I know you are expecting a What’s Blooming post, but it’s the end of the month and I needed to wrap this up before our trip!

I will share this cool cloud photo, though!

Here were my goals for August and how I did:

1. Cook some new Indian dishes.  I was planning on doing 3, but only ended up doing 2.  Chana Masala and the Aloo Gobi.

2. Lose 4 pounds – Nope.  I lost 1, which is statistically a wash since it could be back up tomorrow.  I have this maintenance thing down, but not the losing LOL!  I was doing 4 no grain days a week and then the scale wasn’t moving, so I added grains to other days and dropped the pound this week. Go figure. 🙄

3. More strength training.  I was not so good with this.  I am just doing too much biking to really do much.  I will just do lighter workouts and focus on heavier lifting when the biking season winds down.

4. Less complaining.  I think I have been doing really well here.  It helps that my work stress has gone down a lot lately.

5.  Finishing up some projects.  I didn’t finish too many projects.  One was to make a houseplant area, which I have here.

The chest we open up twice a year, once to take out the good china for Christmas dinner and once to put it away, so I am using it for the base.  I did find a use for that ammo box! 😀  I need to accessorize a little bit more with the white shelf, but it’s nice.  John said it was like a plant shrine.

Can you believe we are on to September already??

Welcome to August!!  It feels more like fall around here. Rainy and in the upper 60s.  Pixie is back into lap mode again. This is from a few days ago, but it’s pretty much the same around here 😀

Now on to goals for August!

1. Cook some new Indian dishes.  I am going to go for at least 3 and post them on the blog.  Things that are relatively easy.  I love Indian food and I should cook more of that at home.

2. Lose 4 pounds – We are going to Vegas at the end of the month.  This was a bit of a surprise trip.  John’s friend offered to fly us out there, so we are going! Anyway, I thought it might be nice to challenge myself to lose 4 pounds before Vegas.  This will be accomplished by doing 4 days a week of lower carb/grain free and the other 3 days as I normally eat.  I find this system actually works pretty well for that purpose.

Grain free breakfast today?  Ricotta puffs with blueberries!

3. More strength training.  I have the program and I am going to stick with the level 1 for a while longer before moving up.  Being strong really helps my biking, so I can’t slack too much on that.

4. Less complaining.  I feel like I have been complaining too much about stuff lately.  Work, in particular, but that accentuates the other complaints that I normally do.  I need to focus on the positive things about my job and learn to deal better with the negative.

5.  Finishing up some projects.  I have a fair number of half-finished projects around the house (not sure how that happened) and I would like to try to finish some of those up before starting new ones!

Okay, that sounds good!

More than half way through 2013!  I have been a little slack on putting my monthly goals on the blog as the end of last month and beginning of July got busy with BOW and then an AIM post.  So, I thought I would recap some of my goals for July and 2013 so far.

1.  More strength training.  I started the New Rules of Lifting for Life, but am not as consistent as I should be at about 2 times a week.  I should be doing 3.

2.  Bike miles.  Yep, getting those in. My goal was to reach 1250 by the end of July and I am at 1359 as of today!

Anyway, I have new August goals to share tomorrow.

Here are the items on my yearly To-Do list I made back in cold and snowy January!

1.  Take a few guitar lessons.  I have not done these yet. Mostly for monetary reasons. We did the bathroom, got a new car and I got a new computer, so discretionary spending has been pulled back a bit.  I still want to do this, though.  Better work more 😯

2. Bathroom update. Done and done! All pretty much by myself and I can tell you that I still love it just as much!

3. Yep – lose weight again.  I have lost 6 pounds this year.  I have stalled out pretty much since we got back from vacation and then with the start of cupcake biking season. So, that needs a focus again.

4. Either do another 100 mile bike ride or some organized bike events. I am not sure I will do this or not. Either way, I haven’t yet. 🙂

5.  Try to hit 2500 miles on the bike this year.  More than half way there!

6.  Relax more.  Am I?  I don’t know.  I am taking an unexpected weekend getaway at the end of August.  Work has been a bit dreadful in terms of really busy for the last several months, so I haven’t felt very relaxed.  But, I do have a good life 😀

I also added in a goal of reading 30 books this year and making good progress on that.
Not too shabby so far.  Reviewing that list will help me refocus my energy (I hope!)

New goals tomorrow!

Thank you all for the comments on my guitar playing.  I have that sort of pride/embarrassed feeling about posting them.  I am still very much a beginner and I note every mistake in these videos.  Yet, I look at how far I have come in the last couple of years with it.  Then there is the whole upper arm flab thing  😳   But, it’s me, it’s real and unedited.

We have had the most fantastic weather the last few days.  Just gorgeous!  We rode to breakfast today and I tipped my face up to the sun and just reveled in it.  I can’t believe how much the weather can affect my mood.  It was 55 degrees and sunny for our ride.

You know it!

Extreme bagel closeup!  Careful, carbs are catching, you know 😉

It’s now May and time for me to set some things going for the month.  Not too many this month.

1.  Pantry use up.  When I was cleaning out the bottles of dust old spices from the pantry, I saw a lot of half used up food items.  Grains, pastas, beans, etc.  This month will be using up a lot of that stuff.  I cannot buy any new hot cereal until I have used up the quinoa flakes, Wheatena, cream of wheat and oat bran that is currently in various states of being used up.

2.  Keep an extra close eye on my eating.  We are taking a vacation this month, so I need to be extra careful the other weeks of the month.  Nuff said there.

3.  More strength training with weights.  I have been a bit lackadaisical with this lately as biking is consuming all my thoughts.  I am going to write out some programs and follow them.

4.  RELAX! We are taking a very much well-needed vacation and I am going to make the most of it.

That’s it for this month.  It’s going to be a busy month. I have 13 to 15 people coming to my house on Friday and I need to be in full cleaning mode now.  Guess that will move along spring cleaning a bit. 😀

Quickie post! Another month come and gone.  Forward into spring now – woo hoo!

May is going to be a busy month.

Here were my goals for April:

1. 250 miles on the bike.  I didn’t quite make it.  Weather didn’t cooperate as fully as I would have liked, but I did get 170 miles in.

2.  Do a month of body weight only exercises.  I was somewhat lame about this and only posted 1 of the routines.

3.  Guitar video.  I posted one yesterday and as a bonus for lucky listeners, a second one below!

4.  Clean out the pantry.  I did clear out some old spices, but I think we need to do a “use stuff up in the pantry” month.

5. Try 2 new veggies.  I did one – the rutabaga.  Turns out this time of year there aren’t a lot of new types of produce in the market.   I could have done something like orange cauliflower, but that would have been pretty lame of me.  😀

So, yesterday I posted a video and here is the other one.  Waltz in E by Carulli

I like yesterday’s recording better, but this is a fun tune.  Next videos will be even better in the future!

Back with May goals tomorrow.

Brand new first full month of spring and it still feels like winter around here.  Strong winds and spitting snow.  I thought it was supposed to be April showers??  Hello?

At least a hot breakfast warmed me up. New to me product that I found:

It’s a nice alternative to other hot cereals.  It doesn’t have all the protein that is usually in quinoa, so I don’t know what happened when they flaked it.

I did this banana custard style. You could definitely taste that it was quinoa.  I liked it, but I don’t think I would buy this very often because the flavor wasn’t worth the price.

So, it’s time! Goals for April:

1. 250 miles on the bike.  I almost was going to go for 400, but then I realized that it is April and the supposed showers, plus that is a big ramp up of miles in 1 month seeing as I did 60 in March 😀  I won’t be too upset if weather causes me to miss this goal (remind of this, please, when I am whining).

2.  Do a month of body weight only exercises.  This is something fun to try to not do weights, but just work with body weight exercises working all muscle groups.  I’ll be listing what I do for these.

3.  Guitar video.  I haven’t made you listen to a guitar piece in a while, so it is time to do that again!

4.  Clean out the pantry.  Okay, since I have utterly failed at cleaning out my bedroom closet the last 2 months, let’s try the pantry.  We have some spices and stuff back in there from the stone age that need to go.  We need to get new spices, too.  Good thing is that all those old spices can go in my garden for compost.  Instant herb garden!

5. Try 2 new veggies.  I actually had one today, but I need to find another.  Been slacking in the Great Veggie Experiment category.

That ought to keep me in line this month 😀

I got this shot of Pixie being all annoyed at her tail again.

Her face cracks me up. She was hating on that tail for a good 10 minutes LOL!

Spring is coming. I keep telling myself that spring is coming!

I did a bit of plant shopping and ordered a rose for my new bed extension.  I was going to go with a different one, but after reading some reviews of its performance in real gardens, I set up my search again and came up with this one:

It’s called Enchanted Evening. I told John to be ready for lots of singing.  I used to play the soundtrack to South Pacific all the time and it doesn’t take much for me to break into song  😆  I purchased this from Jackson and Perkins this time (their photo). Its a floribunda and grows about 3 feet tall, so should be perfect.  Of course, this won’t arrive to me until May, but I can just keep looking at the picture.

New month, new goals.

March goals:

1.  Purge closet – Okay, that goal got moved over from February since I failed at that one.

2. Get my bike outside.  I am riding early this year.  I normally like to have 50 degree weather to be biking, but I miss outside biking so much that I am going to suck it up and do 40s.  I’ll just have to dress a bit warmer. John gave me a real side-eye when I said 40s, so it will likely be solo biking. 

3. Moving in March.  Since I am done with the rehab, now I can move more exercise wise. I actually enjoyed being more physically active than usual with the rehab, so I want to keep that up, although not quite to the difficulty degree 😀  No more hibernating!

4. Planning meals.  We don’t plan meals too often. Sometimes we do, but most times we fix whatever we have in house. Planning will get me using more recipes (instead of just pinning them). Plus hopefully shopping more efficiently.

5. Grain-Free days.  A few days each week, I want to do grain free.  I actually like doing that and it keeps me motivated while I work on project Drop A Size in 2013. 😀

That is a nice set of goals.

Now from the files  of the laziest cat in the world: I was vacuuming and needed to get my foot pedal off the floor.  Pixie wouldn’t move, so I had to put it on her.

No response…

And on the quick Friday dinner front – more stir fry! This time I did a heap o’ broccoli, Kikkoman Triple Ginger sauce and jumbo shrimp (4 ounces).  I would have had some rice with it, but John got to the last of the rice before I did 😀

Stir fry – when it is okay for food to touch.

Here’s to a relaxing weekend for everyone!

Hello new month!  Now we can really think about spring coming, right? January seems like such a long and cold month with not much to do.

I’ve been busy, so I will just get down to the goals!

1. Finish the bathroom renovation.  Okay, this might be a bit of a softball, but I think I will challenge myself to try to finish by our Mardi Gras party on the 10th!

2. Exercise 60 minutes most days of the week.  Biz set this challenge for herself, although I think she has it every day. I will take some rest days in there.  Normally I do 45 minutes of exercise. This might be challenging to fit in with the renovation, but it will keep me aware.

3. Purge my closet. I have stuff that I just don’t wear anymore because I don’t like it. That will give me room to shop sales and consignment for new stuff! Yay!

4. Keep on with my good eating habits. Results follow if I really stick to this. I am in a good groove right now. Two areas of concern in February. One is Super Bowl Sunday and the other is our Mardi Gras party. But they are only 2 days out of 28, so they shouldn’t affect me all the much if I am focused the rest of the time.

5. Do some kind of Pay-It-Forward thing. I don’t know what that is, but I am going to really look for something to do for someone else. It doesn’t have to be big, but something I don’t normally do.

On the agenda for this weekend?  Dun, dun, dun : 

For the tub surround. Going for frosted white. I have a feeling it is either going to be great or really cheesy. No in between :D 

Wish me luck!

I didn’t really set any specific goals for January itself because I had set up my To Do list for the year. 

I actually did make progress on some of those goals already, though.  That’s the whole beginning of the year for you.  Everyone is really motivated, including myself!

I read 3 books this month, 2 of which were fiction.  I don’t know if I should count cookbooks as part of my 30 books for the year?

The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry by Rachel Joyce

This is a very sweet book.  It’s a journey of self discovery by a man later in life. 

Then Breakfast at Tiffany’s by Truman Capote

I had never read this book. It’s really a novella, not very long.  Interesting that the book does not end like the movie and I wonder what Capote thought about that.  Capote’s writing style is so good and I think the shortness of the novel makes people maybe not realize its greatness.  This book is very reminiscent to me of The Great Gatsby in terms of style of writing. Crisp and witty.  If you liked Gatsby, you will probably like this one.  This particular edition also had several short stories in it, and I loves me some short stories!  Those were a sweet little bonus.

I got started on the bathroom renovation. Did I mention I was redoing the bathroom?  Just in case you weren’t aware… Funny, this was not a project that was going to be started so soon, but it actually came about because of a coupon for tub refinishing that I saw in the paper. I called for an estimate on doing the tile in the whole room and decided I could have a better look for less money by taking it out myself. (I will have them do just the tub at some point). That got me going a few months before I had really thought I was going to do it.  Now I am glad it will be done before biking season. Don’t want anything keeping me from my cupcake rides!

I am actually progressing on the weight loss front as well.  Remember when I had my little hissy fit earlier in the month that the scale wasn’t moving?  Well, I didn’t need to change anything. I just needed to be patient and wait a bit and the scale went down 3.5 pounds for January! That is pretty amazing for me and I am super pleased. I’ll just keep on keeping on.

Pixie picture of the day.  We have a portable dishwasher (which also is a nice catch-all for putting stuff on… ) and Pixie loves to lay on it when it is running because it is warm.  I set my latte next to her to get a picture and she got most offended. This was just as she was getting ready to leave 😀

Maybe she doesn’t like my owl cup?

Anyway, I need to think up some February goals!

How was your January?