My March to-do list, and what I would love to achieve in the month of April.

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I just realized that no matter how crazy and tiresome March was, we did pretty good on our goals. Granted, our to-do list wasn't very long. Here is what it looked like and how it happened:

• Finally, finish the baby blanket. Yes, I did! If you missed it, read more about it  HERE. We have the cutest new little nephew, and I hope he'll enjoy this little gift very soon. 


• Finish two projects around the house and post about them. Well, I kind of achieved this one. We did finish two projects but I only posted about one of them. But I promise, I'll post about the other one very soon (hopefully, tomorrow if I can find time to take pictures).


• Prepare our garden for the season and start planting if weather permits. Again, I can't say we completely achieved it but close enough. I dug it up, and we purchased some compost. I haven't started planting anything yet but peas are on my to-do list in the next couple of days.


• Start on spring cleaning. That's exactly what I did- I started...I barely touched the surface. I washed windows in the kitchen and the living room, and also cleaned the kitchen blinds. But not much else, unfortunately. We were all just too sick to do it. But I'm definitely going to achieve much more in April :)


• Start organizing the garage. Oh yeah, baby! Last Saturday we spent the WHOLE day in the garage (so much fun...). Let me tell you, it was a HOT MESS! As usual, I forgot to take the before pictures. But we cleaned it all. We literally got everything off the floors and outside to the back yard and I cleaned the floors 4 times until I was satisfied:

And all the junk was sitting on our patio. Yeah, I know, we are a bunch of red necks :)

I promise it didn't stay like this long. We worked all day and cleaned our back yard before the sun went down. I'm not going to show any after pictures because it's not all done yet. We organized it but there is an area of the garage that we want to turn into a work area for all the gazillion projects I have in mind, and it's still far from being done. Hopefully, we'll finish it all in April. Oh, we'll see...

And that's how we did on March goals. It wasn't a perfect month by any means but we've done quite a bit. I realized that when I don't overload my list, it becomes much more doable even when life happens.

But I'm ready for April! I've been thinking about joining Carla's savings challenge and finally I decided what I want to do. We will have some expenses this month (like creating a work area in the garage) but I still want to stay within a budget.

So this is my first financial goal - Stay within a budget. It's time, girl! The last couple of months were just too expensive. I hope to finally be able to get back on track. And first and foremost, with our grocery budget. I've been consistently over the first quarter of the year. Granted, our food budget is pretty small. We plan $280/month for our family of 4. This month we will add another $50 for stocking up because we are very low on lots of things. I hope we'll be able to stay within this amount and stock up on everything we need. Plus, I hope to stay on top in the other aspects of our monthly budget and, maybe, even save some money.

Now to the second goal. Last month I made $302 in extra income (mostly from my part-time gig). After some discussion, we decided to use this money for all the projects we are planning for this month (like again, the famous garage). But it's a lot of money for us. So what I'm hoping to do is make $300 again this month to equalize our expenses. It will not be easy but, I think, it's doable.

As for non-money-related goals, we want to achieve this month:

• Finish 4 projects around the house and post about them (haha...I couldn't even do 2 in March!)
• Garden, garden, garden!! I can't wait for some fresh produce (including kale that decided to grow back :)
• Spring clean like a mad woman...It's happening in April, I promise!

Wish me luck! And what's on your to-do list this month? Any great plans?