Making Me Happy This Week–1/21/2018

One thing that I’ve been doing for a couple of years in my paper notebook is making a sort-of-weekly list of things that are “Making Me Happy This Week”.  I thought I would start sharing them here on the blog, because we could all use some reminder of what makes us happy.  Maybe it will inspire you to make your own list regularly. 

Here’s what’s been making me happy this week.

• Grace & Frankie on Netflix.  Season 4 just dropped on Friday.  We are still in Season 3.  I love that there’s a show that portrays the complex lives of women in their 70’s.  It’s a terrific show, but contains adult themes and language.  (So be careful about watching in front of children.)
• Making someone else happy.  We gave our old 52” TV to Todd’s friend Gwen.  We also freecycled an old Roland synthesizer to a stranger.
• Scented wax melts in my Ohio State Scentsy warmer.
• Walking outside.  One of my goals this month is to walk outside at least a few minutes every day that I’m at work.  We also do a longer walk outside on the weekends.
• Purging and organizing the closet space under the stairs.  We have an awkwardly shaped coat closet under our spiral staircase.  It was filled with stuff we didn’t use or love anymore.  Things were just piled in there.
• I took inspiration from this IKEA photo and we’re going to try to put up some shelving and more flexible storage.
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• But for now there’s a lot less junk in there, and the shelves are an extension of our pantry, since our pantry is very small.
• Noodle loves to nap on the Santa rug that I got from Target.  I need to find the exact same rug except not Santa so he can use it all year long!
• The free organ concert at the Spreckles Organ Pavilion every Sunday afternoon.
• Walking through the Prado at Balboa Park.
• Trying out a new to us sandwich place in Hillcrest called T-Deli.
• Week of Putting Me Together Winter Style Challenge outfits.  (Except the last two. I usually only dress up for work.)
• Weather cooling down for cozier clothes.
• Our new silicone wedding bands!  I read about them on a style blogger’s blog.  Apparently when people travel, they sometimes wear these as wedding bands instead of their real rings so they don’t lose them or get robbed.  We loved the idea so much that we bought some just to wear them. Neither one of us wore our original wedding bands anyway.  My finger got too big for my band.  Todd lost his swimming in the ocean.  He had been wearing a titanium ring that we bought him a few years ago, but the metal is very hard and he was always afraid he was going to get it caught on something and rip his finger tendons.  (This happened to someone he knows!) So now we are both wearing the soft silicone rings.  They are so cheap too!  And you can change colors when the mood strikes or according to outfit.  Also we can workout with weights and it doens’t bother us.  This isn’t for everyone, but we don’t care about jewelry so this is a really great solution for us.
• My old boss who left us for another job in December texted to say, “Have I told you all that I miss you??!! My new team is no where close to your performance & quality. I miss you.”
• Takeout dinner from Punjabi Tandoor.  My favorite Indian food in San Diego.
• I finally upgraded to Lightroom 6 for the facial recognition. Lightroom thinks Todd looks like white Jesus. I just about died laughing.
• Trying out different plain yogurts (w/o added sugar).  I tried Islandic Provisions, Fage, and Yoplait.  I think so far my favorite is Yoplait, but it has 30% more calories because there’s more fat in it.  It figures that’s why it’s my favorite so far.
• Todd’s chocolate prune and rum cake.  Sounds weird but super yummy and gluten-free.
• Noodle snuggling on me.  Always.
• Banh mi sandwiches from Cali Baguette.
• Monthly and weekly goals.  Yearly is way too long on me.  I feel like I can stick to monthly and weekly goals better and it’s working for me.  I use the Ink & Volt planner for it.
• Trying out Trello for my personal project management and to-do list.