Happy New Year! Resolutions Pt. 2

Hope everyone is still having a great start to the New Year! Here is to part 2 of my New Year's resolutions! This time it's about my personal resolutions for 2015. If you missed my first post about my blogging and reading resolutions, click the link here. Read on to see what my personal resolutions are! 

Personal

Get organized in my life -- I chuckle when I think of saying this, but it's true. I feel like my life is very chaotic and unorganized. I really think it has to do with getting married this past October. I was so concentrated on getting everything together for our wedding that everything else was pushed to the back burner. And then when we got back from the honeymoon, we had a little time to relax before the holidays started. Add to that house hunting and buying a house? Feels like complete chaos. I started working on getting organized last night with bills and important paperwork, but its just the tip of the iceberg. 

Get back into the gym -- Jump started this resolution tonight by going with my husband. We've been going pretty consistently for the last two years, but with the wedding, holidays and house buying (see above!), its been pretty tough getting there as much as we'd like. I've never been one to workout or run, but I started when I met my husband because working out is something he enjoys (but despises running lol). I slowly, and I mean very slowly, starting running and worked my way up to consistently running about 3 miles each time we went, which was about 4 times a week. At one point, I ran 5 miles and I was beyond proud of myself. It only happened that once, but I hope it will happen again! Today was that start of my gym-rat future (ok, I'll probably go 3-4 times a week, but its better than what I have been doing!) 

Move into our new house -- Ahh! Can't believe we actually bought a house! It's a cute little ranch in the neighboring city and I'm beyond excited to move. The only downside of this is that I need to start packing and getting our apartment organized NOW. And then... unpack and organize our new house! Hopefully that will be the last time we move for a while!

Work on my scrapbooks -- I bought a Silhouette earlier this year and started working on a project for my parents. It's much more time consuming that I thought it would be! Apparently I was naive about the process! My goal is to get back into this project because I also added a scrapbooking project to my list of my wedding and honeymoon! 

Work on my genealogy -- I started getting interested in this when I was in high school because we needed to do some work on our family history. After that, though, I lost touch with it and didn't get back into it until about 2 years ago. I was lucky enough to find a piece of paper in my grandpa's pictures that had a name of an individual who was doing work on our family name. I wasn't sure if this would lead anywhere since the letter was written about 10 years prior, but I gave it a chance and emailed the guy. Luckily, his email still worked and I got about 200 years of family history from him. Since then, I've been playing around with it on my own and just bought a subscription to Ancestry.com. But again, with life being so chaotic recently, I haven't done much with it. And let me tell you, its way too expensive to not use! 

Happy New Year! Resolutions Pt. 1

Happy New Year everyone! I hope you all spent your last days of 2014 the way you wanted :) 

To kick off the new year, I wanted to share some New Year Resolutions I have, for both blogging/reading and my personal life. I shared these briefly in my Top Ten Tuesday post this week (you can see it here), but I wanted to hash them out a little bit more. I'm going to split this post into two - this first part will be about my book blogging and reading resolutions; the second part will be about my personal resolutions. I'll gladly take any suggestions on how to make these resolutions a little easier or go more smoothly!

Blogging/Reading

Organize my blog -- I'd like to clean it up, get rid of old posts and make sure all of my reviews are posted on my review page. I also need to learn how to have a list of A-Z on the top of my review page so people can easily jump to a review they're look for... and possibly add a section so people can search by author rather than just the title. It's going to take some time, and I'm sure I won't do it all at once, but I'd like to start. 

Learn coding -- Ever since I started blogging, I've been very envious of those who can create fun things on their blogs and make them really original. While I love my blog, and I have a lot of fun writing things on it, I'd like the ability to make things a little more original and show my personality. This is definitely something that's going to take a while for me as I know next to nothing about it. Just another project to add to my list!

Read more books from my TBR pile -- This is one that I've always struggled with. My local book store has a clearance section where everything is $3.00 or less, and while that's great, it also really sucks. Why? Because I have a hard time passing up books that are that cheap! With the goal of building a library in my home, this is great for me. But it also means that I'm continually buying books and they keep sitting on my shelves, unread. I have every intention of reading the books when I buy them, but then I buy another book and start that one first, and these others just keep getting buried. Frustrating! 

Only buy books that I really, really want -- This definitely piggy-backs off the resolution above, but I'm hoping it will help me. If I stop buying books just because they're cheap and sound interesting, that will help control my TBR pile. Again, this is going to be difficult for me, and I'll struggle, but I really hope I can stick with this. Even if I do for only a few months, its better than not at all!

Top Ten Tuesday 12.30.14

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted by the The Broke and the Bookish. Every week she posts an idea for a 'Top Ten' list relating to books, and encourages other book bloggers to respond and participate. All the details are listed on her site.

This week's question: Top Ten Goals/Resolutions for 2015 (bookish, blogging or otherwise!)

Ahhh so many things that I want to do this coming year! Starting to work on some of the things now, which is good, but I need to do more! :) 

Bookish

1. Get my blog organized. Just need to get my life a little more organized in general 

2. Learn HTML coding. I need to make my blog more original and fun!

3. Read more books from my TBR pile :) I started working on that already but it needs to improve!

4. Try not to buy as many books unless I really, really want them. I have a problem with buying books because they're cheap, but then they sit on the shelves and I buy more without reading them

Non-bookish 

1. Get back into the gym! Seriously! I used to be really good about it, going about 4 times a week. Then wedding planning happened, and then house hunting happened, and then the holidays happened... Need to get back to running my 3+ miles! No use putting this off any longer... will be in the gym in about an hour! :) 

2. Move into our new house! Ahh! Can't believe we bought a house! So exciting :) But what that means is I need to start cleaning and packing our apartment (boo!)

3. Work on scrapbooking. I have a project for my parents I'm working on and also one for myself for our wedding and honeymoon, but I have been putting that off for quite some time because I'm always reading. 

4. Work on my genealogy! I bought a subscription to Ancestry.com, but haven't really used it since and its too expensive to not use it! I love learning about my past ancestors, so this should be a fun goal :) 

So many things to do, not enough time in the day! What are your new years resolutions?!

Top Ten Tuesday 11.25.14

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted by the The Broke and the Bookish. Every week she posts an idea for a 'Top Ten' list relating to books, and encourages other book bloggers to respond and participate. All the details are listed on her site.

This week's question: Top ten books on my winter TBR list! 

This book has been on my list for a while and I just never seem to get around to it. But I really like Mitch Albom's other books, so I really want to finally read this! Plus its a shorter book, so I should be able to fairly quickly. 

Ever since reading Pride and Prejudice, I've really wanted to read more of these classics, especially the ones I own. This ones on my winter TBR pile and I think it will be a good choice :) 

I've read the other three, so this one is next on my list! I love this series, so I can't wait to keep reading!

Another classic that I want to read soon!

This one's been on my shelf too long! I usually don't let her work sit there without reading it, but with my wedding a month ago, many books got put on hold! 

A perfect one for the Christmas holidays! 

I think a good mystery is perfect for the winter. What better way to curl up in front of the fire place on a snowy day?! .... 

Unless its a good romance, of course! :) 

An ebook I really need to get off my shelves and another good holiday read. 

And last but not least, another Addicted novel! 

I have so many books on my TBR pile and I really, really want to make the effort to put a good dent in them. Its one of my New Years Resolutions (ok, I'm a little early on this, but might as well start sooner rather than later!)

What books are on your TBR list?

Happy New Year!!!

Happy New Years everyone!!! 

2013 has been so good to me! I graduated from law school, got a job, got engaged, and of course, started this blog (: I can't wait for what 2014 will bring! I've decided to come up with some resolutions to keep me motivated, both in my personal life and in the blogging community. My personal ones are mainly just to run another 5k and then run my first 10k. But I have many more blogging resolutions below: 

1. Work on the design of my blog

I've recently started doing this, but I'm so new at it that it takes me a while. Plus I'm kind of indecisive, so it's hard for me to settle on something for a design. It's a work in progress, but I'd just like to make it more personal and original.

2. Participate in new reading challenges

These will be posted later this week, but I have so many that I want to participate in that I'm having a hard time narrowing it down! One of my own challenges is to read half of the books that are currently on my shelves. I made a list and printed it out so that I can cross the book off every time I read one. I hope this will keep me on track!

3. More original and thoughtful content on my blog

I love participating in memes, but sometimes I don't put much time into my answers, so I'd like to work on that. Also, now that I've been blogging for almost a year, I feel like I need to include more original posts and start thinking more creatively when deciding what to write.

4. Start a new meme!!

This one is pretty fun for me because I've wanted to do it since I started blogging. Maybe someone already does this as a meme, but I haven't really come across it before, so I'm going to start it. I'd love for people to join in and participate, but even if its just me, I don't care. It's still fun (: The meme I've decided to create is called Cover Me Up! Below is the button that you can grab and some more information. The first post will be on Thursday, January 2.

So, we're always told not to judge a book by its cover, but you know that you still do! It's often the first thing that grabs your attention when in the book store, library, or on a website. If a cover is intriguing or beautiful, you pick it up to find out what it's about. If the cover is boring or unappealing, you pass it up in search for something else. Maybe the title catches your attention too, but for me, it's often the cover. This purpose of this meme is to showcase a book cover that you found interesting. It could be that you absolutely loved it, or maybe you can't stand it. Whatever the cover means to you, post it on here and tell is a little about your thoughts. Do you love it? Hate it? Think it doesn't fit the story? 

To participate in this meme, please follow the host, Pages of Comfort and link back to this blog. Leave a comment below to let me know that you've participated so I can check out your post. Or simply leave a comment with your thoughts on the cover I've posted. 

Grab the button below and paste it in your post!