Planning...far in advance

Technically I started this blog for the purpose of switching over from my wedding planning and personal blogs to a 'mommy-to-be' blog that would grow with me. Since I'm not a 'mommy-to-be' right now I haven't posted much on that topic but that doesn't mean I haven't been planning away. For those that follow(ed) my wedding blog you know that I start planning long before things are a reality (pretty sure I was blogging about my future wedding at least two years before I was actually engaged).

Currently my planning/research on becoming a mother has been directed at Reusable Diapers. I decided a long time ago that this was the route that I wanted to take, one because I personally think they are more environmentally friendly (yes I have read the opinions of the amount of water used but I still believe its better then putting a ton of disposables into landfills each year), cost effective and just plain cute. Trying to figure out which brand to use is a little overwhelming though.

I know that I have a while to make up my mind but since my sister will be giving birth to her first child in June/July this year I want to try and figure it out before that because I fully intend of taking her infant size diapers from her as I will be at least 4 months behind her in delivery if I were to conceive this month. Since infant size will only last about 3-4 months (at the most) I figure this is cost effective for both of us. If she doesn't receive them as gifts we can split the cost.

As for the different brands that I have been reading up on I like the look of gDiapers which are a hybrid of a diaper that has a disposable liner that you can use or a cloth liner. I am 99% sure that one of my best friends used these for her son and I plan on asking her next weekend when I see her but I've read mixed reviews on them. One of the negatives being that they are on the higher cost end of reusable and some say they leak a lot.

{Aren't they adorable?! - gDiapers}

Well reading comments about the gDiapers, GroVia came up a lot as an alternative that didn't have much negative comments and seem to be a little more cost effective but I am not sure if the are sold in Canada yet as their Canadian website is 'coming soon'.

{Still pretty cute - GroVia}

There is also a distributor of cloth diapers here in Winnipeg called AMP Diaper Store that sells a few different styles. Not to mention the wonderful world to second hand via kijiji.com, ebay.ca, etc.

Perhaps you have an opinion that you would like to share?

Breaking my goals into Categories.

I'm still working on articulating my monthly resolutions/goals. Currently I have been keeping a mental tally of what I want to achieve but haven't gotten to the details of the what and when I expect to achieve them.

Categories that I think are important to me achieving the balance and contentment, IE happiness, that I want are:

1. Organization
2. Health
3. Finances
4. Relationships
5. Personal Development - "Me Time"
6. Motivation

I think I have written enough about my desire to be more organized and healthy (both diet & exercise) that those are pretty obvious. Although I am now debt free, finances aren't as huge as an issue that they once were but with our plans of starting a family quite soon and my salary taking a nice cut because of mat leave and potentially only going back part-time in the future, I want to keep it well managed so that I don't fall into the debt trap again.

In the Happiness Project she breaks her relationship into friends, family and marriage subcategories but I feel that a category for all of my relationships is currently sufficient. I may need to revisit this in the future though. This category is really important to me though as 2011 was the year that two long time close friendships ended on me. One was a little more abrupt then the other, which had been slowly eroding for a few years because of the physical distance between us, but I wasn't happy about either of them, many because I didn't really feel like I had a say in the end of either. People talk about how 'breaking up' is hard to do in relation to your significant other, but they rarely talk about the break-up with a best friend (I know because I've googled it many a times for advice). As far as I'm concerned it is just as hard, if not worse sometimes. I suppose one of my biggest concerns is that it will happen to me again. I'm not naive to assume that I will be friends forever with everyone I know but I don't want to go from "best friends" to NOTHING again, if I can help it. So I want to focus on building strong, healthy relationships with the friends I have now, as well as with my husband and family. A big part of which is open and honest communication. I'm not sure what my actual resolutions/goals will be but this is the direction I'm going in.

As for the "Me Time" I want to make it a priority to grow as an individual. I tend to take on a lot of projects, whether its a work, with friends or extra curricular that I overload myself and forget about spending quality time by myself. By making it a priority I think it will help me attain the balance I'm looking for.

My last category is Motivation and for me I think its key to keeping all the other categories going. Like a lot of people I have great ideas and start things with a bang but quickly I loose direction and/or will power and I stop. I want to resolve to do at least one thing a month that will help me stay motivated and on task with everything, like reading the book the Happiness Project. I was thinking of getting a group of women together for a book club of sorts where we all ready books that are inspiring and then met to talk about them and also hold each other accountable for resolutions/goals we've made. I am just not sure who would be interested in it and how to approach people about it. I'm still working that out.

So what about you? Are any of these categories relevant to you? Any ideas of what I should be doing?

Resolutions through out the year and onwards

I know that not everyone believes in setting New Year resolutions but I love making lists and goals. For the last few years I've been reviewing my goals on my birthday, which I had based around me turning 30. Now that that birthday is arriving in two months I have been think a lot about how I wanted to structure my goals going forward and what is important to me.

What I have come up with brings me back to my "Greater Purpose Statement" that wrote about in my other blog, "Acting without regard for others perception of me, I voice my true opinion & chose to create a life of balance and contentment". More specifically the point of creating a life of BALANCE AND CONTENTMENT.

It was then that I remembered that I had heard a review about the book The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin which seems to encompass where I'm trying to go with setting goals and making changes to a better life. I like the idea that it was an "Eat, Pray, Love" for people that don't have the ability to drop everything and travel the world to find their selves, nor is it only speaking to the people that have come to an identity/midlife/quarter life crisis but for someone that has a pretty good life as it is but realizes it could be BETTER.

So I bought the book just before new year's eve with the idea that I would read it before January 1st and set my goals down for the year. Well I'm reading it but the deadline was probably a little tight!

She idea seems to be to split her resolutions into monthly time lines, rather than a year long, which I like as I find that when it is an entire year I either get really ambitious and put down a lot of things that I will never accomplish or I forget about them. In her book she breaks her months into categories like Energize, Family, Friends, Finances, etc. What I want to do is take at least one resolution from each category that I want to work on and add accomplish it/work on it in that month.

For example;

Category - Organization, Month 1 resolution - de-clutter my workspace & implement a system to prevent future clutter.

So stay tuned for my first month resolutions and the categories that I'm going to break things into in my attempt to have a more balanced and content life.

Did you set resolutions? Do they work for you? Is your life as happy as it could be? What does happy mean to you?