Little bits of progress

Hello sun-lovers! We haven’t quite sorted out the internet issues yet, but I’m trying to steal a bit of time wherever I can to upload some of the many posts on my mind.

As a means of getting up to date, let me share with you a number of goals from my 101 list that I’ve been working on over the last few months…

Some of the goals I’ve been nibbling away at each day or each week. For example, these goals are happening in the background even though I don’t always have pics to prove it:

• Goal #1: Read through the Bible in one year – I’m doing this in my quiet times each day
• Goal #3: Lose weight – last time I checked, I was 1.5 kg closer to my goal… yeehaa!
• Goal #12: Make a list of 100 things I’m grateful for – I’m on #84 so far 🙂
• Goal #16: Read 101 books and keep a list of them – 38 down, 63 to go
• Goal #20: Go for a bicycle ride – I recently started riding my bicycle again. Fantastic exercise!
• Goal #30: List 101 things I’ve already achieved – So far I’ve listed 94
• Goal #52: Complete a one-month photo challenge – I’m halfway through a challenge for August… perhaps I’ll post a few of the best pics in a separate post sometime

The photo challenge I designed

• Goal #57: Get 5 more movies for my collection – I recently added ‘Babe: Sheep Pig’ to my collection 😉
• Goal #86: Pay off our building loan – Each month I contribute towards this long-term goal

Many of the other goals are once-off achievements, though, and for those I do have some photos to share with you 🙂

Goal #33: Eat at 5 new restaurants

I added a new restaurant (#4) to my list the other evening when I went to Burnsides Café with my colleagues for a team dinner. It’s a lovely restaurant with delicious food and quaint decor – neither of which I got to photograph in great detail, because I was enjoying the evening so much!

Burnsides Café

Goal #34: Take 101 photos of 101 different birds

My birding has sort-of been shelved for a while, mainly because I’m not yet in the position to accomplish Goal #85 (hire or buy a zoom lens for my camera). However, I was able to add a new bird to my list the other day (using my old Fujifilm camera). Ninja and I spotted this red-throated wryneck eating on the lawn:

(A very bad pic of) a red-throated wryneck

The cool thing is I’ve never seen one of those birds before.

Goals #26, 36 & 74

Sometimes I can tick off more than one goal at one time – always a great feeling! That’s what happened when I celebrated Raksha Bandhan (Goal #74) with my brother on 10th August. I was also able to add to Goal #26 (apply henna another time) and Goal #36 (celebrate another obscure holiday). The whole thing was great fun and definitely deserves a post of its own.

Goal #82: Make or buy 2 decor items for the kitchen

When we moved house, I discovered that I had too many wooden mixing spoons. So here’s an idea I came up with for decorating our new kitchen:

My ‘eat pray love’ kitchen décor

I painted the three spoons in the primary colours of my kitchen and wrote on them the words ‘eat, pray, love’. But lest you think that’s a bit clichéd, I also incorporated three Scripture references for those three words:

• Eat: 1 Corinthians 10:31 – “Therefore, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.”
• Pray: 2 Thessalonians 5:17 – “pray without ceasing”
• Love: 1 Corinthians 13 – The entire chapter describes true love 🙂

Those principles capture the spirit of our home – or at least show what we’re striving for amid the stresses and struggles of normal daily routines.

Goal #100: Revamp my jewellery collection

This goal also deserves its own post, as I revamped my collection during an epic spring clean I’ve recently been doing. I have no idea why but one evening the minimalism bug suddenly bit me, leading me to trash and donate more than half of my books, clothes and possessions – and I’m not done yet! The jewellery collection was one of the first to be whittled down.

So as you can see, even though this blog has been silent for a while, I’ve still been enjoying some sunny days in the real world 😉

Hope you’re all well and filling your days with good things,

Zest