I found this designer online, though now I can’t remember exactly what led me there.  It must have been fate.  If you are like me and have very little willpower when it comes to office supply stores, cute new Post-It products and you bought that 20+ pack of multi-colored Sharpies, be careful on this website.  And don’t, by any means, watch the video here.  You will be sucked in.

Multi-colored amazing font goodness!

Look – now I have a purpose for all of my multi-colored pens!

Don't forget to call Michelle on her birthday!

Actually, my sister Michelle, whose birthday is featured in the photo above, could probably use a planner like this since she has hard time remembering birthdays in our family (no joke, my dad called this past Saturday to reminder her to call our mom on her birthday).

Excuse me – I think I need to Post-It something!

The New Year is officially four days underway.  I wonder how many people have already made and broken their resolutions…

As a self-proclaimed goal freak, I love this time of year when I get to build my goal-tracking spreadsheets, Google “cool goals” online to see if anything sparks my fancy, and think ahead about how I’m going to make the coming year the best year ever.  I’ve followed the same process to make and track goals for about five years.  I certainly don’t have all the answers where this is concerned (for that I just turn here, where I was originally inspired) and I admit my methods change slightly from year to year.  But here are the basics if you’d like to try it yourself!

1. It’s always helpful to have some reflection on the past year before you begin.  This can take many forms – I like to think about it while walking my dog.  And, to be honest, it’s not usually difficult for me to summarize what went well and didn’t go so well in a given year.
2. Divide your life into meaningful categories.  I like to have categories around Health, Fun, Career, Finances and Travel.  When I was in grad school I also had one for school.  Again, these change and should mean something to you!
3. Within each category, brainstorm what you’d like in your life in that particular area.  For example, last year in my Health category, I wanted to be more knowledgeable and discerning when it came to food.
4. Once you have an overarching idea or theme, think about what specifically would help you get there in your life.  For my food goal, we joined a CSA, and I mostly bought meat and dairy products that came from reputable local farmers.  I also started frequenting the farmers’ market, which I love.   My actual written-down goals were:
   1. Join a CSA
   2. Only buy happy meat
   3. Go to farmers’ market each weekend from June – October
5. I pick goals that are measurable whenever possible.  Read 52 books, do something fun with friends once per week, go to one new state, etc.  After picking goals, I put them somewhere where I will access frequently (on my desktop), and I create various forms to help me track my progress.  If I want to work out 4 times per week, I make little checkmarks on all the days I do – and then I average it out at the end of the month.  I also only pick goals I actually want to achieve.  This sounds weird, but I find it very easy to pick goals that I think I should have but I really dread (like reading The Economist…boring).

This year, I have about 30 goals.  They range widely from some hard core savings goals, to visiting my sister in San Francisco, from taking Basil on a walk every day to reading 75 books, which will definitely be a challenge.   My spreadsheets are all ready to go and I finished my first book!

It is great living so close to Boston – an hour and a half in the car, and you’re in a huge city that is walkable, has fantastic restaurants and good friends.  During business school days, when I was commuting down once or twice a week, going to Boston for fun just wasn’t an option – I was going too much not-for-fun.  Enough time has now passed where having actual fun in Boston is back on the agenda.

For this trip, we scored an amazing deal on Priceline at the Hotel Marlowe in Cambridge.  We have heard a lot about this hotel from a friend who goes to Boston regularly to wear the crazy bathrobes the Marlowe provide guests – leopard and cheetah print.  We almost booked a room directly with the hotel, but took a chance at the last minute with the name-your-own-price feature on Priceline and ended up there anyway!  Thank you hotel gods.

Our short time in town was spent mostly wandering around Cambridge.  Boston is a walkable city, but I haven’t spent much time across the river.  We went into some buildings at MIT, had a beer at a Harvard Square bar, looked in a few bookstores and goofed around.  We had big plans to go to dinner in the South End at Toro, a well-known and extremely busy tapas restaurant that doesn’t take reservations.  We figured we’d just get there at 5:30, have an early meal, and crash at the hotel in the fun bathrobes.

Wandering around Boston

MIT

Well.

After all that walking in the chilly fall air, we came back to the hotel for a quick one hour break.  And because it was my birthday and that means I get to do whatever I want for a day, that short break turned into one long 18 hour break. Drew ran down to a local wine store to score some wine, we ordered room service, and I sat in that crazy bathrobe for six hours.  We watched two terrible made-for-TV movies and one nature show about some guy who walked through the Amazon.

My post from the bed. Wine? Check. Movie? Check.

Nope, still haven't moved...

And it was awesome.

Follow that up with brunch at Craigie on Main with good friends?  That is a birthday I’d be willing to repeat every year!

The Highs

1. Arriving – There’s something about long distance travel that always makes me think it might not happen.  Think of the logistics: drop of Basil, pack, get to bus station, bus to Boston, flight to Zurich, flight to Florence, cab to apartment.  With all those moving pieces, it always feels a little out of reach.  That’s why, after easy flights, no delays, and a cab driver who knew where we were going, it felt just amazing to see my mom’s smiling face at the apartment door.

This book was entirely unhelpful. Oops.

2. Food – Another general category, but this falls into two specific buckets.  First, the gelato.  It’s my second favorite food group (behind cilantro), and we could not get enough.  Gelato for lunch?  Why not…pistachios are healthy, right?  The second food highlight was all of the home cooked dinners by Drew for four out of six nights.  He went to the market in the morning and put it all together at night.  We had pasta, risotto and soup – all of it authentic because it was made in Italy!  We even celebrated with a traditional Italian seafood dinner with our shellfish risotto on Christmas Eve.

Market Love

3. David – Last time in Florence, I didn’t see the real David (for those not in the know, the real David is in a museum and the two fakes are outdoors).  The lines are usually around the block, and it’s just a statue, right?  Wrong.  This thing is insane.  18 feet tall, and so detailed you can literally see the veins in his hands.  And our resident art historian Michelle told us all about the making of the statue (the scene takes place before he kills Goliath despite what the plaque in front of the statue says…).  And, given that we went on Christmas Eve, we were practically the only people there.

4. Family Time – It doesn’t matter where we are, hanging out with my family is right up there with, well, gelato.  My seven favorite people in one house together for a week just can’t be beat.  We rocked it out playing the Game of Things, discussed every current issue in each our lives’ and drank a lot of wine.  Side note: currently there are 4 mental health experts/careerists in the group (that includes psych majors, full time professionals, and grad school hopefuls)…you can imagine what kind of conversations THAT leads to.  So, Julie, what do you think your need to take a shower every morning really says about you?

Just us Girls.

5. Christmas in Catholic Central – Wowza.  Italy is SUPER-Catholic.  85% in fact…we looked it up.   That means there are nativity scenes everywhere (and they don’t put the baby Jesus in until Christmas morning…not just tourists stealing them).  We went into like 5 churches every day.  We looked at probably 20+ paintings of the Annunciation (when the angel told Mary she was having a baby) every day.  We didn’t actually go to Mass (figured it would be too crowded), but we were entrenched in it.

The Lows

1. Travel Adventure – The day before the trip, we realized that Alice’s passport had expired.  After a hasty flight to Philly, an emergency passport renewal, and hefty expenses due to flight changes, we still all made it.  There were a few minutes there where I was pretty convinced we would be spending Christmas at home.  Well, scratch that – I would still get on the flight to Florence, but some people would be spending it at home.

2. Normal Group Travel Stuff – Anytime I’ve traveled in a large groups, some things are just annoying over time.  Who wants to go where?  You want to look in how many jewelry stores even though you’re clearly not buying anything?  Who is going to order the pizza? Stand in that line?  Buy the tickets?  Go to the bathroom?  Who’s going to hold everyone’s stuff in the meantime?  This is not a big complaint – it’s how you travel in a large group.  It’s just a thing.  (And I wanted to have two Lows so my friends and family reading this wouldn’t think we were completely spoiled brats by spending the holidays abroad!)

My five sentence reviews are below, but overall, I’m pleasantly surprised with how much I actually enjoyed these books.  I read Deliverance in one weekend, it was so riveting.  Actually, I’ve seen the movie (a long time ago, I didn’t really remember the plot) and I remember it being creepy.  And the book is definitely creepy.  So what little I did remember was spot on.  In 2012 I plan on adding reading another 5 from the list.

American Pastoral – 5 Sentence Review

Seymour “Swede” Levov was a big man on campus in high school and has died recently.  At his younger brother’s 45th high school reunion, the full story comes out that Swede wasn’t as happy and successful as everyone thought.  Instead, his life has been complicated like most people’s – a rebellious child, wife having an affair, turbulent business.  The moral of the story? While things may seem smooth (or ‘pastoral’) on the surface, there is more going on in peoples’ lives that can’t be ignored forever.

Deliverance  - 5 Sentence Review

Four friends go on a camping and canoe trip in the back woods of Georgia, before a dam is constructed on the river.  They meet a lot of weird characters, most of whom are creepy and potentially inbred.  On the second day, during a rest on the side of the river, one man is violently attacked and raped by a local and another friend comes to the rescue, killing the attacker.  The friends attempt to make their way down the rest of the river, knowing that they are now being ‘hunted’ by locals.  In a heroic feat, one of the friends is able to make another kill, three of the four friends survive the ordeal and they leave the area for good (after being asked by the local sheriff to never return).

This picture is from 2006, but our current apartment is just behind that row of buildings. Weird, right? It's like I'm a future stalker of myself.

If you’d like to convince your family to spend the holidays in an exotic locale, it really can be done.  I’ve written about some of the logistics of this previously.  Here are a few simple steps:

1. Begin with a family that lives all over the place, making any holiday visit a hassle for at least several people.  In our family, 4 out of 5 kids live out-of-state (2 well beyond driving distance) full-time and the 5th is just biding her time until she can also move far away.
2. Sprinkle in a little adventurous spirit.  No worries – this may take years to develop.  In our family, the bulk of our international travel has been in the past decade.  During that time, we’ve had one Peace Corps volunteer (West Africa), one year-long post-college traveler (4 continents), one volunteer in Ethiopia, one adventure in Asia, and a nice mix of additional Western European jaunts thrown in there (I can count 15-20 European trips combined among all of us).
3. Plant the idea early and bake.  The first time we did this (yes, we’ve done this before – 2007, Paris), the idea was planted about 18 months in advance.  One sister was heading into the Peace Corps, her ability to come home for Christmas was shaky at best, and I ever so subtly suggested that perhaps a trip to Paris, the mid-point location, would be a good idea?  It helps that Paris is my dad’s favorite city, several of us kids took many years of French in school, and we found the most unbelievable apartment to share among 9 of us.
4. Just do it.  Once an idea like this gets some family momentum, it’s hard to put the brakes on.  The emails start flying, the vacations from work are officially booked, credit cards magically appear for flights, and poof.  Here we are.

As my pictures are still in the camera, here are a few from my last trip to Florence (October 2006).

My first Florence gelato experience - hopefully the daily tradition is continuing in 2011The Duomo - center of the cityView of Florence from the Duomo bell tower (just 400 steps to the top!)

My real feelings about why my writing has tapered off are, as with most things, complicated.  After the high of the Asia trip (the links are still active, so just head back into the archives of Jan/Feb to relive the entire thing), normal life appeared boring in comparison (at least to me).  When things got interesting again and I took a new job, I was much busier figuring out how to travel and work, and even though I may have had interesting things to say, I was lacking the time.  Finally, when I figured out the schedule and got comfortable with the job, I had the time again but felt guilty about the time that had passed, the gaping hole in the archive calendar.

And here we are.

I am not starting anew on January 1st, as might be customary for a fresh start.  I have spent a good amount of time over the past two weeks reviving my active goal setting (which was ditched mid-year amid the job change), and vowing to make 2012 a more deliberate and amazing year than 2011.  And, I must say, that’s a pretty tall order given that 2011 started off with a month in Asia, and wrapped up with career changes, a move to NYC on the horizon and a trip to Italy (which hasn’t even started yet!).

Might as well kick of 2012 in style right here, right now.  Much more to come as the year wraps up and I finalize my goals, spend the holidays in Firenze (Florence, just perfecting my overdone accent in my head), and enjoy the calm of the holidays.

Oh, and all the cute photos I was including in every post?  Yeah, I haven’t taken a picture since September (and that was for a wedding I was helping with).  I’m also planning on changing that in the new year, but in the meantime, here’s an oldie but goodie from January 1, 2011 when I was just stepping into a new year, and kicking off our Asia adventure.

Jan. 1, 2011 - kicking of the new year with a plane to Asia

]]> http://lifewithoutexcuses.wordpress.com/2011/12/19/too-early-for-a-resolution/feed/ 0 Julie Jan 1, 2011 - plane to Asia http://lifewithoutexcuses.wordpress.com/2011/06/22/not-gone/ http://lifewithoutexcuses.wordpress.com/2011/06/22/not-gone/#comments Wed, 22 Jun 2011 20:08:32 +0000 Julie http://lifewithoutexcuses.wordpress.com/?p=1206 ]]> …just busy.

A month back or so I was in the midst of a series of life and career changing decisions, that weren’t quite ready for prime time public view.  You have to be careful of things like that.  Then I went to Florida and my parents came to visit and I officially graduated from Boston College, and I had photographed a wedding and mowed the lawn a lot.  And this site fell off of my frequently-visited sites and out of my frequent thoughts.  And then I left a job where I’ve spent five years, started a new job that involves a four hour commute and I’ve needed to spend my energy getting used to being a crazy driver in Southern New England once again.

I’m excited about the changes, embracing a new (but not so new) work challenge, considering the future.  In the meantime, it’s finally summer.  And all that complaining about the weather that I did all winter and spring is not banished because it’s SUMMER IN NEW ENGLAND, truly one of the most wonderful inventions in the history of the universe.  Open windows, warm days, cool nights…I’ll trust that you know where I’m going with this.

I am going to spend my car ride tomorrow night thinking about the best way to continue to write here without going crazy with too much stuff in my life.  And now I’m going to hang out outside where I belong.

Every year Saveur magazine has a contest for the best food blogs of the year.  The blogs span various categories, including Best Photograph, Best Essay, Best Beer/Wine Blog, and of course the heavy hitters like Best Professional Blog, Best Food Photography, etc.  I always like perusing the entries (and voting!) because it’s a great way to hook up with new amazing writers who like to talk about one of my favorite topics – food. 

As an interesting side note - I’ve always had a secret wish to be a food photographer for cookbooks.  I remember having that little ambition since I watched The Frugal Gourmet on PBS and began my cookbook collection in high school (which, as a hater of all things clutter, is a big deal…this collection takes up an entire bookshelf).  There’s just something so enticing about beautiful food.

Anyway, the contest for 2011 is going strong, and I found some new gorgeous sites to keep on my radar.  Looking at these make me want a new camera lens. 

Beyond [the Plate]

Dessert for Breakfast

Eat the Love

Not Without Salt

Seven Spoons

Sprouted Kitchen

Sunday Suppers

The Bitten Word

The Wednesday Chef

What Katie Ate

What the Hell Does a Vegan Eat Anyway?

 Enjoy!