2021 – Looking Ahead & Setting Goals

With a new year comes the chance to look towards the next 12 months, and think about how you want the year to look. Like many of you, we like to think of the new year as a way to start fresh – a chance to think of goals, and set out to achieve them.

Our new home:

We’re planning to start putting our own stamp on our new house over the coming years, and this year our biggest focuses are to:

Completely renovate the bathroom

Renovate the kitchen to enhance the current space (until we can do a larger renovation in a few years’ time)

Tidy up the garden so that we can hopefully enjoy spending time in it once the summer months come around.

Overall for our house the goal this year is to start to make it feel like it really is ours. We’re extremely excited to start turning it into our forever home.

Health and fitness:

This is a big one for us this year, as it’s something we’ve let slide recently. We’re keen to start focusing more on our health, so our main goals are:

To drink more water, and not just when we’re thirsty.

To cut back on alcohol – we got really into making cocktails during lockdown, but we’d like to limit how many we’re making.

To go to bed at a more reasonable time – we’re both night owls, so staying up past 12 is a common occurrence – not the best thing when the alarm goes off the next morning!

We’d love to start incorporating more of a plant based diet into our lifestyle – perhaps a few times a week.

Finding an exercise routine, we actually enjoy – we’d love to eventually convert our garage into a small gym. But for now the plan is to just start moving!

Hobbies:

The combination of the winter months and lockdown have led to us spending more time than ever binge watching TV. We have a number of hobbies we’d love to pursue:

Reading more books – we were both avid readers growing up, but recently that’s slipped.

Getting more into our blog and social media sites – starting up the page last year was a real mood lifter for us both, and a way to remember our love of travel during lockdown.

Trying out new recipes, both sweet and savoury, as way to get out of a food rut.

If COVID restrictions allow for it – we’d love to explore more of Ireland.

2 books Brianna read last year

It’s a lot of goals to set out for ourselves, and we may fall short on some – but we think setting it out in a list helps hold us accountable. Perhaps we’ll do a 6-month review in June!

Do you have any goals for the new year? If so what are they?

Stay safe!

Brianna and Iain.

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St. Petersburg || Travel Diaries 2#

Hey, howdy, hi!! What’s kicking, people? 😁🙋‍♀️ And no I’m back! And no I’m not crying and running away like the last time 🤭… I’m actually back in spirits! (And NO I didn’t think it’d happen either😂🙆‍♀️💪) After the last couple of posts I was a tad bit dubious about my schedule but well, here […]

St. Petersburg || Travel Diaries 2#

We loved this post about St. Petersberg, it looks like such a beautiful place to visit. Give it a read and let us know what you think!

Hallotober

Photo by Toni Cuenca on Pexels.com

Hey Everyone, we are back to work again and its been a busy couple of weeks, alongside this the Covid-19 restrictions have again increased for us so we haven’t had the chance to get out and about as much!

We have been trying to keep following bloggers and do a bit of writing in the evenings, one blog we have really enjoyed lately is Mingwrites.com and we would recommend you check it out. Ming’s latest post talks about writing/blogging challenges and has inspired us to try the Hallotober challenge:

Hallotober Rules

  • Thank the person who tagged you and link to their post
  • Put the rules at the beginning
  • You can use the tag image somewhere in the post
  • Answer the 13 questions
  • Tag 13 people to do the tag
  • Delete Question 13, add a new number one question of your own

What’s your favorite thing about October?

October is special for the both of us as it’s the month we got married, we were lucky to be able to get away for a couple of nights this year to the 5* Lough Erne Resort this year, it was really amazing – if you want to read more you can find it here.

Are you a big celebrator of Halloween?

We love Halloween, we used to love dressing up and going out to the bar/club when we were younger, in recent years its been more about decorating our house and house parties. Unfortunately, we can’t do that this year but we still have our spooky decorations!

Photo by Karolina Grabowska on Pexels.com

What’s your favorite horror movie?

We aren’t big horror movie watchers and it’s not a movie, but we have really enjoyed The Haunting series on Netflix – Hill House and Bly Manor, we found Hill House especially creepy. I think it became one of our favourite series as the way it is filmed has you always on edge, feeling like somebody was watching you due to all the background characters.

Would you rather a cozy night in watching horrors or a big night out in a costume?

We love a night out but at this time of year we find there is nothing better than sitting in watching TV, the fire lit and a nice hot drink in hand! So, a cosy night it is!

Which has been your most favorite costume to date?

Brianna’s favourite was a Scarecrow, because it was a fun costume to design and do the makeup and it was comfortable for a night out!

Iain’s favourite is a Zombie, because it is easy to change any outfit into a Zombie outfit and again it can be as detailed as you want!

Bobbing for apples or pin the hat on the witch?

We would definitely pick pin the tail on the witch, we laughed/cringed at thinking how disgusting bobbing for apples really is!

How do you celebrate Halloween?

As mentioned previously, we like to spend Halloween in our own home or out at a friend’s!

What’s your least favorite horror?

We recently watched “It”, to be honest we really did not enjoy it considering all the hype we had heard.

We found that the movie just kind of dragged on and did not really feel spooky/scary – as mentioned we aren’t big horror fans and this one didn’t hit the spot for us!

Do you have a favorite trick or treating memory?

Brianna’s favourite is when they were trick or treating and they went to an older person’s house they were visiting said they had nothing but they would get some bread for them – they all stood at the door in confusion, but too polite to decline when the owner returned with a big bag of sweets for them each. Then it was back to the spooky cave under the stairs that her mum made every year!

Trick or treating was not as big a thing in Iain’s area so sadly he does not really have any favourite memories.

What’s your favorite thing about Halloween?

We love the atmosphere and decorations; it is also really nice in normal years to have the sense of community it can bring.

Scary costume or Silly costume?

We both love a well-done scary costume, however it can be a lot of effort to do amazing make-up, whereas it can be easy to throw together a silly costume! So, I guess it depends on our mood/motivation!

What’s your favorite Halloween candy?

This year we have been really enjoying Reece’s peanut and they have been making Halloween pumpkin chocolates!

Who is your favorite Harry Potter character and why?

Brianna is a huge Harry Potter fan so this list could be a long one! But one choice is Luna Lovegood. Firstly because she is a Ravenclaw. And she’s a funny, unique character who is independent and intriguing!

Iain’s favourite is Sirius Black, Iain loves his story and how it progresses – up to his untimely demise.

Tagged bloggers

It’s almost the end of the month and you might not have time to participate, but if you would like to complete the challenge and get a mention let us know!

Thanks for joining us, Brianna and Iain.