Sunday Summary: Planning & Writing

Before I get to the rest of my post, I wanted to share the good news here. Not really my good news, but I’m excited about it anyways. My CP posted earlier this week that she signed a contract for her first novel. Exciting!!

As for me, not too much to report for the second half of the week. I’ve been busy writing. Husband worked Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. So, yesterday basically felt like a weekday to me, except the girl was home from school. Surprisingly, the kids played nicely together until about 9:30, when they wanted a snack and cartoon. This let me get a good chunk of writing done, even though it felt like I was barely chipping away at the words.

This past week was the first I’ve stuck to a menu for our dinners. I’ve tried one before but didn’t even stick to it for a whole week, I don’t think. Not sure why. I think part of it was because I tried to plan a whole month, instead of starting small. And just the thought of getting all those groceries overwhelmed me. This time, I’m doing a week at a time. Although I might change that to two weeks at a time as that’s about how often we do grocery shopping in the winter. The other problem I had last time was trying to plan the meals around the time my husband would be home. And since there’s always 1-2 days he’s not home before the kids go to bed, I let that throw me. This time, I’m trying to make it for the same time every day, and either keep his portion warm or put it in the fridge to warm up when he gets home. Most of the meals were even a win for at least one of the kids.

Monday we had salsa chicken and Spanish rice. The boy nearly inhaled the chicken. The girl is a bit pickier about spicy food(mainly: she doesn’t like it). But, she did eat about half of it before she said she didn’t like the red stuff on it. Tuesday we had Lasagna in the crock pot. The girl tried to say she didn’t like it before even tasting it(and we’ve had it like this before) and then ate all of hers anyway. Wednesday, I made beef stroganoff. The boy barely touched his, but the girl ate all of it. Thursday, we had scalloped potatoes and ham, and everyone ate it. I didn’t plan anything for Friday, figuring we could eat leftovers or whatever. But, I did make some applesauce in the crock pot(that was the third time I used it this week). I’ve always claimed to not like to cook, but I’m finding I like it better when I have things planned out ahead of time instead of trying to figure it out an hour before we plan to eat.

Salsa chicken & Spanish rice

Now, for how I did on goals this week:

• Flames of Redemption: 35000 words(that’s the progressive goal, so another 15k) – finished this Saturday while the boy was taking a nap. 15,013 words this week. Have some family drama shaping up for one of my characters, actually for both of them, just different dramas. And as Eden said on my Wednesday post, these 2 need to get a room, if they’d only admit it. 😉
• Read: The Dream You Make(Christine Nolfi) and Beautiful Darkness(Kami Garcia/Margaret Stohl) – Finished reading both of these. I’m glad I put a more light-hearted story between Allegiant and Beautiful Darkness. They both twisted my emotions up, which is a good thing. And easy to do for me, it seems. I get sucked into stories so easily. I’m almost halfway through Sins of the Angels by Linda Poitevin now.
• Knit: Finish Celtic Knot Bag – Finished this Friday morning, I think.  Took me about a total of almost 24 hours over about 2.5 weeks to finish.
  
• Crochet: Knotted Headband – Finished this Friday. It was nice doing a quick project after finishing a bigger one.

Goals for the next week:

• Flames of Redemption: 50,000 words. This will have me finished NaNoWriMo almost a week early, but the story still won’t be finished.
• Read: Sins of the Angels(Linda Poitevin) & All Our Yesterdays(Cristin Terrill)
• Knit: Little Lion Sock Critter

Simple goals this week as I push through the middle of the WiP.