My Only Goal For The Year: Enjoy Life.

This year I want to do so many new things. I equate my miscarriage to a near death experience in the sense that I'm so much more appreciative of life and really want to do as many things that I love as I possibly can before I have to tone things down a little to focus on another human being. We've decided to hold off on having a baby until I'm done with nursing school and in a way it's a relief to have more time to 'grow up' and explore life. So in the meantime, here are my plans.

I want to go on a long backpacking trip, consisting of multiple nights. I want to rock climb, both indoors and outdoors. I want to wash my laundry once a week so I can stop stressing about it piling up. I want to visit friends who live in other states. I want to spend more time outdoors than indoors. I want to travel, even if just for a weekend, and see new places. I want to learn so much in school and try and enjoy every second of it. I want to mountain bike in many cities all across the country (but most likely in the Southwest). I want to eat so much food that it nourishes my soul. I want to go camping as many nights as possible. I want to grow our business. I want to get a tattoo or three. I want to swim in the ocean. I want to go on dates with my husband. I want to kayak. I want to pick fruit in an orchard. I want to skydive. I want to drink more water than anything else. I want to read books that are so good I need to make space for them on my bookshelf. I want to spend more time with friends and family. I want to take beautiful pictures and print them out. I want to take my dog in the woods more. I want to simplify my home and get rid of things. I want to meditate more. I want to stay healthy. I want to enjoy life.

Life is an amazing thing and there are so many things you can do with it, so this year I'm putting more effort into simply enjoying it.

Spring Bucket List

Sara does a mini bucket list every once in a while, and I love the idea! It's nice to have a little to-do list of things I want to do so I can print it out to have a constant reminder so on the days I have nothing to do, I can take a look and pick something. Here is mine, and be sure to go check out Sara's bucket list!

I plan on printing this put and putting it on my bulletin board in the kitchen.

Do you have a bucket list for spring or things you want to do?

Out with the old...

...and in with the new!

As you may have noticed, I've got a new header and color scheme. Like it? I love it. I've also updated my 'About Me' tab at the top and will very soon have a post for my 'Tattoos' section that will have pictures of all my tattoos in one place. I'm sure you're just dying to see it. Also, the 'Current Goals' section will be updated to reflect my new goals!

I also added a bit of pink to my hair because apparently I like to pretend I'm 12 years old and not a married and full-grown adult who plans on being a doctor. It's the little things in life.

(To read more details from my goals last year, click here.)

Take a picture of all the food I waste. Fail 

Ya, that did not happen. But, the good news is there was rarely any food that was wasted! Vince and I were both great about eating everything, and once we started juicing, anything that was close to going bad we'd just juice. 

Eat more whole and healthy foods. Success

Blew this out of the water. I've somewhat easily transitioned from a gluten free diet to a mostly paleo diet. (More on that below) This means the only things I eat are whole and healthy foods! 

Join/visit the local CSA. Success 

I joined the CSA for a few months, but wasn't completely happy with it. The good news is that I'm no longer curious about it, I learned from it, and I am not intimidated by it.

Sign up with Bountiful Baskets again. Success

We did! We got the organic basket for the first time. While we really liked it and thought it was great for the price, it hasn't been working out. The pickup times aren't the greatest for us and now that there is a new natural grocery store in town, I can find things for a pretty equal price. Plus, I seemed to get a lot of lettuce, which I don't like. Spinch luvver 4 lyf!

Eat less meat. Success and Fail 

Well, at the beginning of the year we ate less meat, but towards the end of the year we transitioned to a paleo lifestyle which includes tons of meat! We now only eat free-range, grass fed, and organic meat, however.

Four out of five goals completed? Amazing.

Read 48 books. I read 48 books this year and I think I can do it again!

Have a baby. 'Nuff said.

Write one sentence in a notebook every day. It can be anything. A quote, what I did that day, anything. Vince plans on doing this as well so we can review it at the end of the year. 

Do as much volunteering as I can. I have a lot of awesome things planned like some health services opportunities, the ER, and some science research. And maybe a river trip where I count animals and/or plants so it's considered volunteering. 

Apply for 15+ different scholarships. I want free money.

Be completely dairy free for one month. I am already 97% paleo, but until last week I've had organic milk in my diet. I can't seem to not drink a glass of milk multiple times a day! I've slowly weened myself off it the past week and I plan on not having any for the month. I might add it back after that time to see how I feel, but if I don't crave it, I won't do it. 

Eat what feels right. So far I've been extremely happy with the paleo lifestyle, and I plan to continue it. I do, however, want to give myself room to change. If I change my mind over the year and want to switch foods I'm eating, I'm allowed to! I just need to listen to my body so I know what it actually needs, while still ignoring the craving to eat 5,000 cherry Sour Patch Kids.

GoodReads

At the beginning of the year, I made a goal on GoodReads that I would read 48 books.

Hold up, have you heard of GoodReads? It's a place where you can write/read book reviews, have lists of books you've read/want to read, etc. It's amazing. The thing I love the most was a little widget where you could set a goal for how many books you wanted to read in a year, and you would update it with the books you read as you go.

Ok, so back to where I was. I dedicated myself to 48 books, which is one every week and a half. I don't know what I was thinking, considering I'm in school full-time during spring and fall and also technically full time during the summer, in addition to working part time and having a husband and dog I like to see. I think at the end of last year I was reading a lot of YA books since I was still working at the library and could check them out everyday, but I've kind of moved past the YA books into adult books and I've realized they are the size difference of about 200 pages and the words are in a smaller print with bigger pages. That's a lot of extra reading.

I've constantly been behind this entire year, but am getting a little closer to catching up. I only have 14 books left to read before the end of the year! Ya, I know, that's still kind of a lot, about 2 books a week. I really don't like not completing a goal, so I totally plan on trying to do this, despite Vince's insistence over the past few days to put down my damn book/Kindle and talk to him.

I have a few books on my list that I am excited about, but I still need your help. Give me some titles that you really love that are a quick read! Not necessarily short, but good enough that you just fly through it. I don't like extreme sic-fi books or romance novels, but pretty much everything else.

To give you some variety of what I've read, in the past couple months I've read:
Fifty Shades of Grey: Book One of the Fifty Shades Trilogy*////Fifty Shades Darker: Book Two of the Fifty Shades Trilogy
The Procedure (Free download right now!)
What Alice Forgot
Not My Daughter

(To see the rest of what I've read this year, click here. You may have to add me as a friend, so if you want to I'm on there under Steffani Rideau!)

The next ones in my queue are:
1929 (Book One)
Gone Girl: A Novel (Thanks for the recommend, Sara!)

Fifty Shades Freed: Book Three of the Fifty Shades Trilogy

This Little Piggy Went to the Liquor Store: Unapologetic Admissions from a Non-Contender for Mother of the Year

So share your suggestions!

*I'm an Amazon Affiliate so I make money if you buy something from a link. If you don't like that, click here to go to the regular Amazon website!

CSA Goodies and Update

Sometimes when I don't blog in a long time, I shy away from coming back. It's like I've done a bad thing! But I'm here. Kind of. I've been out of the blogging groove so I'm at the point where I don't even know how to write anymore or know what to write about. So, I'm just writing to write, and hopefully this will turn into something coherent. And if not? Oh well. Maybe I'll just make this into a list post. Things are so much easier when they are lists!

Vince and I went to California. We drove out and stayed at his mom and aunts for a night. The next day we hangout in downtown Santa Barbara before Vince and I went to our campsite. We camped for a couple nights and then went to his dad and step moms to stay for the night. We played golf and went bowling, as well as a quick hike! Though it was cloudy most of the time, it was nice to take a little vacation and eat some good food. I'll post some more pictures and stories from our trip later.

 

The stairs at our campsite. 

A park where I waited for Vince after his bike ride. Isn't this a dreamy picture?!


I signed up for the CSA! Woohoo! It was on my goal list for the year and I'm excited about it. I signed up in the nick of time yesterday, which was the last day to sign up for the spring share! I don't know what urged me to go yesterday, but I'm glad I finally did. We got the first share today.

It's not what I was expecting, but at the same time I don't know what I expected! I was thinking I'd get more fruit than just grapefruit, especially after the large amount of food from Bountiful Baskets last summer. I reminded myself that it's still winter though, and that more will come later!
We signed up for the full spring share, which is pickup once a week from March 15-May 31. It was pretty pricey compared to Bounitful Baskets, BUT I get it every week and it is supporting a truly local farm! I just love that. They have 'farm days' where supporters can go check out the farm and get a tour and harvest some food. I can't wait to do one of those and see where my food comes from. It's kind of an invigorating and inspiring thing to know that I can see the farm where my food came from whenever I want!

I also bought some chocolate form the CSA so I can make some real Mexican hot cocoa...my favorite!

I bought a juicer after wanting one for so long, and I'm dying for it to get here. The 2 that I wanted that were available online weren't available in stores, so I ordered one online. Luckily I had some reward money for Best Buy so it ended up sooting me almost nothing! I bought a big 5lb bag of organic carrots that are just waiting to be juiced!

I got a job at Black Hound Gallerie. I've done a couple days of orientation and have my first real day tomorrow night! I've been a customer of BHG for years and have always loved the place, so I'm happy to be part of the team now. I'm also stoked that I get to 'dress up' for work now! I've been interested in wearing fun clothes recently, but have had nowhere to wear them. I couldn't wear stuff to the library because of all the creeps and it's just not the same dressing up for class! Now I'll be able to look cute at work and wear fun things like yellow pants and pink shoes!

Lastly, this speaks to my soul. I love everything about this girl! Her spunk, her music, her moves!

It's about time...

Last year I posted about some goals I wanted to achieve, so I'm going to do a little review to see if I completed my goals, along with a list of new goals. It seems crazy that I wrote these goals just last year, I barely remember them! Here's a brief overview of last years:

• My number one goal for the year is to open an Etsy shop.
• Achieved But then I decided it wasn't a good time to have my shop open and promptly shut it down...
• Get my craft room set up.
• Achieved We ended up moving out of that house though so I'm back to no craft room. It was perfectly set up though!
• Be a better mamma to Roxanne.
• Not Achieved I was better with her in 2011 than 2010, but I still feel like I didn't give 100%.
• Make more time for family and go on dates with my little brother Will!
• Achieved I definitely made more time with my family. We get together pretty frequently for dinner and to hangout.
• Don't eat dinner in front of the TV.
• Not Achieved Vince and I definitely eat in front of the TV still even though we don't have cable! Damn that Netflix.
• Sew something at least once a week.
• Not Achieved Even though I didn't sew something every week, I did make a LOT of things this year that I was excited about.
• Write more often.
• Not Achieved I feel like I wrote more in 2011 than 2010, but I didn't write 5 days a week like I intended.

So, three out of seven. Not bad? Aww, who am I kidding, that's kind of crappy. At least I achieved some of the goals!

I've come up with some new goals, but not because of the new year. It's because of a new life! A lot of changes have come about with me quitting my job, which leaves me with a lot of opportunities to do what I've wanted to do for a long time. So with that, here are some new ideas that are all the same theme:

Take a picture of all the food I waste. I've watched a lot of documentaries about how much we waste, more recently Dive (which I highly recommend...it's instantly on Netflix!) and it's made me pay even more attention to my food waste. I may not be able to end world hunger, but I can be in control of what I consume and what I throw away. I'll probably do a little collage of the pictures once every few weeks so that I embarrass myself with how much I throw out (which will hopefully prevent me from wasting stuff in the first place), but also to remind each of you that you should be paying attention to how much food you throw away.

Eat more whole and healthy foods. Sometimes it's so insanely hard to buy organic, especially in a town like Flagstaff. We have ONE health food store and it's expensive. It's a lot easier for me to buy a bag of tater tots for $3 and have that last a few meals than it is to pay $3 for a single organic bell pepper that isn't very filling! I know that buying organic is healthier for me, though, and I feel so much better when I eat it. Also, the flavor of organic versus non-organic? Waaaaay different. I make a potato soup that calls for celery and when I put it in, I usually can't taste it. (Which I like because I don't like the taste of celery unless it's with peanut butter.) Last week when I made it with organic celery, it was more like I was eating celery soup, it was SUCH a strong flavor. Now that I know this, I can add a lot less celery to my soup!

Join/visit the local CSA. Ok. So I'm embarrassed to admit this, but I live 2 blocks from the CSA here in town, if that even, AND I'VE NEVER BEEN THERE. I've always wanted to go and talk to the lady that runs it, but for some reason I am so so so intimidated. Why do I feel like that? Maybe I'm not cool enough to be in there because I like things like tater tots? Whatever reason I may have (that I'm not even aware of) I need to get over it and go there. Not everything is organic, but it's local, which I kind of care about more about than being organic. And this is from their website: 'Each week, FCSA participants receive a set share of seasonally available vegetables harvested the day of delivery'. Say whaaaat?!

All the food I got from Bountiful Baskets for $15. The organic basket is only $25!

Sign up with Bountiful Baskets again. I posted about this before and how much I loved it. The pick-up day was perfect for me, and then they switched it to a time that was impossible for me to get out of work, and VInce's schedule didn't work with it either. I was SOOOO sad about it, I seriously loved it! I am now able to pick it up on the assigned day, so I'm happy. It only happens once every two weeks, not every week like I thought, so this will be a good thing to pair up with the CSA. They offer organic baskets for only $10 more, which is still ridiculously cheaper than going to the aforementioned health food store.

Eat less meat. In addition to organic, I'm only eating the 'free-range, grass-fed, etc' meats, which means more expensive. Vince has agreed that we don't need to eat meat with every meal, so I think this will be an easy thing to cut back on. 

Spinach, tomato + red onion quesos I made for dinner last night and lunch today! Recipe to come...
So in case you couldn't tell, food is a huge thing in my life, considering ALL of my goals revolve around it. At the same time, everything I want to achieve aside from food is based around that. If I want my workouts to go better? I better eat well. If I want to focus in class? I better eat well. If I want to start waking up super early? I better eat well. Food is such an important thing and Americans kind of suck at realizing it's importance!


As a side note, I think I'm going to write an 'organic disclaimer' soon. For some reason, I hate reading recipes on people's blogs that tell you to use 'organic milk' or 'organic yellow squash'. I feel like they are trying to make themselves sound better than everyone else, but I'm sure with most people, that's not really the case! I don't want to make myself sound better or act like it's a bad thing to not use organic foods. If you don't want to or you simply can't afford it, that's fine! I think eating any fresh food is WAY healthier than eating something canned or processed!


Also, I don't plan on only eating healthy or organic foods. If I go out or to a friends house, I will not concern myself with whether it's organic or not. I don't want this to prevent me from doing things I normally do that I would miss out on. This is about making my life better, not hindering it! In fact, as I wrote this post, I even treated myself to a Dr Pepper.


So...there you have it! Some VERY ambitious food goals. I've stuck to the whole 'organic + healthy' eating since I decided I wanted to do it (maybe the 2nd or 3rd of January?) and I hope I can continue to stick to it!

I got it done.

I achieved a goal today, a wonderful wonderful goal. 

I WATCHED MYSELF GET MY BLOOD DRAWN!

I am so excited! The one thing about nursing I've been worried about would be if I could draw blood. I'm fine watching people get their blood drawn and I've always been able to watch it on TV and stuff, but I felt like if I couldn't even watch my own self get blood drawn, how would I be able to do it on someone?

So today, before I got my blood drawn, I told myself that I'd be fine. I've gotten my blood drawn so many times now that I don't really care about it, but I knew I had to watch it. 

It was interesting to watch because the lady didn't do it the typical way, which was a little helpful. She used a butterfly needle which had a plastic tube attached to it that led to the glass blood tube. 

As a treat to myself for watching, I drank a Pepsi for breakfast. 

The unfortunate thing about giving my blood today was that I already got my results back about my thyroid, which is broken. So I have to take medicine again, which I hate! It's hard to remember to take it three times a day. It'll be another good goal to achieve though, and I know I'll feel better than I've been feeling lately. To read a post I wrote a while ago about my thyroid issues, click here.

I also realized that no matter how uncomfortable I am, I will ALWAYS try and make my patient comfortable. When I was called back to get my blood drawn, the lady didn't say anything except: 

'You can sit there.' 

'Can you please spell your last name for me?' 

'Is your first name Steffani and date of birth xx/xx/xxx?' 

'Alright, you're done.'

And that was all! No hello, nothing. I also realized that 90% of the time I get my blood drawn, this is how it is. I try and make small talk, but they just reject it all! Now, I am a person who doesn't really like small talk, but I try and make an effort to do it with most people, because most people do enjoy it. So even though I don't like it, I'll be sure to pay attention to those types of things when I'm a nurse!

Change.

{Doesn't everyone need a picture of themselves like this?!}

After reading Danielle's post about 'One week to be a better me!' I was inspired. I'm pretty sure I'm inspired by like 99% of her posts though! 

I decided that I'm going to try and do some weekly goals for myself. I will share them here occasionally but I'm excited to focus on small goals!

Here are some for this week:

{1} Wake up earlier than normal. Vince usually wakes up with the sunrise, naturally, and I'm so jealous of it. On Sunday morning, I was woken up by the dogs barking non-stop in the backyard, so I had to get up and let them in. For some reason I didn't go back to bed and went and turned on the TV. When Vince was done going to the bathroom {the reason I had to get up in the first place!} we snuggled and talked and it was really awesome. When we do that at night, Vince ALWAYS falls asleep and our conversations are kind of half-assed because we're both so tired. So I'll try to wake up with him and get an early start to my day.

{2} Continue to eat small amounts of sugar. I know I can't be completely sugar free, but I know I need to cut down on my sugar intake again. Just one treat a day, unlike the 2 or so I've been having. 

{3} Make a couple pieces of jewelry a day. I tend to come home, immediately get on the computer, and then I'm done for the night. I'm so unproductive after that! The past couple days I've been really inspired and wanting to work on jewelry, and I just go straight into my craft room. It's been wonderful to see how productive I've been!

{4} Read more books. I'm a reader and always have been. I definitely don't go a day without reading part of a book, but I know I should spend even more time reading than I currently do, instead of watching TV. I really wish I could just get rid of our cable, but Vince likes his FuelTV!

{5} Finish the laundry. I have SUCH a horrible habit of doing laundry and then putting the clean clothes back into a basket instead of folding/putting everything away. This leads to me putting those clothes into a pile on the floor because I have more clean clothes that need to be put away. So at the moment all my clothes are clean, but I have like 6 loads to put away! Dreading. It. 

{6} Work on training the dogs. They're assholes. Seriously. Izobel is getting in a bad barking habit because of the other dogs in the neighborhood, and Roxanne just wants to kill our neighbor dog, Star. I think Vince and I need to let them know who's boss! 

So those are my few goals for the week. It's a 'big' list of goals, but they are certainly short and simple!

What are your goals for the week? Blog about it and let me see or leave a comment!