New Years Resolutions Update

So far I am definitely persisting through the hard times. 

Not sticking to my budgets, but I have found an iPhone app that miiiiight help...to be continued on that.

I was doing good running in the beginning of the year, but have kinda sucked with that from March-now. Hoping to get into that again with a few races coming up!

I am totally drinking more water. I have this sweet water bottle that I got from the Ryder Cup, and I love it! It helps me drink more water when I love my waterbottle :) Oh, and Crystal Light Peach  Iced Tea helps!

Trying new things.....welllll....I want to learn how to sew, does that count? Also, I am doing some yoga this summer with a friend :)

Starting to enjoy my life a little more again....

Book Club = Good Times

{book #1}

I have been wanting to start a book for some time now, but NO ONE has wanted to join. You all are bums. JK, but seriously....

Thanks to Liz and Lauren, the book club I have always wanted is officially underway! {Thanks girls!}

We read The Fault in Our Stars by John Green for the June book club that met a few weeks ago. Liz had us over at her *new* apartment and made us dinner :) Then we talked about the book. Let me tell you, I really enjoyed this book. It's the story of Hazel who has cancer and goes to a cancer support support group. One day, a boy who is remission comes to the group to support a friend. This boy, Augustus, meets Hazel and so begins their story. It is really good people, and has equal parts seriousness and funny. Not to mention the fact that John Green tells a story in a clever way. I read it on my Nook and I cant tell you the amount of times that I highlighted lines from the book that just made me laugh, or think "I LOVE the way he said that".

Anyway, we talked about the book, drank wine, and ...... well you know what they say, "What happens at book club stays at book club."

{Just read it already}

The next one is in July. We are meeting at Liz's again and Lauren is cooking us dinner :) The book is Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher. I am SO excited for book club that I've already read it and I am FURIOUS!

From 25 Before 25 to 26 Projects

Since my 25th birthday has long since come and passed, I have decided to keep my 25 Before 25 alive, but I'm not so stressed about getting them done by a certain time. If they happen, they happen. If they don't, they don't.

If I do them, I will FOR SURE be posting about them  :)

Now you may be wondering, "What is Amy going to do with her 26th birthday year now??" and let me tell you that I have an answer for that.

I want to complete 26 craftyish projects by my 26th birthday. I have no idea what they are yet, but Pinterest is some great inspiration and the blank walls of my house make me feel like some of it will include some form of art, but who knows.

Stay tuned.

{26th Year of Life}

Birthday Post- May 4th

I know that I am a month and a half late on this, but better late than never right?

To celebrate my 25th birthday, I wanted to do something GRAND. Some big huge grand thing that I would always remember happened for my 25th birthday, and since I read blogs, I found the PERFECT idea!

I decided to complete 25 intentional acts of kindness. This was the plan:

1.Volunteer from 4:00-6:30 at Feed My Starving Children
2.Bring cookies to the fire department with a happy note
3.Leave a kind note and a treat for our mailman
4. Leavea $5 gift card and a happy note in my favorite book at Barnes and Noble
5.-10.Purchase 5 carnations and leave them on 5 cars in a parking lot with a notethat says, “Have a great day!”
11.Leave a happy quote tearaway on a community bulletin board
12.Leave a fancy new pen for our server at dinner
13.Bring flowers to the ICU staff at Lutheran General Hospital to say thank youfor their awesome work for us and their patients
14.Bring happy face balloons to the pediatric and geriatric wing of LutheranGeneral Hospital for patients who are not getting many visitors
15.Send a letter through snail mail to a child from http://www.hugsandhope.org/updatepage.htm
15.Bring cookies to the police department with a happy note
16.Bring flowers to the assisted living center near our house
17.Donate some much needed supplies and smiles to Kay’s Animal Shelter
18.Send two cards to two people who I admire for their bravery.
19.Send a nice card to all of my grandparents
20.Visit some loved ones in heaven (sounds morbid, but they need some love too!)
21.Send a care package to Anymarine.com and include some of the following:
- pre-paid calling cards, gallon and quartsize ziplock bags, babywipes, hand sanitizer, mechanical pencils, stationaryset, chap stick, shampoo and conditioner, lotion, tuna packs, gum, pringles,crystal light packets, coffee, uncle ben’s rice packs, fruit snacks, special Kbars, cards, peanut butter.
22.Donate my favorite children’s book to my local library
23.Leave open for opportunities that present themselves!
24.Leave open for opportunities that present themselves!
25.This one is a secret, seeing as how the person who is receiving this one might be reading right now!

Which I stated to the world on Facebook. And then I went shopping at Walmart on May 3rd to get all my supplies for my intentional acts of kindness. Guess what happened.....come on guess......my phone got STOLEN. Yes, stolen, while I was intentionally planning to bring good into the world. After all that business, I finally got home and went to bed all sad and mopey.

The next day was my b-day! I was feeling blue that I didn't have a phone, but my sister and my husband made me feel much better and helped me to see that I shouldn't let a thief ruin my awesome day!

We spent the day doing intentional acts of kindness and it was so fun! Since I didn't have my phone, we used an old school digital camera to document as much of the day as we could.

Here it goes:

1. I wrote homemade letters to grandparents and the staff at Lutheran General to say "hello" and express my appreciation

    2. Brought flowers to two residents of the nursing home that is near our house. I cut them from out  
        garden! They were very surprised and some what confused, but thankful :) We also got to help an
        old lady figure out how to open the door and held the door open for her TWICE.

{daffodils and these other bluish purplish flowers}

     3. There is no picture for this one but I also wrote a cute card and gave some stickers to a a child    
         from this website. I also decorated the envelope with the cute stickers, but I forgot to take a  
         picture.  {sadface}

     4. Brought store bought cookies (didn't know if they would accept home made ones...) to the police
         station in my town with a little note to express my gratitude for their hard work! They very much
         appreciated the cookies :)

{outside of the police station}

     5. This sounds morbid, but I also cut 8 daffodils from my garden and brought them to the cemetery.     

          I put three daffodils on a friend's mother's grave to tell her we are thinking about her :) Then 

         Tommy and I walked around and found some other older graves and placed the last five daffodils 

         on them. I thought it might be nice to give them to people that might not have family left to do it. 

         That's morbid right? Ok, moving on.....

     6. Brought store bought cookies to the fire station in my neighborhood. Same thing as #4 :) They 

         were also VERY happy to accept delicious chocolate chip cookies!

{outside the fire station}

{the photographer and I}

     7. Left a happy quote tear away on the door of a bathroom. Didn't take a picture of this. Felt weird 

         to take a picture in a bathroom that wasn't a selfie ;)

     8. Bought a man a sandwich and a drink for lunch at Jewel. I didn't actually get to give it to him 

         though :( There is this man that stands on a corner off of 21 every once in a while with a sign that 

         says "Need a job to pay for gas and food" and it just breaks my heart. Every time I see him, or 

         that corner in general, I send good thoughts for him out in to the universe. So when I saw him on 

         my birthday, I said, "Tommy. We are going to Jewel to get him lunch." and my wonderful 

         husband drove me right away to Jewel. Then, when we pulled up to his corner, he was GONE. I 

         was initially sad that I didn't get to help him, but Tommy said he was probably gone because he 

         had a job for the day, which made me feel a little better. So we both sent out some kind thoughts 

         for him and kept going for the day. 

     9. Left a $5.00 gift card for a stranger in my favorite book at Barnes and Noble. The note said, 

         "Please enjoy this book, it is one of my favorites! I am completing 25 random acts of kindness 

         and YOU are one of them!" Then I went back a week later and it was GONE! I hope someone 

         out there has a fun story to tell now :)

 {The Give and my note}

{woot}

{waiting on the shelf}

     10. The secret one: BOUGHT A PLANE TICKET TO VISIT MY SISTER IN CALIFORNIA!!  
           Though I'm pretty sure she already knew that. I consider an intentional act of kindness because
           that's what I wanted for my birthday from Tommy :)

Somewhere in there we took a trip to Tsukasa for dinner, got happy birthday sung to us, and then ended the night with eating cake. Yum :)

Overall, it was A LOT to do in one day, but it was fun to attempt it! I can't wait for next year :)

GoodReads

Dear bookworms and the like,

There is a fabulous website called GoodReads that you all must check out. If you haven't already, you NEED to create an account. The person who came up with this site is a genius.

So basically, you log all the book that you want to read by searching for them online and saving them on your "To-Read" bookshelf. OR, if you are like me, and you are standing in the book section at Target and you are thinking, "I want all of these books and I want to read them all right now but I'm not a millionaire so I'll just pick one", but don't want to forget about the other hundred on the shelf that you want to read, you can SCAN THEM and save them to your bookshelf. It's easy and fun. Trust me.

You can also add in books that you have read so you don't get 50 pages into a book and realize that you have already read it and that you just forgot...or so that you can brag to the world that you actually made it through The Sun Also Rises (or insert-an-equally-as-tough-for-you-to-get-through-book-here)  and you're proud of it!

You can also create your own bookshelves like, "Abandon Ship!", where I store the other books written by Ernest Hemingway...

I seriously recommend this website, or app if you have a smart phone. It's free. It's convenient. It's worth your time.

Love,
Me

P.S.- Look me up. I'll be your friend and we can chat about why I dislike Hemingway so much ;)

#23- Volunteer More Regularly

This is part of my 25 Before 25 quest.

I have wanted to volunteer more regularly. I used to devote many many hours in high school to this. It was easier then because I was more involved at church and on a committee where I could do this often. Not to mention that I didn't have as much work on my plate....

I was even pretty active in college. I volunteered at random things, and even tried my hand at a co-ed service fraternity on campus, but quit when it seemed everyone involved was more focused on drinking and partying than volunteering.

Since college and high school, I have found it much harder to find volunteer opportunities. Since I am not as involved in a church, where a lot of volunteer opportunities are available, I am having a hard time finding volunteer opportunities. Which brings me to the beginnings of the list.

Below is a small (but hopefully growing) list of local (well, local to me...and possibly you...) opportunities to volunteer your time if you so choose.

1. Feed My Starving Children- This is a permanent packing site where you can go and pack food for residents of third world countries. They say it a lot eloquently here, on their website.

• My assessment: AWESOME. 
• Why? It's a good experience, just enough time (not too long, not too short), family friendly, and though it is a religious organization, it is solely about the religion.
• What you do: It's super easy to register online, and they send you a reminder email. You go 10-15 minutes before your scheduled time, but if you get there 5 minutes before or at your scheduled time, that's ok too. Then you check in on their computers where you get there, and they give you a lovely hairnet to wear! There is a small presentation in the beginning of the shift. Then you wash your hands, listen to the directions on how to do it, pick a table, and get to work! You might even make some friends at your station :) After your shift, you can go pray over the food that will be sent out, or opt out and wait in the gathering area (it's not weird, I promise. I've done both and no one makes you feel like crap if you choose not to pray over the food!). The staff gives everyone a small presentation about who they are helping by packing food and they ask you for a donation if you want, but you're not required to donate (and no one makes you feel pressured). I have gone twice now, and my mom bought me a shirt, which is considered a donation (and I wear it all the time! It's so comfy!) There are all kinds of jobs- scooping food, weighing food bags, sealing food bags, packing boxes with food bags, etc.- so it's family friendly. They also have lots of shifts to accommodate your schedule too. 

{Cute right?}

2. The Northern Illinois Food Bank- They have three sites to volunteer at, but I will most likely visit the North Suburban Center in Park City, as it is only 20 minutes away from my house. I haven't been there yet, but I have wanted to give it a try ever since a friend told me about it on Facebook! It is a food pantry that provides food for families in 13 different counties that need it most. What's better than helping your neighbors with their basic everyday need to eat? It seems they also have many different opportunities that include both volunteering and donating. I'll let you know when I check it out!

3. Save-A-Pet- I did this in college a few times after I got trained and I LOVED it! Needless to say, I spent most of my time in the bunny room, and also got to play with cats and walk dogs around the yard. It was a good experience. From what I remember, you have to go and do about 30 minutes of work- cleaning out dog and cat food bowls, collecting and folding laundry, etc. before you can play with the animals, but it's fun! They don't normally take people unless you can make a training session and then commit to going at least once a week. I am looking forward to doing this in the future :) Maybe even take home another kitty? Kitty-Shorts McMeowy? 

Any places that you know of around here that you want to add to my list? Suggestions welcome!