A Zestful New Year and Plans for 2016!

Don’t you just love a New Year full of possibility? I love the freshness of a New Year because we have a clean slate to do whatever we want. A New Year is exciting and full of hope. It’s a chance to fix what we’ve messed up in the past, as well as projecting the sunshine to come. There will always be roadblocks, so why focus on that when you can be celebratory instead. Wouldn’t it be great to look at each new day with exuberance rather than worry? The Zest Quest is my way of celebrating a Zestful New Year every day!

I usually have all my goals in place by the end of December, but this year I crammed in a bunch of fun time with family instead. I can’t think of a better reason for putting off goal setting! I laughed until I cried, got to see some more of this beautiful country and shopped for some fun gardening, organizing and cooking toys that I’ll tell you about in a future post!

I’m super excited about a New Year of blogging, so much so that I joined a blogging community where I’m taking classes and learning how to make my blog a place you can’t resist. I’m not sure of all the changes I’ll be making but I know there will be some and I find that tremendously exciting. My site manager already made one change by taking down the slider on the front of this site. It may come back in the future, but for now, I think it’s best if we have the full view of what’s going on instead.

I also joined several reading challenges for 2016 and I’ll tell you more about those in a post dedicated to Books in the future. But what that means is that I’ll be focusing on my huge pile of books that aren’t read and choosing some of them to review in 2016. I’ll be linking to the other bloggers doing the same so you can find lots of great books to read.

Unbelievably, I read 66 Books and reviewed them last year! That’s my highest year total ever that I can remember. My goal last year was to read 50 books and I surpassed that, but I’m still keeping my 2016 goal to 50 books because I want to be sure my goal is manageable around all the fun blogging I want to do on travel, gardening and food. Some of my reviews will be on books in those categories — I have several coming up such as a book and movie review for A WALK IN THE WOODS by Bill Bryson for the travel and hiking lovers. Some books I’ve read and will review for the foodies are SUPER FOODS by Sue Quinn and THE MADE FROM SCRATCH LIFE by Melissa K. Norris, as well as the historical THE ART OF COOKERY MADE PLAIN AND EASY by Hannah Glasse, an 1805 classic. This is just the start of the pile I have to read that foodies and nature lovers will enjoy. My fiction reading pile is way too big to list, but a hint will be books by Stephanie Dray/Laura Kamoie, Marin Thomas, Paula Brackston and Robert Morgan.

In the Travel category I have posts planned for West Virginia, North Carolina, Virginia and of course, Ohio. I’d love to work on a series of posts from our trips to Ireland and the several trips out west to Montana, Wyoming, Utah, Colorado, Idaho and hopefully Oregon in the future. I have a stockpile of photos from those trips with interesting travel tips that I’d like to combine because they were true highlights of the many travel adventures I’ve had over the years. It will be a busy year of organizing my journals and photos!

In the Gardening category I have a series of posts planned from a visit to my friend Mel’s garden last fall. I think that will be fun to do before spring to get us through winter. I’m still debating on plans for my own garden this year, including how much to grow from seed myself. I usually get that sorted in January so that I can order the seed I need, so more coming on that soon. I’ll track my garden blooms and vegetable bounty like last year too so you’ll get some comparisons to last year.

The Food and Recipe sections will probably have the greatest expansion this year. The recipes have been the hardest for me to work on because I don’t measure when I cook. I’ve had to learn to write everything down, take pictures every time I’m in the kitchen, as well as research other viable sources to link you to for more information. I have a pile of recipes I’m working on perfecting to post, which sometimes means I have to make them over again to figure out the measurements or to take better pictures describing the steps. I’m playing with some new lenses and techniques, too, so developing a recipe for the blog never goes as fast as I’d like! HA But I’m having fun and I hope that shines through when you finally get to see them!

The Farm Share posts will continue so no changes there except maybe make them shorter so I have time to do everything else! LOL We’re almost into the second half of winter, and finally REAL winter in NE Ohio with snow, so the posts will reflect a lot of frozen veggies versus fresh starting this next week. That will save me prep time but I’m not sure how pretty the photos will be! Either way, it will be fun because my freezer is still jam-packed so I’m going to have to cook a lot faster!

On the personal front, I’ve had a setback that slowed me up a bit this week when I did a three point landing in the snow in a twisted heap that tore or sprained the ligament on my left knee. Ouch! Three days later and there are more aches and pains showing up that weren’t there before, so I’m still trying to figure out how long it will take me to recover.

I’m still in the kitchen cooking (with Mr. Carnivore’s assistance) – it’s just a lot slower going with a cane to keep my balance. I did have fun with a photo shoot this week (before I fell!) to show you my shopping bounty from our trip south this year, so more coming soon!

Happy New Year! What’s your zestful plans for 2016?

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