Are You a Morning Person?

Source

 One of the blogs that I subscribe to is Money Saving Mom. If you are looking to save money (and who isn't!?!) I highly suggest Crystals' site. She has everything from weekly store deals (with coupon matchups), frugal (and yummy) recipes (a lot of which are freezer friendly!), lots of info about freebies you can sign up for and tons of other things! Her site is super inspiring for those who want to learn how to spend less and save more. She has an ongoing series called "We Paid Cash" that will blow your socks off! To see the different ways that people have set aside money to pay cash for big items (everything from a new TV to cars and even houses!!) is really inspiring. She is a big fan of Dave Ramsey and I got turned on to him and his plan through her site. But Crystal isn't just an amazing home economist. She is inspiring in other ways too. She is the uber-queen of goal setting. She sets yearly, monthly, weekly, even daily goals. Oh to be that person! I really would love it! And she's not neurotic about it! One of Crystal's biggest things that she talks about is making sure that you are giving yourself grace in your life. We often extend grace to others very easily, but boy are we hard on ourselves! She sets her goals and if she doesn't cross everything off that's OK! She lets it go and/or carries it over to the next day/week/month and that's that! Oh to be that person! lol

A while ago Crystal had a Make the Most of Your Mornings Challenge. I didn't participate at the time because, well, I had a newborn! And was averaging 2 hours of uninterrupted sleep at a time. I was tired in the morning and the last thing I wanted to do was to try and be productive!! But, now our 7 month old is regularly sleeping through the night and as of next week Steven is off his crazy 2nd shift and back to 8:30 to 5 (YIP YIP YIPPY!!!). That means a few things for me, but the biggest is this: the hours I spend in the morning checking email, emptying my Google Reader, checking on Facebook, and maybe "swinging" by Pinterest (yeah, we all know how well that works out! lol) while lingering over my coffee have to end. Right now I tend to take my time in the mornings because I know that Steven won't be home til almost 9 most nights. (plus if he's still in bed or has gotten up earlier and then gone to take a nap with the baby before he has to leave, I don't feel like I really need to start my day yet.) This means that I have all afternoon and evening to get things done. With him being off at 5 I'll need my to do list to be finished by early afternoon so I can have dinner started. (Right now we have dinner, I clean up and then I do some more stuff before it's time to get the kids ready for bed. Then I either climb in bed too or do some more stuff til he gets home.)

What I have realized is that I don't make the most of my mornings. In fact, the morning hours are completely wasted around here! And a big reason is me just being lazy! I also hate mornings! Always have! But I need to learn to embrace the morning, make the most of it and get things done! So even though Crystal's challenge is officially over I'm going to take it for myself. If you want to join in follow the link above. It will take you to the main page of the challenge that has each day linked to it. I'll post here each week to let you know how things went for me (It's a 3 week challenge) Day 1 on her plan really just started with making the commitment to change your mornings and recognize what makes them unproductive. I've done that so check! lol Day 2 is realizing that your morning starts the night before so I'll be looking at my evening tonight and see what I can do to make my mornings run smoother.

How do you do with mornings? Are you a total morning person who greets the day and starts off running? Or are you an evening person who'd rather do your work later on after kids are in bed while watching your favorite shows? Or do you spread everything out equally all day long? I'd love to know!