Hola amigas y amigos!
A very belated happy new year - I hope you enjoyed Christmas. We'll be taking decorations down on January 7. Since we're in Germany over Christmas, we've decided that the children will get their presents on two days - December 6 (traditional German St. Nicholas) and January 6 (Three Kings, Los Reyes Magos). 6/1 is a Spanish tradition, but hey ... it's hard to pretend Baby Jesus came and left some presents a couple of hours after we returned from Germany.
I've stockpiled masses of stuff to give to both Mouse and Sparrow at some later date (TM), so in order not to overwhelm them, they'll only get 2-3 things each, and I'll have to remind myself to hold back on purchases from now on.
Our main present to ourselves was delivered on Saturday - a brand new digital piano (display model from the Edinburgh Organ Studio), a Kawai CL 30. I've joined the "practice each day" challenge over at the Piano World forums
Overall 2009 will be more frugal. Not because of the credit crunch, but because we will now have two children in nursery, AND I have cut down my work days to two due to lack of funds.
Here are my plans to do in 2009:
On the home front, I hope that we can get the final room done up so that we can move into the smaller room (sigh) while the kids share our original bedroom. We already have furniture and shelving all ready to put up. We're going to have the walls replastered, then DH is going to sound proof the floor and lay some nice laminate.
We've also decluttered books, now all we need is rent a car to take them to good used book charity shops (Oxfam and/or Barnardo's) as well as clothes. Now all I need to do is declutter and bag baby clothes that Sparrow, who will definitely be our last baby, has outgrown, and sort through the piles of clothes we got from friends so that I can come up with better storage.
I've stockpiled masses of stuff to give to both Mouse and Sparrow at some later date (TM), so in order not to overwhelm them, they'll only get 2-3 things each, and I'll have to remind myself to hold back on purchases from now on.
Our main present to ourselves was delivered on Saturday - a brand new digital piano (display model from the Edinburgh Organ Studio), a Kawai CL 30. I've joined the "practice each day" challenge over at the Piano World forums
Overall 2009 will be more frugal. Not because of the credit crunch, but because we will now have two children in nursery, AND I have cut down my work days to two due to lack of funds.
Here are my plans to do in 2009:
- Blog weekly, and not JUST on kid topics. I've been reading a lot of blogs written by women in science and engineering, and it's inspiring me to talk about more than just child related milestones.
- Comment on at least two friends' journals a week.
- Don't buy any books myself except as presents. That's right - moratorium on book buying. I have literally over 100 unread books littering my shelves. If I want to read new ones, I can (and will and do) go to the library or use Bookmooch. I will also ask for books as presents.
- Only buy myself a coffee twice a week. I developed a serious latte habit, but we have an espresso machine and there's one at work I can use.
- Practice the piano for at least 10 minutes every day. I have bought Albert's All-in-One piano course, Book 2, and will be using that together with simple Bach pieces until I've finished learning all of them. (New sheet music is NOT a book!) I love Bach, he's my favourite composer. This should keep me interested and levels of difficulty sufficiently low so that I don't get too frustrated.
On the home front, I hope that we can get the final room done up so that we can move into the smaller room (sigh) while the kids share our original bedroom. We already have furniture and shelving all ready to put up. We're going to have the walls replastered, then DH is going to sound proof the floor and lay some nice laminate.
We've also decluttered books, now all we need is rent a car to take them to good used book charity shops (Oxfam and/or Barnardo's) as well as clothes. Now all I need to do is declutter and bag baby clothes that Sparrow, who will definitely be our last baby, has outgrown, and sort through the piles of clothes we got from friends so that I can come up with better storage.