Sunday, January 19, 2014

Adventures in Cooking


One of my New Year's resolutions was to cook more, and so far this month I've made veggie burgers and oven-baked carrot fries, sweet potato black bean "boats" (above), grilled cheese sandwiches with tomato, basil, and mozzarella cheese (below), homemade pesto, and of course our old stand-by of pita pizzas! The results have been mixed (the sweet potato boats were delicious, the pesto not so much...) but I'm proud of myself for trying. I have some vegan jambalaya in the crock-pot for dinner tonight, so hopefully that comes out okay! Hoping to try black bean burgers and mashed chickpea salad sandwiches this week too, fingers crossed that they're tasty!




Wednesday, January 8, 2014

I don't know about you, 2014...


Happy Wednesday! I have three new students since returning to work on the 2nd, all of whom aren't thrilled to be there. I haven't exercised once (unless you count lifting toddlers and speed walking through a mall to meet my husband exercising), and I just ate pizza, Skittles, and ice cream for dinner. Whoops! In my defense, the first full work week after short vacation-ish weeks is the worrrrrst and I have an insane headache, so I'm doing okay despite that.

I started the book Where'd You Go, Bernadette by Maria Semple late last week and finished it while my pizza was cooking (at least I MADE my pizza) and I loved it. The book, not the pizza. Okay, the pizza too.  Some of it hit kinda close to home, and it was funny and heartbreaking and I couldn't put it down.

In other bonehead news, I managed to break my second Canon camera in two years. It's at the shop right now, hopefully getting fixed forever. I got the photography book by the gals at A Beautiful Mess for Christmas and was all excited to try out some of their projects when I realized my camera had a big ol' dent and wouldn't turn on. Wonderful. Fingers crossed that it doesn't cost me too much!

And I cut my hair off even shorter. Woo to 2014! I need to plan some fun stuff to look forward to this month...the ballet, perhaps? Clothes shopping? General silliness with my loved ones? Sounds good!


Wednesday, January 1, 2014

2014 is Here!


Hellooo 2014!

Another year has come, and I have no idea what's in store for me. Last year I predicted less drama (which didn't happen, unfortunately) and I made some goals that I didn't completely achieve. So I'm going to try and let go of the things I can't control and take charge of the things I can.

Let's look at last year... I wanted to use my kitchen gadgets, and the only one I ended up using was my doughnut maker, so it wasn't a total fail! I wanted to learn the end credits to ET on the piano, and I know about half of it. I wanted to have more theme parties, which were a resounding SUCCESS! I wanted to knock off some house projects, and I did in fact buy patio furniture and curtains. Now to actually use that patio furniture! And I wanted to exercise and eat healthier. I did the latter more successfully than the former. I just really hate exercising. Sigh!

Let's take a stab at this year!

Stop reading comments and message boards. Not entirely, mind you...the comments on some of the lifestyle blogs I read and Tom and Lorenzo, for example, are wonderful and hilarious and add to the conversation. I'm talking about Buzzfeed, YouTube, news articles, stuff like that. Those comments are some of the most hateful and ignorant things I've ever read. Who needs that?

More parties! I love throwing parties. Even though I end up spending too much money on them, and stress out that nobody will come, I really do love planning them. I almost always have a good time, and I can't seem to go more than a couple months without getting an itch to throw another! This year I definitely want to have another 90s party, this time with karaoke! And Craig and I will be celebrating our 5th wedding anniversary so I want to celebrate that too. Basically, I am Party Cat.


Buy clothes and shoes that actually fit and are comfortable! I realized earlier this year that I tend to buy clothes with my high school self in mind. Now, I don't actually dress like that anymore (side note: my 10 year high school reunion is this year! Good lord!) and I'm less interested in being tortured to look cute (I'm looking at you, high heels!). So this year I'm all about versatile chic basics and beautiful FLAT shoes! Time for a shopping spree!

Cook! Yeah yeah I want to eat healthier, but a lot of that will come, I think, from cooking more of my own food. I just got a beautiful vegetarian cookbook (three years vegetarian in April!) and I'm excited to try out some of the recipes.

Do something different and physical. Get your mind out of the gutter! I'm not going to make any concrete exercise goals, because I always fail at those, but I want to try something different and exercise related at least once! In 2013 I went ice skating for about a half hour, ha! It's a start! I'm thinking trying tennis this year, or at least more badminton!

Ignore everybody. I get too neurotic about snobs and other people changing my opinion about things, or at least making me question my own thoughts about things. I want to own my opinions, and have the confidence to express them!

Disconnect and reconnect. By this, I mean stop compulsively looking at Facebook and reconnect face to face with friends I haven't seen in a while. I see them at parties, yes, but I mean shopping, lunch, whatever. And I need to PUT the phone down when I'm with other people. Conversations! Memories! Real life, dammit! 

Say yes! No explanation necessary!


Let's see what a hot mess 2014 turns out to be! Cheers!