January Recipe Recaps

I have to start this out by saying I am so proud of myself for how much I have cooked this week. I have stayed on top of meal planning and making my grocery lists. My Simplified Planner has also helped because it always "asks" what you are heating for dinner. Eating at home has really helped us with both our budget and staying under my calorie count. It has also been so fun and I am definitely becoming more confident in the kitchen and a better cook! We had some really yummy meals this month!

What's Up Wednesday

Happy Wednesday! I love answering these simple prompts. They are so fun! My go-to question for anyone is always "what's your favorite...?" I think this is a form of that!

Training Plan Week 5

Life Lately

Our life lately has been slow and full. After a lot of traveling and packed weekends from October through year-end I wanted to focus on a lot of free weekends in January. I knew this would be the best way to start off strong with my 2017 goals. So many things get pushed aside when time is tight and I wanted to focus and prep on the things I needed to do in order to set us up well. So we said "no" and planned to have a lot of margin.

5 Things I Love About Working for a Big Company

Colorado Springs

I work for a big company in "corporate America". It's definitely not where I thought I would ever work and even when I started working there after college I thought I would be there a year max. (I will have to share that story another day.) Sam brought that sentiment up the other day when I said I wasn't sure if I could move somewhere else because I didn't think I'd ever find a company I loved working for as much! I love where I work! Sometimes I think big companies get a bad rap so I wanted to share why I love working for one so much!

2016 Running Recap

Our little running group // 2016 RNRDC Finisher

One of my favorite bloggers Teri shared her running recap a week ago and I loved reading it! I thought this would be a great way to summarize my year and compare my years to come!

Training Plan Week 4

Training Plan Week 4

Friday Favorites vol. 8

Another Friday Favorites joining the link-up on Erika's blog! I missed a few of these but I love recording my random favorites.

2016 Book Review

This was a big year for me and reading because I finally reached my goal of reading 25 books in a year! And then I surpassed that goal and read 31 books! I was so proud of myself. Finishing a book gives me a huge sense of accomplishment - am I the only one?! I wanted to share my top five books from this year and any books I wouldn't recommend. You can also read my entire list on my Goodreads account. If you have Goodreads definitely add me! This year I have gotten many recommendations from other bloggers. (My favorite blogger recommendations have come from Mix and Match Mama, Rachel Dawson and Bailey Jean.)

2016 : A Year in Review : Part 2

Part 1 of my year is here. I am really excited about part 2 because no matter how good part one was I know part two takes the cake.

July

We got married and then we went on our honeymoon. Obviously move were highlights of our entire life much less our year. I can't believe our wedding day already happened and I miss it, mostly having our favorite people all in one place. But I am also so glad it's over because I love being married so much more than getting married.

2016 : A Year in Review : Part 1

Well I think it's safe to say this was my best year ever! I can't believe I got married this year or that I'm old enough to be married! Haha When prepping my 2017 PowerSheets I was thinking I didn't do that much until after we got married. But then I realize that was partially because most of the things accomplished were wedding related! I had so much fun with all the wedding planning and parties and especially seeing so many people so many times who I don't usually get to see because they live far away. Okay here we go! I'm using my Facebook memories for help remembering what all I did!

The Weekender + Training Plan Week 3

I love reading others' recaps of their training runs week over week. I want to share mine here to inspire others, get advice and record it for myself. I also record all my runs and my training plan on Running Ahead. It's a very basic website but I love it. Also my Garmin automatically syncs to the site (once I download the information on my computer) and I love how easy that is to match up the runs on my plan with the runs I've done. And there are so many stats and y'all know I love data!

Friday Favorites

Another Friday Favorites joining the link-up on Erika's blog! I missed a few of these but I love recording my random favorites.

PowerSheets : 2017 Goals

My 2017 Goals

I am really happy with my goals. I think the make sense to me. I am happy with the words I found to define my goals and the fact that I only have five. I didn't want too many. I wanted to make big progress this year and achieve some lifelong goals. These goals came from a lot of brainstorming! I had at least two pages of brainstorming random goals and then I looked for threads. I looked at the goals that really, really mattered to me and then tried to find an umbrella they could tall under. I also found Bible verses that related to my goals. I want to start with memorizing those this year. Y'all these goals are going to happen!

PowerSheets : My Word of 2017

For Part 2 I identified what "fires me up" and my word of the year to me. Obviously I love thinking about what fires me up because it is all my favorite things! The number one thing that fires me up?! Answered prayer! What is more empowering and encouraging!? I started a prayer journal in October and it has been a huge blessing to see some of these prayers answered! You don't need a prayer journal for God to answer your prayers, of course, but it helps you to realize that he is answering them when you keep a journal and have some repetitive prayers. 

For my journal I've listed my specific prayers in seven categories, one for every day of the week, in a basic journal (Rifle Paper Co, of course). I've decided to rewrite my prayers in these categories month over month. Some of them are the same month over month but some of them change and I enjoy rewriting them and seeing how the evolve.

PowerSheets : An Intro to Me

Welcome to my 2017 PowerSheets journey! This was my second year doing PowerSheets and I could not wait to get my hands on the new workbooks. I hope y'all are as excited about my journey as I am! Sorry if I ramble on too much.

I was so excited that this was the year Cultivate What Matters put out a Couples Companion Guide for the PowerSheets. I would love for "goal setting" to be a tradition in our marriage! Sam sometimes rolls his eyes at my goal digging but he was a good sport and went through the whole guide with me. I think that marrying Sam has helped to provide me with clarity in my goals in that he and our marriage is my priority. I loved going through the companion guide and asking him about his dreams for our marriage and how I could better love him!

January Goals

Happy New Year! I disappeared for a while but now I am back and one of my goals for this year is to keep this blog going! (Or, let's be honest, maybe I will decide I'm not enjoying this hobby but I want to give it a good try before I give up!) I am excited about the new year and I am pretty sure it will be my best year yet.