Happy Monday, my loves! I hope you’ve had a nice and refreshing weekend and are ready to take on a new day. Last week was my first full week back at work and I went in hard, working on my new year’s resolution to be two weeks ahead with my content creation. In order to get there I need to produce more than a week’s worth of content in a week for a while now, so the workload has gotten a bit heavier but it’s nothing I can’t handle. It does mean I spent most of my time behind either my desk or my camera, so I’m afraid I don’t have as much to show you this week. I am of course going to share all the photos I did take with you though, so let’s take a look what my week was like outside of all the work.
On Monday I finally took down the Christmas decor. This is always such a bittersweet moment for me! I love how clean, fresh and spacious the home feels after all the decorations are gone, but putting all of the ornaments back in their boxes does make me feel kind of sad and nostalgic. It feels like putting away a happy time, and like I’m ending the joyful feelings I had when I put them up. It was extra hard this time as I had resolved to go through my Christmas decorations and give some of them away. We simply have too many for the space we live in, and for the past few years I’ve never used them all at the same time. I separated out a few that we donated to our scouting. When all was done it did feel amazing though, like a clean slate. Plus, all our decorations fit in their three boxes now and there aren’t any loose Christmas bits and pieces floating around the storage (not even the big wreath which would never fit in a box).
Getting my little plant display back made up for a lot of the sad feelings, haha :) This is definitely one of my favourite nooks in the house.
Isn’t it incredible how much bigger a home feels when you take the Christmas tree down? Robbert and I were both surprised by it again this year.
A healthy lunch of leftover sauerkraut soup and a veggie & tempeh wrap. Vegetable-heavy lunches like this make me so happy, I really should make them more often. All it takes is a little meal prep at the start of the week to make the tempeh and get all the veggies, and then I can enjoy it for days.
I got a Krtek calendar for Christmas and it’s been sitting on my desk ever since. Krtek is my early childhood hero and seeing a new little seasonal image of him and his friends every week makes me so happy :)
Onion tears. I wore contacts for years and never had a problem with cutting onions when I did, but ever since I started wearing glasses instead I’ve been crying every time. People have suggested I get swimming goggles to wear while cutting onions and I honestly think I might do that, supposedly it helps a lot.
Back at the gym! I went twice last week, and I still love it. I enjoy my time there as I’m taking it nice and slow, and whenever I’m done working out I feel so good. As of now my routine is to start by walking at a quick pace on the treadmill at the highest incline for 30 minutes (while watching Marie Kondo on Netflix), then doing all the weight training machines, 15 minutes on one of the elliptical machines, and then some stretching. I’m already noticing I’m getting better as I’ve recently turned up the pace on the treadmill and added more weight to the muscle building machines and it takes the same effort to do the exercise. Yay!
On Wednesday I took on the first part of my massive decluttering challenge. Oh my, did it drain me! Making decisions about so many of your possessions is really tiring, but I’m glad I did it and I’m looking forward to tackling the other 15 areas of my home.
I’m very happy with my results, and it’s already made me feel much lighter. The fewer things you own, the fewer things you have to clean and take care of. It’s kind of a relief to know that that’s something I’m working on.
Confession: this is the place where decluttered objects go to wait until they get dealt with. Most of this is stuff I’d like to give away or donate, but that’s not always easy to do when you don’t own a car. It’ll probably take a while to clear all of these.
I’ve decided to commit to trying the Curly Girl Method for a month, to see what will happen to my hair if I do it for a bit longer. I documented the first try off-camera on my Instagram stories.
Hum. I tried something different according to tips from the comments again, but I’m not quite sure this is it for me either. Air drying just doesn’t really work for my hair as it won’t dry quickly enough to hold the wave, I feel. I also think I used too much curl cream this time. Better luck next time!
We made slingshots with the explorer scouts this week. Since becoming an explorer leader I feel like I’ve discovered my inner little boy and I love it, haha! I’ve never played with slingshots before and I have to admit, it was a lot of fun.
After another failed attempt at the Curly Girl Method, I decided to snip a few cm’s off the ends of my hair. Not because I think that’ll magically make my hair curly, but the ends are very clearly the most damaged part of my hair that has the most trouble holding a wave when it’s wet. I thought a bit of a fresh start might do my hair some good. My ends weren’t looking all that great to begin with, if I’m honest. I’m always kind of weird about my ends as I’m hell-bent on having the longest hair possible still, but my ends do tend to be scraggly as my hair simply won’t all grow to the same length. This length is about what all of my hairs can reach, so it does look a lot fuller when I wear it like this. I’m still deciding how I feel about this length, but for now I can say I don’t think I mind it. My personal preference is definitely for longer hair, but my hair does look healthier and nicer like this.
I spent Sunday catching up on little tasks that needed to be done around the house. I did my taxes, did a few loads of laundry, and tackled cleaning the giant pile of makeup brushes I created during my declutter. They’re all nice and clean now and ready to be stored in my professional makeup kit.
At the end of the day I was pooped and didn’t feel like cooking, so we ordered pizza. I love that I can just order pizza now, with all the vegan options that are available. Yum yum yum!
Sunday also marked Diarmuid & Pádraig’s one year anniversary with us! It’s been exactly a year since they came to live with us and it’s been amazing to have them here. They bring us joy every single day and fill our hearts with so much love, I can only hope they know how much we care about them. Here’s to many more days together!
Ah, blue skies. I do miss summer and honestly can’t wait for spring to come around, but having a blue sky to look at every now and again does make up for a lot.
I’ve been making an effort to read more, and so far it’s been pretty succesfull. I try to reach for a book at times when I’d normally grab my phone, and having something light and bite-size to read really helps with that. Hopefully I’ll be able to get into more of a reading habit in 2019.
I hope you’ve had a lovely week guys, talk to you soon!
I would be interested to see what would happen if you combine 2nd-day 40’s brush out hair with curly girl method.
My hair is in need of a haircut as well. This post motivated me to reach to my hairdresser to schedule a time this week, hahaha!
I hope I can read more this year, too, but I’m not very hopeful about it. But I did have an epiphany: if I get books from the library, they have a return date so I’ll have to read them sooner or later. When I buy a book, I just shove them in the shelf forever and never pick them up. The library is an incentive to read them faster.