal.

5.   Complete the A – Z  blogging challenge

This doesn't happen until April but I have been doing some preparation.

6.   Family weekend away for my birthday - in June

We've tentatively agreed a date and an area so now I have to sort out the details 

7.   Look after my health – eat well, sleep well, play well

I think we've been eating reasonably well - we've gone back to having our Hello Fresh deliveries so that is giving us variety.  I've also tried switching to decaf tea at the end of the day and I think that is helping with my sleep.  I started the month trying to be more active but haven't really kept it up.  I find January quite a hard month - such an anticlimax after Christmas and then it's often cold and miserable so hard to get motivated.  Spring's coming right?

8.   Visit my brother

At some point!

9.   Visit the beach

When it's warmer!

10.                Complete my reading challenge (52 books for the year)

On schedule for this.  In January I read:

Why Mummy Drinks by Gill Sims

Our Souls at Night by Kent Harud

The Accidental Further Adventures of the 100 year old Man by Jonas Jonasson &

The Life Changing Magic of Tidying - Marie Kondo

As always, details and reviews can be found on my Goodreads site.

11.                Keep a journal

I'm improving on this one.

12.                Blog at least once per week (plus regular memes)

Well I (almost) completed the Just Jot it January challenge so this month was a success.

13.                Organise/Take more photos

This needs work!

14.                Update my clothes/accessories/make up etc regularly

Well I did a bit of a Marie Kondo on my clothes this month so a good start.  I think this is something I'll look at seasonally so I'm done for winter!

15.                Do more crafting – move the sewing machine!

No comment!

16.                Try out a new recipe or do a bake each week

Thanks to Hello Fresh we've tried out new recipes most weeks.  I also made a Lentil & Veg stew for the first time which was ok and I tried out a recipe for a piece of pork loin that we had which involved wine and rosemary.  That actually didn't turn out so well, probably because I used cheap wine and it tasted a bit vinegary which was a shame.

17.                Visit/see Noah every month

We visited the weekend of the 19th and had a lovely time including eating out on the Saturday evening.  Noah was very good although he was a bit noisy when we first got to the restaurant and as we were the first there and it was quiet for a little while he sounded Very Loud lol.  Once it began to fill up and there was more background noise he was less conspicuous.

18.                Make progress on the house plan

Well one of the first things we need to get done is a few repairs on the roof - no point in fixing things inside if there are external issues.  We've had a quote so now we just need to sort out a date for the works to be done.  Moving in the right direction though.

19.                Lose 19 pounds

1 down 18 to go.  I definitely need to be more active. (Or eat less but as I said above January is not a good month for getting outside and when I'm inside a lot snacking is very tempting!) 

Quite a good month overall, especially as I had a lot of Grandparenting going on.  That didn't always leave a lot of time, or energy for other things.  I was certainly pleased that despite that, I still managed to blog nearly every day and do a fair amount of interacting with other bloggers too.

One other thing that I managed was to set up a separate google group for the readers in our family.  A few of us posted lists of our 2018 reads and there was a lot of interaction about it so we agreed to set up a separate group just for book discussions.  There are 17 of us and we've just been sharing which books we read in January.  It's good to get suggestions for books to read - or which to avoid lol.