The blue door and thoughts on Dec, and next year

magnificent!

Is this not the best blue door ever?!

We drive past it daily and when we did our Santa ShoeBox drop-off, we stopped for 5 minutes to take a few pics quickly.

Picture it - sweaty gym person (me) with a camera directing the kids to stand right there in front of the door.

Anyway, as always, worth it!

So I did my goals review last night and it was... revealing.

My average number of steps has increased to over 6000 (6380 to be exact) - yay! HUGE for me.

The key for me was in LETTING GO of the idea that I had to get to 10 000 steps.

I started aiming for only 7500 which is when Discovery gives you 100 points, and because it's more doable, I reached it on a lot more days. More than the once or twice a month of reaching 10 000 steps.

Isn't that interesting?

#imperfectionrocks

I thought I didn't really do that well with my goals til I started checking back and the reason was very apparent - I had something like 15 socials/ events! Only 3 books read. Plus training two new nannies. No wonder I'm knackered.

It is this time of year though...

But added to that I've been going to bed after midnight most nights - the Fitbit tells me I  only went to bed before midnight on 5 days. 

Still the tally was 90% goals done.

So for December....

I have my whole list of course, all 38 of them, but I'll only share things you may be interested in here:

1. Get my sleep average back up to 7.5 hours (I did so well in October and it went downhill)
2. Walk an average of 7000 steps a day... this is very ambitious since I'm going to be lazing around on holiday, but let's see.
3. Read 8 books. I surpassed my Goodreads goal of 70 - am on 72 now, so I thought I might as well give it a good stretch to 80 :)
4. Finish all November photos and Lord have mercy, there are tons. TONS. I almost don't want to take my camera anywhere. I haven't taken it to work for at least a week because I don't want more to go through :(
5. Test one new recipe to make it to my 25 for the year (I'm thinking of Se7en's Christmas cookies ----> see pic pinned to Pinterest on right sidebar)
6. Commission someone (!) to come paint and sort out the front of the house and if I'm not crazy after that, to paint all the common inside areas GREY. I also still have my eye on a grey couch....
7. Have a wonderful holiday :)

Notice there's no mention of Christmas stuff.

I think we're done. Except for these optional cute things I keep seeing on Love-and-lollipops's Instagram account (I now have a crafts album within my iphone pics). And we picked some branches to do some washi tape Christmas cards for the 3 people we'll see in Dec.

D keeps on buying "stocking stuffers" (I call them presents) but I'm letting it go. The cameras and camera bags are wrapped and ready.

We had a deal to do house stuff for presents but D told me tonight he bought me a present. I still don't want to go near the shops.

I'm very good if I stay away but once I venture in, that's it.

The only thing we need to do is properly grocery shop once we get back from holidays... just in case there's load shedding while we're away and we have to throw out food.

#thisisfive

I very tentatively mention this because I haven't started praying about it yet... but I think I may already have my word for next year, and it's a good one :)

Anandi, if you're reading, you will LOVE it! :)

Right!

That's me.

Tell me how your November went, do you still know if you're Arthur or Martha?
What's on your mind for December? Do you have lots to do?
And more importantly, have you started thinking of your word for the year?