Why small success? Because that’s the only kind I know! Even the big ones come in small steps. Here’s my paltry offering for the week:
- Reduced the email clutter – I got our email inbox on our home computer down from more than 11,000 emails to under 400. You read that right – 11,000! And that’s an inbox I tended to daily, deleting spam and various other messages and filtering others into appropriate folders. It took a couple of weeks of daily devotion, but I did it. I plan to maintain the comparatively low number of messages by regularly purging.
Creeping up again. Oh, no! - The semiannual clothes switch – I’m more than halfway through switching the kids’ clothes to the appropriate season and size. I still have to do inventory and make a shopping list for the older kids, but the two youngest now have access to long pants and long sleeves. Which means, of course, the day after said switch, Indian Summer arrived, and temperatures soared into the 80s. Regardless of temperature, the switch did solve the five-year-old’s chronic case of plumber’s crack.
Size 4T girl’s clothes, ready for storage. - Creating some consistency in my prayer life – I’ve been struggling with maintaining any type of interior prayer life for years. Outside of prayers before meals and family prayers at bedtime, I’ve been hit or miss with any type of prayer other than the spontaneous-type that arises according to circumstances. However, with my Pray: the Catholic novena app, the family rosary that came home from school, a concerted effort to pray The Morning Offering, and Divine Mercy for Moms, I feel more connected to God and my faith than I have for a long time.
- Delicious dinner – I’ve been flying by the seat of my pants a lot for dinner lately, which doesn’t always work out so well. Last night’s dinner, however, was delicious, if I do say so myself. Sweet Italian sausage, baked acorn squash, broccoli and cauliflower straight from the farm, and fresh applesauce from the orchard. It tasted like fall!
Photo by genniebee512 (Pixabay) - Book launch – I successfully got my new book, Ornamental Graces, launched. This counts as a large success, but it was made up of many small ones: navigating formatting, cover design, and Createspace and Kindle Direct Publishing for the first time along with many, many other tasks.
That’s all I’ve got. Celebrate more small successes over at CatholicMom.com.
Have you had any small successes this week?
Congratulations on the book.
Thanks so much! It’s such a relief to have it done and out there.
That’s a lot of success! I want to know your inbox secret…mine’s a mess (again). And the acorn squash sounds yummy. I’m the only one here who would eat it. Sigh…
No secret. There was just a lot of OLD stuff in there that was no longer relevant to our lives. It’s creeping up again so quickly, I think I may have to make a habit of cleaning things out at the end of each month. Usually only 1/2 of us will eat squash. This time, I let my daughter add the brown sugar. There was a tablespoon of butter and 1/8 cup of brown sugar in each half. Needless to say, ALL the kids loved it!
I only get acorn squash on Thanksgiving, at my sister’s. She is an amazing cook and makes the Best Thanksgiving Dinner Ever. Also, she got her squash recipe from the same cookbook your daughter uses.
(Does squash reheat well? Because I want squash now, and I’d be buying a whole one just for me. Or what could I do with the other half?)
I think if you got a single acorn squash (on the small side), you could bake it a half at a time. Just put the unused half in the fridge in foil or plastic wrap until you’re ready to use it. That said, I’ve reheated it in the oven, and if you haven’t overcooked it the first time around, it should be good. You just have to watch it doesn’t get too mushy.