Pro-Soup Propaganda

Happy new year! 2011 is going to be great!

Happy New Year! Whooooo hoo! *toots horn and throws confetti*


Did you all have a wonderful new year's eve? How did you ring in the new year? Viral bronchitis may have sapped my energy, but Jonathan and I celebrated by staying home and enjoying some Barefoot Bubbly and Deschutes' Hop Henge IPA. We watched The Business of Being Born (SO interesting!! I had no less than ten friends give birth in 2010. Craziness.), SNL's Best of Christopher Walken, and Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work. It was a nice, relaxing evening, with the exception of all the coughing I've been doing for three weeks now. Viral bronchitis is not so fun. You just have to wait it out. Good times, indeed.

Today marks the first day of winter term. I'm hoping I won't be totally swamped with school stuff this term. I'm taking eleven credits, with four of them being for in-class statistics. This totally messes with my normal work day and so some days I'm having to stay later and I only get a half hour lunch instead of a full hour. But it's much better than taking distance statistics, like I tried doing last term. (I'm sure some of you remember how incredibly frustrated I was with that. Hopefully I do much better actually sitting in a class!) After this term I'll only have my capstone project to do and I'll graduate in June!

Something I'm trying for this month is Whole Living's 28 Day Action Plan. With eating more junk food during the holiday season, working a ton, and not getting enough "me" time, I am looking forward to gently refocusing myself back to doing the things that I normally do that make me feel awesome. When I was in Ketchikan in December I was eating almost no fruits and vegetables and, if you follow what I eat at all, is SAD. When I returned from Ketchikan we didn't buy any more groceries until Jonathan got paid again, and just ate what we had. So I had some fairly random meals at times. Again, not enough veggies! I was a sad Britt! But last Sunday night we went grocery shopping and bought a ton of food for the next two weeks (and stayed within our budget - woot!) and I have been trying new healthy recipes and life is returning back to good again! Some of the recipes I've been cooking (if you've just started reading) are:

*Moroccan Steamed Salmon with Quinoa and Carrots
*Millet Bowl with Black Beans and Vegetables (I used quinoa.)
*Creamy Kale Salad (I didn't use beets because Freddie's was out.)
*Roasted Spiced Chickpeas
*Chipotle Avocado Sandwich

I would highly recommend all of them! (Yes, I mixed and matched a few recipes from other weeks into this list. As long as I'm eating more veggies, fish, and beans I'm happy.) I'm going to make this Salmon with Herbed Mustard Sauce recipe later this week. YUM!

I am really proud of Jonathan and I yesterday because we totally KICKED BUTT in cleaning our apartment and getting things together to give away and donate to Goodwill. I will be delivering things to friends and Goodwill a few nights this week, but it feels so good to have more space! We cleaned and I was able to put some stuff away and organize things that I've been wanting to do for months. It feels awesome!! I've been wanting to arrange our spare bedroom/computer room a bit more, too, because since I do distance classes I want to have some art around the computer and make it look nice. I finally cleared the stuff away from the wall the computer is on and now I can hang some art! I'm pretty excited. I'm going to hang the print Jonathan got me for Christmas, going to get a pretty calendar to put up (eventually...gotta pay more bills before I can buy this calendar!), and I want to get a big piece of cork board to make an inspiration board, which I have been wanting to do for quite some time, but didn't have room to. This post was also very inspiring to get my rear in gear! 

To 2011 I just want to say I am going to be doing lots of butt-kicking. There are many exciting, big things afoot for this year, some of which I can't quite mention yet, but you will all find out in due time.