One Little Word: Focus

It's taken me a while to discover what my One Little Word for this year will be. I've made lists and thought about how I want to grow and improve this year. Over the past few months I feel like I've been so busy and pulled in so many different directions that I've barely had time to think. Please tell me I'm not the only one who sometimes feels like this.

Yesterday while driving away from the post office, my word came to me. FOCUS.

I need to focus on what is most important in my life and let some things go. Focus on family. Focus on nurturing friendships. Focus on creativity. Focus on fun. Focus on service. That may seems like a lot of different things to focus on, but I do feel that with careful thought and intention my time and energy will be spent in positive ways in all of these areas.

So there you have it, my One Little Word for 2015. I'm excited to see how this word will influence my choices as it encourages me to focus and be more intentional in my life.

One Little Word - March

In March, I continued to work on my one little word, Grow.


In the One Little Word Class taught by Ali Edwards at Big Picture Classes, she challenged each of us to chose an activity that would help us focus on our word.


My focus for the month was on growing my healthy habit of exercise. I decided that I wanted to run 24 miles in March and track my progress. I also went to the gym on other days for weight classes just to mix things up.


I met my goal and ran just over 27 miles in March. This is a pretty big deal for me because I haven't ever considered myself a runner. Really, I am more of a slow jogger, but at least I was out and moving!


Ali provides templates each month that are ready for printing and writing. I love how simple this project is because of those prompts.


My page for March is now complete. I'm looking forward to the April assignment that involves writing a letter to my future self.

Thanks for stopping by today. Hope you have a wonderful week.

Working on My OLW

I've been slowing plugging away with working on goals related to my One Little Word for this year.

One of the areas I've been focusing on is "growing" my health. When the new year started, I was being quite lazy with my exercise habits. I decided to step things up and I've been getting to the gym or running from home 3 -4 times per week so far this year.

This month I've decided to take set an additional goal of running at least 24 miles this month. This means running 3 miles two days each week. I don't consider myself a strong runner, but it is something that I can quickly do from home and it doesn't take a big part of my day. Plus, I always feel great when I'm finished.

Thanks to my friend Katie for letting me know about the Runkeeper app for my phone. As I run, it updates me every 5 minutes with how far I've run and the pace I've been running. It helps motivate me to keep going.

So far this month, I've run 9.98 miles! Only 14.02 miles to go to reach my goal.

Another area where I'm working to improve my health (and my family's health too) is planning out our week night dinners. This is probably something that most of you already do, but I was in the bad habit of waiting until around 5:00 each day to start thinking about dinner. This led to way too many nights of grilled cheese sandwiches, take out, and generally not well planned meals.

Now I plan and write out our meals on a chalkboard in our kitchen and do all of the shopping on Mondays.


I try to plan a couple of meatless nights (this week we only have 1) and mix up different styles of food (Mexican, Italian, etc.) This week the pork roast we have tonight will be used again in our quesdillas on Thursday. Last night's fajitas included peppers, onions, avacado, salsa and fresh cilianto with a little grill chicken. Yum!

With kids involved in piano lessons, dance, scouts, volleyball and choir during the week, having dinner planned out is key to everyone's happiness!

The kids love looking at the board to see what is for dinner and I love it because they don't need to ask what's for dinner.

We usually do a pizza/movie night on Friday, so I didn't need to plan a meal for that night. Sometimes we grill pizzas or we'll just order it. Saturdays are usually leftovers or date night. Sunday nights are usually with family or friends and we'll plan that out on Saturday.

For now, I'm feeling pretty good with getting 4 nights a week planned.

I'd love to hear about your favorite weeknight meals. I'm on the lookout for some new recipes to try!

Thanks for stopping by! I always love hearing from you.

One Little Word - January

Last month I decided that my word for 2011 is GROW. I have to admit that January flew by without giving too much thought to my word. But this month I have committed to spending more time thinking about and working on goals related to my word.

I signed up for the Ali Edwards Big Picture class where we are given a prompt each month that focuses on our one little word.

Today I was able to work on the January prompt which included defining and finding inspiration from my word.


Here's a look at what I created using Ali's January ideas.

I'm using Pink Paislee album pages that came is all different shapes and sizes for this project. Each month I will be adding a page to an album that focuses on my word.


I'm excited to have a monthly prompt to keep my word on my mind. Hope you have a great day!

OLW 2011

This year I decided to follow Ali Edward's lead and choose One Little Word as a theme for 2011.

We went out of town for the weekend and I had some time to think about what I wanted my word to be this year. Our family was with one other family for the weekend and the adults enjoyed sharing ideas and thoughts about things we want to improve on this year.

The word GROW kept coming back to me, so I decided that it must be the right word for me this year.


I have chosen a few areas in my life where I want to continue to grow.

• Grow family relationships
• Grow creatively
• Grow health
• Grow friendships
• Grow spiritually
  

Each week I plan on writing down (and completing!) one thing I want to do for each area that will help me GROW and become a better person.

A lot of these are areas where I actually feel pretty good about how things are going, but I know they can be even better with additional focus.

I've decided to sign up for Ali's class at Big Picture Classes so that I will receive monthly reminders about focusing on my word. I know from past experience that it is very easy to loose energy with a project like this, so I figure a little extra motivation will be just what I need.

Did you choose one little word for 2011?