January Proved to be an intensely satisfying month.

Chuck and I completed the Tim Ferris Geek to Freak Challenge, which I will go over in detail in tomorrow’s recap post. The big thing that we changed was our diet for 28 days. I’ll just say that it’s definitely changed the way we think about food, diet, and the cost of it all.

We got some awesome surprise visits from great friends that we haven’t seen in a while, which is always a special treat.

We made some more progress on house stuff including basement cleaning, stair building, and organization. I swear we will have our mass of stuff organized soon even if it kills me.

I finally made time to really get creative again.

Many an evening has been spent in front of the fire, playing our new favorite game and making lots of plans. This was the month we took the time to get our financial house in order. Making plans for retirement savings, accelerated mortgage payments, and financing house projects. We are in a good place but we can do better, and I’m on quest to do just that. This is what being BRAVE is about right? Striving for the things that you want in life and making your dreams come true.

As far as the blog goes I started a new series, updated my Clean Eating page, started a new shared Pinterest board, and started working on the 2015 Best of SL&G ebook that will be available for free in the near future. You can get it first by signing up for my monthly newsletter in the side bar.

All in all I think it was a good start to the year and I’m so excited to see what 2016 has to bring us.

Cost of Groceries in January: $198.04

Cost of Garden Supplies: $1.80 (I bought some flower seeds)

The New Year rang in with a great group of friends. Unfortunately I was lucky enough to start off the year with sick, so this post is a day late, and while I still sound like a dying mule right now I get myself together enough to get this post out for you.

Chuck and I finally put in the effort clean up our yard. Since we moved in we have had a ton of junk just hanging out in our side yard and it was not a good look. Now all that stuff is safely stored in the basement or garage, which also got a cleaning out so that I can finally park in there! I’m so excited to not have to scrape my car every damn day.

We also made some big improvements to the house, and man is it really starting to feel like home! More on that soon.

Since this was the first Christmas in our new home as a married couple I actually put a little effort into decorating this year, though it was kind of a struggle (decorating just isn’t my thing). I think our efforts were well received.

We hosted back to back holiday parties, and wow was that a tiring weekend, but so, so fun.

It finally snowed! I’m pretty sure the north east broke some records for the unusually warm weather we had this December, but the snow finally hit before the new year, and I’m so glad that it did! I love winter!

I’m looking forward to the New Year and all it has to offer.

So November has passed and with it my favorite time of year, now we are moving into the frigid temperatures and busy holiday season. This month a lot has happened around the SL&G house.

I showed you all our new door and our in progress bedroom, but we still have a long way to go with this house.

We welcomed some amazing new souls into this world and I’m so excited to watch those cute little girls grow up. O hey, I’m an aunt now!!

I got to travel to CT again and hang out all weekend with some awesome people (apparently we are really bad at taking pictures, so I have none)

There was a Friends Giving celebration with another group of awesome friends and a stuffing cook off, in which I’m pretty sure we all won. #weatetoomuch

Walking the rail trail #mileadaychallange

All the food and good times has gotten both Chuck and I thinking more about our health and the fact that we have been majorly slacking. It’s time we did something about this. I’m still working on a plan for getting through the rest of the holidays with healthy eating, but in the mean time we started the #mileadaychallange. Everyday between thanksgiving and Christmas we plan to walk at least 1 mile on top of whatever else we have done that day. We have 5 days under our belts and are still going strong.

I also took some time to analyze my diet again and talks about how much I am loving Part Time Vegetarianism.

This month was also NaNoWriMo. The month were thousands of people challenge themselves to write 50,000 words in 30 days. I participated last year and made it to 40k before my story ended. This year I was in no way prepared to take on this challenge so instead I decided to challenge myself to work for 10 minutes a day on one of the books I have in the works. Honestly I wasn’t able to even do this. Some days I was able to put in hours, while others Netflix won that battle. I know I could have tried harder but honestly this was the first time in months that I had time to do anything at all. That 10 minutes a day turned into time to work on passion projects of all kinds, including the blanket I mentioned above. I also got my thank you cards in so that took up some time as well. This was the creative spark that I was looking for, so I’m still calling it a win. Next year I’m going to take on this challenge and win.

Well I don’t think that for once I actually need to say what a whirl wind this month was. I think you guys got the jist of it lately, but I’m going to give you a run down of all the awesome events that transpired in September.

It started off busy with wedding preparation and planning.

We did make time on labor day to go canoeing and enjoy a little relaxing time together.

The following weekend we celebrated a friends 30th birthday with a huge surprise party that was a ton of fun!

Then is was the week of the big day. There was a lot of last minute preparation happening, followed by partying…obviously.

The honeymoon immediately followed, don’t worry a recap is forthcoming.

My September was pretty darn great, how was yours?