Time to take a look at my resolutions.  They say that at this point, about one month into the new year, most people have already failed on their resolutions.  Not so here.  I feel that I am on track.  I am still loving that dark chocolate!  Do I keep mentioning that one?  That’s because it is my favorite.   Today I am thinking about joy.  Blogging has brought joy to my life.  Why, you ask?  Because I have met so many wonderful people.  I read acres of funny, interesting, or thoughtful posts from people I have never met.  I read lovely poetry and viewed great art.  It has been such a pleasure.  And I have been thinking how interesting the “blogsphere” is.  There are people whose blogs I regularly visit and who visit mine.  I have come to know these people and I truly conside them my friends.  I find that fascinating since I have never met them in person, would not know the sound of their voice, and in some cases have no idea what they look like.  And yet… they are my friends.  And they bring such joy to my life.  When I find that they have commented on one of my posts it brightens my day immediately.  And when I view their work or read their thoughts, that too brightens my day.  So to all you bloggers out there who I have touched and who have touched my world.  Thank you.  You have enriched my life.  Have a great week!

Let see, I already said that eating dark chocolate is going well. I am also doing fairly well at getting enough sleep. I have slipped on that one occasionally, but for the most part I am doing okay. I haven’t really addressed relationships. While I feel most are in good shape, one can always do better. I don’t want to name names, but there are some family that I think could use some extra TLC and i need to get to work on that. I haven’t really thought about working on my focus, and i think I need to do that. But I have been successful with getting more fiber. I could do better, but I’m doing okay.

So far so good. I’d like to try and post a sky shot, but i haven’t done that from my new Ipad and I’m not sure i can figure it out. Let’s hit the “more” button on the toolbar and see what happens!

Nope. You’ll have to wait until I can get access to my desktop system. My husband has been working from home a lot and hogging my office/studio. It is a major drag. I love you honey, but please go back to work!

This is my first sky shot for the new year.  Okay, it’s not the best shot, but it was early in the morning – before 6 am.  I’m not at my best for taking pictures then!  What’s important is that this is the first full moon of the year.  It seemed like a good place to start.

I went to the grocery store today.  I didn’t need that many items since my wonderful hubs shopped at the beginning of the week.  That left me free to contemplate how to get more fruits, vegetables and whole grains into my daily diet.  I started in the produce section and picked out some fruits and vegetables.  I got some prepackaged chopped veggies that I thought I could stir fry easily for lunch with a little of this and a little of that.  I don’t mind spending a lot of effort to put dinner together at night but I feel that lunch should be quick, easy and healthy.  From there I wandered up and down the aisles checking items of my grocery list and seeing what else caught my eye for healthy lunches.  I picked up a can of Amy’s vegetarian chili.  It’s all natural so I felt pretty good about that.  In the frozen vegetable aisle I picked up a bag of rice with veggies.  It has carbs but as long as I don’t go overboard that doesn’t bug me.  I can easily microwave it for a healthy lunch.  It didn’t have any calorie laden sauces or lots of salt.  Finally in the frozen entrée section I picked out a vegetarian shepherds pie by Amy’s.  The only problem with the products from Amy’s is that they are FULL of salt.  I realized this when I got home.  The bane of processed food no matter how natural it is.  I will steer clear of those in the future.  For lunch I picked a homemade split pea soup from the in-house prepared food section and got a small baguette of whole grain bread to have with it ( not the WHOLE baguette!).  I had a clementine along with those and a square of extra dark chocolate to round it all off.  Yum.  I felt like it was healthy and it was definitely delicious.  I am now armed to try to eat vegetarian for lunch.  I don’t want to go whole-heartedly down the vegetarian path but I do want to reduce the amount of meat I eat.  The new resolutions are off to a good start!

Here’s a recipe I found on Allrecipes.com that looks healthy, yummy and can be made without the meat.  I haven’t tried it yet so I will report back when I do!  UPDATE:  My family and I made this recipe this week minus the ham and mango.  While not delicious, I found it to be perfectly edible.  Not so my family.  They found it to be inedible and promptly ordered out for pizza.  Really!  I guess I will try future recipes before posting/reposting them. 

Brazilian Black Bean Stew

Ingredients

•                     1 tablespoon canola oil
•                     1/4 pound chorizo sausage, chopped
•                     1/3 pound cooked ham, chopped
•                     1 medium onion, chopped
•                     2 cloves garlic, minced
•                     2 (1 pound) sweet potatoes, peeled and diced
•                     1 large red bell pepper, diced
• 2 (14.5 ounce) cans diced tomatoes with juice
•                     1 small hot green chile pepper, diced
•                     1 1/2 cups water
•                     2 (16 ounce) cans black beans, rinsed and drained
•                     1 mango – peeled, seeded and diced
•                     1/4 cup chopped fresh cilantro
•                     1/4 teaspoon salt

            Directions

1. Heat the oil in a large pot over medium heat, and cook the chorizo and ham 2 to 3 minutes. Place the onion in the pot, and cook until tender. Stir in garlic, and cook until tender, then mix in the sweet potatoes, bell pepper, tomatoes with juice, chile pepper, and water. Bring to a boil, reduce heat to low, cover, and simmer 15 minutes, until sweet potatoes are tender.
2. Stir the beans into the pot, and cook uncovered until heated through. Mix in the mango and cilantro, and season with salt.

This blog has been about finding the joy in small moments each day. However, it is a new year so I think I am going to shift the focus a bit. From here forward it is going to be about my 2012 New Years resolutions. Up until a couple of years ago I never engaged in the process of making resolutions. I didn’t really buy into the whole idea. But two years ago I decided to set some. I didn’t want to go with the usual ones that everyone seems to set for themselves.  No “I am going to lose weight” or “I am going to eat healthier”. Those were not the types of things I was thinking about. I set four goals the last two years. They were as follows:

Drink water. I never seem to drink enough water during the day and I knew that doing so would offer many benefits.  My goal was to drink the recommended 8 8oz glasses per day.  I figured if I got anywhere close I would be doing much better than I usually do.  I have found that carrying a water bottle along with me makes this a much easier task.

Find joy. This lead to the original focus of this blog. There is joy in every day even if it is just that you are still here!  Each day, no matter how good or bad, I try to reflect on it and find some small joyful moment.  It can be as simple as a smile from someone you don’t know, to someone opening a door for you.  Random acts of kindness.  They are out there each and every day!

Attend Church. I believe that attending church is a good thing. It gives me a good, warm feeling. At the time I set the resolutions I was unhappy with the Catholic church.  I have since switched to the Congregational church in town and my daughter and I are so happy now.  I’m sure my Dad rolled over in his grave when I did that, but believe me Dad, it is all for the best!

Get rid of stuff. Most of us are surrounded by stuff. Lots of stuff. And much of it we simply don’t need. So I resolved to get rid of stuff that was cluttering my existence.

I did pretty well on these resolutions the past two years. The only one I haven’t executed well is getting rid of stuff. I need to work at that a little harder. This year I am going to add to this list. A friend of mine posted a list of five suggested resolutions, from Carolyn Butler at the Washington post, that resonated with me. That list is as follows:

Work on your focus

http://artimagica.wordpress.com/2011/04/18/art-from-detritus-3/