By the Numbers: 2015

^^^A sunset from this year. No filter.

By some miracle, I actually hit my goal of reading 20 books this year. Admittedly, 20 is not a very large number for me, but considering the fact that I had a baby in August, I'm very okay with it. My final two reads of 2015 were rereads! I am all about rereading my favorite books, and I definitely ended the year on a high note after more than a few duds (find me on Goodreads to read my reviews).

The last two books I read were rereads, but everything else was new. 

Of the 18 books I read this year for the first time, here are my two favorites:

All the Light We Cannot See. A-mazing. I know some people who didn't like this one, and while normally I'm all about personal preference, I just don't get how anyone could read this and not love it. It's so good.

The Husband's Secret. This one is a good travel book for reading on a plane (which is exactly where I read it). It was interesting but not super intense, so it didn't need a lot of concentration.

Here were my top two duds:

The Girl on the Train. I'm sorry, but I could not handle this one. I know it was all the rage, but just no. I literally wanted the main character to get HIT BY THE TRAIN so the book would end and I could move on with my life.

Faithful Place. This is one of Tana French's murder/mystery books, and it was by far my least favorite of the four I've read. I found the story pointless and just kind of wished I hadn't wasted my time.

see what I read in 2014

Last year I logged every single mile I ran in Daily Mile. This year I didn't do nearly as well logging miles, and I ran a ton without my Garmin watch, so it's hard to say exactly how far I ran this year. I logged officially over 200 miles, and then there's a bunch that weren't logged, so maybe 250 miles this year, I'm guessing. Not too bad! I ran consistently until 24 weeks pregnant (and ran 2 half marathons at 10 and 18 weeks!), and then I took a break until 6 weeks post baby. I've blogged about post-partem running here and also some here if you're interested.

In 2016, I have one race lined up so far: the 2016 Oklahoma City Half Marathon in April. This will be my 10th half marathon! I also would really like to run a few local 5ks, and there is a 10k in early April that I might do as well. I hope to find a way to fit running into my schedule but also be realistic about it, and I plan on keeping you updated on any progress!

Blog posts written: 129 
That's the lowest of any year since I started blogging in 2010.

Here are a few favorites:
Why We Tithe
An Elbow to the Face
Then the Cops Showed Up
He Saw Us
5 Things I'm Obsessed With
The Fear
R's Birth Story

Tweets: 1,867
Fun fact: that's about 1,000 tweets less than each of the previous two years!

Instagram photos posted: 300

US States visited: 3 (5 if you count layovers)

Atlanta (on a layover), California (on a layover), Illinois, Texas, Utah

Trips to Texas: 8 (same as last year!)

Stamps in my passport: 1 (Bahamas)

Jordan got 2! He went to Nicaragua on a missions trip and the Bahamas

So, I actually totally forgot about our Bahamas trip until I was putting this recap together. 

How could I forget this happening?! 

You can also see more pics and read about our Atlantis adventures here.

Spent on gas: $1,070.45

Spent on clothes (just for me): $222.63
Average monthly spent on groceries: $275

Average monthly savings: $1,113.21* 

*Our monthly savings is a bit lower than last year, but we did have a baby, so there's that. Our savings will be even lower next year now that we have to start paying for daycare, so we will see what happens!

compare to 2014

30x30 list items completed: 3

I am really excited about this! 
I didn't think I crossed anything off this year until I was looking at my list. 
Here's what I did:

-Buy a bedroom dresser
-Organize my recipes
And the big kahuna: 
-BUY A HOUSE. That happened.

Also....

I cannot forget to mention the fact that I spent the majority of this year pregnant. From announcing Baby Bum on the blog to sharing a few baby bump updates to writing out her birth story, it's been a heck of a ride. Everyone talks about it, and I've discovered for myself that it's cliche but true: you just cannot imagine the love you feel for your baby. I look at her and cry because she's so beautiful and she's for me to keep! I still can't believe it.

I'm looking forward to settling in a bit, both with our baby and in our new house and in our new routine with me back at work. I have been so incredibly blessed, and I am so thankful for all God has entrusted to me.

Thanks for sticking with me this month as I took some time off from the blog. I hope to get back to posting 2x a week in 2016. I realize that I can't expect you to keep coming here with such sporadic posting, and I definitely do not want to just pop in once a month with an R update. My plan is to try and post every Tuesday and Friday, just so you will have some idea of when to check back for new material. Of course, my time with R will become even more precious once I'm not hanging out with her all day every day, so blogging will not be my main priority. However, I do love it and want to continue to share pictures and happenings. It's fun to look back on for me, and I hope it is fun for you to read!

Here's to 2016! I hope you have a safe and fun New Year's.

p.s. By the Numbers: 2013 / By the Numbers: 2014

How to Make an Awesome DIY Recipe Binder

One item that has been on my 30x30 list forever has been to organize my recipes. I had a giant stack of magazines that I'd saved just for one or two recipes, cookbooks with bookmarks on my top favorites, Pinterest boards overflowing with food pins, and printed recipes stuffed inside cookbooks, never to be seen again. Something needed to happen, but I kept putting it off because I knew it would take a good chunk of time to sit down and organize everything.

Making your own recipe binder will take time, but hopefully if you do it right, it will save you a ton of time in the future because all your favorites will be printed and organized in one place! I'm sure there are lots of different ways to make a recipe binder, but this is how I've done mine. I take zero credit for this idea, by the way! My friend Hannah has hers organized like this, and as soon as I saw it, I knew I needed to make one for myself.

NOTE: The recipe binder is not intended to be a replacement for your cookbooks. It is specifically for organizing recipes you find online/someone tells you/you found in a magazine. This is to organize all those random recipes scribbled down on scraps of paper or folded between pages of a notebook. Additionally, if you do have a cookbook you use for just one recipe, why not make a copy of the recipe and give away the cookbook? No need to keep an entire cookbook for just one or two things.

To make a recipe binder, you will need:

-A binder

-Clear plastic page protectors (the ones with holes punched on the side already)

-Some type of divider tabs

-A printer and copier

Obviously your organization method will vary depending on what types of foods you eat. If you're a vegetarian, you clearly will not have categories organized by type of meat like I do, but you get the idea. My main tabs at the top are: Entrees, Crock-Pot, Soups/Stews, Sides, Desserts, Breakfast.

Compiling the binder is time consuming but easy! All you need to do is start putting recipes into the page protectors and then file them away into the appropriate category. Depending on where the recipe is, you can do one of the following: 

1. If your recipe is in a magazine: tear out the page OR make a copy of the page (see above for an example)
2. If your recipe is in a cookbook: make a copy of the page
3. If your recipe is on Pinterest/online: print out a copy of the recipe (see below for an example)
4. If your recipe is handwritten on a scrap of paper: retype the recipe and print OR tape the recipe to a larger piece of white paper to file into the binder

See? So easy! After all your printing and typing and copying, you should have all your recipes together in one place, organized for easy reference. Now recycle those magazines you've been holding on to, and get to cooking!

This recipe binder makes me so happy! It's so easy to find recipes now, and I love how they are organized by type so I can flip right to the category of food I'm looking to make. I was glad to be able to cross this off my to-do list. Shoutout to my friend Hannah for the brilliant idea!

Questions? Leave them in the comments and I'll get back to you!
How do you organize your recipes?

I Did It!

I know I said I would have my "Life of an Editor" post up today, but I HAVE to tell you guys something amazing that happened to me last night! (This is why I don't like to plan out my posts. It always gets messed up anyway.)

Earlier this year, I posted a goal of mine that has been on my 30 by 30 list: to be able to do 3 unassisted pull-ups. That was March 31, and since then I have been working on my arm strength. I bought a pull-up bar for over the door, I bought body bands to help with assisted pull-ups (thanks, Beka, for the idea!), and I have been practicing pull-ups almost every single day since the end of March.

I've gotten so frustrated because I haven't seen any progress. I've even pulled down the bar off the door a few times and pouted while bemoaning my wimpy arms. But I have been getting closer and closer, and...

Last night I finally did THREE IN A ROW! 

I thought maybe last night would be The Night, so I had Jordan film it for me. Check me out! Almost exactly 6 months to the day.

I am pumped. PUMPED. Shout-out to Jordan for all the encouragement. I really couldn't have done it without him.

If you work hard at it, you can do it. That's a fact. Amen.

*Back to regular programming tomorrow with my Life of an Editor post. Thanks for indulging me.

Two Eight

Today, I am 28.

Over the hill of my mid-twenties and quickly sliding down the slope toward thirty. Jordan's birthday is exactly a week after mine, so July is birthday month in the Bumgarner household. He'll be turning 29. 

Yep. Got me an older man. Rawr*.

I love birthdays! It's fun having ours so close together. We just have to make sure our kids do not have birthdays in the summer. Don't want no one raining on my month-long birthday parade. Amen.

Tonight I'm having a potluck dinner party at a friend's house (I may have asked her to host one for me. It's not lame.), and then on Saturday Jordan and I are going to this adventure park thing downtown. I've been wanting to go for a while, and so we're doing it for my birthday. Hurrah!

Have I mentioned I love birthdays? Well I do. They are the bomb dot com. 

When I was little, my birthday was the one day a year I didn't have to fight my brothers to sit in the front seat of the car. Now I have a car and sit in the front seat all the time, so that perk has lost its luster. But birthdays are still fun and will continue to be until I decide otherwise. So here's to 28!

Only two more years to cross everything off my 30x30 list! Clearly I have to get to traveling more. And buy a house. Lord help me, I do not want to be in this apartment when I'm 30.

_____

A day in the life of my 27th birthday

[Apparently I didn't blog about #26]

My 25th birthday

Skydiving for my 24th birthday
_____

*Rawr = "A word that means 'I Love You' in dinosaur" (According to Urban Dictionary)