Almost at the finish line…

A little more than halfway through the year, it has suddenly occurred to me that I had a New Year’s goal that I have just about completely abandoned, simply because I completely forgot about it. Isn’t it funny how we get so caught up in other things that we forget the promises we made to ourselves? Man, even just typing that makes me feel lame.

So just to recap: because I (supposedly) love reading so much, I pledged to read 50 books by the end of this year and so far I’ve read exactly 9. Womp womp. According to GoodReads (where they so kindly keep track of how much I’m failing) I am 48% behind, which translates into roughly 24 books. Eeep.

There are four months left in the year, so I’m going to try and plow through as many books as I can in such a short time. If I reach my goal now it will means a) I have way more time on my hands than I actually thought and b) I will have finally completed one of my New Year’s goals (which, in the end, is probably the most important. Right?)

Here are some of the titles that are waiting on my list:

Fifty Shades Freed by E.L. James

The first book made me blush, the second book just plain made me laugh, but now there’s a faint resemblance of a plot line I’m starting to enjoy myself. It’s funny how you get so desensitized to all those naughty bits after a while.
The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstrern

L just finished reading this book and she swears that it is one of the best things that she has ever read in a really long. Which is saying a lot, because L manages to read a heck of a lot more than I do. I blame her long bus rides to work.

Insurgent by Veronica Roth

Having freshly emerged from a short obsession with teen novels, S and I still have some favorites that we like to follow. The first in the series, Divergent, is surprisingly more gritty and intellectual than most teen novels but maybe it’s because Roth uses words like “divergent”, as in the title of the book. Further teen obsessions include The Mortal Instruments and The Lorien Legacies, which are a billion times better than the movie portrayed.

Who knows what else I might dig out of the woodwork to enjoy? Plus, every fall one of our local universities explodes with various used books fairs that I hit up a couple of years back with a good friend of mine. We missed last year (probably a good thing, as I’m ashamed to admit the amount of abuse my wallet took in those few days) but this year there’s no stopping us. We’re going back and it’s going to be good. Maybe it will even warrant a Twenties Project Post.

What about you guys? Does anyone else have anything they want to accomplish before the year ends? Anyone else as bad at keeping New Year’s Resolutions as I am? Let’s have an interwebs pity party. Email me at thetwentiesproject@gmail.com.

Psst! Wanna keep up with me and the billions of books I haven’t read on GoodReads? Check out my profile here or sign up yourself right here. Check out more of our favorite reads at our Amazon store, too. Who knows? We may have more in common than you think!

b’s apartment: design challenges

With every space there comes a design challenge. I’m sure some wonderful decorator/organizer/architect has said something similar beforehand, but at the moment I’m going to take credit for it and declare that it doesn’t even matter if your space has been completely made just for you, or you think you have it all planned out. You just never know you have a design challenge until you run into one. Kind of like carpenter ants.

Fortunately for me, my new apartment offers several design challenges that I am already aware of because S (fellow blogger, twenty-something and bestie) lives in the same apartment complex, so the layout of our apartments are very similar. In fact, when I called him to tell him I had seen the place, I described it as being “like yours, except flipped around”. Do I sense a he says/she says décor post in the future?

Coupled with my photographic memory of my apartment tour, I’m already facing a few design challenges when it comes to my new space:

1) It’s not a game. This is serious stuff. Ha. Of course I take decor very seriously. Too seriously. Like, in an I-wake-up-in-the-middle-of-the-night-doubting-my-paint-colour kind of way. But one of the biggest design challenges involves just that: a game. Or more specifically, a boyfriend with a huge gaming addiction. Fortunately, he’s no Angry Video Game Nerd, so he doesn’t have shelves upon shelves of games that we need to store. But we do have two PS3s, an Xbox, a Wii and dozens of wires to account for in our living room. Coupled with our surround-sound system and our giant TV, I need to find a way to make the space pretty enough for everyday living but user-friendly enough that the legendary party known as “Game Tuesday” can be pulled off without a hitch.

2) But we have little ones. I love our dogs, Milo and Gemma, so much but designing with dogs in mind can be a challenge much as designing around kids can be a challenge. The materials that we use must be non-toxic and not so precious that they can’t tolerate the occasional (the occasional!) accident and what must amount to mounds of pet hair per year. I also have no idea where to put their dishes, randomly.

3) Ch-ch-ch-changes. This is one of the biggest issues in a rental because there are so many things like fixtures that just cannot be changed. This can sometimes be a good thing. (Hardwood floors are almost unheard of now in an apartment building.) Or it can be a not so good thing. I’m thinking specifically about the colour of the bathroom tile on the walls. I can’t even talk about it right now.

4) I like clothes. And we have two closets in the master bedroom. There’s even a second closet in the second bedroom. But I need to figure out how to configure the closets in the best way so they can house all of the things we need to house in the apartment: off-season clothing, winter gear, day-t0-day clothes, linens, and cleaning supplies. And shoes. That’s another thing we’re not talking about right now.

5) I also like books. But short of having a multi-story library that the Beast has in his castle in Beauty and the Beast, I don’t think I will ever be satisfied with the arrangement of my books. I am armed with a few bookcases, but after having the majority of my books in storage for over a year, I’m not entirely sure how many books I even have anymore. That could be an issue later on down the line.

I’m sure there will be a few other design challenges down the line too. I visited S’s apartment recently and could already begin to see  my list growing: unconventional window placement and spacing, decorating around a piano, squeezing things into a too-small foyer…but I’m remaining optimistic. There’s way more space in this new apartment than it is in the one we are now. So who cares if some of the windows are a little funky? In my experience (re: voracious reading of design magazines) it seems like the most beautiful spaces are the ones in which the decorators have used innovative ways to make the most of what they had. If it means working with what I’ve got in order to make my new apartment the beautiful living space that I imagine, then I’m up for the challenge.

Do you have a design dilemma that you’ve recently overcome? Your story could be featured in an upcoming article of ours! Give us a shout at thetwentiesproject@gmail.com and add your name to our growing roster of writers.

my failed new year’s resolution

At the beginning of the year I signed up for this website called Goodreads, where I can create a virtual library and share with friends some of the books I’ve read and am interested in reading. (If you’re a giant nerd like I am and love to read, then you should sign up too!)

Goodreads has this goal-setting feature where you can set the number of books that you want to read in a year. One of my resolutions for last year was to try and read more, so I set my goal to a lofty fifty.

Ideally, that’s what I would have liked to have read.

Then a couple of weeks ago I got this email from them reminding me that I still had twenty-five books to read until I had reached my goal. I felt like such a failure! That meant I had only accomplished half of my goal and since there was only a couple of weeks left in December there was no way I could read twenty-five books in time.

As we approach the new year those twenty-five books have been weighing on my mind. There doesn’t seem to be a point in making a New Year’s resolution if I never seem to achieve it.

But then I got to thinking about how many books I had read the year before (and believe me, I came up with an embarrassingly low number!) Even though I hadn’t reached my goal this year, I still got a fair amount accomplished.

And maybe that’s the point with resolutions- that even if you don’t completely follow through with them, at least you can say you tried. And  I don’t mean to say that just making the resolution is trying, or that it’s enough just to have good intentions. If you really make a conscious effort to follow through on whatever goal it is that you have, it counts.

So maybe my epic fail wasn’t a fail after all. It was a life lesson that leads me to this year’s resolution: be less hard on myself! Instead of dwelling on what I consider to be mistakes or failings I should concentrate on the effort I put into all the things that I do and congratulate myself on what I have accomplished.

For example, we started The Twenties Project this year, which is something that S and I have always wanted to do. We still have a ton of great ideas for the site that haven’t yet come to fruition but we’re still excited to share them with you in the upcoming year. Looking back on what we’ve accomplished since October though still feels like a lot and we’re grateful for all of our readers and followers. There will definitely be more in store for you guys!

What are some of your plans for the New Year? Do you have any resolutions you’re still going to try and work on for the next year? Being more forgiving to myself also means giving myself permission to be less of a workaholic and spend more time doing the things I love and find relaxing. I want to cook more and bake more and put more time and money into decorating my home. My posts will definitely involve a lot more of that this year!

And as for my Goodreads goal? I’m okay with not meeting my goal this year. But for next year, I’m going to try for fifty again.

At least I can say that I’ll try!

Happy New Year’s everybody!

B

P.S. I’d love to hear more about your own New Year’s resolutions and some of your suggestions as to what you’d like to see on the site in the New Year. Do you want to see how well I do with accomplishing my reading goal in the New Year? Be my friend on Goodreads. My username is- you guessed it- B.

l’s christmas list: having myself a merry little christmas

So as many in the Twenties Project might not be aware of- yes, not only am I L, but I also moonlight as B’s little sister. Our parents are lucky, huh? Yeah, we don’t think so either. But regardless of the grief we have caused them with our brilliant and sometimes chaotic existence, I decided to stay true to the code of little sisters everywhere by copying B and making my own Christmas wishlist post. I hope wonder if we’re also wearing the same sweater as I write this…

Furthermore, I thought it would be appropriate to step up to the podium for all the guys and gals out there who have a really really really… and oh yes, REALLY hard time slowing down and taking a break from the rollercoaster that life usually turns out to be. As one of those people, I understand how hard it can be to shop for us around Christmas time because we would rather wear ill-fitting sheer white pants then tell you what we really want gift-wise. Why? The secret is that we’ve convinced ourselves that we don’t actually need anything; well, besides the satisfaction of fully completed to-do lists, and maybe in my case, $1800 for my dental surgery (**All I want for Christmas is my wisdom teeth out, my wisdom teeth out, my wisdom teeth out….**).

That being said, here’s the trick for shopping for us this Christmas season- encourage us over-achievers to stop and take a breath.

1. Philosophy ‘Cinnamon Buns’ and ‘Classic Fudge Cake’ Bath and Shower Gel ($16.00 CAD each). Not only will these encourage me to take yummy and luxurious bubble baths, but there’s also a recipe for cinnamon buns and classic fudge cake right on the bottle if a delicious smelling bath isn’t enough to satisfy my sweet tooth. And knowing me, I’d probably take advantage of the best of both worlds, natch. (www.sephora.com)

2. RENS White Sheepskin Rug ($39.99 CAD). How can anyone not feel like royalty curling your toes into this rug when you roll out of bed on a cold winter’s morning? I also feel like my feet would hate me less after a while. (www.ikea.ca)

3. iPad (starting at $519.00 CAD). Alright, so I’m kind of cheating because this will totally encourage me to not relax. But then again, the more I have every second of my life planned out, and all on one ingenious device, maybe there will be more moments where I have nothing to do… wow. (www.apple.com)

4. Chapters/Indigo Gift Card (price varies). Mmm, books. One of the few things that I’m good at still indulging in is snuggling down for a good read- well, as good as one can snuggle on the subway. (http://www.chapters.indigo.ca/giftcards/)

5. Tiffany & Co. Key Pendant and Chain (this combination, $330 CAD). Not only does every girl deserve to have something from Tiffany’s, what girl wouldn’t also love to keep the key to her heart safely around her neck? (www.tiffany.ca)

6. A Walk-In Closet. Well, you wondered, I answered.

How are you going to relax and indulge during your time off this holiday season? I’m taking tips at l.twentiesproject@gmail.com