Monday, November 25, 2013

Gearing up for 2014! Goal #2


The one about cooking.


Let me take you back. Back a year and a half ago, before I got my current job. Back to a time when I worked 7 hours a day, but it was broken up into two shifts. Back when my commute was a 20 minute walk. 

I loved to cook. I'd come home and try new recipes all the time! Bake a whole chicken? Heck yeah! Spend three hours slaving over a pot of homemade chili? No problem! You give me the recipe, I'll cook it. There's nothing I love more than successfully making a meal that I utterly enjoy eating.

Then I got a new job. 

Now I am gone for over 12 hours a day. By the time I get home, all I want to do is crawl under a blanket and have someone feed me. Do I want to cook? Nope. Do I want to order pizza, or Thai food, or burgers? YUP! I've been busy all day. Let someone else do the cooking for me.

I've slowly been working on pulling myself out of this, but the hubby and I still eat out way too much. I cringe thinking of how much money we spend on fast food, when we could be spending it on food to fill our fridge. So, here comes goal #2!

Make a weekly meal plan, and stick to it!

I've gotten really good at actually making the meal plans....it's the following them that's not so easy ;). The hubby is helping me with this because we've decided to restrict our meals out to either Friday or Saturday only (because, you know, time out with friends!) and shop a week at a time. It's funny really. We went from shopping for a month at a time, down to two weeks, down to one. It's so much easier to keep fresh food when you buy it weekly! We'll also be prepping all the veggies we need on weekends, so that way weekdays are just pour and cook! Less prep = less reason for Jessica to be lazy.

I can DO this! I've already stuck to it for two days, which I know is a drop in the bucket, but I'm trying to form the habit so it follows me into the new year. This goes hand in hand with loosing weight because, as we all know, I love fast food but it doesn't love my love handles!

So there you go. Two goals down. *breathes deeply* Let's do this.

Sunday, November 17, 2013

Gearing up for 2014! Goal #1



It's that time of year again! Time for friends, family and WAY too much good food. It's the time where I always look forward, and right now the one thing on my mind is:


Right now is usually about the time I start thinking about what my goals are for the new year. I hardly ever set actual resolutions. They're more like "Things I aspire to do". It gives me a little more wiggle room to change them up if things call for it. After all, a year is actually a pretty long time. You never know what could happen!

Anyway I've figured out my first goal for 2014. Get back into journal writing, and I mean seriously. It used to be that I'd write at least three times a week, if not every day. I can go back right now and read all the things that happened to me in 2002, my last year of high school. Or take a trip down memory lane back to 1998 when I first stepped foot as a Freshman onto campus. I miss that. I miss having a record. Lord knows I don't have the best memory ;).

So my first goal of 2014 is:
Create a yearly journal, and write in it at least 3 times a week.

I'm going to do it on here. I type so much faster than I write, and quite honestly get less frustrated :). There's nothing worse than writing a sentence and then having my grammatically obsessed mind realize I missed a letter. DOH. So yes. To help me achieve this goal, I bought a spiffy book!

Click the picture to go to the book on Amazon!

It has ideas, prompts, quotes, and a whole bunch of other awesome stuff to help you get started off on a writing tangent every day. Maybe I won't make it all 365 days, but I sure aim to try!

I thought it'd be fun to invite some of the rest of you out there to join me! Blogger blogs (like this one) are free, and the book only costs $2.99 on Kindle. I'm starting officially on January 1st, so if you're in let me know! We can link up, and see what question we each answer every day. Trust me, journal writing is tons more fun when you have other people to comment and share with :).

So goal #1 down! Let's see what other ones I come up with before January starts.