Backdated Birthday Weekend Post - Day 1

On February 23rd I drove to Newport RI and checked into the Wyndham Inn at Long Wharf for the start of my birthday weekend. Since all I did that night was chill out at the hotel, here are pictures of the hotel room:

The check-in area is incredibly cute.

What you see when you walk into the hotel room.

Look left and you'll see the bed.

Look right and you'll see a chair, TV, and wardrobe.

Go straight ahead into the rest of the hotel room.

To the left off the hallway is the bathroom.

More bathroom - that's a whirlpool tub!

Keep going through the hallway past the little kitchen area and you'll reach the living and dining room.

Here's the couch.

And here's the nighttime view out the window.

A Musical Themed Birthday

So I have a friend who shares my birthday. Actually, two of them if you count Waldo (the guy I work with in the afternoons). Because I'm going out of town for my actual birthday, Birthday Twin and I decided to host a joint birthday party. It was musical themed and we encouraged everyone to dress up as their favorite character from a musical. We had characters from Jesus Christ Superstar, Annie Get Your Gun, Sweeney Todd, Seussical... Sadly I didn't think to ask everyone if I could post their pictures on here so instead you get a picture of me and a picture of the cakes. 

Guess who I was?

Audrey II made from a fake plant, paper mache, and LOTS of superglue.

My costume - assembled from clothes I already owned.

Did you figure it out? I'm Seymour from Little Shop of Horrors! With my plant Audrey II.

Seymour and Audrey II.

And now for a picture of the cake...

Birthday Twin lights the candles.

And of course, Audrey II has found a lovely new home in my front room.

Audrey II lives on my end table next to the lamp. 

Shopping Spree!!! Whee!!!

Ok, I don't usually go on shopping sprees. But this week I was bored so I dragged Waldo along with me to a couple thrift shops and some other stores for window shopping.

"Gay AF" baseball cap.

Waldo wears a unicorn head. 

The reason I bothered to post this is because while we were in Savers' Thrift Store, I wound up finding my birthday present to myself. A full 8-person set of china for under $30! It's Prudence brand china and the pattern is called Antiquity. Yippee!

Cart from Savers with the china in it.

Of course as soon as I got home I set the table with four of the eight place settings so I could take photos. Here you go:

Table all set up with light blue tablecloth that matches the blue and white china.

Another picture of the china on the table.

Ash Valentines Day

Today is a weird day for Christians. It's Ash Wednesday - a day of fasting - and also Valentine's day.

Cartoon  of a woman opening a Valentine's day heart shaped box and a poem falls out of it. The poem says "Valentines are red, Wednesday's ashes are gray, You can't spell Valentine without 'Lent' on this day." 

I will be observing Ash Wednesday and in lieu of Valentine's day today I'll be celebrating Discount Chocolate Day tomorrow when all the chocolate goes on sale.

2017 New Year's Resolutions Update

It occurs to me that I never gave the 2017 resolutions recap. Here it is!

Diet
If you'll recall, my plan was to track what I eat in order to figure out how much I eat in a year so I would know what I need to plant to grow it myself. I made a really good start with this, but with multiple moves and food sharing with housemates it was too hard to keep track. I might re-start this plan in 2018 but we'll see.

Exercise
My exercise goals were to be able to do a handstand, a cartwheel, a split, 25 pull ups, 50 pushups, 200 situps, and 200 squats. I still can't do the handstand, splits, or pull-ups, but I've reached all the other goals.

I debated and ultimately wound up deciding against doing a 5K color run because as exciting as crossing the finish line sounds to me, it turns out that running just isn't my thing.

I was curious about the circus classes , rock climbing, kickboxing, and Krav Maga. I wound up taking "Survey of Circus" at Esh Circus Arts in Somerville. I'd love to take another circus class at some point, but now I don't live near there anymore. After I moved here, I started taking kickboxing and Krav Maga at a local studio and I'm really enjoying both.

Finances
I am proud to announce that I'm credit card debt free, my car is paid off, and I'm on my way towards paying off my current student loans before I need to take out loans for nursing school. I have not managed to put money into retirement because I've been throwing anything extra into debt. I fizzled out on using Digit for no particular reason. I did, however, keep up with my charity donations. I should really start posting about the charities I pick again.

Focus More on Spirituality
I did a really good job with this goal overall. I continued to do my daily gratitudes and finally got into the habit of saying grace before meals. Although I did pray more frequently, I wasn't successful at the morning and bedtime prayers. I finally found a new local church and I need to get into a more regular routine with going.

One thing I'm really proud of myself for this year is following through with both my "Become Love" motto and the "Is it true? Is it kind? Is it necessary?" criteria regarding my speech. I've been in several extremely difficult interpersonal situations this past year and I'm overall satisfied with how I conducted myself. I behaved well, even in the face of lies and slander directed at me by people I'd trusted.

This Year's To-Do List
If you'll recall, these were the smaller things that didn't seem large enough to be proper resolutions.

Here are the ones I managed to do:
* Get a professional massage.
* Go on a date.
* Swim in the ocean.
* Make video recordings of me reading kids' books and send them to Wolfie.
* Go dancing.
* Fly a kite.
* Take the kid housemates sledding.
* Take my grandmother out to lunch.

And here are the ones I started but didn't finish:
* Make a will - I have this written up but need to make it official.
* Self-publish my kids' book - I've switched who is illustrating this for me.
* Make a junk statue with Tea.
* Go camping and roast s'mores - I set up MULTIPLE camping trips, all of which failed to happen. I did, however, roast s'mores around a friend's backyard firepit.
* Play a violin duet with Primo - we picked a song but I wound up moving out so this didn't happen.
* Bike around Martha's Vineyard - this was a planned trip with Cupcake that they canceled.

And here are the ones I didn't do:
* Make a junk statue with Tea.
* Organize all of my photos.
* Go sailing.
* Take my dad kayaking.
* Become an ambassador for the Boston Children's Museum.
* Go apple picking and then make a pie.
* Go on a whale watch.

I Got New Glasses

Not sure how I feel about them, though...

Me, in need of a shave and a change of clothes, wearing my new glasses. 

My Other Blog

Well, the best way to get back into blogging is to start posting, right? So here we go...

Drawing of a white woman in vintage attire holding a cooking pot.
The quote on it says "My cooking is so fabulous... even the smoke alarm cheers me on!"

In addition to all the new stuff I mentioned in my last post, I have been working on a cooking blog! The main idea behind it is that I've been posting a picture and the recipe for my dinner every weeknight (in English and French). I don't always manage to do it - sometimes all I get out on time is the name of the recipe I ate so I have to go back and edit it later to add the pictures and recipe - but I've done a fairly decent job of it so far and I like that it keeps me cooking good dinners for myself.

The most recent thing I've added is a sidebar with an index of all of my recipes for easy searching. I'm eventually planning to add in some non-dinner recipes, food sustainability related posts, and posts about food growing and composting.

Anyway, you can find the new blog HERE if you're interested.