theinbetweenismine

just a girl living the expat life

Things I want to do in 2021

filed under: goals


photo credit: @maplepharaoh via Unsplash

This is my version of new year’s resolutions/goals. I feel it’s particularly hard to set any goals this year with all the unknowns going forward in this pandemic, but since I ended up doing quite well last year (despite the unexpected twist and turns we all experienced), maybe I actually can set goals that are achievable despite a (still pretty) restricted environment.

TRAVEL TO GERMANY.

I know. It’s a lofty goal to set while we’re still smack-dab in the middle of a pandemic, but this is really the one and only thing I want to do this year if I had to pick one. I am putting this on here because I have hope that by the end of 2021, we might hopefully be in a position to travel and see my family again.

STAY HEALTHY

My second biggest goal is to stay healthy. I feel like we’re much more cautious than other people when it comes to Covid-19 and the things we’re willing to do, but honestly, I just don’t want to catch it before we can get vaccinated. I will wear my mask, wash my hands, and social distance as much as we possibly can for the foreseeable future.

COMPLETE A 365 PELOTON STREAK. 

Hear me out, this is not as crazy as it sounds. I have not gotten addicted to exercise (maybe just a little) and this doesn’t mean that I will be working out hard every day. The Peloton App has a lot to offer and I’ll be making use of all the different types of classes. Some days it’ll only be some yoga or even meditation, but I am committing to doing something good for my body every day in 2021. (Join me?)

KEEP UP WITH MY PLANNER/JOURNAL.

I did really well last year with my planner (mostly because I made it a habit to record my workouts and my meal-planning in there) and I hope to continue to use my new planner in the same way. Having it on my desk where I work every day has been a great motivator to take a few minutes every day to write in it.

GET RID OF EXCESS STUFF.

I am not sure if I should just plan to do a couple of “purging days” this year or go about this more strategically by giving away/throwing out one item per day (which would remove 365 items from my house this year). I am already behind if that was my approach, so I probably go with a more random approach. I just know that I feel the “clutter” in our (comparatively small) apartment and I wouldn’t mind feeling a little lighter from stuff.

COOK MORE VEGETARIAN DISHES.

We’ve been cutting down on our meat consumption last year already, but I’d like to further work on cooking more vegetarian dishes (especially ones that make Jon feel full/satisfied and not miss meat). One example that has been a great “meat substitute” has been a lentil-based bolognese sauce. I am taking your tried-and-true suggestions (please and thank you).

MAKE AN EFFORT TO SUPPORT SMALL/LOCAL BUSINESSES.

I must admit that Amazon has been a lifesaver during the pandemic. I have a love-hate relationship with Amazon. I know that I shouldn’t support it but you can’t beat the convenience, and so many times when I was out of luck finding certain items locally, Amazon came to the rescue. I know, excuses, right? While I can’t see cutting myself off completely just yet, I vow to do better and try to buy locally or from companies directly more often whenever possible. At least, I am not one of those people who get a gazillion packages each week (I think we averaged 4 items/month last year).

BUY A BED FRAME.

Don’t laugh. We’ve been living without a bed frame for 2+ years. When we bought our Tempurpedic (best bed ever, btw!) many years ago, it came with one of those standard metal bed frames (on wheels) on which I repeatedly bumped my foot. Let’s just say, it was painful. When we moved from our house to our apartment over two years ago, I insisted that we get rid of that metal frame… and we have been living without a bed frame ever since. Jon doesn’t think we need one, but I definitely feel like a bed frame will tie our bedroom together. (This goal is for you, Tanja.)

LIMIT MY SOCIAL MEDIA TIME.

Oh boy, dare I say it. Last year was not good when it comes to spending time on my phone. I felt like it was worse than before with all the doom-scrolling and also trying to keep up with everyone and everything going on in the world. I really do want to try and be more intentional with the time I spend online (and on social media sites especially). I have no idea if I can manage (or what exactly my expectation is here), but I want to be more mindful and I’d think that it would be a least a little bit easier with the news not being all crazy all the freakin’ time. Wish me luck on this one.

READ 30 BOOKS.

Why 30? Why not 30! I ‘only’ managed 22 books last year, so I am just throwing out a random number to motivate me to read more this year, but also to keep the goal realistic. In the end, I only want to just accomplish one thing: enjoy the books that I do get to read this year.

Did you set goals for this year?

Things I wanted to do in 2020

filed under: goals, review


photo credit: @anniespratt via Unsplash

I usually don’t post a review of my previous year’s goals, but in light of a very unprecedented year, I was surprised to see that despite the wrench that 2020 threw into the works of everyone’s life, I checked more things off my “want-to-do”-list last year than I thought.

✔ GO SKIING (AND SNOWBOARDING).

That would most definitely not have happened if I hadn’t been able to check this one off my list in January already. So glad I got to go!

TRAVEL IN THE SUMMER WITH MY FAMILY

Well, that obviously didn’t happen and I was super-bummed about it. We had planned the visit (and subsequent road trip) for months and it’s not like my family comes to visit every year. That trip had been in the making since 2015 and was one of the hardest things to “give up” last year. 

✔ IMPROVE MY FITNESS AND BREAK THE 2 HOUR-MARK IN THE HALF MARATHON.

I finally checked this goal off my list last year. Sadly, it wasn’t an “official PR”, because all in-person races were canceled and I ran this HM virtually with a friend, but at least, I could prove to myself that I’d been improving and was capable of accomplishing this. I hope to repeat it on an official course sometime.

✔ RUN AT LEAST 600 MILES THIS YEAR.

I didn’t even have this goal on my “radar” but ended 2020 with 610 running miles under my belt.

WORK ON MY ETSY SHOP.

That didn’t happen. I had high hopes at the start of last year that I would be motivated and make time for my Etsy shop, but the pandemic pretty much zapped all of my creative energy. Then, the USPS woes started and I felt even less inclined to re-start a shop that was going to rely on the postal service to deliver goods. Maybe I’ll re-open my shop in 2021. 

READ MORE THAN 27 BOOKS.

I did not read 27 books last year. I read 22, which I guess is not too far off, but it feels like I could barely focus on any books in 2020. I am hoping for 2021 to be better.

✔ CONTINUE TO INVEST IN HEALTHY LIVING

I definitely kept my focus on healthy living last year. I made sure to keep up (and expand) my fitness routine, I started taking (some carefully selected) supplements, I focused on hydration, and with all the home-cooking we were doing, tried to improve our meals by adding more vegetarian dishes, swapping in lighter ingredients, and adding (even) more vegetables and fruit into our diet. I also dabbled a bit with intermittent-fasting (more out of curiosity than anything else).

✔ ONE ACT OF KINDNESS EVERY WEEK.

I don’t know for sure if I accomplished this (I did not keep a tally), but I am claiming this as complete. I try to be a nice person on any given day, and even though I have no recollection of purposefully trying at this goal, I do feel that I reached out more (I reconnected with a few people), wrote letters, and tried to be kind and smiled more at strangers. I am pretty sure that I extended more grace and kindness to people last year than not.  

✔ BE INTENTIONAL WITH MY TIME.

I definitely gave myself grace and didn’t jump on all the bandwagons and allowed myself to say “no” to things that I felt I should be doing but had no interest in doing (looking at you, all-the-Netflix-series). There were many days where I felt drained and gave in to mindless doomscrolling, but also made sure that I stepped away often to get outside and clear my mind.

✔ KEEP UP WITH MY PLANNER/JOURNAL.

In a twist of irony, in the year when there was not much to do besides sitting on your couch, I used my planner more consistently than ever. I jotted down (and pre-planned) my weekly workout routines, meal-planned (on paper, not just in the Evernote-app), and wrote down FaceTime Calls with people near and far as if they were meetings on my calendar. I am hoping to keep it up :)

*   *   *

7 out of 10 goals met in the year of a pandemic? Not too shabby, I’d argue. Not that I had put any expectations on my goal’s list after the pandemic hit, but it’s nice to see that I still got some things accomplished.

How did you do?

Things I want to do in 2020

filed under: goals, lists!


Go skiing (and snowboarding).

Guess what, I already checked that off my list last week when I went to Tahoe with some friends. Skiing is secretly always on my goals’ list. It’s a real shame that I live two hours from the snow and go so rarely. I want to change that. It’s hard to get up to the mountains, if your husband is not much of a snow person, but I am hoping to go once or twice more this season. 

Travel this summer with my family

I might have mentioned it here before, but if not: my family is coming to visit this summer; my parents, my sister and BIL and the kids, and I am beyond excited. They’ll be here for about three weeks and we’re in the midst of planning another epic road trip together. I wish they could just come and I could host them at our place, but unfortunately, we don’t have the space and of course, they want to see more than Sacramento if they come all the way over here. So we’ll be traveling together quite a bit and I am sure it will be a blast!

Improve my fitness and break the 2 hour-mark in the half marathon.

Does this goal sound familiar? Yes, because I copied it from last year. I did NOT run a sub-2 hour half marathon last year, so it’s staying on the goals’ list. I also didn’t run three half marathons (as two of the three I was planning to run fell during the time when I was traveling to Germany), which means I only got one shot at setting a new PR and since the only half marathon I ran was San Francisco ( = hills) I knew it was kind of a long shot. 

Run at least 600 miles this year.

I want to up my running mileage again this year. I ran 469 miles in 2019, but I would love to hit 600 miles again this year. This amounts to 50 miles per month. That should be doable, even if I throw in cycling and more cross-training.

Work on my Etsy shop.

If you follow me on social media, you might know that I own a shop on Etsy. Once upon a time, it was a little endeavor I started with my neighbor-friend across the hall, but she moved away, had kids, and eventually decided that she didn’t have the time to invest time in our little shop anymore. For almost a year, I contemplated what to do; close shop or continue on my own. I eventually decided that I didn’t want this creative outlet go. I’ll tell you more about that decision in a separate post. 

Read more than 27 books.

2019 was a slow reading year for me. I think I finished 27 books, only barely more than half than I had hoped. But, reading is supposed to be fun and I am not  going to put a number goal on it, if that means I am going to put unnecessary pressure on myself.

Continue to invest in healthy living

I have a lot of fitness goals on my list here and along with this goes a focus on healthy living. I’ve started tracking food and macros this month,  not to lose weight, but to be more aware of how I fuel my body. I also set myself a goal of drinking at least 60 oz of water every day, because hydrating properly has been an on-and-off challenge for me over the years.

One act of kindness every week.

I always try to be a nice person, but I am hoping to purposefully make someone’s day every week. It can be through offering a helpful hand, a sympathetic ear, heartfelt advice, or a simple compliment. It’s so easy to make someone’s day better by adding some positivity and kindness. Yes, it’s awkward sometimes to offer a compliment to a stranger, but every time someone has done it for me, it buoyed me up through the day and beyond.

Be intentional with my time.

This is nothing new. I always feel pressed for time, have so many competing interests. Sometimes, I am guilty of mindless scrolling on social media and when people tell me that they’ve been watching this show or listened to that  podcasts, I sometimes feel left out or like I am missing out, but I want to focus on the things that interest me this year and not feel bad to not jump on every bandwagon.

Keep up with my planner/journal.

I’ve tried my hand at bullet journaling the last two years and it was an on-again-off-again love affair. When I was bullet journaling, I was doing it 110%, until I wasn’t and didn’t touch it for a couple of months. I hated these empty pages in between. So, for 2020,  I bought a new, traditional planner and I am hoping that I’ll better be able to keep up with it this year.

Did you set any goals for 2020?

Things I want to do in 2019

filed under: goals, good things

I promised you last week two weeks ago that I was going to share a ‘things I want to do in 2019’-list, so here I am. I am still a little wary to put a list together, but I also like the process of making a list and subsequently, checking things off that list.

Go to Germany.

After last year’s plans were thwarted, I made new plans to visit my family this year, no matter what. This is my number one priority. I haven’t seen my family for almost two years (hard to believe) and it’s time. Obviously, if I would have it my way, I would see them more often. I hope they’ll come visit us again here in California soon (and I know they’d love to!).

Get rid off stuff.

Before our move, I purged quite a bit of stuff, so we didn’t have to move it (I also wasn’t sure if we were going to have enough space for storage). I already felt a thousand pounds lighter, but still, there is more stuff that ended up in boxes in our garage and I am planning to go through this and truly get rid off everything we don’t want or use anymore.

Improve my fitness and break the 2 hour-mark in the half marathon (gasp, I said it).

Is this year going to be the year? Running a sub-2 hour half marathon has been a goal, well, I guess since I ran my first half marathon. The first race was just to prove myself that I can run the distance, then my ambition was tickled and I started trying to improve my pace. While I had two more PRs last year, I still haven’t broken the 2 hours. My current PR is 2:02:39 (so I am literally 2:40 minutes away from my goal), but you’d be amazed how freakin’ hard it actually is to improve only a couple of minutes over a long distance like that. Back to more cross-training and running more miles, it is.

Run 3 half marathons (again).

I am a much better runner, if I set goals and having a race on the calendar is definitely great motivation. I liked having three bigger races, conveniently spaced out in spring, summer, and fall, to look forward to and work towards last year. I think I want to do this again this year.

Find at least two healthy new recipes to try per month.

I’d like to think that I am already eating pretty healthy(-ish), but I am always looking to add more, new exciting recipes to the mix.
I believe that cooking at home (mostly) from scratch with fresh ingredients (and control what goes into the dish) and an attitude of “what can I ADD to my to your diet, instead of take away” is more important than restricting my diet and eliminating certain foods entirely.

Read 52+ books.

Last year, I set a goal of 60 books (which was 1 more than 2017) and didn’t quite make it. But I read 52 books (which is one book a week on average) and my goal is to just keep that up. Any extra books are going to be a bonus.

See new places.

I am rephrasing my “travel more”-goal from last year. You don’t have to travel far to visit and explore new places and there is so much in my immediate vicinity that I haven’t seen, so I’ll be making an effort to be more of a local tourist this year.

Did you set any goals for 2019?

Things I plan to do in 2018

filed under: goals, good things

I read this great blog post the other day about setting goals that are out of your control vs. implementing actionable changes you can make to your habits to move yourself in the right direction, and I could relate so much. I am not much for New Year’s resolutions, a) because I feel like you can make positive changes on any damn day of the year, and b) because resolutions always put so much pressure on a person.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I think a little bit of pressure is necessary to make some positive, but hard changes sometimes, but if the goals are too lofty or there are too many changes to implement at once, chances are you (universal you) will fall short.

Resolutions look good on paper, but they also need to be doable. It’s great if you aim to read 100 books this year, but unless you have a clear plan how to accomplish this, this is just going to be that: a lofty goal. Before you know it, you’re three months into the new year and way behind on your reading goal.

However, if you rephrase your resolutions and really think about which goals are realistic and what kind of changes are doable in order to achieve a certain goal and which small steps to take to get there, these goals become much more attainable.

Ok, maybe that got a little bit too philosophical. So, without further ado, here are the things I plan to do in 2018 (and not all of them are ‘habit changes’):

Go skiing with my family in the Alps again.

That is in the works. I’d be ecstatic if this works out the way I am hoping (currently, I am saving every vacation and comp hour for this trip.)

Run 3 half marathons.

Why three? Why not three! I ran one in 2016,  two last year and I’d just love to add another one this year. (Don’t worry, this is not going to be an ongoing future trend.) I am already signed up for the San Francisco Half again, but there is room to fit in two more, I think. I am also hoping to up my mileage from last year (766 mi) just to have something to work towards (because I always do better with a bit of a challenge).

Go back to yoga, for crying out loud.

Yes, here it is again. I can’t believe I am actually putting this on this list, because this has been on my goal-list for, like, FOREVER and I haven’t made it happen. But if I don’t put it here, the chance of it ever happening gets even slimmer. Am I thinking about this right? Good. (Hold me accountable, pretty please.)

Read 60 books.

This will be an average of 5 books per month or so. I had a goal to read 25 books last year. Twice as many as in 2016. I ended up reading 59 books, so setting my goal to 60 for this year seems just the logical – and attainable – thing to do, yes?

Take more weekend trips and meet up with friends.

Whenever I get away for a weekend, I feel so refreshed when I get back home. I want to see new places and there is so much that I haven’t seen here in California (and other neighboring states). I’d also love to spend more time or go on small trips with some far away friends.

Discover more restaurants.

J and I love cooking at home, but we also love to eat out and try new restaurants. We’ve been going to the same joints a lot last year and I want to find some new-to-us restaurants in town.

Keep on top of my Feedly reader.

I know this might seem like a silly goal to add to this list, but I am subscribed to so many (too many!) blogs that I often can’t keep up with everything and I hate that (part of what often ‘stresses me out’). I hate when I have hundreds of unread posts sit in my Feed Reader (and as you might know, I am not one to “mark all read”, lest I miss something important!)

I do know though that there are blogs that I “click away” from routinely, which I should probably remove from my Reader (and I am sorry about that. I promise it is nothing personal, there is only so many blogs a person can read at any given time.) and I should probably better organize the blogs I do want to keep. In order to do better this year and be more focused, I got my Feedly reader down to “zero” last week for a fresh start and I am aiming to keep the list of unread posts below 50 at any given time.

Friday Five | Midyear goal check-in 

filed under: goals

I know, I know, we’re little over the halfway mark of this year already, but it occurred to me just now that I had set some tentative goals guidelines for this year and that it might be a good idea to check in. Which means, I had to dig through my archives and find the post where I listed those goals (and see what they actually were, haha!) and figure out if I was brave enough to publicly share here how I have been doing (or if I should just let sleeping dogs lie and just pretend that post never happened.)

I am not really this great with new year’s resolutions and the like (which doesn’t mean I don’t have goals I am working towards), but I do like list-making and crossing off of things… so I guess, this is where these two meet.

Well, turns out, I am actually not doing all that bad either, so of course, I am going to share the status quo with you guys, because a) I don’t feel too embarrassed and b) maybe this will hold me accountable, too, going forward.

1. Fill a jar with notes of happiness. Yes. J and I have been writing down one happy thought for the week every Sunday for the last 28 weeks. I hope we can keep this up, this is really fun and I can’t wait to read through all of them at the end of the year.

2. Run 1000 miles. On track. Well, actually I am a little bit behind. My tracker stands at 460 miles, but I think that I might still be able to catch up if I set my mind to it. I was a bit derailed by my ankle pain and didn’t run as much as scheduled for a couple of weeks.

3. Cross train. Kinda. I definitely did more cross-training than before, but I could still be more diligent. Oh yeah, and have I mentioned yoga lately? I definitely should go back to yoga.

4. Read 25 books. Done. As of right now, I have read 42 books and I don’t even know myself anymore. Last year, I didn’t think it was possible to fit more reading into my week, but I am so happy that I am making more time for books again.

5. Invest some time in my Etsy shop. Nope. Big fat fail so far. I had a handful of orders in the first half of this year and designed a Thank you-card for a wedding, but that’s pretty much it. My creative juices seem to be dried up currently. Sigh. Maybe they’ll come back to me in the second half of the year? One can hope.

How are you doing with your goals so far?

I am linking up with  Running on Happy and Fairytales and Fitness for the Friday Five 2.0 Linkup

Summer goals

filed under: family, goals

beach_sand_wood_summergoals

1. Visit the Grand Canyon + Antelope Canyon. My parents, sister, BIL + the munchkins will be arriving next week for a few weeks of play and fun! I know I must sound like a broken record by now, but I am just so excited. This is what happens if you only get to see your family for a few short weeks once a year… you can’t stop talking about it when it’s about to happen! They’re finally coming here for the summer and we have some fun things planned. One (or two) of them is taking my sister + BIL to the Grand Canyon + Antelope Canyon, because they’ve never been!

2. Have a BBQ in the park. Since we (still) don’t have a backyard, I want to go to the park for a summer BBQ. It’s one of my favorite summer activities (oh how I miss BBQs in my parents’ backyard) and I can’t wait until we have a grill and patio again.

3. Write more. I wanna get back into the habit of writing more letters, writing in my journal (which I haven’t done in forever!) and establish a more regular posting schedule on this blog. Just write.

4. Take my family out for Sushi. The last time my parents visited (three years ago, gasp!) I introduced them to sushi. They were very reluctant to try it at first, my Mom claimed that she didn’t like raw fish (although she had never tried it, mind you!) and my Dad, generally a food connoisseur, hadn’t had much interest in Asian food at all. Well, let’s just say that by the end of the night, they were total converts! My dad has even asked me repeatedly if we’re going to go have sushi when they’re here. Go figure!
I can’t wait to take them to sushi again (and also introduce my sister + BIL to it :)).

5. Attempt to make homemade ice-cream. I do not have an ice cream maker, but have seen multiple recipes for homemade ice-cream, e.g. popsicles. (I call all of this stuff ice-cream, just FYI.) Since ice-cream is my favorite summer treat, I’d love to give this a try.

6. Start going to the Farmers Market again every week. I loved going to the Farmers Market on Sunday mornings last summer, but even though the Farmers Market is year round, I kind of slacked off during the winter months. I seriously need to get back into a regular Farmers Market routine ASAP.

7. Keep up my workout routine (even if that means – reluctantly – going back to the treadmill when it’s 100+F outside). I cannot let myself slack off this time.

8. Spend more time outdoors. Sometimes I wish the summers were a little bit more moderate where we live (I don’t really do well in the heat, besides the fact that I burn easily and have to be really careful about sun exposure). Nevertheless, I want to find ways to spend more time outside.

9. Get back to using my DSLR. I have to admit, I have gotten kinda lazy lugging my big DSLR around… I really need to get back into the habit of using it and what better excuse than capturing all the beautiful moments of our summer family vacation, right? Exactly.

10. Take my niece and nephew to Disneyland! Pssst, that’s a surprise they don’t know anything about yet. Don’t tell them! :)

What are some of your summer goals?

10 ideas to build up that financial cushion

filed under: FYI, goals, help

2012 in pictures: week 35
With my goal to track our spending for the last couple of months, I have also thought about ways to save a little bit more money for rainy days.

I already have some money automatically transferred into savings every month, but I know I can do more.

My problem usually is that what is most commonly suggested in order to cut unnecessary spending, I already do. I make my own lunches 99% of the time, I don’t get fancy coffee on the way to work, but brew it myself at the office, I don’t go to happy hour or spend a lot of money on eating/drinking out in general.

I realize that I do tend to be a bit of an impulse buyer, usually just little things here and there that provide instant gratification. A new stamp at Michaels, a marked-down shirt at Target, some random product from the beauty isle. I know that is an area I can work on.

A penny saved is a penny earned, right? Money that is not “available” in cash or your checking account, is not as easily spent.

So, the trick is to trick yourself into putting away money without even really knowing it.

Here are a few ideas I already implement:

1. Put your spare change in a piggy owl bank (like the one above). J is really good at that and he often goes through my wallet to empty it of all the change that I carry around. I frequently get mad at him for taking away all my change (as I do like to have a couple of quarters and nickles, because you never know when you might need them for a parking meter or what have you), but fact is: our piggy bank will fill up and that’s a good thing. It might not be that much total, but it could add up to as much as $100 a year or more.

2. Use a cash-back credit card. A lot of banks and institutions offer the option of earning cash-back on every purchase that you make with your credit card. I only recommend this if you know how to handle a credit card and if you pay off the balance every month (otherwise it won’t make any sense), but if you play it smart, you can make actual money off using your credit card. I personally have an AMEX account through hour Costco membership and I average about $200 in cash-back every year. Not bad, if you ask me!

3. Automatically transfer money from your paycheck into savings. Like I mentioned above, we do this already, but I know that we could save a little more. I’ve seen recommendations for like 10% of your income and then built it up to a higher percentage if you can.

Here are a few more ideas that I’d like to consider:

4. Save money that you earned by using coupons and store card discounts. I am not BIG into couponing. Most coupons are for stuff I usually don’t buy anyway and it’s too much of a hassle to search for coupons every week. However, I do use coupons (when I come across them) and store discounts where I can. I am thinking about putting the coupon savings (that are conveniently printed on to your store receipt as a percentage and $ amount of your purchase) to savings after every shopping trip. I mean, you technically could have paid full price, so why not put away that extra money?

5. Save interest earned on your savings. Do you earn interest on the savings you already have? For me, they show up in my checking account and even though it’s a really small amount, I want to get into the habit of transferring the interest back into the savings account, where it belongs.

6. Save your raise. If you were lucky enough to get even the smallest raise (ha! Hasn’t happened for me in… ever!… due to my stupid contractor position), consider automatically having the amount transferred into savings. You won’t even miss it since you already have a budget set to the salary that you earned previously.

7. Save all your $5 bills. My Dad taught me this when I was a little girl. He would put away every 5 Deutsche Mark coins (now 5€ bills) into a piggy hour glass bank and use this to finance part of our annual skiing vacations. Genius.

8. Transfer left-over money into savings at the end of the month. If you happen to have budgeted quite successfully during the month, consider transferring left-over money (or part of it) into savings, before you start a new month. I really like this idea, although I wish I wasn’t paid on a bi-weekly basis, but instead got my salary at the beginning of each month in full. Maybe it’s just me, but I have a hard time keeping track of expenses (and which part of the month they belong to), when I get paid twice a month on odd days. I am sorry, I just like it a bit more organized than that.

9. Reward yourself for chores you don’t like to do.  This really is a bit of a mind game because by paying yourself, you’re not actually earning any more money, BUT see it as a treat for yourself that every time you do an unpleasant chore, you put a couple of dollars away to reward yourself with later.

10. Round-up online purchases. If you happen to do a lot of online shopping, you could consider rounding up to the nearest dollar amount ($14.49 to $15) of even to the nearest ten ($14.49 to $20) and put the difference into savings.

Do you have other suggestions?
What do you do to trick yourself into saving a few bucks?

Summer goals

filed under: goals, good things

Untitled

Now that my summer vacation is over (more recap posts to come – no worries!), I’d like to share some easy, achievable, looking-forward-to goals for the rest of the warm summer months. Nothing too serious, just a reminder of the fun things about summer!
(If you have been following my blog, you might have noticed that I am way behind on my updates for the more serious goals of my “12 changes”-project. I’ll catch up on that pretty soon.)

1. Drink more iced coffee. I’ve seen the cold-brewed coffee instructions pop up all over the Internet and it’s time to invest in a coffee press and make it happen. I need to know what all the fuss is about.

2. BBQ. If we had the opportunity (read: a place to store and operate a BBQ grill, even a small one), J and I would be all-summer-long-BBQers. Unfortunately, we don’t really have the space to do it regularly, but I want to make it a goal to get out to the park a couple more times.

3. Enjoy the summer weather and spend more time outside. When I hear about the sad, sad summer that my family and friends in Germany have to endure, I really want to be thankful for the hot temperatures here in the Central Valley and enjoy the weather as much as I can. However, that is easier said than done, when the temperatures frequently reach the triple digits and you’re not cut out for the heat. I am hoping to go for more evening walks/runs and sit on our balcony more often.

4. Read more. On-going, always-on-the-list goal for the summer. There’s nothing better than some iced tea and a good book to wind down.

5. Visit the Farmers Market. I’ve seriously neglected the Farmers Market for months and it’s definitely time to visit again.

6. Indulge. It’s the summer and it’s time to enjoy life and its yummy treats! I am a sucker for ice-cream. I could eat ice-cream every single day in the summer. That is, mind you, not really an option, but what also works great for me as treats are popsicles. They’re refreshing and have way fewer calories than regular ice-cream.

7. Happy hour with friends. Namely one special lady that is about to leave me and the beautiful city of Sacramento soon for the ‘Windy City’. (Are you sure you want to leave the moderate Californian winter for lots of snow and ice?)

8. More brunches. I said it before and I will say it again: I love weekend brunches – preferably with some lovely ladies and some girl talk. Who wants to start a brunch club?

9. Find and try more cold dinner ideas. Let’s face it, it’s not very fun to cook when it’s t’s around 100°F outside and I am trying to come up with more ideas for cold dinners and snacks (besides salads, which I love, but which can get boring.) I definitely want to cook milk rice again (a summer favorite at my parents’ house) and cherry soup (with the slightly unhealthy, but refreshing option of adding vanilla ice-cream).

10. More time for crafts. Another side effect of the heat is that I rarely turn on the computer at home in the evenings, because it only generates more heat in our already hot apartment. That has freed up some time again for more crafting and I’ve been working on some smaller projects in the evenings for the last few weeks. I definitely want to continue this streak.

What goals do you have for a fun rest of the summer?

12 changes: June goal

filed under: 12 in 2012, goals

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{via blue.sky photography}

Remember, when I told you in March that I had started the Fierce Love Course? Well, I kind of got stuck in week 2 and I’ve been trying to jump back on the bandwagon ever since. I don’t have any other pressing goals lined up for June right now, so I thought it would be a good idea to try and re-do (and finish) this course in June!

I mean, I know it’s good stuff. I know, it’ll benefit me. I know, I need this.

Why is it so freaking hard to make time for oneself? Why does it feel like a lot of the time I am only half-aware of all the good things that are happening?

I know what you’re going to say… I make plenty of time for myself, like going to brunches with some lovely ladies (and guys!) this weekend, making trips to Ikea and going to the gym. I go shopping for my niece and nephew (which is so much fun!), I read and spend quality time with J. Those are all good things, great things even, but fierce love is about focusing on myself,  and consciously and purposefully doing things that fill my tank, which also includes saying ‘no’. Sometimes deciding to not do something means doing something for yourself.

I want to me more conscious about the things I do for me, and only for me. I want to be fully aware and feel and enjoy every second of it. I wanna listen to the voice deep down inside of me. I want to consciously and intentionally do and I want to listen to my heart about what makes me happy.

Hopefully, by the end of this month, I will have a better grip on what it means to practice fierce love.

What is your goal for the month of June?

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Come join us over at 12 changes in 2012

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