At the beginning of 2012, I made
a list of four things I wanted to try and do this year. Now that we're more than halfway through the year, (which I can hardly believe - WHERE did the time go?!) I thought it was be a good idea to check in with myself and see how I've been doing with keeping my resolutions. This might jog your memory as well, and make you revisit any resolutions you may have made earlier in the year too!
1. Learn to cook more: When 2012 began, a good friend of mine and I decided we wanted to try a bunch of new recipes that were relatively easy but still delicious to expand our palettes. Being a big
Jamie Oliver fan, and having watched his television series where he teaches people who have never picked up a frying pan in their life how to cook, I thought his cookbook,
Jamie's Food Revolution, would be a good place to start. We began our cooking series,
Transatlantic Tastes (Since we live on opposite sides of the Atlantic for parts of the year, we cook "together" via
Skype) and learned a few new recipes while catching up on what was new with each other.
Now, as I'd said in my
original blog post, I figured that we wouldn't be able to cook every single week, because we're both busy people, and I knew life would get in the way. So while we haven't cooked as often as we would've liked, we did manage to do our cooking sessions a handful of times, and we are still trying to get back on track. Stay tuned for more recipes!
2. Spend less: This year, I wanted to spend less; time, money, whatever. I took a look at my upcoming year and all the things I knew would be costing me money over the next 12 months (like weddings, travel, etc.) and wrote down all of my bills and loans to pay off, and set up a budget. Thanks to online banking, a lot of these can be paid automatically at certain times of the month, and also thanks to the helpful bank teller at
BMO, I've been able to work out a schedule and figure out how to pay off some of those loans, while still putting away money into my savings.
I've also been spending less time on things like watching television, but during the summer, that's not exactly hard - there's not a lot of good television happening (except for
Mad Men and
Suits, but the former finished early in the summer and the latter only takes up an hour of my time each week, so that's okay, right? Plus, who can resist the charming
Harvey Specter? Not this girl.) I've been spending less time being lazy on the couch and much more time hitting the gym. If you have a membership, you might as well use it as much as possible, right?
Have I jogged your memory just yet? I'll be back soon with Part Two of Revisiting the New Years Resolutions!
