With A Side of Jess

Thursday, January 1, 2015

Year End Reflections

As 2014 comes to an end...did I really just type that? 2014 is coming to an end? Where did the month go?...but alas...As 2014 comes to an end, I thought it would be nice to take a look back and reflect on the year.

10 Things That Made Me Happy:
  1. Dying my hair red
  2. Girl's nights
  3. Advent presents for friends and sister
  4. Shipshewana with Kelley
  5. Book club/rediscovering my love of books
  6. Buying my car
  7. Making Andrea's Minion cake and Jen's TFIOS cake
  8. Discovering Boba at Lola's
  9. Finding a good recipe to make sweet and sour chicken at home
  10. Leadership scavenger hunt at work

5 Things That Made Me Sad:
  1. The mouse ate my PB2
  2. All the snow last winter
  3. Jen moving away
  4. Divergent
  5. Losing my perfect attendance record at work

Reflection:
I'm not going blindly into 2015. My rose colored glasses are not on. I am taking a realistic look at things and what I want to accomplish in 2015. In reality I know that 2015 will not be much different from 2014. There will be ups. There will be downs. Good times, bad times, just ok times. It's life. I'll be working on a post about what I'd like to accomplish in 2015 and that should be up sometime this weekend or early next week.

2014 wasn't a bad year, but I don't know that I would say it was spectacular either. It was much harder for me to think of things that made me sad, hence why there's only 5, than it was for me to think of things that made me happy, so I suppose that means that on the whole the year was more good than bad.

Monday, December 22, 2014

A Year of Books 2014


As you can see from above, I've been busy reading a lot this last year. My goal is 25 books for the year and I still have over a week to get in that last book. I'm fairly confident I can do it.

Monday, December 1, 2014

#RandomActsOfDecember 2014





Some of you may remember that last December I teamed up with my good friend Jen over at Peace, Love, and Life for a project we called Random Acts of December. Our intent was to do 100 random acts of kindness throughout the month to pay it forward and do something to positively change the lives of those around us. While we didn't make it to 100 last year, we had a lot of fun and made many people smile.

Because life happens in the course of a year, we will be in different places this year. While I'm sad we no longer live a short 15 minute drive from each other, I am excited that it means we get to spread happiness in multiple places!

And just to clarify, our acts aren't necessarily random meaning unplanned. Most have been planned out due to needing supplies or what have you and are random in who receives them.

If you want to see what we're up to, feel free to follow along using #RandomActsOfDecember on social media. If you're lucky enough to receive something from us, feel free to post about it using the same hashtag.

Social Media Links:
My Instagram
Jen's Instagram
My Facebook
Jen's Facebook

Monday, October 27, 2014

Cha-Cha-Cha-Changes

Just what the title says. I've been thinking about ways to get back into blogging, because I know I've been MIA, and a friend suggested I kind of switch the direction of the blog. That's exactly what I'm going to do, but at this point in time I'm not sure exactly how that will change things here. It might just be an overhaul of the design and layout, or it might mean even more changes. I am setting a loose timeline of having things completed in January. Until then, and much like the last year or so, I'll be in an out.

Please feel free to let me know if you have any ideas or suggestions as well. While I probably can't take action on everything, I will do my best to take it all into consideration.

Friday, October 24, 2014

Foodie Friday - Keurig 2.0 Review


When I found out I was going to receive a Keurig 2.0 complimentary from Influenster for testing purposes I was super excited. Not long before I had mentioned to a friend that I really wanted a Keurig, but I wasn't sure I could justify the price at this time. The Influenster Gods must have had their ears open when I was talking.