Goal 101-- COOK A NEW DISH EVERY MONTH

for a year.

So the title of the blog is a bit of a misnomer. I'm at goal 102 and counting. When I originally wrote the list, I just wanted to get as many written down as fast as possible, my first goal was to think of 100 goals. And as we should all fully accept, the best brainstorming is filter free. So I turned the filter off and twenty minutes later had a list of 100 goals. I got the template here. It's somehow easier to write them down when the lines are already numbered for you.

Back to Goal 101. . .

Ian's done most of the cooking (he's great at it) for the last three years and I've reaped the delicious benefits. Unfortunately as with many skills, my cooking confidence waned from disuse and one day I realized I needed a recipe to make tuna noodle casserole. This realization paired with our rampant out-eating put Goal 101 on the list...cook a new dish every month for a year.

I've actually tried a lot of new recipes in May. I've made: one hour pickled red onions, soft pretzels, salmon patties, white bean and tuna salad, perfect calzones, spinach and feta strata, and I used phyllo dough for the first time ever (a too rich for me dessert. My heavy cream days are over)

Luckily Ian happened upon a recipe in Joy of Cooking for Potato Samosas that used Phyllo Dough, while not traditional, they were delicious. I wonder if he remembered to take the left overs for lunch?

Not wanting to repeat the pain from mincing  shallots the other day, I took Miranda's advice via Ian wear swim goggles.

I dug around for my middle school swim gear. They worked perfectly, not a single tear was shed.

See how they turned out after the jump.

Goal 67-- LEARN CALLIGRAPHY

I've started to appreciate even vaguely legible handwriting since working with the four chicken scratch officiandos (aka. most of the mechanics at A Better Cycle, my worker owned bike shop... I own 1/6 of the shop!)

And while my normal penmanship is quite stately, I have always wanted to learn calligraphy. It's so beautiful, changing function into form. My favorite is the flowing scripts with all those flourishes.

I got a book from the library and set about tracing and copying. First the Uncial hand, a good beginner hand very uniform (and all capitol) letterforms. I practiced writing my mom's address on the cards I'd send.

Then I moved on to a Spencerian script pictured below. The first image is one of my earlier attempts when I still had to look at the primer for each letter.

It's been a few weeks and I've written dozens of addresses and about 70 little cards for all my coworkers at my craft store job. Here are two cards I wrote today. I think I'm ready to learn a third calligraphy hand!





I have yet to come across the tulip again, I can't for the life of me remember where I was when I saw it. My green thumb friend keeps naming and describing tulips "It could have been a parrot tulip...was it ruffly?" She's supposed to bring in her tulip catalog so I can flip through it and see if we can narrow it down. It was light pinks, very soft looking and just the absolutely perfect shape!

Recap-- Goal 49 MAKE SOMETHING

This post originally appeared on my other blog which is on hiatus. My business Bike Cozy is still in full swing and gearing up for a busy summer of selling bicycling accessories. I'm also attending a few business development workshops in June so stay tuned!

Originally posted March 6, 2010

Look What I Made: Fabric Bunting



(if you were in a CSI type t.v. show you'd be able to magically zoom in and 'enhance' (even though the photo is only 800 pixels wide) sector c5 to reveal the reflection of the photographer to catch the errant fabric bunt maker!)

I've been wanting to make a festive fabric bunting for months! The trouble was picking out a selection of delightful and coordinating fabrics. Then I unearthed the Moda: Neptune (by tula pink) Sampler that Ian's step-mom bought me when they were visiting last year. A perfect symphony of 32 coordinating fabric squares.

An occasion fit for accomplishing two goals! One: figure out a use for the sample pack and two: make a festive fabric bunting. And it means I can cross of goal 49- make something oh sure, that may seem conveniently vague yet the subtext of that goal was "Make something to enrich your surroundings, that you've been meaning to make but have found reasons to put off for a long time."

So I got to work with folding, tracing, sewing, trimming, flipping, ironing, training, and hanging.








That's four of my 100 goals accomplished! goal 49, goal 50, goal 91 and goal 102

Recap- -Goal 91- donate to 5 useful websites

This was originally posted on my other blog for my small business Bike Cozy. And if you look at that blog you'll notice the posts were few and far between.

I've been steadily ticking off goals on my list and want this to be a recording of them. You're welcome to follow along, maybe you'll be inspired to achieve some of your goals too!


original posted January 15 2010

I have a list of 100 goals. Some are a little silly: goal 86- Master a british accent. Others are serious: goal 20- Go back to school, and goal 37- Build a house.

The first goal I've made a good start on is:
Goal 91- Donate to 5 websites I find or have found useful

The first three donations were easy:

1. BikePortland.org : Beyond being a great source for bicycling news in the Portland area, BikePortland.org supports local entrepreneurial craftspeople by hosting BikeCraft. It's how I got my start making bicycling accessories.

2. EtsyHacks : this website is pure utility for etsy sellers. It offers quality Mozilla add-on scripts that offer all sorts of useful shortcuts and buttons to make selling more eficient. I tried a few out and am so grateful for their existence.

3. Wikipedia.org : This site is cemented into computer culture forever. I've looked up all sorts of things over the years and giving back made sense.

Then I got stumped. What other non-profit websites have I used? hmmm. . . oh yeah when I was first learning how to get around Portland by bike I looked up routes on...

4. Bycycle.org : an interactive route planning map for cyclists in the Portland area.

Then I was really stumped. I only needed one more site to complete my list of 5 and finish my first goal of the new year! The answer came last night as Ian and I were unwinding in front of his magic movieboxscreenthing and Hulu played a commercial for Kiva. I'd seen the same commercial a dozen times but always forgot by morning. Today, thanks to goal 91, I googled "person to person lending Hulu" and it returned a link to the Kiva website.

After browsing the entrepreneurs I was almost frozen by possibilities. Finally, I loaned $25 to a farmer in Samoa. To think, it's because of free internet t.v. that I found out about Kiva and am now an international financier!

5. Kiva.org : "...the world's first person-to-person micro-lending website, empowering individuals to lend to unique entrepreneurs around the globe."

Goal 91- complete!