a sign.

Today while I was doodling at work (don't tell my boss) I suddenly realized that my two lucky numbers, 2 and 13, figure prominently in this year's date. Duh, I know. Blame it on holiday hangover. No matter. I'm taking it as a sign of amazing things to come.  This is my year!

Happy late birthday to me!

Happiness is...reaching a milestone.

Happy Blogiversary to Me!

This has been a year of change and adventure, of food and friends, music and movies and breakthroughs. Today is the true beginning of a new year (holidays don’t count in my world), my one year blogiversary (133 posts and counting!), and my birthday (I’m not saying which one.)

With a new year come new challenges and opportunities, new adventures and change. I have a few big projects in the works that I’m not quite ready to make public yet as well as all of the things I mentioned in my year in review post earlier, enough to keep me busy for quite some time.

I leave tomorrow on my trip to South America and Antarctica and am both thrilled and terrified. (Click here to see a rough outline of my itinerary.) It will be the first time I’ve gone anywhere truly by myself. I’ve flown alone and even taken weekend roadtrips a couple of hours from home but nothing to this extent. I’ll be with a tour group of course, and I have an unknown entity in my roommate whom I’ve never met before (here’s hoping we get along!) but for all intents and purposes I’ll be on my own. And I’m a bit nervous. But I’m so excited not only at the prospect of travel and I’ll that I’ll be able to see and do, but also of having some unstructured time to myself. I have a lot of things to think about (see unmentioned projects above) and a lot of work I’m hoping to get done on my books. I also intend to take about 15 million pictures of all of my adventures and see what I can figure out on some of photo editing tools.

And then there are the onboard gym facilities. My goal is to take advantage of the yoga classes and start up some running so that I can work my way up to a 5K later this spring.

I’m also taking just this one physical book (and my brother’s Nook, there’s no way I could be gone a whole month and only read one book!) This was a Christmas present and is supposed to be a fantastic resource by David A. Bednar. I’m going to use it to kick-off my scripture study goal. Each month I’m going to tackle a different subject for an in-depth study and instead of just taking random notes I’ll pretend I’m giving a talk on the subject and record what I learn accordingly. That way I’ll not only have to read and study but organize my thoughts, personalize it all while looking for connections and applications. I’m hoping it helps me to get more out of my studies this year.

I may or may not have regular access to the internet so I’m hoping to keep you all informed of my travels and adventures along the way but I can’t promise anything. So, in case it doesn’t happen until I get home, here’s a little video to keep you company.

I'm pretty sure this is what it's going to be like :)

Happy Birthday to me! (And Happy New Year to all of you!)

Happiness is...having a project.

Or two.

My roommate's birthday was this past week.  She's a popcorn fanatic and decided she wanted to throw herself a popcorn-themed party. So, we set out to overhaul our house (which hasn't quite come together since the newest roommate moved in about 2 months ago), clean it up, organize it and then do all the food and party prep.  It kept us all pretty busy.

I re-painted all of our kitchen chairs from a smoky blue to black (and have a lovely spray paint effect manicure to prove it!) And then spent I don't know how many hours making cupcakes.

First were the popcorn inspired mini-cupcakes topped with mini-marshmallows.  Aren't they cute?

Then there were the leftovers which got the sprinkle treatment.

And then the piece de resistance: buttered popcorn flavored cupcakes with salted caramel buttercream frosting topped with caramel popcorn and sea salt.  Look how pretty!  They tasted pretty delicious as well.  (I found the recipe on Pinterest, you can find it here.)

We had 8 different flavors of popcorn, some sweet, some savory. And then there were the decorations.

On top of that I finally put the finishing touches on my bedroom. You can't see much of it, and you wouldn't really notice much if you hadn't seen what it looked like before, but there's the new mattress underneath it all, a black rug, new black and white photos in the frame on the wall (which didn't get painted, I decided to stick with just the classic b&w rather than trying to go with an accent color just yet...maybe that will be the spring project!)

It was quite the weekend of domesticity. Not my usual course of action but fun for a change and something I definitely need to work into my life a little more often.  Creativity and motivation are uplifting, if also somewhat exhausting! 

How did you spend your weekend?

Happiness is...a birthday party!

I threw myself a birthday party yesterday.  That's another first for me.  I don't like to be in the spotlight.  That's just asking for trouble when things don't go according to plan, you can't fade into the shadows and pretend you have no idea what's going on.  (In the shadows, that's my favorite place to be!)  But it turned out rather well.  There was a decent amount of people that showed up but not so many I felt overwhelmed.  And it was great to spend some time with some truly wonderful friends.  I was showered with unexpected gifts and a month's worth of hugs along with tasty treats and terrific conversation. It definitely made up for the crappy rest of the week I spent sniffling, sneezing and feeling generally yucky. 

A few more things that make me happy...

Cupcakes!

African Violets

Star Wars cookies

Any wish I could have made while blowing out my candles would pale in comparison to what I already have in my life, compliments of the wonderful people I call friends. As Ralph Waldo Emerson said, "A friend may well be reckoned the masterpiece of Nature."  Amen, Mr. Emerson.  Amen!