Homestead Update #2

Hey friends! I'm back for another homestead update. I'm really enjoying having them in one place. It makes it so much easier to see what I've been doing on the homestead on a weekly basis. Of course this time of the year there's not a lot of homesteading per se, but more getting organized for the upcoming year. Let's get started. There was a LOT of organizing this past week.

Eggs

The girls laid 14 eggs from 1/2-1/8/2021, with Maran laying 4 of those eggs. I can tell her eggs because she is the Black Copper Maran and lays dark brown eggs (you can see them in last week's update). We did have some frostbite on a couple of the girls. Nothing serious but I am keeping an eye on them since the temps have dropped drastically lately.

Budgets

Well...we didn't do as great on our grocery budget for December. I think it was mostly because we splurged for Christmas, New Years Eve, and New Years Day dinners. Plus I was really missing fish in our weekly diet so we went to a fish market to stock up on a little bit of fish. We also really started meal planning and filling in the gaps on things that we need. I've been eating really healthy as well and that is costing a little extra money. But we just did next week's meal plan and it is the first time that we don't have a grocery list (other than milk. I think I need a dairy animal so I can have fresh milk and dairy products without going to the store). So I'm really excited to see how next week's meal planning turns out. Did we end up buying more at the store? Or did we really stick to the meal plan, no shopping plan?

Speaking of meal planning, I have some meal planning inserts for my planner but I've been taking them out of the planner and putting them on the refrigerator so it's easy to find. We don't plan out days, but instead meals. Then we can decide each morning what we are in the mood for and take it out of the freezer. It's been working really well and we have been eating so really yummy food!

December: groceries and supplies: $503.49; eating out: $52.69=$556.18. Compared to November though, we overspent but we are lower than October.

Projects

I'll have a total project list update next week, but this past week I got so much stuff done behind the scenes. Quickbooks is set up, balanced, and ready to go. Financials is just not something I like dealing with and I put it off for a very long time but finally sat down for 2 days this week and totally got it done. I also wanted to organize my photos but that was a daunting task. I spent a few hours on it but because of my habit of just dumping photos into a folder it was just too much. So I've got the past few blog posts pictures all organized plus the ones I had organized before. I'm going to come up with a 'blog post' check list to keep myself accountable and part of that will entail organizing my photos before I am finished for the day. Same with the financials. There will be a checklist that will hold me accountable so I enter things every day rather than waiting. If I wait it never gets done so it will become part of my routine. Just get it done! But the bottom line is that I feel organized and ready to tackle the actual making money part of my business. Haha.

Health

And I've been walking a lot. I bought myself a Garmin watch and it counts my steps. I've been trying for 10,000 steps per day. I've just started reaching that goal every day but it's been an effort. I'll keep going with trying for 10,000 steps 5 days per week. I think that's doable. I've split my walking time between getting Anna Lee on the hill and then finishing up on the treadmill. I usually get on the treadmill in the evenings-right before dinner. I look at my step count for the day and then run on the treadmill until I hit 9,000 steps. I usually shoot for 9,500 because I assume I'll walk at least 500 more steps before bedtime. It's been good. And I noticed I have a theme for when I'm walking outside. One of these things doesn't look like the other. LOL.

That's it for this week. It's been a really productive week. I look forward to keeping the positive momentum going into the coming weeks. And you can catch up on the weekly updates starting with this post.

'til next time
-k
xoxo