What a Difference a Year Makes

I took a look back and realized that almost exactly a year ago this week we broke ground. What a year 2011 turned out to be. There were so many days filled with excitement, anticipation, frustration, exhaustion and joy. Blood, sweat and tears. But look how far we've come in one year.

And yet, there is still plenty of work left to do.

Revisiting Goals for 2011

Remember last January when I shared 20 goals for Twenty Eleven? Let's look back and see how we did. I can tell you now, there are some that were achieved and some that were a big fat FAIL.

Ringing in a New Year with wonderful friends in the new house!

Goal #1: Read at least 20 books.
I don't honestly know how many books I've read because my Kindle battery has been dead for the past three months because I haven't read a single book in the past three months. I did read a bunch of books in the beginning of the year though and some favorites included: Let the Great World Spin, The Help, Saving CeeCee Honeycutt, The Hunger Games Trilogy, Animals in Translation and A Dog's Purpose. I'm pretty certain I didn't make it to 20 though.

Grade: C

Goal #2: Run 1011 miles in 2011 (Cary).
Ha! No.

Grade: D-

Goal #3: Volunteer somewhere. More than once.
I officially volunteered once this year by taking pictures for the Neighborhood Housing Services of New Haven. I unofficially volunteered on a few occasions to take pictures for friends and family as well. All of these were a great use of my time because I got to help others out and work on my photography skills!

Grade: A-

Goal #4: Change up our fitness routine.
I would say I definitely changed up my fitness routine this year. And by that I mean little to no running in favor of swinging a hammer and lifting heavy objects, which resulted in surprisingly large arm muscles. I also took up yoga and am finding that I really, really enjoy the change of pace.

Grade: A-

Goal #5: Stop biting my fingernails (Cary).
Ha! No. Stubby, half-gnawed nails are still in full effect. I blame it on stress.

Grade: F

Goal #6: Go vegan for an entire month (Cary).
Yahoo! A goal accomplished in full. Remember my month of veganism?

Grade: A

Goal #7: Declutter. This applies to our lives as well as our basement.
Technically we are currently in full declutter mode. As we make the permanent move to our new home, we are weeding out all the "excess" stuff that we don't need to bring with us. So, in that way, the physical things in our life are being decluttered. The rest, well, there hasn't been anything in our lives this year to declutter because all of our time has been devoted to homebuilding.

Grade: B+

Goal #8: Participate in a bike race (Cary) and a 5K road race (James).
Big Fat Fail on all accounts. Maybe in 2012.

Grade: F

Goal #9: Complete an ultramarathon (Cary).
Riiiiight. I barely made it to the Turkey Trot this year.

Grade: F

Goal #10: Lose those five pounds that came with 2010 and do it without dieting (Cary).
I haven't had the time or inclination to weigh myself in more than six months. I lost five pounds starving in the first two weeks of my vegan diet, but that doesn't count. Really, I'm over it and what's five pounds anyway? The good news is I didn't GAIN five pounds this year either!

Grade: B

Goal#11: Find a new date night activity.
Technically, we nailed this one. But, unfortunately, that date night activity was a regular Friday AND Saturday night trip to the Home Depot. Yes, seriously.

Grade: C

Goal #12: Restore a piece of furniture. This one is in progress. Remember those thrifty furniture finds? I'm working on them as we speak and I'll be sharing them soon!

Grade: Incomplete

Goal #13: Be smarter about our finances.
Technically, we spent more money this year than we ever have in our entire lives. BUT, I was able to save a TON of money by shopping smart. My two favorite ways to save online: Ebates and our Discover Card cash back bonus points. Check out how much we saved just in the last few months. Also, we purchased a lot of new furniture for the house and didn't pay full price for a single piece of it by taking advantage of all of the holiday sales and coupons. Woot, woot! Can't wait to share our finds with you soon!

Grade: A-

Goal #14: Reinvest in relationships. Honestly, we haven't had a lot of free time to spend date nights with friends and family (unless we happen to run into them at the Home Depot). But, I'm as close as ever with my BFFs and one of them even moved back to CT this year with her hubs and baby. It's been great having them both around more often and has given us an opportunity to grow even closer. We're also really looking forward to life living next door to my brother and his family. It's so great to be neighbors!

Grade: A-

Goal #15: Dress up more.
I think I did a fairly good job with this one. True, there were days where I skipped a shower or showed up to work with brushing my hair, but on the whole, I think my style ranking notched up a little in 2011. James on the other hand...

Grade: A-

Goal #16: Participate fully in the house building process.
Oh. Yes. We. Did.

Grade: A+++

Goal #17: Add three new "green" routines to our lifestyle.
Ummmm...no comment.

Grade: D

Goal #18: Open an Etsy site to promote (hopefully sell!) some of our creative projects.
Nope. Didn't happen in 2011. I'm hoping this is a highlight for 2012.

Grade: F

Goal #19: Practice patience & Communication.
I honestly don't think James and I could have gotten through this year in one piece and our marriage intact without a lot of patience and constant communication. Home building is HARD. Especially when you submerse yourself in it like we did. It's stressful and exhausting and all consuming. I think we did good on this one. Much better than expected actually.

Grade: A-

Goal #20: Reduce stress.
In hindsight, this wasn't a good goal for a year when we were taking on so much. There were times when my stress level was so high that my hair started falling out. No joke. But, I'll be rolling this one over to my 2012 goals. I'm going to make it happen!

Grade: D

Overall, we could have done better but considering the year we had, we didn't do as bad as I expected. I'll try to come up with a list of goals for 2012 soon. You'll probably see a few repeaters on there but writing them down seems to help keep us honest. What are your goals for 2012? Are you a resolution keeper or breaker?

Check Another One Off The List

Remember my list of goals for 2011? Well, maybe you don't, but they haven't stopped haunting me since I posted them for all to see on the right sidebar of this blog. I'm slowing working on a few of them (I'm up to book #5 or 6) while others are falling by the wayside (I chewed right through my fingernails this morning, eew!). In an effort not to fail miserably on my goals for the year (and to avoid writing a pathetic "recap of 2011" post in December), I decided to pick one and focus on completing it as soon as possible. So I went online and Googled "volunteer opportunities in CT" and found myself browsing through a list of wanted ads for various organizations on the VolunteerMatch website. One of the first listings I came across was for an organization in New Haven looking for a volunteer photographer to take pictures for them. Hold the phone? You mean I can get in my volunteer hours (goal #3) AND practice my photography craft (unlisted goal) all at once?! Yes, please!!

The organization is called the Neighborhood Housing Services of New Haven (NHS). NHS works to rehabilitate houses and revitalize neighborhoods in the city of New Haven. They buy and renovate run down houses and sell them to low and moderate income families. We toured a few of their houses and I took pictures for them for their website and educational materials.

The NHS is also collaborating with the Yale University School of Architecture to design and build a new home in New Haven. I took a few pictures for them of the building progress, which was really interesting because they are only a few steps ahead of us in our own house project. The student project is really neat because they designed the house and are doing all of the building themselves.

I hope to work with the NHS again (notice the goal says volunteer more than once) in the near future. It's given me the opportunity to not only give back to a community organization but it has also allowed me to work on my photography skills. And now I can finally scratch another goal off the list. Yes!

28 Day Vegan

Tomorrow is March 1st (can you believe it!?) and thus ends my 28 day vegan adventure. It's been a month of high highs and totally desperate lows. I am not going to lie, the first week was rough. The problem was I did not prepare adequately. You may remember from my first post on this subject that James was away for work for the first two weeks of the month. I figured that would make the transition easy. The problem was that without James home, I didn't plan dinners, heck I didn't really eat dinner. I was really busy that week with extracurricular activities (1, 2) and didn't find time to make a proper trip to the grocery store. So for that first week, I lived on carrot sticks and peanut butter and jelly. By the end of it, my stomach had suffered through a baby shower and a super bowl party and I had lost three pounds! I was starving and desperate and knew I had to take action or I was going to fall off the wagon for sure.

On a suggestion from a friend, I bought an amazing cookbook called Veganomicon. A-MAZING. Go out and buy this book, even if you want to add cheese to every recipe (I promise you though, you won't) it's totally worth it. There are so many awesome, easy recipes (notice all my post-it notes) along with lots of helpful tips about shopping for and cooking with natural, healthy foods. Armed with this beauty, I set off for a Whole Foods shopping spree and I was well on my way to gaining back those three pounds. Below are some pictures from some of our meals this month. If you want any of the recipes, let me know, I'd be happy to send them your way.

vegan pancakes with Earth Balance spread and agave nectar

vegan veggie pizza with Daiya "cheese" - James was a big fan


Tofu stir-fry with buckwheat soba noodles

sweet potato burritos with Tofutti sour cream and fresh guacamole

roasted Tofurkey with mushroom gravy

spinach linguine with artichokes and homemade basil cilantro pesto

James' vegan valentine peanut butter cups...mmm

vegan black bean brownies - to die for!

The truth is, after my minor stumble in the beginning, my vegan diet this month wasn't all that far off from how I already eat. If I was bound and determined, I think I could certainly remain vegan and feel full and satisfied for the rest of my life. But make no mistake, being a vegan isn't easy. It takes a lot of time, planning and preparation. Grocery shopping becomes a two hour ordeal (okay, that's a small exaggeration, but you wouldn't believe how long it took me in the bread aisle alone!). Depending on where you live, you might not ever be able to eat out again. If you do venture out to eat, be prepared to ask your waiter a gazillion questions before ordering. Even then, it's hard to know for sure if your breaking the rules. Snacking? It will never be quite the same again. You wouldn't believe how hard it is to pass up those cookies your co-worker brought in or those donuts leftover from the morning meeting. But rules are rules and I stuck to them. And I'm glad I saw it through.

A lot of people have asked me if I'm planning on remaining vegan. For now, the answer is no. I think I'll always look at veganism as a goal, sort of the line in the sand that represents the best nutritional and ethical me I can be. The closer I am to that line, the better off I am. Forcing myself to stand on the line just won't work for me though. At least not at this juncture in my life. Darn it, I just love mayonnaise too much.

Definitely delicious!

The Great Vegan Challenge

Okay...I admit, it may not be worthy of such a title, a lot of vegetarians people try this, so don't go thinking I'm all original or anything because I'm not. I'm just determined to cross off a few of our 20 goals over there on the right side bar. They are stalking me.

So I figured I'd start with my goal of going vegan for a month. For those that are not familiar, veganism is defined by a diet that does not include any animal products. I've been a vegetarian for over six years but I still consume animal products like milk, cheese and honey. In fact, I'm actually technically a pescetarian because I still eat fish on rare occasions. But I don't eat mammals or birds. Never, ever under any circumstances. But that's a topic for another post.

So anyway, I figured February was as good of a month as any and hey, it's also the shortest at just 28 days. There is also four feet of snow outside right now so running is a definite no (this doesn't bode well for goal #2) and as a result my appetite has been in hibernation along with my leg muscles. Plus there are no major holidays or birthdays for my parents and in-laws to bug out about when we come over for dinner. The only thing that I didn't consider is that it's the middle of winter and fresh, local produce is hard to come by. Definite bummer.

I'm only two days into this, but so far things are going well. It makes it easier that James is in Canada this week and next because it's going to take me a little time to adjust to this new diet. If any of you have any cookbooks, recipes or helpful hints, pass them along. I'll be back in 26 days to give you a full report!