Week 4: Craft for Charity

Today I spent the entire day crafting with my fun FUN coworkers. I started & almost finished a scrapbook that I'm going to be donating for an auction for http://www.ohiopugrescue.com/. This is a wonderful organization that helps lots of sweet pugs that would otherwise not lead such happy lives and I'm happy to be able to donate 2 little scrapbooks to their silent auction next Saturday. I'm so curious to see how much these books will auction for- that will give me some idea if it would be worth trying them in a craft show later this year! Here's the finished project :)

Week 3: Share the love

Nearly every year (yep, I'm a 29 year old woman) I think, "it would be really fun to pass out valentines." As a youngin' I LOVED picking out, filling out and passing out the perfect valentines. But then Valentine's Day passes and I think..."hmm...Easter cards?"

This year I decided to indeed make valentines for all my female coworker friends at work. They were happy to receive them and said lots of nice things to me about them. So, I, too, felt the love.

One of them thanked me and I told her it was important to me to acknowledge the people I love having in my life. To me, that's a really, really true fact that I think I too-often forget. I hope that these little cards accomplished that to these ladies that I cherish, and I hope that I continue to find ways to show it to the special people I'm lucky to have in my life.

(Photo is coming when my phone decides to play nice!)

Week 2: Learn Something From a Book

Ok, so I've done that before.

I've read lots of books. (Or, at least, the first bit of pages in lots of books).

But not this one, so this totally counts.

(And I finished just in time for it to work for my week 2 accomplishment!)

I really randomly found this book in the library and I learned a lot from it. The book is about one family's mission to live off the land for a year- and they do it in a super-inspring way. I have the blackest of thumbs but going into every spring, I get excited about the possibility of TRYING to grow my own food. I think it would be beyond cool to be able to feed my family food that I grew with my own physical labor. But, I always manage to give up and kill things before that ever becomes a reality. This book provided a lot of insight about the importance of being able to do what I've been trying to do for years. It's no secret that we rely off everyone else for every meal we eat. I really like the idea of being able to do it myself and finally being successful in that.

That being said, I'm going to give a garden a go again this year. This book also gave me the idea to look for a gardening guru that I can learn from. I didn't grow up in a family that gardened. While my Mom was superthrifty, she also worked 2 jobs. My dad worked 12 hour shifts 6 days a week. So, when I decided a few years ago to try gardening (and the several years that I've tried since), I end up disappointed. I want to work closely with someone who knows what they are doing so maybe, just maybe, gardening won't feel like such a foreign subject to me.

So, this book did good things for me. It challenged me in a lot of ways and made me think about things I would rather not (specifically, corporate farming and what that really looks like). While I believe that I'll never become 100% organic in the truest sense of the word, I feel inspired to give a few things a try. I'll try out farmer's markets and try, again, to grow tomatoes.

The book's website is:

http://www.animalvegetablemiracle.com/

You may recognize the author, Barbara Kingsolver- she also wrote The Poisonwood Bible (which will likely be next on my reading list).

Week 1: Part 2 (Grateful)

In addition to doing those random things I've never done and telling the story- I also want to attempt to track my feelings over the year and remember the small little things thrown my way that fill up my heart. So, here's a little mush & gush about just how special my husband, Scott of http://www.scottlivesay.com/, made me feel today:



I really, really love that Scott spent a lot of time creating something as weird, yet awesome, as this card. There is no back story, no inside joke, just strangeness for humor's sake. He had this waiting for me along with beautiful flowers when I woke up this morning.



There really, just really, aren't any words. But, we do weird things all the time to make each other laugh and this totally fits that bill. Thanks, sweets, for being weird.

And here are the flowers:

Tonight he took me to dinner at Carraba's (big, giant, sweet sacrifice on his part- he is not a big fan of italian food but he knows that I am) and to buy a jacket of wanted for...years.

Today was a great day. I really appreciate all the love I felt from so many people that went out of their way to wish me a happy birthday. I'm looking forward to the next 364 of my 29th year.

Week 1: Make Chicken Curry

For the first time in my life, I made chicken curry! I didn't even know I liked it until a few months ago. Since then, I've been craving it. I decided to make some for my birthday lunch. It wasn't nearly as scary as I thought it might be (recipes can be kind of intimidating, right?). It turned out just like I thought it should, which made me a proud girl. Here's the photo evidence:

Unfortunately, even though I really really liked it...after about 4 bites in, I couldn't eat anymore. I was just 100% not feeling it. That was a sad time. I ate a bag of caramel corn for the rest of my lunch.

But, that's one down, folks.