Happy New Year! Preparation and Reflection for 2021

 Hello Friends,

I hope you are doing well.  This morning I did some planning, journaling, reading, and reflecting. I love NewYear's Eve because I use it as a time to think of the past year and what my goals are for the upcoming year. I finished reading Atomic Habits by James Clear today. It is a great book to read to think of the habits I want to continue and start in 2021. I wrote in my Five Minute Journal on what I am grateful for, and my hopes for the day to make it a great one. I planned in my Happy planner and filled in my to do list for today. I reflected on the affirmation card below to get into the mindset today. I also did a 6 minute meditation using the Insight Timer app on my phone. I am enjoying meditation lately and it is helping me to keep calm and focused. Definitely want to meditate daily in the New Year.

I planned in my Happy Planner on Sunday this week for the week ahead. I planned out this week for New Year's spread in my new planner. I have filled most of it in at this point, but here is my before the pen layout for the week.

I love this sticker that says Pop! Clink! & Fizz! I am happy I saved it for this day because it is perfect for New Year's Eve. I add the champagne glasses clinking sticker and some other star stickers as well.

I received some more planner stickers for Christmas as well as the Happy Planner pictured above from my mom. We always gift each other a planner and stickers each year. She got me two sticker packs, one note pack, and the fitness insert.

I got a lot of lovely things for Christmas. Below are a few gifts I received that will help me make this year a great one. I received the One Line A Day journal. Which has five years of space to write a line about your day. It will be great to reflect each year on the year before and to also compare years. I received the oh she glows cookbook. I am excited to try out these plant based recipes and I have two other books of hers and enjoyed them. I received these affirmation cards for women by Casey Weigand from Liam's dad and stepmom and am looking forward to incorporating these into my morning routine in the New Year.  

We were also gifted the ornament that says 2020 The year we almost got married from Liam's step sister. It is so cute and funny and we love it. I got the First Christmas in our New Home 2020 ornament on Etsy from SamanthaAnnAndCo. We love this ornament so much and we love our new home.

I also put together this plant stand from IKEA today. It is the Satsumas brand plant stand. I am happy that I now have a good home for my plants, and they will get a lot more sunlight in the New Year. I am glad I worked on this project today, and that it is now done. Liam also put together the second Malm nightstand. We are making progress in making our house more of a home.

Joining along with As Kat Knits for Unraveled Wednesday.

Thank you for visiting today! This year was at times a difficult one and also a year that we had to slow down, and live in a different way. There were also some really great times had this year. I cherish this year for the special moments we had and mostly buying our first home. I hope that you enjoy your New Year's Eve and have a Happy New Year! I hope that 2021 is a wonderful year for you, and your family. Thank you for visiting my blog this year, I am so grateful for each of you. 

Happy New Year! x

Blogmas Day 26 - Christmas Day 2020

 Hello Friends,

I hope you are doing well. Our Christmas was spent just the two of us at our condo townhome this year. It was nice to spend the whole day here, and take it easy. It was a white Christmas this year in Toronto. It hasn't been for many years now, so it made for such a nice day to stay inside and not have to drive. At times we could watch the fluffy flakes falling outside our window. Liam and I opened gifts to each other first and had our coffee and Baileys. We opened cards and stockings, and then we opened gifts. Liam got me a lot of tea and chocolates. He also got me a lovely snowman Pandora charm. I am also excited for the subscription he got me for Psychology today magazines, which I will be receiving every couple of months this year. Liam opened the ridge rib men's scarf I knitted him. I was so happy that he liked the scarf and the length. He looks cute wearing it below.

Pictured below is our tree on Christmas morning. My favourite sight to see! The gifts all wrapped, and it looks like Santa even added a few toys under there and the cushion to add more Christmas cheer. He filled our stockings too. Christmas is always so magical and wonderful. 

We had Pillsbury cinnamon rolls for breakfast along with some fruit. They were so delicious, we both had a few. They were so quick and easy to make and turned out well. I was happy to be able to have one leftover this morning as well they are such a treat.

Then we had a zoom chat with Liam's Mom, Sister, and her boyfriend. We opened gifts which we had exchanged a couple of days earlier. It was nice to see them. Then we chatted with Liam's Aunt, Uncle, and Cousin. After our calls with family, we took a walk outside and I loved seeing the snow covered houses and streets. We went to check the mailbox and got some mail. I finally received the ornament I ordered in the mail from SamanthaAnnAndCo on Etsy. It was larger than I realized, but so cute and I am loving it. It was perfect that we received it on Christmas Day and such a nice surprise. It has been a wonderful first Christmas in our new home.

After we got back, I made some tea. Then we got on zoom call with my Mom, Dad, Sister, and Brother-in-Law. We opened gifts and chatted for a bit. Then Liam and I had our lasagna and garlic bread for dinner and finished watching It's a Wonderful Life that I started last night. I was happy we still got to see our families through Zoom on Christmas, it was still special. We chatted with Liam's dad and step mom on zoom today, and now we have seen all the family for the holidays. I look forward to next year, when hopefully we can meet again in person, and spend the holidays together as usual. Hope your Christmas was also enjoyable and you made some special memories even with the pandemic going on. I hope you also enjoyed your boxing day. Take care and be safe.

Have a great day!

Blogmas Day 25 - Merry Christmas!

 Hello Friends,

I hope you are doing well. Merry Christmas! I am so happy it is finally Christmas day. I hope that you all have a wonderful day today, spending it with loved ones either in person or from a distance. These few weeks of posting here for Blogmas have been so special to me. I really enjoy posting during this season and get so much inspiration from this wonderful time of the year. There is so much to be grateful for even though this year was so difficult at times. We made it through, and now we can now enjoy this wonderful holiday with loved ones and have a special and magical day. I always love how everything feels so special and magical on Christmas day.

I wanted to share the top I bought on Amazon for Christmas. It has Merry Christmas written above a plaid trailor with a tree on top. I am wearing this shirt today while I celebrate with Liam and our families. Link here for the top on Amazon if interested. I will also be wearing some Christmas socks and the pyjamas I got last night from my parents from Old Navy they are so cute and comfortable.

Thank you for visiting my blog today for the final day of Blogmas and Christmas day! I hope that you stay safe and take care! I will post soon to catch up after Christmas. I am looking forward to planning for the New Year in upcoming posts. 

Please click here to read my other posts from Blogmas 2020.

Have a wonderful day!

Blogmas Day 24 - Merry Christmas Eve!

 Hello Friends,

I hope you are doing well. Merry Christmas Eve! Today I was so happy to have the day off work. Liam and I went out to a couple of stores to get some gifts and also some things we needed to celebrate tonight and tomorrow for Christmas. This morning before we went out, I got to knitting the last of the wreaths as Christmas gifts  for my family, and I had some coffee out of my favourite Christmas mug.

I bought a small poinsettia plant today while at the grocery store! They are so festive and look pretty on the counter in my kitchen.

I had my last chocolate out of the Lindtt advent calendar this afternoon. I love the bear chocolate from today that is always behind the door on the 24th.

I watched the movie, A Charlie Brown Christmas this afternoon while I knitted. It is a classic and also watched Santa Clause is Coming to Town from 1970. I love that one it is so cute and I watched both a lot when I was growing up and still watch these every year. 

I knitted this white wreath for my sister. She likes having white ornaments on her Christmas tree. I also added the red bow to the ornament as well. The pattern I used for the wreath is the Christmas wreath ornament by Penny Carrington found on Ravelry. I used 3.25 mm needles.

Liam and I had a facetime chat with my family tonight as we opened pyjamas. We had the call after we drove over to my sister's place to drop off their Christmas gifts to open together tomorrow. It was snowing a lot and the visibility wasn't very good on the highway. I am glad we arrived home safely and then had dinner and did our call. 

Thank you so much for visiting my blog today! I love Christmas Eve and I am so happy to share my day with you. I hope you had a great day too and I will chat with you again tomorrow for my final Blogmas post on Christmas day! I am so excited for Christmas to be here tomorrow. Even though we will be celebrating with our families from a distance, I know it will still feel so special and magical as every Christmas day does. 

Please click here to read my other posts from Blogmas 2020.

Have a great day!

Blogmas Day 23- Preparations for Christmas, Knitting, and Reading On

 Hello Friends,

I hope you are doing well. It is so close to Christmas now, and I am getting so excited to start my holidays. I am off work tomorrow, Christmas Eve. The company I work for gave us that day off this year. Usually we are scheduled to work a half day, but this year because of the pandemic and all the hard work we did, they gave us the day off. Tomorrow, I will finish wrapping and preparing for Christmas day, and clean. I did a lot of wrapping last night while watching the Bachelorette season finale. It was good to get more done, wrapping really takes a long time sometimes. I still have a few gifts to wrap and get sorted out, and have to prepare Liam's stocking. I am mostly done and it feels good. We are visiting my family for Christmas, so I wrapped a lot of their gifts last night and some for Liam as well.

I knitted more of the wreath ornaments for family to give as gifts. I still have a couple more to knit up. These are so fun to knit up and I really love how they turned out. I used the pattern from Ravelry the Christmas wreath ornament by Penny Carrington.

I lost my loan from the library for Beach Read by Emily Henry sadly. So, I will have to resume reading it in the New Year when I get it back in a few weeks. It is really good so far, and I like the storyline and the relationship unfolding between the main characters. I am still reading Atomic Habits by James Clear. I stopped reading 13th gift because it didn't grab me. 

Joining along with As Kat Knits for Unraveled Wednesday.

Thank you for visiting my blog today. I always thank you for being here, because I know your lives are all so busy. I appreciate the time you take to come to my blog and read about what I am up to each week. I will be posting here daily for the next two days for Blogmas. I will resume my regular weekly posting schedule after Christmas. I hope to see you tomorrow for Blogmas day 24, Christmas Eve!

Please click here to read my other posts from Blogmas 2020.

Have a great day!

Blogmas Day 22 - Christmas Yarn Wine Bottle Hat Topper

 Hello Friends,

I hope you are doing well. Today I am sharing a fun and quick craft you can make with any leftover yarn and a toliet  paper or paper towel cardboard roll. It looks so cute to gift wine this holiday season. When I first saw it, it looked knitted to me and I was surprised it wasn't. I found the pattern on Post Stitch Knitting blog. This one is so fun, easy, and quick to make! You can make it in time for Christmas with only a few more days left.

I was gifted this fun wine bottle holiday sweater last year by Liam's sister. It looks so cute with the hat topper on a yarn bottle! its from Uncle Bob's s ugly Christmas sweater wine bottle collection.

Pattern Details:

Pattern: Wine Bottle Hat topper by Post Stitch

Materials required: paper towel roll or toilet paper roll cut to 1 inch in length. 10 -12" strands of yarn to wrap around the roll.

Notes: no knitting involved and so easy! Looks so cute to gift on a bottle of wine at Christmas

Thank you for visiting my blog today for Blogmas day 21! We have only four more posts left of Blogmas and until Christmas day. I hope that you are having a wonderful holiday season so far.

Please click here to read my other posts from Blogmas 2020.

Have a good day!

Blogmas Day 21 - Happy Planner Christmas Week Layout

 Hello Friends,

I hope you are doing well. As some of you may know, I write in The Happy Planner weekly and use it to plan out my weeks. I have loved using the planner for the past three years. I love adding the stickers, and then filling in the to do lists with my tasks and also adding notes to remember. I created a layout last night for this special week of Christmas. I am excited to share it with you. Please join me as I discuss this special layout below.

I added a couple of to-do lists for Monday and Tuesday, because I usually get more done these days at the start of the week. I will also be busy Wednesday as well, but for this week of Christmas, I would like to have most of my to do tasks completed early in the week to enjoy Christmas.

For the end of the week, I just placed the big "Happy Christmas" sticker that takes up a few days. I always enjoy the day before and after Christmas as well because we are celebrating Christmas, so I went ahead and put the sticker to fill all those days. I love how it is so colorful and feels so special. I placed the Santa and "Santa stop here" sticker for Christmas Eve because we all hope Santa fills our stockings and makes our next morning magical. I added the gather sticker because we'll be visiting some family this year and gathering together. I am really looking forward to this part of the week!

I placed this "Merry & Bright" sticker in the corner of the first page which is my quotes or inspiration spot. I just love this sticker in the red and green with the holly. It makes me so happy.

I love this peace on earth sticker it is so pretty with the various colors. I hope there is peace on earth especially at this time of the year.

I just love this cute bicycle with gifts on the back of it. It is adorable.

I used this sticker book called Christmas Joy from Me & My Big Ideas and The Happy Planner. It has a lot of stickers to choose from and I got all the stickers you saw today from this booklet.

This is the planner I used this year. I loved the message "your year to shine".

Thank you for visiting my blog today for Blogmas day 21! I am so excited for this week leading up to Christmas it already feels so special. I had a lot of fun making this layout last night and anticipating the fun week ahead. See you tomorrow for another Blogmas post!

Please click here to read my other posts from Blogmas 2020.

Have a great day!

Blogmas Day 20 - Baking Peanut Butter Blossom Cookies

 Hello Friends,

I hope you are doing well. I decided to make peanut butter blossom cookies this year. I made them a couple of years ago to bring to work and share with my colleagues. They enjoyed them, and Liam and I both liked having some at home. I love peanut butter and love these cookies because of their peanut butter taste. I loved how when they first came out of the oven, the kisses were melted and so delicious blending in with the peanut butter flavour.

This year, I decorated the Hershey kisses like Christmas trees. This was one of the designs included in the recipe I used from Chocolate with Grace. She also includes a design to make them into reindeer that is so cute. I will have to try that out one year. 

I didn't have sprinkles on hand, so I improvised and used colored frosting instead. I made the frosting using the recipe from the Best Cut out Sugar Cookie recipe by Joy Food Sunshine. I divided the frosting into three bowls and added food coloring for blue, red, and yellow ornaments to decorate the chocolate trees.  In the future it would definitely be easier and look nice with sprinkles. To add the green frosting onto the kisses, I used a Ziploc bag and cut a small hole at the corner to make a piping bag. For the ornaments, I dipped tooth picks into the frosting then gently dabbed the different colors onto the dried green frosting.

Cookies details:

Recipe: Christmas Peanut Blossom Cookies from Chocolate with Grace

Frosting recipe: Frosting for the sugar cookies from Joy Food Sunshine

Notes: These are quick to make and the dough does not have to chill. They are quick 10 minutes in the oven. All together it probably was 20 minutes baking and then 20 mins to make the frosting and coloring them in the different bowls, then decorating about 15 minutes.

Thank you for stopping by for Blogmas Day 20! I can't believe it is now the week of Christmas already, I am so excited to celebrate. What is your favourite cookie to have at Christmas? I enjoyed baking the three different cookies this season. Please see those posts here. Next year I might try making some different types of cookies. There are so many types of cookies to make and enjoy! I hope that you enjoy your weekend and also have a good week ahead. I will be posting daily all the way up to Christmas day for Blogmas.

Have a good day!

Blogmas Day 19 - Reflection on 2020, and Resolutions for 2021

 Hello Friends,

I hope you are doing well. I wanted to share my resolutions for 2020, and how I did this year working on them. I shared my hopes for 2020 in last year's Blogmas post on my resolutions here. I am also sharing below what my resolutions are for 2021. I am so excited for a fresh New Year, more than ever this year. A New Year always feels like such a fresh start and full of possibilities. Please see below for my 2020 review and then my goals for the upcoming year!

Review of 2020 Goals:

1. Get Married

I didn’t get married this year – twice! because of the pandemic, the first time the venue wasn't open and the second time there was threat of closures and a reduced guest size to 10 people . So we postponed to next year. We have a tentative date planned for March. Fingers crossed that the third time is a charm.

2.Buy a House or Condo✅

We did buy a condo/townhouse! We moved in in November this year and put down the offer, and had it accepted in August. It was an exciting experience and we are so happy in our new home. 

3. Get to my goal weight 

I didn’t get to my goal weight this year. I did lose weight in the Summer and worked hard eating right and exercising. Then I started gaining again after the move and now it is Christmas time and more difficult to diet. I will start over in the New Year. 

4. Read 15 books ✅

I got to 12 books completed at this point. I have a few books on the go right now that I might finish before the end of the year. I read more this year than other years with being home more often. I mark this one as complete because I am reading those 3 last books and reached my goal to read 15.

5. Knit 12 new projects

I knitted a shawl, two fair isle ornaments, socks, a cowl, scarf as a Christmas gift, a pumpkin, a beanie that I haven't yet finished, and a wreath ornament. I have knitted the ornaments before so they don't count. I made it to 6 items that I didn't knit before. I like this goal and will use it again for 2021.

6. Improve blog✅

I did start following new blogs this year especially at the end because of Blogmas. I followed new knitters on Instagram. I posted a lot more this year around 3 times each week at some points. I was thinking of ways to improve my blog and think of new content to share especially for Blogmas this year.

Resolutions for 2021 

1. Get to goal weight - I will keep working towards my goal weight and trying to be the healthiest version of me. I will read the article called "how to get to your goal weight faster" by SkinnyMs from this photo.

Photo source

2. Read 20 books - I had a goal this past year of 15 books and almost made it. So I will aim for 20 this next year! I can do it.

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3. Knit a top - I see so many cute tops on Instagram to knit up. This year, I will choose one to knit up to wear in the summer.

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4. Get married - I hope to get married in March of 2021.

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5. Start trying for a baby - I am really hoping that once we get married, we can start trying for a baby. I am so excited for our future family that we build together. My sister is currently pregnant and due in late April next year. I am excited to be an Aunt, and I am so happy that our family is growing.

Photo source

6. Get a cat - I really want to get a pet cat this year, we shall see. It will be a busy year and we have to be all set up in our home to welcome a pet. I have always had cats growing up and feel my home is not complete without one.

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7. Finish decorating home - We still have a lot of furniture and décor to buy for our new home. Hopefully this year we can complete decorating our new home and make it all that we would like it to be.

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8. Start a yoga routine -I want to incorporate yoga into my weekly morning routine to get in shape and healthy. I think yoga is a calming exercise and great way to get mentally ready for the workday.

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9. Start Cross stitching - As I mentioned in my preparing for 2021 post, I am interested in learning how to cross stitch this upcoming year. I saw a cute set on Etsy that I will probably buy to get started. It is always fun learning something new.

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Thank you for stopping by the blog today! How was 2020 for you? It was a crazy year and it is nice to see that even while in a pandemic, I did meet some of my goals and resolutions. What are your goals for 2021? I am so excited for the New Year! Looking forward to celebrating Christmas first. I can't believe it is in 6 days! 🎄 See you again for another Blogmas post tomorrow for day 20!

Have a great day!