Review for July

I know, I know, a few days late but it's the first second I have really had to myself! My birthday turned into a bit of a week long celebration, my best friend planned a surprise dinner at her house Saturday night which the HTC managed to keep secret till we pulled into her driveway, and a few family and friends over Sunday morning for morning tea. And then the Monkey and I are off to this afternoon to coffee with the work girls as well! What a social butterfly huh ;)

Anyway, I think I did pretty well this month in hindsight!!

Completed:
(1) Download twenty new recipes
I tried to get a good range in the end, downloaded a few from my favourite chefs, mostly lovely chocolatety baking stuff from Rachel Allen and Nigella Lawson. But I did also extend my collectiona little and found some slow cooker and budget recipes to try out.

(2) Tidy study
I loved the feeling of accomplishment once this one was done! Of course now I will admit, there are a couple fo things I need to file and tidy again ...what's new! But I am planning on keeping on top of it this time.

(4) Bake cupcakes for my birthday
I am calling this one, even though I didn't officially complete it as written. I did initially want to bake cupcakes, but in the end found a divine chocolate cake recipe from the CSR packet would you believe! So I made that instead. Will post that recipe and what else I have been baking soon.

(5) Fill green bin with weeds
I am chipping away at this, a little bit at a time and am slowly getting there! We have an empty green bin now and gorgeous weather forecast for the next few days, so hopefully I can make another dent in it this week.

(6) Organise and print photos for Monkey's collage
Done, now I just have to put it together, which will be on my August list.

(7) Buy new baking items
Okay, my plan was to take some money from my birthday and splurge on new baking stuff for myself. Realistically I did buy a couple of things but more out of need than anything, considering as I was mixing my 'Chocolate Heaven Cake' I realised that I didn't have a pan anywhere near big enough (That thing was a whopper!!). So I did go out and grab a new pan as well as an oven thermometer and skewers. I was also lucky enough to be given a lot of baking stuff for my birthday which was lovely!

(8) Print and send Monkey's birthday invites
All have been sent out and I have had some wonderful feedback on them, very glad I made the effort.

(9) Organise all digiscrap items
Boring job but thankfully it is finished and everything is so much easier to find now.

(11) Complete 3 digiscrap pages
I am very proud to report I finished six! Of course having a couple of spare days due to holidays and the Monkey being at child care helped. It does feel like I did them all at once though and that I haven't done any digiscrapping in a couple of weeks due to all of our germy goodness, so I hope I can grab some time to play around again this month.

(12) Bake two items
Well at final count I think I baked seven. A few family and friends wanted to catch up for my birthday so I decided on doing a morning tea so I could have fun baking before hand. I made Pizza Scrolls, Cheesy Twists, Almond Biscotti, Chocolate Heaven Cake and Scones, as well as the two less successful batches of cookies I made earlier in the month. I will do a big recipe update soon to catch up.

(13) Read a book
I finished the second in the 'Twilight' series called 'New Moon'. I find these books interesting, there are parts that really interest me, but also times that I find them less convincing. Even so they are a fun read. I meant to read 'The 10 o'clock question', a book that the HTC bought as well but didn't get a chance.

(14) Organise recipes
After spending forever trying to find a new and shiny way to record them ont he computer, I gave up and reverted to a ring binder which works just prefectly, thankyou very much!

(15) Complete two Jessica Sprague tutorials
I am a little disappointed as in hindsight there aren't as many tutorials as I thought to work my way through, but I did complete another couple of them. Nevermind, now I have my gorgeous PhotoShop shiny I am going to sign up to one of her online courses soon - I can't wait!


Not Completed:
(3) See a movie
I did have two offers from friends to go and see 'My Sister's Keeper' which is one of my favourite books, but in thinking on it I couldn't bare to do it. It's funny how stories such as this suddenly seem so much more heartbreaking once you have a child of your own. That along with my gorgeous MIL going through chemo at the moment, I just didn't think it was something I could face right now.

(10) Go out to a nice dinner for my birthday
Unfortunately we didn't have the dollars or time for this, with us all being sick and the budget particularly tight at the moment. But we did have a gorgeous dinner at my best friend's house which could almost be counted I think, even if I didn't organise or plan it?!



So in summary, my SP score went from 6.5/ 9 last month to 13/15 this month - yay for me! It does still feel like I have been neglecting it a bit though due to us all being sick, lucky I got a heap done at the start of the month because otherwise my score would have been zero :)