101 Things Update - Week 2

Well. Two weeks into 101 Things and I'm doing well in some areas and absolutely failing in others.

#1: To declare my 29th year "Year of the Cupcake" - I turned 29 this week *shudders* and already the first cab is off the rank with these gluten free carrot cupcakes with orange cream cheese frosting. I made them for my birthday party because I have several gluten intolerant friends. Given how I feel about cupcakes and also given how tricky gluten free baking can be, I think I really grabbed the bull by the horns on this one. Consider Year of the Cupcake to be declared!

#21: To learn to make a Cosmopolitan - done, also for my birthday party. Not very hard at all, and to those not in the know they appear to be a little bit fancy!

#35: To exercise 4 times per week in the lead-up to the wedding - Week 2 and I'm slipping. Now, I'm going to use the excuse perfectly understandable reason that because it was my 29th birthday this week, and this coincided with my time off with Grant, that of course I wasn't going to spend my time at the gym, particularly as I was about 500km from the gym I am a member at.

But, to my credit, I went out of my way to walk everywhere. So, when we went to the pub for tea on my birthday and then to the movies, we walked. Not so bad! Also, to my credit, I bought a new pair of gym pants and a singlet with a shelf bra in it from Kmart on sale for a total of $21. This counts towards exercise of course. HAHAHA I'm kidding! Not even **I** am that delusional! But what it does mean is that I can go to the gym on 4 consecutive days without the stench killing other gym-goers. Score!

#45: To take calcium tablets each day - I think I'm doing okay, and don't recall missing (m)any, but we'll find out when I get to the bottom of the jar. It's not actually that straightforward, though, because I have a different jar in Adelaide and quite often when I'm in Melbourne I'm too lazy to go down to the car and get mine out. But don't tell mum that, because it means that I'm taking hers...

I'm also not going to bother updating this one every week because it's borrrrrrrrring.

#65: To read all my unread books before buying more - Still reading Three Cups of Tea. Still loving it. If I remember to bring it away with me this week I may have even more of it read soon! Again, I won't bother updating this one unless I have finished a book, or to let you know what the next book I'm reading is.

#74: To delete crap photos from SD cards, hard drives etc - in progress. Have started on the 8GB SD card currently in my digital SLR, mainly because I ran out of space on it the other day. No, there aren't that many photos on it, but I shoot in raw so I can - one day - more effectively use photo editing software. But I still have quite a lot of photos to get through, both on this card and on one or two others I have.

#78: To learn to blow-dry my hair - I probably should have mentioned this last week but one of my lovely bridesmaids Emma and I had a play with our hair last weekend and we did okay. Although if I posted on the Saturday night, which I think I did, it hadn't actually happened yet. We're learning to do the smooth thing, and we're learning what kind of curling tools do what to our hair (the answer isn't always "they curl it!", surprisingly...). We have a ways to go yet but we'll get there. My intention behind #78 was to have nice hair for our wedding, and to carry a useful skill away from it. And for all you doubters, it IS a useful skill when you have hair as unruly as mine. Of course, I generally go with the "embrace the mess" theory rather than going down the long and winding path of Taming the Beast...

#79: To use up all the dregs of my beauty products - I've finished one old bottle of moisturiser and started on another old one. I think I stopped using both of them because I was developing a mild sensitivity to them (!), so I'm only using the dregs on weekends and my regular moisturiser during the week. I find that if I use the same type of moisturiser all the time I get a little sensitive to it, so I change moisturisers every time I run out so that I'm not consistently exposing myself to the same ingredients. And it seems to be working, because neither of those moistureiser dregs have caused much trouble. Yet...

So, progress has been made! Somehow I doubt that next week will be quite as exciting for you, dear reader.