Tag Archives: scheduling

Relaxation (or Taking Some Time To Myself)

Posted on April 7, 2016 | Comments Off on Relaxation (or Taking Some Time To Myself)

I’ve been busy with a lot of things lately. Between work, workouts, acting, and other stuff I feel like my days are getting filled up really quickly. This is awesome and I’m so happy about it, but sometimes I realize that I need to take a step back and relax for a bit. I’m finally getting better at realizing when my body feels like it’s getting to a breaking point, so when I started to feel like that at the beginning of this week I took some time to myself. I’m glad that I didn’t get to the point where I got exhausted and needed a few days to get back to my usual self. This time, I really only spent 2 afternoons being selfish and doing things for myself and I feel back to normal already.

I ended up canceling plans that I had made this Monday to do some stuff that I needed to do but had been putting off. Even though my plans were more fun, getting stuff crossed off my to-do list is really nice too! None of the things on my to-do list were urgent, so I had been putting them off for a while. I think knowing that I should be doing something but not was causing a bit of stress in my life. So getting those done relived some stress and made the rest of the things I needed to get done not feel as overwhelming.

I’ve also rediscovered my love for the library. I used to use the library all the time. My original e-reader was a Sony because at the time that was the only one that could get library e-books. But then I almost forgot about the library and I let my library card expire (did you know they could do that?). So a few weeks ago, I went down to the local library branch to get a new library card so I could start enjoying library books again. I’ve checked out a bunch of stuff lately. It’s so easy to get library books on my Kindle (much easier than my old e-reader) so I’ve gotten a ton of new books lately.

I feel so silly that I haven’t used the library lately, but now I’m back and obsessed! After running the errands I had to run on Monday, my afternoon and evening were spent reading and that was such a perfect way to spend the day. I still have books that I buy, but I’m so glad that the library is pretty well stocked with e-books so I can curb that spending habit. I know I’ve spent a lot of money on books (I love them so much!) and if I could limit my book spending just to the books I love so much and know I’ll be reading over and over again, that will help me budget better. I still can’t get over how this wasn’t something I thought of sooner, but at least know I’m on the right track to reducing my spending habits without reducing my reading material.

I also spent time getting ready for my upcoming trip for Rayshell’s wedding. I had already gotten a dress to wear and some cute and comfortable shoes. But I realized that if I was wearing open toed shoes at a nice event my feet probably should look nice. So on Tuesday after work, I went to my favorite pedicure place and splurged on a pedicure. My last pedicure was last spring, so I think that I had deserved to get another one. And I found the perfect color to put on my toes for a wedding!

Pedicure

I’ve still got a couple of other things that I need to do before this weekend, but there’s nothing that feels so big that it will be tough to complete. I want to be able to enjoy my weekend (which includes the wedding and a 5K race) and not have to stress about things at home or things that need to be done. Most of the things on my to-do list now are ideas that I’d like to work on (like reorganizing my desk and cleaning out my workout clothes drawer), but they won’t affect me if they don’t happen this week or month. I would like to work on checking things off more often so they don’t build up like they have. That’s just something else I need to work on in my self-improvement so I can maybe start treating these relaxation days and rewards for getting stuff done!

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Default ThumbnailSo Much Reading (or Really Taking Advantage Of The Library) Default ThumbnailWorking On Money Priorities (or What’s Worth The Splurge) Default ThumbnailStill Being A Bit Selfish (or Using Some Pressure) Default ThumbnailA Very Low-Key Christmas (or Not Spending My Day Off Doing My Usual Stuff) Default ThumbnailHaving A Book Nerd Moment (or The Little Things That Make Me Smile) Default ThumbnailBooks and Roses (or A Day By USC)

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Posted in Beauty, Fun Stuff, Shopping, Tough Stuff

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Lack Of Plans (or A Lazy Weekend)

Posted on March 16, 2016 | 1 comment

Before this past weekend started, I had so many things scheduled to do. I had several hangouts scheduled with friends (some which were also going out to eat hangouts), meeting with people who I’m thinking about working on projects with, and doing the regular weekend chores like laundry and getting groceries. While I wasn’t over booking myself, I was starting to feel a bit overwhelmed with everything that I was going to get done Saturday-Monday (I consider Monday part of my weekend since my days off are Sunday and Monday).

Then slowly, my plans started to get cancelled. If you are one of my friends I was supposed to meet with, don’t feel bad at all. Honestly, as my schedule got more and more open I started to relax. I don’t know why the plans were stressing me out, but clearly I needed a weekend to myself.

Saturday ended up being the only day that seemed busy. I had my usual work schedule and then as soon as I was done at 11am I got into my car and headed to my friend Erin’s house. Erin cut and colored my hair (I really needed it since it hadn’t been done since before Thanksgiving!) and I felt nice and refreshed. I originally was going to watch her kids so she and her husband could have a date night, but Erin was getting over the flu so she wasn’t going out that night. But she did have some errands to run so I watched her kids for about an hour so she could do some kid-free shopping.

Usually when I’m watching her kids, it’s late so we just do dinner, watch a movie, and the kids go to bed. But since this was the afternoon we decided to do some fun activities. Erin’s daughter is super into science experiments, so we decided to do a search on YouTube for kid science things. I had no clue there were so many videos on easy to do science projects! We did a couple of projects (some successfully and some not-so-successfully) and before we knew it Erin was home again and I headed back home.

Even though I was babysitting and driving back and forth to Erin’s house, it really didn’t feel like I was doing much. During my drive I listen to my podcasts and babysitting Erin’s kids is usually pretty easy (and they were so into those videos online that they didn’t even care that I was there).

After leaving Erin’s house, I headed back home and got some of my errands done and then just relaxed at home. And that’s pretty much how I spent Sunday too. I did the chores I needed to do, but most of the time I was just being lazy at home doing very little stuff. I did a lot of reading and watched a movie at home, but that’s not really that productive.

Monday (the end of my weekend) was a bit busier with a workout, a drive down to Anaheim to do some shopping, and I had plans that evening. But it still felt like I was being selfish by doing only what I wanted to do.

Even though my weekends aren’t too busy, it felt nice to have a really lazy weekend. I got to decompress a bit and get things in order the way I wanted to. I worked on some organizing work that I had been meaning to do and didn’t worry about how long I was spending on them. It really was the perfect way to spend the time after plans were cancelled.

I do need to remember to schedule time for myself from time to time. I think I feel like I do that because I work from home and spend many evenings at home after my workouts. But when I’m working my focus is on work and after my workouts I’m usually showering, eating dinner, and then spend a little time getting ready for the next day before going to bed. So that time isn’t always spent doing what I want to do. I think if I had one day a month where I had nothing I had to do and could just spend it being focused on me, that would be perfect.

Of course, I need to schedule that day into my calendar otherwise I wouldn’t remember to do it.

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Monthly Recap Update (or My New Habits)

Posted on March 1, 2016 | 1 comment

I’m 1/6 of the way through the year and I’m still totally loving my Spark Planner and using it every day! I’ve been using almost every single feature of it (I’m still not 100% sure what to do with the monthly calendar, but I’m working on it) and it’s made a huge difference in my life!

I’m pretty much using most of the sections of the planner as they are intended. I use the weekly goal setting for weekly goals, monthly goal setting for monthly goals, and monthly challenges for monthly challenges. I love how I’ve been accomplishing so many of the weekly and monthly goals I’ve been setting. Some of my goals are easy to achieve (like how many workouts I’ll do that week), but I always set a couple of challenging ones too. I’ve been working on going to bed earlier and I’m setting weekly goals to slowly do that. I’m setting a goal to go to bed 5-10 minutes earlier each week. So far, I’m in bed 45 minutes earlier than before and I’d like to work to maybe 10-15 minutes earlier than I have it now.

Even though most of the features are being used exactly how they are set up, I’m still playing around with the weekly calendar and love what I’ve got going so far. I’ve mentioned this before, but I’m using the first of the 3 sections on the weekly planner as my blog planner. This has been so helpful for me and it’s really helping me plan out posts way in advance (for example, I’ve got a couple of things already planned for the end of this month in the works). This also allows me to see when I don’t have something fun to write about yet so I can work on what I want to write about that day.

The bottom section of the weekly planner relates to what I had set to be my 30 day challenge for last month. I’m using that section every night to write at least 5 things that I’m grateful for. There are a lot of repeating things on that list, but it’s a nice thing to do at the end of the day to reflect on what I’ve done and to keep myself in a positive mindset. I’m finding that even on days that I struggle to find 5 things to be grateful for, I can always figure out something. And that reminds me that even on my worst days there are still good things.

I started to do this in January but I really wanted to make sure I continued doing this last month. I never missed a day (I did forget to write once but I did it immediately the next morning) and now I have reminders set to go off to remind me to do my daily gratitude, weekly goal setting, and monthly goal setting. I’m making sure that I stay on top of things.

I’m not even letting myself slack off when I’m on vacation. I remembered to bring my planner with me when I went to Sacramento and worked on my goals in my hotel room at the end of each night.

Spark Planner

I’ve just set up my 30 day challenge for this month. My goal is to not order delivery food for 30 days. I’ve done it before so I know it’s not impossible, but I’ve gotten into a bad habit of getting delivery food when I’m tired. I don’t need to spend the money (especially since delivery food has a minimum for an order) and I definitely don’t need the calories. I’m not saying that I won’t go out to eat at all, but I won’t be getting delivery food. If I want something from a restaurant, I’m going to have to go there to get it (I would rather not do take-out either, but sometimes I like to get something yummy but need to eat at home so I’ll allow that in my challenge).

What I’m loving about these monthly challenges is that they are starting to turn into habits. I’m still keeping up my January monthly challenge of 100% food tracking (I’m pretty much only using Recovery Record now). And I can totally see myself keeping up my nightly gratitude notes. I don’t think that giving up delivery food will be a permanent change, but I’d love it if I could keep delivery food to a minimum.

It’s so funny that for years I was trying to figure out how to do almost everything digitally and not have a paper planner or tracker anymore. I had finally gotten everything to that point and then started using my Spark Planner. It’s not a planner in the same way that my planners in the past have been, so maybe that’s why I never realized how great it would be to write some things down to track and that I would be able to accomplish more goals each month than I ever expected.

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Lack Of Planning (or No Home Cooking This Week)

Posted on February 26, 2016 | Comments Off on Lack Of Planning (or No Home Cooking This Week)

After doing so well with cooking recently, this past week was a serious let down for me. I had ever intention of trying to do some real cooking this week, but that never happened.

Part of it is due to my schedule. I got back late on Monday night from my trip. And while I did go to the grocery store, I wasn’t going to cook at 9pm for the week. Tuesday after work I had my WIF meeting. Wednesday after work was my workout. And while I could have cooked after getting home from my workout, I wasn’t feeling up for cooking after taking over an hour to get home. Thursday I had a friend at my house after work and I didn’t want to be rude and cook while they were here. And tonight I’m supposed to be meeting a friend for dinner. It’s just not my week to have free time after work to prepare and cook meals.

I guess there were little places in my schedule that I could have cooked, but I don’t think I’m really the person to cook a meal that I don’t need to eat that night and to use all of it as leftovers. I’m still easing my way back into cooking and I think knowing that what I’m making is going to be my meal is more normal to me than just cooking and storing everything immediately. When I cook, I do get hungry (even if I just ate). So knowing that I will be eating that meal when it’s done is a way to stop the cravings to want to snack while I’m cooking.

Just because I’m not cooking doesn’t mean I’m eating like crap. I’m doing my lazy version of cooking with the easy to prepare things that I bought at the grocery store on Monday night. These aren’t the most balanced meals and I’m sure I could do better, but sometimes I need something easy like a waffle with peanut butter and a banana so I don’t get really hungry and order delivery food (which is almost never the good option). I’m finding better things to keep in my house to use as easy meals so I don’t feel like there’s nothing in my house to eat. A lot of these things are frozen, but I think that frozen food doesn’t have to be bad food. Trader Joes sells lots of good frozen veggie options and I love their frozen prepared brown rice. Those plus a protein (like the frozen cowboy burgers) are great meals that I can put together in minutes.

I’m lucky that breakfast is pretty easy for me, and dinner is easy enough (but I know it could be better). The place that I’m struggling is lunch. I used to miss lunch a lot because I would get distracted by work and forget (never good before having an after work workout), but I have an app that alerts me to eat by 1pm now. So at least I’m not forgetting anymore. But I’m still struggling about what to eat because it needs to be easy enough to prepare because I don’t want to step away from work for too long but also needs to be easy to eat since I have to take bites between customers if someone calls or starts an online chat.

I’m working on meal planning (but not looking at bulk cooking as the plan) right now. I know that if I plan things out better, I can grocery shop better (and probably spend less money) and I won’t have the “what can I eat” feeling at mealtime. While I had a decent plan going last year on the cleanse, I think that it worked for me so well because the lack of variety. I need more variety than what I had then, but too much variety is too overwhelming and too expensive. The balance is tough to find, but I’m working on it.

I know this weekend will not be including cooking because I’ll be out-of-town again, but I’m hoping after getting back from that trip I can get back into my groove and continue to enjoy lots of healthy, delicious, and easy meals that I cooked myself.

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Posted in Food, Tough Stuff

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Staying Calm In The Crazy (or Is This Month Over Yet?)

Posted on February 23, 2016 | Comments Off on Staying Calm In The Crazy (or Is This Month Over Yet?)

In my effort to do more fun adventures this year, I may have overdone things lately. There are a bunch of things back to back in my schedule and it’s starting to stress me out a bit. But I know my schedule calms down soon so I’m just trying to focus on getting through things.

My schedule craziness has a lot of factors in it. I’m currently doing the Orangetheory Weight Loss Challenge. While the weight loss challenge isn’t too crazy, one of the requirements made my schedule a bit weird lately. You have to do 3 workouts a week, but the weeks are from Friday-Thursday. So when I did a workout on a Thursday instead of a Friday recently, I had to make up an extra workout on a day that I don’t usually go on. While that alone didn’t make my schedule crazy, it did eliminate a free afternoon that I’m used to having and that threw things off a bit.

I’ve also just spent the weekend out-of-town. I went to Sacramento with my mom and my aunt (recap to come tomorrow) and being out-of-town for about 2 1/2 days changed when I would have time to do things about in my life. I had to rearrange when I could do errands that I typically do on the weekends. I had to figure out a new time to clean, do laundry, and do grocery shopping. With most of my afternoons the week leading up to the trip busy with workouts, I had to figure out when I had little breaks in my day (typically before 9am) when I could do things. It’s not horrible to have to schedule like this, but when things are a bit different they can be stressful for me and make me feel a bit too anxious.

I’m also going out-of-town this weekend. This time it will be to San Diego for Rayshell’s bachelorette party. I’ve been looking forward to this for a while, but again it’s requiring me to do some crazy scheduling. The party is from Friday evening until Sunday. Fortunately, I got that Saturday off of work so I could drive late on Friday night (after my workout) or early on Saturday morning without having to worry about working until 11am. And while some people will be hanging out there for a good chunk of Sunday morning, I will need to be back in LA by noon on Sunday because it’s Oscar Sunday! I made a really simple costume for the party so I don’t need much time to get ready, but I still need to get back to LA, get ready for the party, and I’d like to do laundry then too. I have the option of driving back late on Saturday night and I’m still debating about doing that. I think I might not know what I want to do until I do it.

Besides those two weekend trips (which I hadn’t planned to be back to back but are), I’ve got some other fun adventures in the next few weeks. I’m going to see my WIF mentees soon, I’ve got another bonus show at the Pantages that I just got tickets for, and some of my friends and I are trying to figure out a time to go whale watching together.

These are all super fun things coming up. And I’d love it if I could get used to schedules like this. I think it could be really good for me to have more social time and less alone time at home. I love my alone time to read or watch TV, but I might do better with less of that. I’m already alone most of the day working at home, so making my afternoons, evenings, and weekends more social helps to balance things out. I think that I might have jumped into making myself busier with both feet instead of easing into it and I’m a bit overwhelmed right now.

Despite my stress, I’m really excited about every event I’ve got in the next few weeks. I do plan out my blog posts and I love that my upcoming schedule is pretty full with fun posts and less boring ones (like this one). I hope that you enjoy reading about all of my upcoming adventures and hopefully these next few weeks for me go by without too much more stress added to it.

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Posted in Celebrations, Fun Stuff, Tough Stuff, Travel

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Seeing Friends In Random Places (or Unscheduled Hangouts)

Posted on February 9, 2016 | Comments Off on Seeing Friends In Random Places (or Unscheduled Hangouts)

I haven’t been so great with scheduling friend hang outs lately. I’m seeing my friends at the gym, at events, or at pre-scheduled things a bunch. But I’ve been slacking on the random get-togethers recently. I know a part of it is due to my crazy schedule (which seems to only get crazier through this month), but there is still plenty of time that I could see my friends and I don’t.

I was feeling a bit down about this over the weekend when I had 2 very random friend run-ins that really made my day! And both of the random run-ins were with women I’m in my mentoring group with. We just scheduled our next mentee meeting to be later this month, but to see people out and about was really great.

First, on Saturday I made a trip to Trader Joes (which I usually don’t do on Saturdays due to everyone else being there that day). I was getting my reusable bag from the backseat of my car when I looked up and saw fellow mentee Janice! I was totally in shock! I knew that she lived near me (she loves that the meetings are at my house because it’s super easy for her to get to), but we’ve never run into each other in the neighborhood.

I rolled down my window and found out she just arrived at the store too, so we said we’d try to do our shopping together. Of course, with all the people inside and us getting distracted by our conversation we didn’t do too well with our shopping. So we stood off to the side and did some quick catch up chatting and then split up since she had a short list and I had a ton of groceries to get. But it was still so awesome to get to see her even for those few minutes.

Then on Sunday I had to work. It was interesting working at a theater show when everyone else would be watching football (or the commercials), but we actually had close to a sold-out crowd and I think everyone with a ticket showed up! Plenty of people made jokes about how we should have the game going in the lobby, but nobody seemed upset to have to watch the game recorded so they could be at the show.

While I was busy doing my will-call work, I heard my name called and thought maybe it was someone I was working with needing me to help with something. But then I saw my friend and fellow mentee Jane at my will-call table! A friend of hers had gotten tickets for the show and she at forgotten that I told her before that sometimes I work there at the shows.

Again, it was awesome to get to see her and we had a bit more time to catch up since by the time she got to my work I was almost done passing out all the will-call tickets. We also had some time to chat during intermission and after the show was done. Since I had seen Jane more recently, we didn’t have as much to catch up on as I did with Janice. But there was still plenty to talk about. I know I’ll see her when we have our next group meeting, but I’m hoping she and I can make plans before then too.

It’s so funny how down I was feeling about not seeing a bunch of friends before the weekend started and then I saw 2 of my friends so randomly. It really did make me feel better about myself and make me realize that even if I don’t see people that often, it doesn’t mean that we aren’t friends or don’t want to be friends. Everyone is so busy these days and it’s really easy to go weeks or months without seeing someone (or you feel like you’ve seen them recently because you connect on social media and not in person). But it’s ok if that happens because if you are true friends with someone, you can go a while without seeing them and then just pick things up where you left off the last time you saw them.

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How My Goal Setting Is Going (or A Spark Planner Update)

Posted on February 2, 2016 | 1 comment

I’ve officially been using my Spark Planner for a full month now and I have to say that I’m loving what I’m getting done with it! While I still use my phone/computer for my scheduling (things overlap and change too often to handwrite everything), I’m using the goal setting sections of the Spark Planner and finding my own ways to customize it to work for me the best that I can. So I figured that a month in would be a great time to do an update!

First of all, I’m still using the weekly calendar feature for blog scheduling. Since the weekly planner has 3 sections for each weekday (morning/noon/night), I use the morning section to write what I want to write about here for that day. It’s so helpful for my Monday posts about Orangetheory because now I write down what I did for each workout after I get home so I don’t forget about the workout (I hope that you’ve noticed that change on here!). It also helps me see where I’m missing an idea or where I have too many posts scheduled for that week so I need to move something to the next week. I’m hoping to make Finding My Inner Bombshell bigger and better this year and planning out my posts will be a big part of that!

For the beginning of January, I didn’t really do much else with the weekly planning section. I sometimes put a to-do list in the noon section so I had it there to check off, but that’s not a daily thing. Then, about a week ago I saw something about making gratitude lists each day to help stay in a positive mindset. So I decided to put a list of at least 5 things I’m grateful for in the night section of the weekly planner now. I’m loving this routine but I need to create an alarm for my phone to remind me to do this in the evening (sometimes I get in bed and realize I forgot to do it, so I have to get up and write them out quickly). I’ve actually made my gratitude lists my 29 day challenge for February!

Speaking of the monthly challenge, I’m so excited to share that I was very successful in my 31 day challenge for January! I decided to challenge myself to do 100% accurate food tracking for the month and I did it! This may be the first time that I did 100% tracking for an entire month and I know that I will be able to keep it up now. The big change I found while doing this challenge is that I’m not loving My Fitness Pal as much as I have in the past.

While I have loved seeing the exact numbers for my calories and knowing I’m under my calorie goal, that also created anxiety when I was over my calorie goal. So I stopped tracking on days where I was going over or when I had a binge. I didn’t want to see what I had done and the number of calories I ate. And that was creating avoidance for me. So I’ve been using Recovery Record now and I love it! There are no numbers on the tracker. You just write what you wrote and how you feel. That’s all. And there are meal reminders so even though I don’t always remember to eat lunch, I at least have the alert that I should eat then.

I’m also loving the monthly/weekly goal setting pages. I don’t hit all my goals at the time, but it gives me something to work toward and each day I look at what the goals are so I can make sure that I’m on track to check off as many of them as I can. It also has made me think more about what goals I want to track and what is really important to me. I never thought that maybe I had some bad goals in mind, but I’m now reconsidering some of them (don’t worry, I’m happy with my 2016 goals I announced on here).

I’m still not sure what I want to do with the monthly calendar or if there is something I want to do regularly with the noon section of the weekly planning pages, but the beauty of this planner is that there isn’t something that I feel has to be there. It’s freeform and I can do what I want. I’m thinking about some ideas with meal planning or maybe workout tracking. I’ve been seeing some awesome inspiration on the Spark Planner instagram page. I know I’ll think of something soon and then that will be what I keep up for whatever time remains in the year.

No matter what else I do with my Spark Planner, I can’t believe how much this planner has influenced and changed my life in the first month. I’m so excited to see how amazing it helps to make my year and how much I’ll be able to get done.

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Posted in Celebrations, Fitness, Food, Fun Stuff, Health

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My Spark Planner (or Being A Little Low-Tech This Year)

Posted on January 8, 2016 | 2 comments

I’m pretty big with using technology to make my life easier. I love having my calendar sync between any devices I use and I can color code it as much as I want. It’s pretty helpful when I have a lot of overlapping events in my life. I would possibly be lost without my phone calendar and the alerts it gives me (especially the 24 hour alerts before a Southwest flight so I can check in).

But toward the end of the year, a bunch of friends were posting about their new paper planners for 2016. Because of my changing schedule (and the overlapping issues), I don’t really see myself using a paper planner. It would be too messy for me to feel ok using it. But as I started to look into the planners that some of my friends were getting, I was intrigued by the other things that the planners offered.

So many planners now are designed to be more than just a schedule. They can be goal focused and I loved that idea! I looked around at various planners, and the one that seemed best for my life was the Spark Planner. So I put an order in and got it just before the new year! I’ve been using it for a little more than a week, and I wanted to share with you all about how much I’m loving it (and no, they didn’t pay me to say this)!

Like I said, my plan for my planner was not to be a scheduling tool. That’s not something that I would want to use it for, but if you wanted to do that, there are plenty of ways to plan in it. But I’m going to focus on what I use my planner for.

First of all, I love that it’s a plain planner! If I want to decorate it, I can. But I love that it’s not super cutesy or obvious.

Spark Planner

Mine lives on my desk and it goes nicely with all the other things I have as desk accessories and looks professional if I did have it in my bag and took it out to use in public.

There are planner pages for each week. They are broken down by morning, noon, and night but you can use it for anything you want. They aren’t broken down by hour (I would hate it if it was) so things can be much more freeform. I’m currently using the weekly pages to do my blog planning because I’ve been blog planning on post-its in the past and that’s not efficient. This way, I can not only plan my posts each day, I can take notes on what I want to write about (which is very helpful in my workout recaps).

Blog Planning

I have decided what to do with the other blocks of time, but I might use them for just random notes or I might think of something later that fits perfectly. But that’s why I love the freeform of the planner pages!

The main focus on my Spark Planner for me is the goal setting pages. They have so many goal pages and I’m loving them all!

2016 Themes

I used the 2016 goal setting pages to help me plan my goals for the year as well as my word of the year. I haven’t started filling in the achievements page yet, but I’m excited to document all the great things I accomplish this year! I’m really using this section as a companion to the goal setting that I do on here, and I like having it written down so I don’t have to search my blog to see the specifics of goals I’ve set for the year.

Monthly Goals

The next thing I’m loving are the monthly challenges! My current challenge for this month is to accurately track my food every day. I’m still toying with which app I want to track my food with, but this is a great way to be accountable even if I’m working on my challenge in two different places. There is also a monthly goals page, and I’m using that as a breakdown for what I need to do this month to be on track for my year goal.

Weekly Goals

Finally, there are weekly goal pages. I’ve been using these for goals that aren’t necessarily specific to my monthly/annual goals. I’ve been using them as more of a weekly to-do list. I’ve got things on it like to book flights for upcoming trips, do things related to the blog, or appointments that I need to set. At the bottom of the weekly goal pages, there is a section to reflect back at the end of the week. You are supposed to review all of your goals and celebrate what you were able to get done.

Besides all the goal setting stuff, there are also prompts to help you reflect on goals and ideas that you want to work on. And there is a lot of free space to doodle, make lists, or do anything you want.

I’m sure that some people use the Spark Planner in a much more regulated way, but I’m so happy with the freeform and lack of time constraints that I’m finding in my planner. I know that over the year I will find new ways that this planner will help me in my life, but for now I’m loving how it is helping me work toward each of my goals.

If you want to get your own Spark Planner (and I highly recommend you do if you want to work on goals this year), you can pre-order the ones that will be released in March. And if you want to get a free PDF of the Spark Planner, if you share the website on social media and then email them a screenshot, they will send you the PDF!

Whether or not you chose to buy a Spark Planner, I think that having a planner that helps you work toward your goals is such a wonderful gift to have. And I know that I will be more successful in my goals this year because of all the tracking I’m doing!

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Posted in Celebrations, Fun Stuff, Shopping

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Fitting In My Workouts (or Planning For The End Of The Year)

Posted on November 23, 2015 | Comments Off on Fitting In My Workouts (or Planning For The End Of The Year)

I had a reality check this past week when I was seeing how many workouts I had done so far in 2015. While I was on track for a long time to hit my workout goal, only doing 3 workouts in a week for a while due to my calf injury plus missing a week of workouts when I was sick really messed up my plan.

So before this past week started, I planned out some workouts in the app that I’ve been using to track my classes. I got it figured out for the rest of the year how I can hit my goal.

Workout planning

It’s not that crazy of a plan, but of course the next day I realized that my plan wasn’t going to work the way I wanted it to, so I’m thinking things through a bit more. But it helped me realize that I do need to push it a bit the next few weeks and my goal is going to be a stretch but it’s totally realistic.

My plan for this past week was originally to do 5 workouts and then do 2 7am workouts this week before leaving for Thanksgiving. Due to scheduling issues, I wasn’t able to do my 5 workouts and I’ve moved my workouts around this week too. But as long as I add in another workout in December I should be ok.

This past week, I worked out Sunday/Monday/Wednesday/Friday. I’m glad I changed my plans from working out 5 times because these workouts were pretty intense.

2 days only had 2 blocks each. That means that I spent pretty much 30 minutes on the treadmill straight and then did 30 minutes on the floor without a block. And I did that twice. It’s been a while since we have had workouts that didn’t switch between blocks. It’s nice to have that challenge, but when we switch between blocks it feels better on my hips and it makes the time go by faster for me. But I know I need to push myself and having these long blocks gives me that chance (but I’m glad that this doesn’t happen more often).

With those long block days, my floor work suffered a bit. I was pretty exhausted so I didn’t push myself as much as I could (or should) with the weights. But I’m still using heavier weights than I was at the beginning of the year.

While my weight work wasn’t as good as I know it can be, I had a big improvement in my pushups. Pushups have always been hit or miss with me. Sometimes they do hurt my hips. And ever since I tore my calf I had to stop doing them on my toes because that strained my muscle too much. So instead of trying to get back on my toes I’ve been focusing my form when I do pushups on my knees. And I’m getting some good muscle fatigue now while I’m doing modified pushups. And I even was able to do pushups with the bosu ball as part of ultimate burpees. That made me pretty happy.

My treadmill work is still a struggle too. It’s both a physical and a mental struggle. I do have my pain from time to time, but I’m also terrified that my calf still isn’t fully healed and if I push it too much I’ll injure myself again. So I’m trying to be easy on myself and not stress out that I’m still not where I thought I’d be. I’m hoping that I can increase my treadmill speed at the beginning of the new year, but I’m not going to hurt myself over that goal.

This week is going to be a short workout week for me due to Thanksgiving, but I’ll be getting my 3 workouts in for sure (including my new tradition of a workout on Thanksgiving morning)!

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Posted in Fitness, Fun Stuff

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A Bit Over-Scheduled (or Starting To Stress Out)

Posted on November 17, 2015 | 1 comment

For the past few weeks, my schedule has been pretty crazy. Every weekend is filled with something (sometimes something fun and sometimes lots of working at some of the day jobs). A few weeks ago, I realized that my next day off without having something on my schedule like work, class, or hosting an out-of-town friend would be Thanksgiving. I’m not used to not having a day every so often to just relax and do what I want to do. Right now, every day has something important and on a specific schedule. And that freaked me out a bit.

Now that my Thanksgiving trip is about a week away, I’m still extremely busy and I’m starting to worry about how I will get everything done before I head down to San Diego to be with my family.

I have to work while I’m in San Diego (I work the day before and the day after Thanksgiving) so I need to make sure I pack all of my work stuff. That ends up being very last minute because I will be driving down to San Diego right after a work shift next week. So I need to wait to pack everything I need until I’m logged out of my shift. But I’m starting to work on a work related packing list so I don’t forget anything.

I also have a few food things I need to make and bring down to Thanksgiving. I won’t have time to make them until after my class on Monday next week (that alone is stressing me out), but I’m starting on my shopping lists now and I’m hoping that I can get the ingredients this week so everything is ready for me to go Monday afternoon.

I also have gifts for a couple of people. I have a Hanukkah gift for my mom (I’ll write about that next week because it’s an awesome gift that I think you all might love), a Hanukkah gift for Ross and Krystle, and a birthday gift for my Dad (he got his Hanukkah gift back in April because I knew he’d want it as soon as possible). I’ve also got face paint for my cousin’s kids (it’s tradition) and I’m still thinking about bringing something else to maybe help decorate the house. Fortunately, all the gifts are all wrapped and in a bag with the face paint. It’s ready to go in my car but again it’s something else to have to remember to pack.

And of course, I have to start thinking about what clothes I want to bring with me. I’ll be doing another Thanksgiving morning workout with some of my family so there’s that checklist too (can you tell that I’m checklist obsessed right now?).

With all that I have to do plus lots of work do to for my day jobs, I know that when Thanksgiving day comes and I have the day off to spend with my family I will be very grateful. I’m trying not to get overwhelmed by everything I have to do, but that’s just who I am. The checklists are helping me because I can see exactly what I’m planning on bringing and when I’m packing up my car and I make sure that I don’t forget anything.

I am very happy that I can drive to Thanksgiving and don’t have to worry about flying because I can bring a lot more stuff and it’s easier to pack my car with several random small bags instead of trying to make sure everything fits into airline regulations. At least that’s one thing I don’t have to stress about.

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Posted in Celebrations, Family, Fun Stuff, Tough Stuff, Travel

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