December Goals!

I can't believe it is the final month of 2013! We have so much to look forward to this month and so much to look forward to next year. To end off the year I have set some loose goals for December but first a recap of how I did on my November Goals:

+ Move N into his big boy room (currently our office) by the end of the month and find somewhere for our office to go. This month I took on the gargantuan task of sorting, purging, and finding a home for everything in our spare bedroom/office a.k.a the dumping ground. I got rid of a TON of paperwork including most of my school stuff. What didn't get purged found a home in other places throughout the house. Some of it moved nicely into our walk-in closet which had a ton of unused space. Due to surgery, DH so was unable to lift but our desk and computer will be moving downstairs to our underused living room space this weekend hopefully.  I also mentioned the temperature issues in this room. DH insulated the garage door and finished caulking the rest of the upstairs windows this month and it made a wee bit of a difference. This weekend will be our final push to get everything ready in there. I should have a post on the room transformation sometime next week.  

+ Finish most of my Christmas shopping and get the boys Santa photos done. I jumped from 25% to 65% done! I have a few small things to grab when I do groceries, etc. tomorrow but for the most part, the last 25% of the gifts are in the form of gift cards which we'll buy when DH gets his annual Christmas "bonus" of PC gift cards from work. Santa photos were a partial fail. N refused to get his hair cut and then refused to see Santa when it came time. We do have a nice pic of B and Santa and are hoping we can get a photo of the both of them with Santa at DH's work x-mas party this weekend. Our decorations are up aside from the tree which we'll pick up and decorate this weekend. Expect a Christmas post sometime this month too - looks like we'll come in at around $500 total for our Christmas spending this year which is less than 1/2 of what we spent last year!

+ Continue with organizing, cleaning, and purging at home. Office was sorted! As were the kitchen cupboards, and the laundry room. B scrubbed the baseboards on the main floor for me with a cloth and soapy water and I even managed to scrub down our walls and cupboards in the kitchen. 

+ Continue to firm up our Disney travel plans! We paid off the rest of our Disney Resort/Park Fees which felt awesome and DH ordered his passport. I have our travel route and stops meticulously planned as well as our days and the attractions we hope to see and places we'll eat but we still need to make reservations and look into Fast Passes. I've also been busy scouring Trip Advisor reviews for reasonably priced places to stay along the way since we are driving down but between mold/mildew and pests (roaches!) this task has taken much longer than anticipated. 

My goals for December are:

+ Finalize Disney travel plans by mid-month. I really don't want to be stressing about this closer to the time we leave. On my list for the next 2 weeks is: purchasing travel insurance, booking hotel night stays for our drive, and making dinner reservations. My sister will be housesitting and watching our dog while we're away so I'll also have to make sure we have some food, etc. here. 

+ Finish Christmas shopping and enjoy Christmas! DH usually grabs the gift cards so I think finishing the shopping will be minimally stressful. I've tried to reduce the number of commitments we have for December so we aren't overwhelmed. This year we decided only to go to DH's work children's x-mas party since last year it was hectic going to both of ours. DH's is also much better - more of a family event with better entertainment, a meal, good gifts and the best part is that it is free! I'm also hoping to send the boys over to my mom's or my sister's place one evening so we can enjoy a quiet night of gift wrapping together. 

+ Carefully monitoring spending. Between Christmas, our vacation, and some unpaid time off for DH, we need to be careful to keep our spending in check and our expenses as low as possible this month. Nothing ruins a good time more than worrying about money.