Finally kept a New Year's resolution

Friends, I have finally, for once in my life, made a New Year's resolution I actually stuck to!  Flash back to a year ago, I had just finished one of the most challenging years of my life.  So what do you do after you survived one of the worst things you thought could ever happen?

Before I say what my resolution for 2018 was, let me fill you in on a little bit of what I'm talking about.  If you have read my blog from the beginning, you probably noticed some wedding posts so you're clearly thinking, "ok this chick was married once upon a time" and you'd be right.  I was married to my high school sweetheart.  So you read on as I've posted and gradually I don't mention him so much any more and you might wonder, "ok what's going on, no big announcement was made so did something happen?"  I won't bore you with the dirty details but we aren't together anymore.  Long story short, we were destined to go in different directions with our lives.  The split happened suddenly at the beginning of 2017 and I didn't see it coming. 

I learned so much about myself in 2017.  I admittedly went through a mourning period, but the way I see it there are two options when something like this happens to you.  You can either sit around and feel sorry for yourself, or you can pick up the shattered pieces, throw them back together and make the best of what you have left.  I didn't want to be mopey, I wanted to move on and see what was next for my life.  I learned I'm stronger than I thought, I have a great support system who kept me going (thank you all!), and if I thought I was a positive person before this...I'm so much more positive than I ever imagined I could be.

Flash forward to the version of me that began 2018 and you've got someone who came to terms with "everything happens for a reason."  That positive person knew that there's something great waiting out there and was going to do everything possible to be happy and successful in 2018.  What resolution did I make then?

I'm going to make this year my b*tch!

As you know from my last post, I paid off quite a bit of debt, I cruised through each day with a smile on my face, my friends and family commented frequently that I actually looked happy as opposed to similar times in 2017. I got back out there and met some great new people and grew amazing friendships that were already pre-existing, but were enhanced by the experience of what I went through.

In having this outlook of "it was great, and then it was over, I'll look back on it fondly, remember the good, learn from the bad, and look forward to the great things to come" I ended 2018 with a year I'm proud of! I had so much fun along the way and I know 2019 can be even better!  I go into the new year looking forward to all the people I'm going to meet, the debt I'm going to pay off, the home I'm going to build for myself, and the friendships that will just get better and better each year.  Oh and hopefully I lose a bunch of weight, get rock hard abs, and win the lottery......What? A girl can dream right? :) 

What's your New Year's resolution? I'd love to hear it and encourage you along the way! If anyone has Chris Evans' number, please send it my way to help with my resolution this year ;)

Where did the year go?

Woah, my last post was already a year ago.  Where did that time go?  I've been ferociously putting what I can to paying down debts with the goal being paying them off. While I can't say I'm out of debt, I can say I've now paid off over $9,000.00!! still have a little bit to go before I start on my student loans but the payment I was working on was a minimum payment each month of like $300 ish.  Terrible but now it's gone! Forever!

As for the weight loss, I haven't lost much more but I maintained!!! That's awesome because I still haven't changed my diet habits much from my weight loss post, and I've been to the gym just as frequently. I haven't maintained this well in a long time, usually it goes up and down (mostly up).

Other than those things the year since I posted last has been great! I'll write a post at another time explaining why.

On another topic my house projects have been minimal which stays true to my budget paying off debt as fast as I can.  What I have done around the house has been either free or very low cost.

Thanks to help from my great family, I repainted my ceilings in my living room, and kitchen.  In my bathroom there used to be popcorn ceilings.  Every post that I saw on removing popcorn ceilings on Pinterest said it was going to be so easy! Wet it down, scrape it off, clean up the mess no big deal!

FALSE!!!!!!! I took a scraper to it and barely scraped anything off! I did NOT want to sweat for hours wearing out my arms to make very little progress.  So on to plan B.  Thanks to my carpenter dad, we mudded over the whole ceiling.  Now that sounds worse than it is but my bathroom is REALLY small.  We also fixed the crown molding in the bathroom.  Whomever installed it in the first place put it in upside-down....one of the many remodeling shot jobs the previous owners of the house did.

I also did some demo and uncovered a jewel!!! Ok so it's not a real jewel but it's super exciting anyway!

Would you just look at that!!!! Brick chimney! Why on earth would anyone cover that up with drywall? No clue honestly.  But I'm so excited about it! I first came across it by doing laundry.  What?? Laundry?? yep! so my basement is unfinished and down in my laundry room, there's remnants of a coal chimney that I assume was used originally to heat the house when it was built in the 20's.  However, the portion of the chimney in the basement is painted white.  My hope was not just that the chimney went all the way through the house but also that it wasn't painted white the whole way.  There was only one way to find out!  Take a hammer to some plaster! I had those gold bowls hanging on the chimney side originally so I took one off and knocked out a little portion under the bowl, that way if it wasn't brick, I could just hang the bowl back up and no one would know.  Luckily for me I saw brick!!! So I put the bowl back until I had more time.  I did it one side at a time in two different "bash" sessions.  Let me tell you nothing is better to help you get some stress out than some aggression therapy! I was able to get all my stress out in each session.

I think I've exposed as much as I'm going to.  I have that horizontal divide that acts as a chair rail type thing throughout the whole kitchen.  My plan (when it fits in the budget) is to paint the bottom half white and the top half a less "pukey" looking color.  Not sure what yet but I was thinking either greige (grey/beige) or beige on it's own.  I also need to seal the brick somehow so it looks wet all the time and not powdery like it does in the photo.  Oh and I will put some trim pieces around the rough edge of the drywall.

Stay tuned for more projects and a story about how my 2018 was a fantastic year!