Welcome to 2013

Hi again everyone, and Happy New Year :) I hope you all enjoyed my 2012 posts and I'm hoping you're still looking for more fun challenges. I will try not to disappoint you, although the set up for this year will be a bit easier on me and not quite as challenging.

Here is the plan:

Essentially, I am looking to complete the challenges that I began in 2012 but never finished. These include: knitting a scarf for my husband, making a scrapbook, and finishing my children's book. Additional tasks will be added such as: continuing to work on my Duolingo (Spanish), new knitting projects, organizing/cleaning up my iTunes library, and organizing my myriad of recipes. To accomplish all of these tasks, I'm setting aside at least five hours a week to devote to a task. This format gives me much more flexibility for which days I need to work on my tasks and if I'm sick, or really busy one day, I can have a much needed rest day (that I never had last year). Each task will be worked on until it is completed, but I am allowed to switch if I really need to.

Also, there are smaller tasks that I will be doing every day for the whole year (and you'll have to keep me accountable to these all year long . . . I hope I can keep something up for that long). These include: reading at least one chapter of the Bible every day, recording my dreams from the previous night in a dream journal, writing down a short summary (or the most memorable thing that happened that day) every night, trying at least one new thing per week (this will probably be in the form of trying a new recipe though ;)), and exercising at least once a week. My job is more sedentary now and if I don't force myself to do it with this, I will probably get really out of shape (or just become a slightly more squishy shape ;)).
So, that's the plan. My husband has agreed to join me this year, but his tasks include: practicing guitar, working on house designs, writing a novel, starting Duolingo, exercising, and others yet to be determined. I'm pretty excited about this plan, and looking forward to a productive, but hopefully less stressful year.

Anyone else want to join in the challenge? I would love to hear about things you'll be working on. Regardless of what you are up to, have a safe and blessed new year, and I'll keep you updated (probably about once a week) on how all of my tasks are going :)

The End of 2012 Summary

Well, that’s it . . . 2012 is over, and I made it. J I did my challenge every day for an entire year. And I’m not dead, I’m not crazy (that is open for debate of course), and I definitely feel like my year has not been wasted. Although some of my initial inspiration came from "Julie and Julia", I think they should make this year into a movie instead . . . all she did was cook ;) What a crazy time it has been, let’s take a look back and what’s happened over the past year:

January – I climbed some serious rocks. I got calluses and big muscles and accomplished more on a fitness level than I think I ever have before. I did buy another one month Groupon to go again soon, I don’t think I’ll do it every day, but January was just so fun, I’m looking forward to going again.

February – Wow that was a lot of cakes. This was probably the most stressful and time-consuming month, but the most fun at the same time because so many people were talking about it. The blog got by far the most page views that month and I really liked how much the people that ate the cakes seemed to enjoy them. I definitely took my baking up a level and I have learned many new techniques and recipes. Many waistlines suffered, but it was so much fun. J

March – Many books were devoured: “A Tale of Two Cities”, “The Help”, and “Sisterhood Everlasting”, all good reads from slightly different genres. I had almost forgotten how much I enjoy reading, and it is something I hope to continue to do more of, I just need to remember to set aside time to do it . . . perhaps at lunch time now that I’ve lost my crossword puzzle group. I think everyone needs to take the time to get lost in a good book as often as possible.

April – I ran . . . a lot. No, no marathons or anything, but way more running than I have ever done, and way more than I intend to do again (seventy-six miles in one month). I really did not enjoy this month at all. It was nice to be able to talk about it with many of my friends who love running, but I never got that “runner’s high” that keeps so many people running, and I didn’t really see any physical benefits from it either. I think it improved my cardio system, but my other exercise months were so much more fun. I’ll leave running to the runners and keep trying other activities to stay moving.

May – I learned how to play a beautiful instrument, the cello. I am still no expert at it and I need much more practice, but in order to really learn how to play an instrument, that half-an-hour a day really is necessary. I think I would have made more progress if I would have had a teacher to be accountable to, but I still think I did pretty well and I hope I continue this in the future.

June – Ha, I learned how to juggle . . . who would have thought? I can’t do anything fancy, but for how uncoordinated I usually am, just learning the basic 3-bean bag juggle was a pretty amazing feat. I hope that I made my friend who tried to teach me how to juggle proud, and now I have a fun party trick. If I want to be really consistent at it, it would require more practice as well, but with the Klutz book on juggling and some motivation, I think pretty much anyone could learn how to do it.

July – I spent way too much time staring at my computer screen trying to organize all of my digital pictures. It was my intention to work on my scrapbook and get my pile of “scraps” that is growing out of control tamed a bit, but that didn’t happen. Instead, I spent all the time working on the pictures, and never got away from the computer to work on the fun, crafty side of scrapbooking that I was looking forward to. That will definitely have to be tackled in the new year.

August – Ah, August, I enjoyed hot yoga so much. I am always so cold, so it was nice having a whole hour to focus on stretching/strengthening, de-stressing, and being warm . . . lovely. J It was so wonderful spending the time with good friends too. I truly wish that the memberships at the yoga places around here weren’t so expensive because this was something that I could really see myself doing very frequently. Ah well, I enjoyed it while it lasted, and some friends got me a gift certificate to the studio for Christmas, so I’ll get to attend a few more classes sometime soon, hooray. J

September – I attempted to become an author and an artist. My story is still not where I want it to be, and as my hand didn’t really figure out how to put what was in my brain onto the paper until the last few days, the illustrations are obviously not where I want them to be either. This is really one project that I would like to finish. I don’t think I’ll necessarily publish it, but just make a few copies to give to my friends with kids . . . I think that will be nice. Hopefully whenever I get to it I still remember how to draw.

October – I explored a fun, new website called Duolingo. I brushed up on my Spanish and learned a little more. I have a long way to go to be anywhere near fluent, but it was nice to tap into a different part of my brain and keep it open and learning. I think everyone should give this a try, it’s almost set up as a game so it much more worthwhile to do the next time you sit down to play a game of Spider Solitaire or something. They have a variety of languages you can learn too: English, Spanish, French, Italian, German, and Portuguese. Plus, you are helping to translate the internet into another language and sharing knowledge with the world . . . a pretty worthy cause if you ask me.

November – I taught myself how to knit, and I managed to almost complete a project and it stayed a consistent size throughout . . . a big accomplishment, if I do say so myself. I’ve found that I really enjoy this and would like to keep up the hobby and keep learning in the future. I highly intend to, and I can’t wait to see what fun projects I can start working on next. J

December – I tackled a different challenge every day of the month. Some were very simple, some were not, but they were all small projects, life skills if you will, that I figured I should know how to do; from changing the oil in my car to changing a diaper, French braiding my hair, making marshmallows, or folding a fitted sheet. This was a rather stressful month full of uncertainty of not knowing exactly what I would be doing each day, but I think it was really good for me to learn these things and I think they will benefit me in the future.

And that’s just with my challenges. Personally, there have been changes as well. New friends have been made and old friends have moved away. I switched jobs twice this year (once within a company, and now to a completely different job). I will always miss aspects of my old job, mostly the good friends that I left there (you know who you are), but I am excited about the new directions my current job is taking me, and am l moving forward with hope. I saw one brother married and the other engaged, and am grateful for the time that I got to spend with my family, it is truly a blessing.

To all of you that have been faithfully reading my blog all year, thank you so much for your support and encouragement, it means a lot to me. And to my husband, without whom I never would have made it; who stood by me when I was up to my elbows in cake icing at 1 am, when I needed someone to go running with me 30 days in a row, or when I was stressing out like crazy over what the challenge would be for that day. Without all of this support, I truly wouldn’t be where I am today, so I am so very, very grateful to all of you.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year, and may you all live 2013 with the same passion and dedication to life and learning that I tried to encompass this year. I hope some of you have been inspired, and if so, I’d love to hear about what you’re up to J God’s blessings, and I’ll talk to you in 2013 J

December Reveal

Originally, December was set aside to be my culmination month in which I would celebrate all of the previous months by doing the activities from them for a few days during the month. But then I decided this was kind of  an easy way out and not very creative. I wanted to end on a high note, so I had to come up with something else. So in my brainstorming, I discovered lists of "Life Skills" that people are supposed to have. I perused many lists like "30 Things You Should Know Before You Are 30" or "100 Things Everyone Should Know How To Do" . . . that sort of thing, and noted that there were many things I hadn't done yet, so that became my goal. This month, almost every day, you will get to enjoy reading about me trying to do something I haven't really done before. Some will be practical, some just kind of silly, and of course, quite a few baking things (not necessarily things everyone should do, but things that I have wanted to try or feel I should try, at least once). We'll see how it goes. The problem is that I only came up with about 20 though, so I need your help, readers, to come up with the last few, or my year of monthly challenges will fall flat, right at the end. So PLEASE comment or send me suggestions. Thanks, and enjoy :)

November Reveal and Knitting - Day 1

Yup, you read correctly, I’m going to learn how to knit. Yes, at one point I did know the basics of both knitting and crochet, but I was too much of a perfectionist then and my stitches got tighter and tighter as I was so concerned that I would mess it up, and then it got all messed up. So now I think I’ve grown up a bit and I’m not quite as concerned about making mistakes so I hope this will be a relaxing activity for me. I was having troubles deciding between knitting and crochet, but I decided to go for this because I was more in the mood for it at the time. Many thanks to one of my good friends for posting something about crocheting on my Facebook wall today and giving me the idea. I was originally going to do another musical instrument this month, but I was just not feeling up for it, so I’m much more excited about this knitting idea. I went to Wal-Mart tonight and got a few sets of needles and a skein of yarn. I looked at a few patterns and think I picked out a scarf to start with. Maybe I’ll go to the library tomorrow to get some beginner books. Hopefully I’ll have something warm before the weather gets too much colder! Wish me luck J

October Reveal

So I tapped into my creative side a little bit last month, and I wanted to kind of keep that trend going. I discovered this cool website called Duolingo where I can practice/learn a new language while at the same time help to translate the internet into another language . . . cool huh? So, I couldn’t decide what I wanted to learn (continue Spanish, learn German since my husband took a few years of it in high school, start a new language altogether . . . French?). I was not sure if I would have internet access for the first few days since I am away from home on training for my new job, so I picked up some Spanish language magazines and books to try and read. Maybe later on in the month I’ll try Duolingo and maybe do German or Spanish or French . . . I want to keep my options open. That’s the challenge for this month: spend some time (30 – 60 minutes) every day immersing myself in another language and try and make that stagnant “English only” section of my brain a little more pliable . . . this should be fun J

September Reveal

So by now, you are probably wondering what other crazy schemes I could possibly have up my sleeve. This next month is really going to tap into my creative side and try to unlock some hidden talents I don’t know if I have but if I ever did, they were lost in my childhood. As you might recall from my novel reading month, I absolutely adore books, especially children’s and young adult literature. My parents actually thought I would be a librarian when I grew up, but to their great surprise I became a scientist. I think it had something to do with me trying to challenge myself to study something I knew little about. Anyways, for my challenge this month, I’ve decided to get back into books and try and write and illustrate a children’s book. One day at work, one of my good friends was talking to me about some silly animal song and he said “now for a song about wombats”. I didn’t have much to do that afternoon, and inspiration suddenly struck and I found myself composing a song about a wombat. It turned out to be more of a poem and sounded perfect for a children’s book. He was rather impressed that I had written it in so short a time period, and so with that encouragement, combined with my visions of this book in my head, I am embarking on a new journey. I am not looking to get published or become a famous children’s book author (although getting published would be cool, I don’t think this endeavor is quite of that caliber), but just to devote about an hour every day to fine tuning my story and trying to figure out how to draw. This should be fun J

August Reveal

So, have you been wondering when I’m going to do something crazy again? I bet you have, and guess what? The time is now. I’ve been sitting in front of my computer for the last month and it’s been a while since I’ve had an exercise month, so it’s time for that again. Any guesses on what it’s going to be? It’s something that I actually enjoy, but with a little bit of a twist. I am not very flexible, so I figured that was something I needed to work on; hence, one month of doing yoga for at least a half an hour a day. And the twist? I bought a “Groupon” for a month of unlimited classes at a hot yoga studio. What is hot yoga? Basically, it’s yoga in a room that is between 85 and 105 degrees. Sound fun to you? It sure does to me . . . here we go!

July Reveal

As you can probably imagine, all of these crazy challenges have resulted in plenty of pictures and other memorabilia, and that’s just this one portion of my life. I love to travel and go to concerts, etc. so I have plenty of “scraps” lying around. I have the habit of putting them in my bedside drawer until the day that I finally have time to start scrapbooking. Well, I feel like that time is now. I mostly have that feeling because I can’t close my bedside drawer anymore . . . oops! I have made one scrapbook in my life, a whole book to document three wonderful months I spent studying abroad in England during college. Everything before and after that got skipped. Therefore, I have tasked myself this month with working on my scrapbooking project for about an hour every day. If I don’t do quite an hour, it’s not the end of the world, but if I get wrapped up in it and spend more than an hour on it, that’s okay too.

If any of you out there are “scrapbookers”, you’ll understand that it’s not a fun and games. This is an arduous process. I’m guessing there won’t be too many days of exciting things to blog about, but I’ll try and record a few blurbs every day, just to keep you updated. The first step in my scrapbooking process is to wade through the thousands of pictures I have stored on CDs and on my computer. They need to be labeled, categorized, and then backed up onto my external hard-drive (something that I probably should have done a long time ago, but I’m glad I’m finally taking the time to work on it now). After that, I will go through all of the pictures and scraps that I have and decide what should be documented and what can be skipped. Throughout that process I’ll probably make some sort of outline, and then spend way too much money at Walgreens or Snapfish or someplace getting lots of prints made. After that, the fun starts and I actually get to make some scrapbook pages (my husband already let me buy some awesome supplies to get me started). So, here we go, here’s to a creative and productive month of scrapbooking J

June Reveal

This month’s challenge will be to learn how to juggle. Why juggling you ask? Well, by now you should know that I’m crazy enough for it, based on all the other crazy things I've endeavored to do so far. But anyways, juggling is not something that I was ever really that interested in, but I was always impressed when I saw people who could pull it out as a casual party trick (I’m not all that impressed by professional jugglers, interestingly enough, who knows why). So there is that, and then one of my friends at work happens to be a very good juggler and he would randomly juggle at lunch time (oranges, apples, etc.) or I think once even in the lab (rubber flask stoppers) . . .there is seemingly no end to the situations in which juggling can add a little fun. So since he lost a bet (I think it was about a crossword puzzle answer) he owed me a juggling lesson. That is how this all started.

Any of you who have known me for a while probably know that I’m not the most athletic person in the world, not that I couldn’t be, I just never have been. So the whole hand-eye coordination / tossing a ball around kind of thing is really not natural for me. At all. This fact made the juggling lesson rather interesting. I think I spent much more of the time running after and picking up the tennis balls than I actually did trying to toss them around. At any rate, he gave me some good juggling tips and encouraged me to keep practicing . . .yeah, that didn’t happen. So here it is about a year later and I am no better at it than I was during my first lesson ever, thus this month’s task. Enjoy J

May Reveal

Hello everyone. Sorry for my lapse in posting on my blog. Don't you worry, I have not stopped doing crazy challenges, I was just a little too busy to spend the time updating this blog. Hopefully in the next few days I'll get all caught up though. So anyways, what have I been up to? After all of my running, I think I deserved a Baskin Robbins month or something (a flavor a day sounds wonderful :)), but instead, I decided to stay still after all of that running, and work on something I had been putting off for years. As you may know, my husband and I have quite the collection of musical instruments (17 I think) and I can play most of them, but not very well. For one of my birthdays while I was in college, a fellow college student was selling her cello and I bought it for myself but never learned how to play it. So that lovely instrument just sat untouched, a shame I think. So, it was time to rectify that . . . cello playing, here I come.

I had about six months of violin lessons when I was in 8th grade, but haven't played a stringed instrument since then (besides guitar and bass guitar), so I'm pretty out of practice. This might be a mistake, but I decided to take some weekly videos of my progress for you all to see. I'm sorry if I hurt your ears. Do any of you have an instrument that has been sitting in the closet for too long? If so, I encourage you to take this monthly journey with me (although you don't have to post videos if you don't want to). Enjoy!

The End of Novel Reading and April Reveal

My last day of novel reading is here, and I finished my last novel last night . . .oops. I was so close to the end I just had to read a little bit longer and finish it :) That being said, I'm going to "cheat" a little bit today. Since my original plan was to read for 45 minutes a day and blog for 15 and I ended up reading for the whole hour every day (and obviously not blogging at all which is why I'm so behind), tonight I'm not going to read a novel, and I probably won't read for the full hour, but I think it's justified. So, what will I be reading instead? This: Archaeological Study Bible. Some friends were reading it, and since I've always liked history, I thought this would be a really great way to keep reading, get closer to God, and learn some history all at the same time. My husband and I finished our two-year read though the entire Bible at the end of last year, so it is about time to start over anyways :) This time, instead of reading it in order, Genesis to Revelation, we are going to try to follow a chronological reading list and go though it that way. Last time, I read out loud and afterwards he read the notes from his study Bible about what we had just read, so this time, he will read the text, and I will read the archaeological notes. This should be very interesting, enriching, and informative . . .I'm looking forward to it.

Now that my novel reading is done with, what do you think is up next for me? Any guesses? (if you already know, shhh) ;) Well, here is how I look at it. I got in good shape in January after all of that rock climbing, and then proceeded to undo all of my good work by eating cake every day and sitting around reading books. Looks like it's time for me to get in shape again! Unlike rock climbing, the activity I've chosen for this month is not something I enjoy doing. It is an activity enjoyed by millions of people every year, and the only equipment needed is a good pair of shoes and the open road . . .you guessed it: running. So, lace up your running shoes, stretch out those legs, and get ready, the first week is one mile, every day. Let's do this!

March Reveal

First of all, let me apologize to my readers for being so behind in my blog writing. I've been so busy lately and while I've been keeping up with my tasks, I haven't been very good at keeping you informed and up to date. That being said, if you paid attention to my last Cake Madness post, you have probably already guessed what my challenge is for the month of March :)

After being so exhausted from the rock climbing and time-consuming cake baking, I decided I really needed something a little easier and a little more "for me" this month. If you had known me before I went to college, you would have known how much I love reading. I have always been a book-worm. My mom has told me that one of my favorite phrases as a child was "Read Mommy, read". That being said, I wanted to get back into it, and set aside some time every day, 45 minutes to an hour, to sit down and read a book. Preferably one from my growing collection on my bedside stand.

Initially I wanted to read for 45 minutes and blog for 15 so I didn't get so behind, but as you know, that didn't happen (sorry again). So I generally have been reading for about an hour each day. Now that you know what I've been up to, let me dive and and fill in the details for you. If you haven't read the books, I'll warn you I might talk about plot details (spoilers) so be aware of that. But if you have read the book, or seen the movie, or would like to read the book now and comment on what I've been reading, please do. Or maybe you'd like to read a different book and fill me in on what you are reading too, that would be great. At the end of every book I read (as applicable) I plan to watch the movie and do a brief movie review as well, I think that will be fun.

So, here we go!

2012 Overture

Image courtesy of clipartclipart.com

Hello, and welcome to my blog, Life's Lab Notebook, a place to record everyday experiments. As part of my New Year's Resolutions and mostly because of being spurred on by media such as "Julie & Julia" and the like, I've decided to become proactive in my own life.

Things never seem to just happen for me, but I figure if I plan things to do, at the end of this year I'll have a sense of accomplishment that I didn't have at the end of 2011. My goal is to complete 12 tasks/challenges/experiments, one every day for a month, throughout 2012. These are things I feel I should start, things I want to try, or things I might already do, but want to increase their frequency.

So, join me on this crazy journey, and I will try and keep you all updated on my progress...I need someone to report to :) I read somewhere that it takes 30 days of doing something to form it into a habit (not that I'm expecting each of these to become a regular habit), but that is partially where this crazy idea came from. So here we go, let's dive in and see what happens!