Counting down to the Re-Launch!

A little over a month ago my blog entered modus hiatus (aka I stopped blogging). Because I'm not perfect, I realized I needed a break -- a time of re-evaluation if you will. Also, in a moment of insanity, my fellow coworker, foodie and bloggin' buddy and I signed up to take an Abnormal Psychology class. We were out of our minds. Perhaps, our psyche was in a state of abnormality?

Anyway, for the last month I've been plotting the re-launch of my blog (this is not it). I've got ideas people. I've got direction. But until the monumental re-launch takes place, I'd like to revisit this past year. A year in review if you will. Today, I want to go over last years goal, and tomorrow I'll begin the "Best of" series. Are you totally psyched?

Goals for the 25th Year of My Life

On my 25th birthday last year (May 4, 2009), I set some goals for myself. Below are the goals I set and... what I really accomplished.

-Sing karaoke with my best friend, Michelle Check! Seattle girl's trip of 2009 (Note the date in that picture is wrong. Stupid timer).

-Re decorate my bathroom.

Not check. But I bought a new house and have so far put up a new ceiling, painted the living room and bedroom and now the exterior is being done. Does that count?

-Lose at least 10 pounds.

Not check. But I trained for and ran a 5k. Below is my first race SWAG.

-Smile more. Totally check. My new coworkers make me laugh on a daily basis.

-Publish a few more articles. Kind of check. I published my first full feature article in Just Between Us Magazine. Check out Is Chick Lit Hurting your Marriage? But I haven't really done anything since.

26th Birthday Goals

-Train for a 10k
-Study for and pass the test to be a Certified Group Exercise Teacher
-Increase my Yoga practice for entrance into Yoga Teacher training
-Plan my meals and my days
-Stay connected with friends and family
-Write and publish a couple more articles
-Come out of the blogging closet (yes, only a select few of my friends and family know I'm a blogger)

I feel like those are reasonable goals. That's it folks. This is me. Take me or leave me.

Tomorrow's blog: The Best of Sandwiches. I'll be revisiting the best sandwiches I made since this blog's conception.

See you tomorrow. Kiss Kiss!

-Shawnee

I'm alive!

This past week has been a combination of spending all free hours at my new house trying to get things move-in ready and me battling a really bad cold/flu.

I have to say I haven't been eating very well or exercising. :( I feel really icky about that. Though, I have been following through with my one goal: wake up early. This is my last week of just focusing on that goal (see my post on Nov. 25

I was originally going to make my goal 5:30 a.m. , but I realized there is really no point to it. I am at 5:50 right now. That will give me time for at least a half hour of exercise and time to eat breakfast, have a short quiet time with God and then an hour to get ready. My reward for following through with this goal is a subscription to Real Simple Magazine. I am pretty proud of myself. At the end of this week, I'll have been following through with waking up early for four weeks!

My next goal is to spend quiet time with God in the mornings. I am trying to build up to 10 minutes. I'll start with five minutes and then move up to ten the next week. After that goal is completed I'll move on to either cleaning daily or exercising daily. I'm leaning towards exercise. It is going to be my most difficult goal.

The reason I am breaking down the goals like this and only focusing on one at a time is because I really want to live a healthy lifestyle. I want all of those things I listed (see Nov. 25) to be things that I do daily. I want them to be habits for the rest of my life. Nothing has worked so far, so I figured maybe taking it slow is the best approach.

Well, my posting will probably be off and on for the next few weeks due to the holidays and my house taking up a lot of work. I have a book review/giveaway coming up here really soon. I'll post it on Friday night.

Get off your butt and eat some Stewi

You'll have to read the whole blog to get the title...sorry. LOL

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving! I am so excited to see my family and eat good food. Josh and I may just be buying a flat-screen tomorrow too. We decided the deals on Black Friday for the tvs are really not that good. *shrugs*

I didn't photo-document everything I ate yesterday, but here's the gist of it...

Breakfast: Medium caramel latte with nonfat milk, an apple and an orange.

Lunch: 1 cup steamed rice and steamed veggies with a little teriyaki-ginger sauce.

snack: 2 pineapple spears and 1 serving of blue diamond almonds

Dinner: (see below)
I had one whole wheat La Tortarilla Factoria tortilla with cheese, salsa and a chopped up veggie burger and a side of sour cream.

Evening snack: I was still hungry so I ate 2 WASA crackers with cream cheese and chicken broth.

Today...

Breakfast:
Pumpkin pancakes! That's right. You heard me. This recipe was deliciouso and oh so filling. I switched out the white flour for whole wheat. White flour burns off too much. I topped them with peaches, a few walnuts and light syrup!
Thanks Martha Stewart for the recipe. :) Click here to give it a try.

Lunch: 1 whole wheat Thomas English Muffin with cream cheese, salsa and cheddar cheese, lightly melted. YUMO! This temporarily satisfied my salty-starch craving.
Dinner: I shall call it Chili Stew. I tried to come up with something more clever, but the alternatives were Stile or Chew or maybe even Chew-e. LOL Yeah this is one of my odd ball creations.
I threw into the pot:

• left over frozen bean soup (1 cup or so)
• left over frozen sloppy joes (1 cup or so) Made with 7% fat beef
• 3/4 cup green beans
• 1 small can of portabella mushrooms
• 1/4 cup or less of corn
• 1/4 cup of salsa
• a dash of chili powder and garlic powder

This creation came out surprisingly really well. It tasted really close to chili, but added the big chunks of veggies like I like in stew. I ate this with a flour tortilla on the side (I ran out of La Tortarilla tortillas)

Get Off Your Butt: My revelation:

If you're one of my regular blog readers (I think I have 2), you may have found my goals, hopes, aspirations and the outcomes of them to be rather flakey. I agree. It seems like I can't stick to anything. I can't.

*sighs* I googled "How to get motivated." I periotically browse the internet for solutions to my life's problems. I found an article titled: "Get Off Your butt: 16 Ways to Get Motivated When You're in a Slump."

I am really lazy. I see patterns of behavior starting to emerge from myself that are a mirror image of my father. He's a "when I get around to it" type of guy. Getting around to it rarely comes often. I can't live my life like that.

Anyway, the author of the article discussed how people who set goals for themselves set too many at one time. That was the biggest thing that stuck out to me. I listed out all of the changes I would like to see happen in my life. There are 8 daily habits that I have been working on impleminting in my life:

• Wake up earlier (at 5:30 a.m.)
• Spend quiet time with God (at least 10 min daily)
• Clean daily
• Exercise daily (1 hour)
• Cook dinner and prepare lunch daily
• Cut calories down to 1300
• Incorporate yoga (at least 10 minutes daily)
• Write my book (1 hour daily)

Each one of these daily habits should individually be goals. The author of the article talks about taking each goal one day and week at a time and breaking them down into obtainable goals.

For example waking up earlier: I'll start with 6:10 a.m and then each week I'll set the alarm back 10 minutes until I am at 5:30 a.m.

The thing is I can only work on one goal at a time. I broke down each of these goals week by week and getting through this would take me until July. But I am excited about it.

The big picture goals in my life are: lose weight, write a book, travel and start a family. I think that if I start working on these goals, I'll get there. I'll still be exercising and cleaning, but my focus for the first five weeks will be waking early, so I have some more time to do those things. If I lose weight in the process, awesome! If not, that's ok too. I want more than anything to be healthy and happy. I think this is a way to achieve it. I am going to give it a try. I'll start waking up at 6:10 on Monday morning. Until then I am going to work on waking up at 6:30 a.m.

Right now, I am going to have some dessert: vanilla yogurt and granola.

HAPPY THANKSGIVING EVERYONE!