Simply Wholesome in the New Year

Happy new year everyone!  I hope you all had a wonderful time last night ringing in 2013.  Our celebration was perfect – we put the girls to bed early and enjoyed a delicious meal with some close friends who I was able to test some new recipes on.  The menu included marinated baked salmon, quinoa and kale pilaf, maple roasted butternut squash and parsnips, and a salad provided by my friend.  For dessert I tested new recipes for coconut macaroons and chocolate cookies, which were a total failure.  But everything else was delicious, and I hope to share some of these recipes with you all soon!  In the mean time, for my first post this year, I thought it would be nice to do a little reflecting on 2012 and looking ahead to 2013.

A look back at 2012…

Last year was a great one in the SWK household.  After moving from NYC to NJ in 2010, we are now pretty settled into our life in the ‘burbs.  When we moved my munchkin was not quite 2 and my little peanut was still cooking in my belly, making things pretty hectic for a while.  But now both girls are old enough that they (mostly) sleep all night, eat real food, and can sometimes play independently, making things more stable than they’ve been in a long time!  This has allowed me to focus on finally updating this blog, and also to start school at the Institute for Integrative Nutrition (more on that another time!).  Not only that, but after a gentle nudge (shove?) from hubby, I joined a gym last summer and started working out again after an embarrassingly long hiatus.  It feels really good to be carving out some time for my own interests and health after after 4 years being so focused on taking care of my kids!

While I was fairly quiet here for the first half of the year, the posting definitely picked up in August.  In case you missed them, here are the five most popular posts from the fall of 2012:

1. How much do you know about GMOs?
2. 100% Whole Wheat Hamburger Buns AGAIN! (Bread Machine)
3. The Perfectly Packed Lunch
4. Fruit Juice for Health?
5. Welcome to the New Simply Wholesome Kitchen!

Looking ahead to 2013!

So now it’s 2013…wow!  It’s so easy to lose track of time until New Year’s finally hits and you realize how quickly life is moving.  This year promises to be quite exciting for the SWK household.  Our big news is that we’re moving again!  When we originally moved out to NJ, we bought a townhouse as a way to ease the transition from city apartment living to home ownership.  The community we found has been such an amazing way to quickly meet new friends and easily find impromptu playdates outside.  But there was always a part of us that looked forward to having a piece of property to call our own, and so when we accidentally found a house this fall that we fell in love with, we decided to go for it.  This means that soon we will be moving to the other side of our town into what will hopefully be our “forever” house.  Given that it will be the seventh home I’ve lived in since graduating college less than 12 years ago, I am very ready to be done moving for a very long time!

In addition to looking forward to having a yard for my kids to play in, I am thrilled about being able to finally experiment with gardening!  I grew a few items in pots last summer, but am totally new to real gardening so if you have any good resources to recommend, please send them my way!  I promise to keep you all posted on how things go and what I learn.  Aside from the yard, another great thing about moving into a house with a very long timeframe is that it allows us to research some investments in making our house as “green” as possible.  I look forward to sharing with you what we’re learning on that front as well.

And finally, I’d like to share some of my goals for 2013.  Hopefully some of you are actually interested in what I’m working on, but really, there is nothing like posting goals on the internet to create some accountability for myself!  So please, feel free to ask me how I’m doing throughout the year to keep me on track 🙂

1. Get more organized.  Some of you might assume that I’m a super-organized (and I like to think of myself that way!), but sadly that couldn’t be further from the truth.  Instead of staying on top of things, most of the time I’m flying by the seat of my pants, just barely keeping up!  This year I’d like to do a better job of keeping my life in order and stay on top of my house and my  to-do list.
2. Plan more meals.  Ok, this is part of getting more organized, but I thought it deserved its own goal.  Luckily, I’m pretty good at stocking my kitchen and coming up with reasonably healthy meals on the fly, but when I actually plan out a meal I feel so much better (and it makes hubby so happy!), so I’d like to have more nights during the week where I figure out what we’re eating more than 30 minutes before it hits the table.
3. Plant a garden!  I am so excited about this one.  For the first time in my adult life I’ll have my own backyard this summer, and I can’t wait to learn about growing some of our own food.
4. Take some steps to “green” our home.  I mentioned this above as well, but I anticipate a steep learning curve as we make improvements to our home over time.  Our first renovation project will be refinishing floors and painting walls, so we’re already looking into the least toxic options, but there is a whole new world out there that hubby and I are just starting to discover!
5. Blog more consistently.  I can’t tell you how many posts swirl around in my head but never actually make it up.  I’d like to share more this year, so please let me know what you’d like to see more (or less!) of going into 2013.

Thank you all for continuing to visit The Simply Wholesome Kitchen – I’m so glad you’re here and welcome your feedback or suggestions at any time!  I hope you all have a wonderful 2013 to look forward to as well!