Jan 8, 2016

Phone Photo Dump: Dec. 31 - Jan. 6


Growing up I was always the one with my camera out, snapping away. Didn't matter where we were or what we were doing, I always had my camera. My friends used to call me The Paparazzi and J's uncle used to call me Flash. I got away from taking pictures the past few years, but since I upgraded my Blackberry for an iPhone I've been snapping away again, only now all my pictures are on my phone.

One of my favourite parts of blogging is seeing a little bit of other blogger's lives. I figure by sharing the photos from my week (or at least a handful of them) I can share a little piece of my life more easily. These aren't the only pictures I took this week, but they're definitely some of my favourites.

1 & 2 were taken New Year's Eve. We decided to use my new selfie stick to try and take a "family" picture. Daisy (our beagle) and Sydney (our cat) weren't particularly cooperative. Daisy doesn't usually get that close to Sydney, we think she's actually a little afraid of her.

3 & 4 are what most of the pictures I take every week look like. Daisy likes to sleep, and she's pretty adorable when she's all curled up on the couch with us. Every time I take a picture of her like this J laughs and makes a comment about how I must already have enough pictures of Daisy sleeping. But can there ever really be too many pictures of an adorable beagle flaked out?

5 isn't exactly a picture obviously, it's a text message I took a screen shot of. It's from one of my staff. I know you can't read it but he basically thanked me for being a lovely person to work for. Most of my staff are university students and I always try to be accommodating to their changing availabilities and flexible with time-off and shift-switch requests. Dorky, I know, but it's nice to know they appreciate it. (I took the screen shot to text to my husband because I was that excited. DORK.)

6 - 9 were taken on New Year's Day at my parents' place. We had dinner there with my brother and his fiance. Two of the cats (the boys) stayed pretty close to dad while he was cutting the ham. My brother brought his BB8 over to show off, and Maggie (mom and dad's third cat) wasn't quite sure what to make of it. My brother was also in charge of dessert, he and his fiance worked together and made a delicious carrot cake from scratch. He enjoys the baking and she enjoys the decorating so they're a good match.

11 - 13 were taken on my father-in-law's 60th birthday on Sunday. 11 & 12 were taken at the church (he's our pastor) during the party we threw for him and 13 is of him opening his new iPad from my mother-in-law and all his kids. (J is one of six kids so if they all go in together getting big ticket gifts is do-able.)

14 is probably my favourite picture from the week. Daisy is totally a daddy's girl - she loves getting as close to J as she possibly can!


Happy Friday, enjoy your weekend!

xo,
Sara

Jan 7, 2016

Monthly Goals

I love the idea of setting goals each month, but I've never been super great at actually achieving them. I'm going to try and take it a little easy on myself this year, and only set three goals each month. One will be a blog goal and two will be goals that relate to one of my 2016 resolutions. I'm cautiously optimistic that tying my monthly goals to my resolutions will make me more inclined to work on them. And hopefully by the end of this year I won't be writing a post and how (once again) I sucked at keeping my new year's resolutions. 

January Goals

1. Try out at least three new recipes. 
(One using the veggie spiralizer I got for Christmas.)

2. Completely organize and de-clutter at least one 
of the following rooms: office, laundry room, 
rec room, master bedroom, spare bedroom. 

3. Blog at least 10 times. 

Pretty straightforward and hopefully pretty achievable. I'd like to get more than one room cleaned and organized but at the same time I want to be thorough so I think I'll aim for one a month to start, I'd also like to blog at least three times a week, but I also don't want to be posting just to post. Plus, I think I'll be more motivated next month if I achieve all my goals this month. I'll try to gradually make them a little more work, but this is as tough as it's going to get for now.

Wish me luck!

xo,
Sara

Jan 4, 2016

Hello 2016! (My Resolutions)

While I was getting ready to write this entry, I decided to look back and see if I had blogged about my new year's resolutions last year. I did. And they were great. No, really. Completely in line with what I had planned for this year, but written much better. Yay last-year me! ;-)

But at the same time, it's not really a "yay" moment. Because if those were my resolutions last year, why are they my resolutions again this year? Apparently it's because I suck at keeping my new year's resolutions.

I thought about calling them something different. About doing a whole post on the difference between resolutions and goals. And then making goals instead of resolutions because maybe resolutions are just too much pressure. But that's a little ridiculous.

So, here are my resolutions for 2015. I mean 2016!

1) Be healthier
  • I want to eat better. I need to cook more meals at home, and I need to try to use healthier ingredients.
  • I want to drink more water. And not just drink more water, but less diet coke (sob) and less energy drinks. 
  • I want to move more. One ringette game a week does not do it. When the time comes I want to be able to chase my kids and play games with them without feeling like I'm going to pass out. 
2) Be organized
  • I want to do planning. I want to have meal plans and I want to have a plan for this space. At work I am a super planner, everything figured out down to the last detail, but at home I'm pretty much completely disorganized.
  • I want to keep my house clean & organized. If company were to show up unexpectedly I would be mortified. We're not dirty people or anything, but things are cluttered and things rarely go back where they belong when we're done with them. (True confession time, we basically live out of laundry baskets instead of putting our clean clothes in our drawers. So bad.)
3) Be disconnected
  • I want to step away from my phone more. I want to step away from the TV more. I want to step away from social media more. (That last one might seem odd considering I'm also wanting to blog more, but I waste so much time being unproductive when I'm online. I could spend half the amount of time and still get posts done and leave comments.) 
  • I want to read more, and I want to "wife" more. I want to spend quality time with my husband. I want to play games, I want to chat, I want to go for walks.

I guess my 2016 resolutions aren't exactly the same as my 2015 resolutions, but they're definitely close. Here's hoping I do a better job with them this year!

Do you make resolutions? Do you stick to them or do you find yourself making the same ones every year? (Or is that just me?)

Happy New Year!

xo,
Sara