Spicy Motivators: January, February, March

AJsRandom

AJsRandom

Well-known member
Happy New Year to everyone!!!! 🥂

Welcome to the Spicy Motivators! Come and join us to be motivated:

" You might need encouragement in exercising more (that’s me). You might want to do more walking. You might need encouragement to eat healthier or lose some weight. Your desire might be to cook more home cooked meals. Maybe you need some push to get more memory pages scrapped or maybe a desire to do more other crafts like sewing, yarn crafts or painting. You might like to set yourselves a monthly goal of how many challenges you want to take part in... or how many pages you want to achieve for an album you are putting together. "

You are welcome to start a post to share your goals and edit to add when you achieve things. Otherwise just pop in here at the end of each week and share how your week has been in achieving your goals.

Also, please feel welcome to ask for any encouragement you may need.
 
Happy New Year to all the Spicy Motivators.

Thank you Ane for encouraging us.

My plan is the same as last year - each afternoon to do some indoor Youtube exercising ( I am going to do some of this in our Retirement Village meeting room once a week if I can motivate one or two to join me).
Still looking after my diet with cutting out as much sugar as I can. It is not difficult as my Ken is doing the same as he is pre-diabetic so determined to never need medication for it. My baking is with recipes that have no or little sugar. There is some little apple cakes that taste great but no sugar at all - the sweetener is the grated apple ( I do not dice them - I grate them). I will attach my recipe card to this post. Little Apple Cakes.jpg
 
@A-M Anne-Marie, thanks for the recipe! It looks pretty yummy--maybe I'll give it a shot. I'm pre-diabetic too and really need to cut down on sugar and increase the exercise.

@laura.dulle Laura, that's a great goal! I also walk and lift weights (I go to the gym and do machines). I don't lift any great weight or anything, but do what's comfortable.
 
@AJsRandom, I joined the local gym at the end of December in preparations for this challenge, but it wasn't all that different than the weights and stuff that I had at home. They didn't have many machines. I'm still pretty light weight. Do you use an app?
 
I appreciate everyone sharing what workout apps you use. I had been using Noom to track my activity, weight, and calories. But when I saw the cost for renewing for another year, I balked! Does anyone have a good (preferably free) app that they'd recommend to track steps, weight, and meals? Thank you!
 
Laura, I am doing well. At the end of this month I have planned to host some indoor walking exercises with residents in our Retirement Village - just hoping some will join me as they are not easy people to get motivated.
 
I am doing OK. I was unable to workout yesterday (I typically go to the gym MWF). I did finish the homework for this week, besides responding to classmates in the class forum (all my classes are online). I've read for fun most days (I have to finish it for book club on Tuesday). Living my best life!
 
GOALS for 2026

Scrapbooking:
*Get A page DONE, Oh come’on girl!

Cards:
*mailing birthday and anniversary cards every week

Life in General:
*journal daily
*log my meals
*desk exercises once every 90 minutes

Jan 4/11 - Thanks for getting us started again, Ane!
Good luck with your studies. I know you’ll continue to rock!

The apple cakes sound wonderful Anne-Marie. I can almost smell them from here.

Good luck with your workout routines Laura and Grace.

I use MFP as well Shana. It’s a great app and works on your phone and computer. I’ve been a free member for years now and it’s really easy. I have the same username there. (without Carla) myfitnesspal(dot)com There are some great groups you can find for support too.

Not much new here. Just had my first eye surgery follow-up appointment and everything is great. Going in on Tuesday to have them remove some film from the back of the lenses with their spiffy lasers and then the following two Tuesdays for laser adjustments for distance vision and then I’m done! Also had cortisone shots in the knees again Thursday night so hopefully no more pain for a bit.

Heading to a scrap/card retreat next weekend with my gang. Looking forward to that. That’s all I’ve got.

Take care!
Love and Blessings!
Carla
 
@A-M what you tube video are you watching. I JUST started watching a you tube (improved health) aerobics for cardio.....there are so many to choose. I would welcome ideas so I don't get overwhelmed with trying to choose which one.
Not sure how often I'll pop in here. My list of goals and what I would like to accomplish is huge. exercise and eating healthy comes at priority on the list this year. I had 2 mini strokes in 2025. All the dr's are saying in general exercise, eat healthy, take your medications.
I have always been active but never enjoyed routine exercise getting my heart pumping so aerobics here I come.

I have gotten my mojo back....I did a total of 7 scrapbook pages for 2025. I've already done 7 in the past 2 weeks and enjoyed it.
 
I am slowly getting up to speed at the gym again. December was just a weird moth for me health-wise and I didn't go at all. I haven't been reading for fun either, as I discovered early Saturday that I had a paper due yesterday (I emailed my prof for more time and he generously gave it). So I have been frantically reading the book we're supposed to analyze for the paper. So my homework is getting done, mostly.

Carla, how was your scrap & card retreat?

Debra, that's awesome that you've already got so many pages done! Good luck on your journey to get healthy. We're here for you! <3
 
GOALS for 2026

Scrapbooking:
*Get A page DONE, Oh come’on girl!

Cards:
*mailing birthday and anniversary cards every week

Life in General:
*journal daily
*log my meals
*desk exercises once every 90 minutes

Jan 18/25 - OMGOSH!!! Retreat was awesome! Getting there and back was……….. NOT! Slow and steady for sure. MORE SLOW than steady. Holy smack. I’m so glad there were no cars behind me. You know that scene out of Twister where they’re driving towards the tornado and EVERYONE else is driving away? Yeah, that was me. I thought to myself, what am I missing here? Is Snowmageddon really up ahead? Well, it wasn’t but it occurred every couple miles for about 20-30 feet at a time. Complete whiteout and then just snowflakes and blue-ish grey skies. HUH? You can’t make this stuff up. Bizarre, but I got there. Going home, it was just snow. I’m used to that.

Now this week is FREAKIN’ RIDICULOUS! I could sincerely hibernate this week! Dang, I hope everyone is safe and warm and dry and the power stays on!

Take care!
Love and Blessings!
Carla
 
GOALS for 2026

Scrapbooking:
*Get A page DONE, Oh come’on girl!

Cards:
*mailing birthday and anniversary cards every week

Life in General:
*journal daily
*log my meals
*desk exercises once every 90 minutes

Feb 1 - Not much new or different except that I’m getting my new eyes locked in place tomorrow. Apparently that’s another procedure and then I’m DONE! WOOHOO! These have been a little funky. It’s like sitting at one of those measurement machines, but then the doc is there and they put a gel-covered “contact” in your eye to keep it open for the allotted time, about 90-ish seconds. (yeah, a LONG time) Then the surgeon takes the machine, in this case a laser, and beams it at the lens to lock the prescription in place. Had the first lock last week. The first eye was rather “terrifying”. The second was easy so I’m sure this will be no problem. And I can drive home 5 minutes later! GEEZ! The technology is mind-boggling!

Then back to work for ……….. 83 days!

Take care!
Love and Blessings!
Carla
 
Goals for 2026
- Scrap at least 20 pages per month for my personal albums, I need to get done some albums, and I've done nothing.
- Read at least 2 books per month
- I need to be more consistent with my tai chi or qi gong routines. In January I skipped several of the routines, and I don't want to lose flexibility.
- Drink more water (it's winter and I'm really finding it hard to drink water; my body is craving hot chocolate or coffee :coffee::ROFLMAO:

Wishing you all a lovely day!
 
@Carla minicooper452 Carla, you're not excited to retire, are you? :LOL: How did getting your eyes "locked in" go?

@Grace. Grace, those are great goals! I need to read more myself. :)

I've decided not to put pressure on myself to scrap or read for fun. I have a lot of odd physical things going on right now, and I think I might be experiencing the beginnings of burnout. I'll wait until after graduation to get to reading and scrapping, but if they happen, they happen. I'm going to focus on getting healthy, mentally and physically. For some reason, my sleep has been extremely fractured and I'm going to try sleep therapy and see if that helps. <3
 
@AJsRandom you are welcome to the Book Club, we are reading by the moment A girl called Samson, which is a type of historical fiction novel, set before and during the The States revolution.
 
GOALS for 2026

Scrapbooking:
*Get A page DONE, Oh come’on girl!

Cards:
*mailing birthday and anniversary cards every week

Life in General:
*journal daily
*log my meals
*desk exercises once every 90 minutes

Feb 8 - Not much different on my end. Eye lock went GREAT! I told you how much I adore my doctor and how “cute” I thought he was. WELL……. here ya go! Here’s the man. Dr. Chu himself. He takes pix of each of his patients when they begin and when they “graduate” from their procedures.
20260202 Dr Chu Eye Surgeon.png

Other than that, just work, making cards, watching the game.

Take care!
Love and Blessings!
Carla
 
GOALS for 2026

Scrapbooking:
*Get A page DONE, Oh come’on girl!

Cards:
*mailing birthday and anniversary cards every week

Life in General:
*journal daily
*log my meals
*desk exercises once every 90 minutes

Feb 15 - OMGosh… we had the BEST Valentine’s Day dinner last night at our favorite place. A sweet, little steak house in the neighboring city. We go there at least once a month and order the same thing almost every time. They have an amazing sirloin steak and delicious au gratin potatoes, but I can never eat even half of it so I always have more than enough for a couple of lunches the next week. And they have a really wonderful house salad that we kind of pick at so we don’t spoil our dinner that we end up bringing home and I usually end up cutting up at least part of my steak to put in that. It’s really quite amazing to make anywhere from 3-4 meals out of one date!

Work was good. Started PT for my knees this week so that should help with the movement and “exercise” as well too. That’s all I have.

Take care!
Love and Blessings!
Carla
 
Carla, so sorry I didn't comment last week. It kind of got away from me. You're right about your doc though. He is a cutie! That is awesome how you can get so many meals out of one! What I bring home usually isn't much of a meal, lol.

So far I have had 2 meetings with my (sleep) therapist. I have taken a few of her suggestions and need to get to work on others. Sleep has not improved yet, but I am hopeful. I found out I didn't make the orchestra, and the director apologized to me (I've known her for almost 15 years). She said she wanted to give some new people a shot, and though I'm disappointed, I understand. I will sing in the choir instead. It is not hard--I did the choir 2 years ago and remember a lot of the music. I also turned in my paper that I've been working on for about 2 weeks. I have 2 weeks to write another, longer one. So the homework is getting done, and some reading for fun. I can relax more now that those 2 monkeys are off my back.
 
Carla, You do so well at keeping us informed here of how you are doing. I hope all has gone well with your eyes.

I have not been doing my Youtube exercises for the last week or so, but hope to get back to it later today. Back on Thursday 5th, I had a trip/fall on the footpath in front of our neighbouring unit. My knee took the brunt of the fall - grazed right elbow and gashes out of right palm and little finger of that hand. I kind of made myself slide along when I knew I would not be able to right myself. I knew not to put my hand out to stop or I might have suffered a broken wrist. Bruises came out in all sorts of places - toes on left foot, right hip, right upper thigh. My left knee is a little stiff but I will definitely be keeping it moving as I do not want it to seize up. The bruises are barely noticeable now.
 
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