Friday Focus- Inspiration for the New Year

Hello Friends,

I hope you are doing well. Happy Friday! When I was thinking about what to call my Friday posts, I thought of Focus Fridays or Friday Focus. The reason for the title is because I want to focus on a topic on Friday posts that are not necessarily knitting related. I like to post on other topics as well. Since it is the beginning of the new year, I thought having a Friday focus on inspiration for the New Year would be fun and maybe helpful. I will be sharing some of the videos, podcasts, meditations, and books I have been enjoying to start the new year. 

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Podcasts

Happier podcast with Gretchen Rubin -  I have listened to a couple of the podcasts to start the year. The first one that inspired me was "choose your one word theme for 2022" . I listened to the word theme podcast on New Year's Eve. It made me think of a word I would choose for the year. It is grow. The other one I listened to on Wednesday was "we reveal our 2022 lists. Gretchen and her sister Elizabeth create a list of 22 goals for 2022 and discuss their goals. I wrote a list of 22 goals as well, and I look forward to checking the list throughout the year to see how I am doing with my goals.

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On Purpose with Jay Shetty - I was recommended this podcast by my sister and I am glad I visited his podcast on Apple podcasts. I listened to the interview with Gwyneth Paltrow titled: Gwyneth Paltrow Interviews Jay Shetty ON: Daily Actions to Build Life-Changing Habits & Training Your Mind to Break Old Patterns. I was so inspired by Jay's words and will be listening to his podcasts this year. One take away from this podcast was that we are all inspired by someone, and we use this interest to motivate us to find ourselves and what we want to become. He also discusses his story and how he became a monk and the importance of meditation.

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Meditation

Setting Intentions for the New Year by Maryam Aishah on the Insight timer App. I enjoyed this meditation to start the new year. I liked her words of inspiration and it was very calming. She focuses on setting intentions for the year and thinking about how you would like to feel. 

Live event - New Year, New You-est you: Your Highest Vision and Dreams by Julie Reisler. It was the first time I attended a live event on the Insight Timer app. I really enjoyed the meditation which was a visualization meditation. Also the community aspect was nice as well. I will try to join more of these events this year. You can access more of Julie's mediations on the app and also on her own podcast the youest you podcast.

Youtube Vlogs 

Vlogs can be so inspirational and I have watched a few to start the new year off right. Below I have shared a few vloggers and videos that are my favourites for the start of this new year. 

Carter Sullivan - I recommend watching her videos Reset for 2022 with me, and January reset routine. I enjoy her videos on monthly resets and day in the life.

Rowena Tsai - Her video how to reset for 2022 . Her videos have always been so inspirational to me and her beginning of the year videos always inspire me so much to get organized with my goals. She ways inspires me in her videos on getting organized, journaling, and making goals.

Amy Landio - In her video Getting back to you in 2022, Amy focuses on how to have a good year and how to get back to doing the things that make you you after the difficult past year in 2021. Her book good morning good life inspired me and I like her vlogs for inspiration on goal setting, morning routines, and inspiration.

SarahBethYoga - I follow the 10 and 15 minute yoga workouts during the week and have done the longer 30 minute ones when I have time on the weekend. I like her videos because she explains things clearly and the workouts are fun. Adding this one to my favourites for the new year because I recommend getting a good start to a new routine or adding her videos if you are looking for yoga videos.

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Books

A Year of Positive Thinking: Daily Inspiration, Wisdom, and Courage (A Year of Daily Reflections) by Cyndie Spiegal. I started reading this book this year and so far I like the daily motivations for each day. They are short and very inspirational.

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Good Morning - 365 Positive ways to start your day by Brook Noel. I read this one in the past and was thinking of it today when I was starting the other book. I have loved reading it over the years and it is also very inspirational and a good book to read daily. These are longer daily thoughts and inspirations that the prior book. I will re-read this book as well this year.

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Miracle Morning by Hal Elrod - I had to include this book to start the new year. I want to reread this one soon as it really inspired me in the past to start my days off in a fulfilling way that inspire me so much to live my best life. 

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Thank you for visiting my blog today for my first Friday focus post of the year on the topic of inspiration for the new year. I tend to seek out these types of videos, books, podcasts, and meditations at the start of the year to shift my headspace to a place of positivity and hope. I am also feeling so inspired now to have a great year and chase after my dreams now after listening, watching, and reading the above. What are some of your favourites that you discovered to start the new year? It would be fun to share a post like this at the start of every year going forward as a new tradition on my blog. I hope that you had a good first week of the new year and have a great weekend.

Have a good day!

Knitting Stocking and Reading Updates

Hello Friends,

I hope you are doing well. This week has been good so far. It is always hard going back to work after the holidays. But we are getting through the week. I have been keeping busy with knitting, watching Big Little Lies on Crave, more like binge watching, and reading. I have been also doing yoga as I had mentioned in Monday's post was my goal to do yoga every day. I did yoga on Monday night and Tuesday on my lunch break. Might not make it today, but I will for sure tomorrow. I really love how yoga makes me feel more balanced and flexible. 

I am still knitting the stocking for Millie. I used the classic christmas stocking pattern from Betty Lai on Ravelry.  I knit the afterthought heel stitches onto waste yarn and am knitting the foot now.

Once I am finished the stocking, I would like to go back to working on the project I was almost finished, the Blustery day in Berkley scarf by Bridget Dean on Ravelry. This one is so relaxing to knit while watching TV. I knit a lot of it and thought I was done, but bought another skein because I want it to be a bit longer than it is when I wrap it around. Millie was in this photo because she was really fascinated by the needle.

On Monday's post, I mentioned I finished reading the Santa suit by Mary Kay Andrews. Now I am continuing on with reading The Bookshop of Yesterdays. I was reading this book at the end of November, then I put it down to read The Santa Suit for around Christmas. I will be continuing on with reading now and then looking forward to reading Malibu Rising by Taylor Jenkins Reid that I was gifted at Christmas.

I am also starting to read Expecting Better by Emily Oster to learn more about pregnancy and be more informed.

Joining along with As Kat Knits for Unraveled Wednesday.

Thank you for visiting today and I hope that you are having a good start to the new year. what are you working on this week? Please join me on Friday for my Friday Favourites that will be New Year's themed. It will include items and sources of inspiration that I have enjoyed and that I think are great tools to use to start the New Year. 

Have a great day!

Happy New Year! Plans for 2022

 Hello Friends,

I hope you are doing well. Happy New Year!  Last night Liam and I stayed in and watched Dick Clark's Rockin' Eve. We had snacks and snuggled on the couch with Millie. At midnight we celebrated with our prosecco and welcomed 2022. We are so happy to be celebrating another year and we hope that this year is a good one and we are all healthy and happy. We are looking forward to some goals we have for the year like continuing to grow our family.

I have been thinking of plans for my blog this year and want to make some changes for the better. My blogging schedule will change from once a week to three times each week. There will be posts every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday this year. I will continue on with the posts I have been doing on Wednesdays and Thursdays usually concerning knitting and reading updates. Then Monday's posts will be updates from the weekend and plans for the weeks ahead, and Fridays will be a mix of topic posts and Friday Favourites. I really enjoyed writing daily for blogmas and was inspired to up my posting game this year and blog more frequently.

This year I have two planners to help keep me on track and organized. I received the new 2022 Happy Planner from my mom for Christmas. It is beautiful with flowers on front and it is written Let Love Grow on the cover. Last year I bought myself a bullet journal which is the mauve one below, to record my habits and track other goals. I make habit trackers, book trackers, and will also start writing monthly goals there and wrote out my goals for the year to keep track.

My Happy Planner layout this week and I have planned to make macaroni and cheese tonight as our yearly tradition on New Year's day.

Last year I started the year with showing you my habit tracker for the month of January. This year I have it in my bullet journal and made my own tracker. I just listed the days of the month and added drawings of each habit I wanted to track at the top. I have found that doing this really does inspire me to meet these goals and work on completed them all each day. I think this layout will also inspire me because I can see a completed line each day and if I am missing something I will be more motivated to want to complete it to fill it in. I will share how it ends up looking all filled in (hopefully) by the end of the month. So far I have colored in blog post as I am working on this post today and going to publish it.

The habits I want to track and complete daily are: read, 8 glasses of water, exercise, close rings/loops (on Apple watch), blog, tidy, meditate, and knit!

I draw the photo at the top, then have a legend at the top for reference.

Thank you for visiting my blog today! I am so excited for 2022 and hope it is a good year for all of us.

  Have a great day!