Merry Christmas, Happy New Year and Harry Potter

I have been a very, very naughty blogger. I have neglected you and I am sorry. Why have I abandoned you? Quite simply the crazy season was crazy and every minute I wasn’t committed to cooking, cleaning, celebrating, catching up or other such activities I was reading the Harry Potter series. I managed to finish the last book before the New Year.

I also realise I seriously owe you some 52 Books in 52 Weeks posts. I will get them done. Basically I am behind because I was reading too much and seriously surpassed my goal.

Let’s talk about resolutions… did you make any? I have done some over the past few years which were more like goals rather than resolutions and I will be keeping some of the ones from last year. So here are my goals for 2016…

• 52 Books in 52 Weeks – yup, here we go again. I can’t tell you how much I enjoy this, but I need to get better with my planning and posting. I was doing well last year until about half way through and then it all fell to pieces LOL.
• Try new things – I have really enjoyed this and haven’t done as much of it in 2015 as I should have so I am bringing this back with a vengeance. I do often tie this in to trying new foods (particularly healthy foods) which is a great thing, but I want to get some more activity things in there too in 2016.
• Healthy lifestyle – This is something that one constantly works towards I think. It is a choice you make each day. Hubby was good enough to gift me the Garmin tracker I asked for so my first goal for 2016 health wise is to keep my steps up each day. I have also been chatting to a friend at work and may have talked her into joining the work gym and being my gym buddy… we’ll see what happens there. Sadly I gym better when my commitment has been made to someone else rather than myself. I am also going to explore more foods, ways of cooking and preparing and organising my meals better.
• Get knocked up – This is probably my biggest goal for 2016. Someway, somehow I want to be knocked up by years end. I don’t think this is too much to ask really is it? This means more to me than pretty much everything apart from my family. Please let this be my year. Fingers crossed.

What goals have you set yourself this year?

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Brand New Year – 2015

Happy New Year guys! I hope you have all had an amazing festive season filled with love, laughter and family time. I’m a little late on the celebratory statements I know, but at least I made it in before February came around hahaha.

I have been so super busy with starting my new job. There is so much to learn and to do, I was recommending changes within my first 4 days of the job. I have found myself in a busy, busy role with daily challenges and I am happy as a pig in mud 😀 The ladies I have working for me are great and so experienced, they are just so great at their roles and know the place inside and out.

So it looks like this year is going to be full on. Like I said last year I have generally moved away from the idea of “New Years resolutions”, but I like the idea of goals, because no one is perfect and there is always room for improvement and adventure (however small they may be). I also think that goals should be fun as well as challenging. Therefore I have spent some time thinking about the kinds of things I wish to accomplish this year, here is my list:

• 52 Books in 52 Weeks – I definitely want to keep this going. I love reading and discovering new worlds and people through stories. Now I am working at a Public Library I have easy, daily access to a plethora of reading fodder 🙂 Like I said guys… pig in mud. I would like to keep challenging myself by reading different things. I would like to try at least one Bibliography this year and a couple of Non-Fiction books. I still did not get to read the Hobbit 😦 It will happen, hopefully this year 🙂
• Try something new – This was another challenge I took on last year in order to break myself out of the routine I was in and I really enjoyed it. Particularly in relation to expanding my knowledge of food and cooking… so much fun! I also did brave things like cut off my long hair which looked pretty good and I now keep it shoulder length 🙂 For the most part trying new things was positive and I think that it was a great goal to set myself so I am going to keep it going for 2015. Trying new things in 2014 also made me better at my job. We had the comment from a lecturer that the Library classes on research strategies were boring so I completely changed them and used pop culture references to demonstrate search strategies and aspects of information literacy. It was so successful that I was invited to present at the Uni conference at the end of last year, it was the first conference I have attended and I presented at it, how awesome is that?! Trying new things can be amazing!
• Health – I am not going to say I am going to lose ‘X’ amount of kilos. I’d like to lose a lot of kilos, but I know that is difficult because of my conditions and at the moment I am eating okay (most days), but I am not really exercising. With this new job I am often stuffed when I get home (plus having to cook dinner etc.) The second week of my new job I also got slapped with a stomache virus, couldn’t take time off… so I didn’t. Come last Saturday I went to bed early Friday night and slept for over 12 hours. I get that these are “excuses” in Personal Trainer terms, but I am working on it.
  I am going to commit to ensuring I am taking my medication. There are so many now that sometimes I lose track. So I am grandma-ing it and have bought myself a pill organiser. I plan to set it up every Sunday night so that my pills for the week are ready to go and all I have to do is take them 🙂
  
  I am also going to try and link ‘trying new things’ into this area. Trying to be active by trying new things or doing things I don’t normally, I think this will make it more interesting for me and therefore easier to accomplish. I will also use it to try new foods that are healthier for me. For instance I tried avacado some time ago (years) and I hated it, this year I am going to try it again.
• House – We were supposed to have our new house completely finished by last year… yeah that didn’t happen. Thanks land development people. So my dream for this year is that we will be moving into our new home around my birthday 🙂 Gotta dream big guys.
  
• Baby – It’s about hope 🙂 This year I have a new job, I am going to have a new house… these things come in 3’s right?! I want to wait a little while until I am settled in my new job before I get all gung ho about trying again. We are still doing the right things on the right days, but we are not measuring and medicating and temperaturing 🙂 Come on baby… this has to be our year… we are waiting to love you 🙂

What goals have you set yourself? Do you have any suggestions for 52 Books in 52 Weeks? Or do you have a low GI recipe to recommend?