I'm having one of those days where I just, I don't like my hair.
This is gonna sound so silly, but it's.
It's one of those days where I washed my hair yesterday afternoon and then I let it air dry and I slept on it.
And then the next day my hair is already just, it's not even worth dealing with it.
So I just had to acknowledge that before I start this video.
But today is Sunday.
It's the first Sunday of the new year.
And I promise after this vlog I'm going to shut up about the new year.
But I feel like you don't really get this type of excitement and drive.
And I guess it's just the feeling of a fresh start very often.
And so I want to kind of relish that feeling and enjoy it while it's here.
So we're going to do a little bit of a Sunday reset today.
I need to... get some things done to kind of set myself up for the week.
I have a couple things I want to do today, some things that are not necessarily the most fun or things that are super easy for me to do, but things that definitely set me up for success.
And so I'm going to walk you guys through that today and just get myself ready for the work week.
I actually have three jobs already this week, so...
I'm excited, I'm ready to just like get right back into it.
I was having this conversation with my brother, I think.
But it's so funny how, at the start of the holidays, you are just so excited to do nothing, so excited to eat and indulge and lay and just be, and after a week of doing that, you're so over it and you don't need that anymore and you're ready to get back into life.
And we are saying to each other that we have to remember that if this comes around during the year, that all you really need to do is just take a day and indulge in whatever it is that you feel like you're missing or take some time off and I think that's one of the things I want to just be a little bit more mindful of is like, if I ever start to feel like I'm lethargic to what I'm doing or I'm losing motivation or just maybe not feeling as excited or disciplined as I usually do, then it's probably time to just take a moment, take a day, take a weekend and refresh.
Just to kind of backtrack and let you know where I'm at.
My family left on Friday.
They were here from Monday to Friday and we had the best time.
It was amazing.
We tried so many new restaurants and just had like really good quality time together.
Then after they left, I did a full cleanup of the apartment.
I did all the laundry.
That's part of What a Sunday reset is like.
For me is doing all of the laundry, so I don't have to do it during the week.
Doing like a good little clean of the bathroom, good little clean of the common areas.
Our bedroom is the size of a box.
So there's not much cleaning to do in there, but I do like to do all the sheets and everything like that.
So that's all stuff that I did yesterday.
The things that I want to do today and this is the part for me that is not necessarily the most exciting but really does help me out a lot during the week, especially if I'm working a lot is food.
So getting groceries and, before that, even making a good list of groceries and really sitting down and figuring out okay like, what are the things that I want to eat this week?
What are the meals that I want to prepare in advance?
And how do I want to kind of make things easier for me as the week goes on, and so I wanna do a big grocery shop today.
I'm gonna go to Trader Joe's and then I'm also gonna go to the other grocery store that we like, get all of my groceries from there, and then I wanna do, I'm not gonna food prep everything just because I'm not gonna be eating a ton of it today, considering it's already lunchtime, but I do wanna at least prep one protein with either rice or a potato and then with a vegetable.
That's my goal for today.
I'm going to take you guys along, and then the rest of the food prep I'm going to do tomorrow, I think, because I still have tomorrow off as well.
Before we actually go to the grocery store, I want to have another cup of coffee.
And I also want to actually make a list of things that I want to get.
I want to make a list of things that I want to make and eat.
Something that I've noticed about myself is that I always get the same staples, you know, our breakfast foods, because Avery and I really only eat breakfast together, and then I'll just get my own things for lunch and dinner.
But I don't really plan these things out and I end up kind of just making something with whatever I have in my fridge.
And so what tends to happen for me is I eat the same things over and over again, and I also end up going to the grocery store more than I need to, because if I don't have the thing that I may be craving or wanting to make that day, then I have to make another trip.
I know that this isn't always gonna work out, because if I'm traveling then I don't wanna do too many groceries.
If I'm gonna be working every day during the week then I'm probably gonna also buy less groceries.
But for this week I am gonna make a little bit of a meal plan and a grocery list just to make my life a little easier.
Okay, I'm gonna put this up on the screen.
You can follow along with me, but i do this very simply in my notes app.
I love my notes app.
I use the table feature to create two columns, so one of them is for trader joe's, one of them is for whole foods, or we have another grocery store nearby that carries similar things, so i make that list and then underneath i currently just have monday through thursday, because i'm probably gonna have to go again on thursday and get new things, and maybe for the weekend we'll want to do something different.
This is kind of what works for me.
I also cook a lot of meals for myself, or for myself and one other person, and so realistically, i don't need to buy that much food.
And also because i eat a lot of or i eat a lot of my meals have animal protein in them and a lot of vegetables and stuff.
I like to get that stuff fresh, and so I don't want to be buying chicken or beef or fish and then having it sit in the fridge for four or five days before I eat it.
That doesn't really make sense.
And so I end up just going cooking and prepping for two or three days, and then I'll go again later in the week.
So nothing crazy.
This is a very no frills way of doing this.
There's tons of apps that you can use if you want to kind of make it look nicer and tracking meals and stuff like that.
I don't really do that, but I do find that when I plan things out a little bit better, when I think ahead and try and create meals that I think I'll be in the mood for, I just end up feeling a lot better.
I am less likely to be snacking a lot and I just find that I'm not slipping up as much which, I have to say.
At this point in my life, I feel like I'm pretty consistent and this has really become a lifestyle.
But when I do feel like I'm slipping up and I'm eating a lot of snacks for dinner and stuff, it's because I just haven't planned it out and because I haven't been diligent enough about taking the time to plan it out.
And so I think for me it's all about doing the work beforehand so that I can be successful in the moment, if that makes sense.
For the next few days, I just want to keep things very simple.
I have been eating out a lot, pretty much been eating out every single meal the last week with family in town and just i feel like during the holidays you don't do, we didn't do our normal groceries and so just kind of been ordering things here and there and so i kind of want to just reel things back in and eat the things that make me feel really good.
And then probably this weekend, i want to start experimenting with something new.
We ended up getting a couple of new things for the apartment i'll show you a lot of it later but we got rid of our large non-stick pan and we replaced it for a stainless steel one.
I have to say I really love it.
I was a little worried about cooking with the stainless steel after cooking with non-stick for so long, because it's just so easy.
But we are on the non-toxic train and getting rid of all that stuff, so we just have our little one now that we use for eggs in the morning, but everything else we're using either the cast iron or the stainless steel pot uh pan god.
Then avery also bought a dutch oven on black friday, so i'll show you guys that later.
And then for my birthday actually, avery's mom gave me an instant pot, and so i'm very excited to start using it.
I haven't made anything in it yet, but i've been reading up about how to use it and just doing some research on some recipes.
I really want to try making a chili in there.
I think that's just a nice warm, cozy winter meal.
After this week, once I'm kind of back into my routine, I can start getting a little bit more creative again myself.
A little lunch.
This is a recipe I actually got from Sana's channel.
I think it was one of her recent videos.
It's sourdough with cottage cheese and smoked salmon.
I did a little bit of a different variation.
I can't remember exactly what toppings she used, but I just put some black pepper on top of the cottage cheese, and then I put chives on top of the smoked salmon.
I'm recently obsessed with chives and I think they make a good combo with smoked salmon.
So I'm excited to try it.
Whenever I eat smoked salmon, I always use this goat's milk cream cheese that they sell at Trader Joe's.
And it's delicious, but cottage cheese actually has so much more protein than cream cheese does.
So when I saw her do this, I was like, this is brilliant.
Because you just get so much more protein.
I think I like cottage cheese.
I can't remember the last time I had it, but we're gonna find out.
Wow.
It's funny, you can't really tell the difference between whether it's cream cheese or whether it's cottage cheese.
If you're someone that likes smoked salmon on toast, you have to try this and let me know what you think.
Another fun thing we did over the holidays is refresh all of our bath towels.
We actually wanted to get the stripe for the bath towel too, but they just didn't have them.
But the combination of the two actually ended up working out really well, and we love them so far.
It's kind of funny because when we were buying these, obviously we knew we had a green carpet, but we didn't know just how close these striped towels would be to the rug that we have in the living room.
Like, if you didn't know it, you would think that the towels and the rug is from the same brand, but obviously they're not.
This rug we actually got from Ruggable, but it's fun having a little bit of a theme.
Without planning.
Obviously, we ended up kind of having a green theme in our And then we have even more in the kitchen.
Avery got this on Black Friday, but we really love it.
I think the color is so chic.
And we've actually used this a ton since we bought it.
Everything that Avery's cooked in the last month and a half, he's used this Dutch oven.
And now he wants me to attempt making bread in the Dutch oven.
So we'll see how that goes.
It's been fun just slowly adding a couple of things to the apartment.
I think the next thing we wanna do is change out some of our silverware and our plates.
A lot of the plates we have right now are the ones that I still have for my very first apartment on my own those Ikea plates.
But we're gonna wait until we find something that we love and just kind of update things over time.
Tupperware to my kitchen.
I'm so lacking in the bowls department, but we're just gonna make do.
This is what I've cooked for today.
I had a third portion that I actually just ate while the zucchini was cooking.
These two are gonna go in the fridge, one for tomorrow and one for Monday.
And then the chicken that I bought today is gonna go with potatoes and probably a salad that I'll just make on the spot, but I'm gonna wait to cook that until tomorrow when I'm actually eating it.
I just made myself a ginger tea.
So we are gonna get nice and cozy on the couch while we wait for it to cool down.
I wanted to share something with you guys before I end off this vlog.
And since we've been talking about food and prepping getting back into a routine, I figured this would be a good time, but I'm actually committing to dry January for this month, because it's January.
Yeah, this is the first time that I'm officially committing to dry January.
I've actually never done it or tried it or anything, but this year I really felt like I wanted to commit to it and try it.
This isn't something that I've really spoken a lot about on my channel, I don't think, but I have, I think, a really healthy relationship with alcohol.
I've always had a healthy relationship with alcohol actually, but I have always known that it's not the best thing for me.
I know that alcohol is not good for anyone really, but I think specifically for me, I think it's something that actually my body really doesn't like.
I think I've over time figured out what works best for me and what are the things that I can actually drink.
Still, I have known for a long time that this is just something that doesn't always agree with me, but there's also just the social component that comes with it, and i find it to be a lot of fun sometimes to go and have dinner with my girlfriends or drinks with friends or drinks with avery.
It's something that i find really enjoyable and fun to try, and so it's always been one of those things that's hard to go cold turkey on, basically.
But this year, for whatever reason, i I feel very curious to try it and to see what's gonna happen after a couple weeks of cutting it out.
I think in the past the reason why I've been resistant to trying it is because I know from my younger self and my early days in New York when I was very restrictive with food.
It usually had the opposite effect and I would want things more and I would be more inclined to eat certain things because I was telling myself no, you can't have that.
And so I think for a while I thought that if I would do that with alcohol, it would make me want to do the same, you know.
And so I always just kind of had this like healthy, if I want to, I will relationship with it.
I don't think that this is something that I'm going to cut out of my life because...
Like I said, I still really enjoy it and I have great memories of nights with my girlfriends or nights with my family, and I don't want to stop having those or making those memories, but it's something that I just am curious about and want to try.
I'm going to keep you guys posted.
I would love to hear if any of you have ever tried it and what you noticed, what you liked, what you didn't like, if you ended up committing to it longer than just a month.
Let's check on this tea and see how it's doing.
Perfect.
Anyway, I hope you guys enjoyed this vlog.
Let me know if you have any questions, suggestions, comments, feel free to leave them down below.
I would love to hear from you.
Give this video a thumbs up.
Don't forget to subscribe if you're new and I'll see you in the next one.
