Author: Allie Zottola

A new tradition

Hi! Can you believe it’s almost Christmas? I’m very excited to spend time with mine and Jimmy’s families. This time of year–when we remember and celebrate Christ’s birth–is incredibly special. The traditions and festivities are always so memorable, too. Over the weekend, my mom and I decided to start a new tradition. We got together and spent the day baking cookies and treats, and assembled the baked goods on trays to give to our neighbors.

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I think that we spent about eight hours baking. I’m sure four of those hours were probably spent laughing. I don’t know what it was, but we had a major case of the giggles all day. It could have been because my hand twitched when I was holding candy eyeballs?

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Then I said something (I can’t remember what) and it made my mom laugh so hard that she drooled on a cookie…which we promptly threw away. We also burned a batch of gingersnaps and couldn’t figure out why. It turned out that we accidentally used wax paper to line the cookie sheet instead of parchment. Yikes!

My sister and her boyfriend were at my parent’s house for a little while on Saturday, and they wanted me to take pictures of them by the Christmas tree. Hannah’s boyfriend was helping her get ready and I walked by the bathroom and saw him blow drying her hair. It was such a sweet moment!

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It was also nice to hang out with my parent’s dogs, Brandy and Reggie. When I talk to Jimmy about them I sometimes refer to them as one unit and call them “Breggie” haha.

My mom and I ended up making sugar cookies, gingersnaps, Russian tea cakes (also called snowballs or Mexican wedding cookies), peanut butter blossoms, penguin cookies, chocolate crinkles, cranberry bars, and peppermint bark. We both agreed that either the cranberry bars or the penguins were the hardest thing to make because they required so many different steps and ingredients. The easiest cookies were probably the Russian tea cakes. The treat that was the biggest hit was the peppermint bark.

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Jimmy and I delivered cookie trays to seven of our neighbors on Sunday afternoon, and I don’t think I stopped smiling for the rest of the day. We both agreed that it felt amazing and like it was the least we could do to give back to the people who have been so friendly and welcoming to us since we moved to our community in 2014.

Do you bake around Christmas time?
What’s your favorite type of cookie?

How my 2015 goals panned out

Just like that, 2015 is almost over. It boggles my mind. This year has been absolutely amazing. It was mine and Jimmy’s first full calendar year of marriage, and we have made it out alive so far! I love him more each and every day. Looking back on 2015, I feel incredibly blessed–the things that happened (or didn’t happen!), the blessing of having a roof over my head, loving the work that I get to do each day, the people in my life, and on and on. I am thankful for everything. It has been a year of growth and learning for me.

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Aaaaad cue random photo of our dogwood tree blooming in April 😉

I’m here to post about how I did on my goals for 2015, so I’ll try and stay on track with that instead of reminisce on how fast the year went. Below (in italics) are my goals from this post and how I think I did.

2015 goals
“Get organized. I want to get back into meal planning and organize our basement.”
-I did well with meal planning and organized our basement at the beginning of the year. I sliced my thumb on a food processor blade while organizing, but it was successful nonetheless!

“Travel as much as possible. I don’t care where I go, I just want to travel as much as I can!”
-Jimmy and I had a chance to visit West Virginia, Maryland, and North Carolina.

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Visiting the Outer Banks in August. I miss it so much!

“Write. I want to write as much as possible by journaling, blogging, writing letters, freelancing, etc.”
-I think I wrote almost every day–either in my journal, in letters, or on my blog–in 2015. I would have liked to do more freelancing, but there’s always next year!

“Take care of my nails. I pick at my cuticles until they bleed. Must. stop. doing. that. I figure that if I paint my nails regularly, I’ll be less likely to pick at them.”
-I started out really well with this goal. I painted my nails each Sunday for a few months and then fell off the bandwagon. I did pick back up with this goal at the beginning of this month, though!

“Decorate a room in our house. I am terrible with decorating. I want to decorate at least one room this year. I’m pathetic, I know.”
-I did okay with this goal. I didn’t fully decorate one room, but I did sparsely decorate our living room and bedroom. I bought curtains for both rooms, a comforter for our bedroom, and some decorations for the living room. I also painted a mandala on a canvas for our bedroom.

“Plant a garden. From what I’ve heard, the previous owners of our home had an incredible garden and composted a ton. Now the garden area is full of weeds. I know it has potential, though!”
-It turned out that the garden of weedin’ was a garden of Eden. Sorry for that cheesy joke. Jimmy and I planted our garden in May and we still have kale growing now in December. It has been awesome and I can’t wait to do it all again in 2016.

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“Read 50 books. I’ve been trying to do this every year since 2011, haha.”
-After years of trying to complete this goal, I finally read 50 books in a year. I attribute this accomplishment to audio books and being finished with college. As of right now, I have read 71 books this year.

“Read the Bible again. Jimmy and I have started reading our chronological Bible together, and are hoping to finish the whole thing in 2015.”
-This was a bit of a lofty goal considering mine and Jimmy’s busy schedule, so we left off somewhere in the Old Testament a few months into 2015. We figured that we were better off spending time studying portions of the Bible for understanding versus trying to read the whole thing in a year and not fully grasping everything.

“Re-read The Purpose Driven Life. This will be the third time. I love that book.”
-I finished the book in June. Loved it just as much as the first two times I read it.

Overall, I did pretty well with what I set out to accomplish in 2015. Aside from the above goals, I had a lot of personal growth as a person and a Christian in 2015, which is what I am most thankful for. God has taught me a lot about myself and I’m excited to see what He has in store for next year.

I’ve thought about what I’d like to accomplish in 2016, and it’s going to be very different from previous years–in a good way. I’ll be blogging more about it at the end of this month or in early January!

Do you set goals in January?
How has 2015 been for you?