The post Top 10 Recipes of 2013 & Planner Review appeared first on The Viet Vegan.
Disclaimer: This planner was given to me for free to review but all opinions are my own.
It’s been a great year for JSA, and it’s grown more popular than I could have ever thought of when I first started it back in 2011. Then, I was lucky to even get 100 views per week, and fast forward to now, somehow I get 15,000 I get per week now! Je suis alimentageuse would be nothing without you lovely people, reading my blog and giving me some sort of purpose to my obsession with food, writing, and photography! The end of the year is approaching, so I’d like to celebrate with a roundup of the top 10 recipes of 2013 and get an early start on some New Year’s resolutions =)
Starting with #10, a recipe that Chris’ mom has made for over 20 years and is a classic at his house.
Chewy Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies
#9: Cauliflower Pasta Sauce – my vegan alternative for white, cream-based pasta sauce =)
A #8: Super easy, simple, and summery strawberry raspberry popsicles!
#7: The smoothest, fudgiest banana nutella fudgesicles =)
#6: Super soft and fudgy black bean brownies!
#5: Funny enough, the top 5 recipes were all vegan! Vegan chocolate smoothies
#4: Green tea cupcakes! Vegan style =)
#3: DIY Almond Butter
#2: My most popular recipe via Google search – Vegan Natural Red Velvet Cupcakes!
And the top post of 2013: Vegan Popcorn Chicken!!
It’s been a blast trying out different recipes and discovering a vegan diet! I’m not not 100% vegan yet (I still have 3 bricks of unsalted butter in my fridge that can’t go to waste) but I’m pretty darn close. I’m so glad that they’re the most popular recipes on my site because it really motivates me to keep discovering great vegan recipes and I guess contributes to one of my new year’s resolutions.
Does it count if I actually started it earlier in November but I want to continue full speed in 2014?
I sort of hate New Year’s resolutions because I am a firm believer in making changes immediately without excuses. But I understand the neatness and fresh slate that 01/01 seems to bring along. I just think that if you want to change, why wait until Jan 1st? Why not start today?
So despite the fact that these goals have actually started probably sometime in November, here are my New Year’s resolutions for 2014:
- Eat vegan!
- Take more initiative with my blog
- Read more books (If anyone wants to follow my Goodreads, it’s incomplete because I actually have 500 books at my parents house, but these are the ones that have been carried around with me since I left for university)
- Follow a budget (I’m so so so terrible at this.)
- Be more organized!
One of the things that has been really helpful in helping me stay organized is my trusty Google calendar, but because of my excessive to-do lists and magical ability to lose these lists, I’ve needed a good planner with lots of space for these kinds of notes.
As a university student, we always get these free planners thrown at us at the beginning of the year, but they’re always too colourfully designed and filled with student union information that I didn’t want or needed (I also worked for the student federation so I knew almost all that info already). I also needed to look at things week by week in a list format (because I live by lists, can’t you tell?)
Lucky for me, one of my fellow Online Blog Conference attendees and Weight Loss Wednesday contributor, Kayla from Say Not Sweet Anne gave me the Geometric Grey October 2013-December 2014 planner to review, and I was actually SO excited. Last year, these were free to download, but this year Kayla sells her hard work on her
Kayla also has other add-ons you can put in each week, like a blog tracking, meal plan/grocery list, extra notes pages, and even an extra-curricular tracking page. (For those in school or with kids in school, keeping track of those extra curriculars can be overwhelming!) I didn’t end up printing the blog tracking ones because I didn’t have time to put in the extra pages or enough paper/ink to print extra inserts for each week, but they look great for those who intend to use those.
The only things I could see to improve this planner is to make a half size, to reduce the amount of paper and so that I can carry it around a little easier. (I have a feeling this is in the works though, stay tuned to her Etsy shop!) Also, if you get it bound at a store, I recommend getting a studier back to it. I only got a piece of black cardstock, which looks lovely, it’s just fairly flimsy otherwise and I always need to support it either on a table or against my clipboard if I want to write in it. I highly recommend using a coil to bind it, otherwise the pages fall out of the spines like the ones they use course packs in university.
Hopefully with this planner, I’ll be able to plan my posts in advance instead of just cooking stuff I want whenever I want. Plus maybe I’ll procrastinate less if I have constant reminders of what’s upcoming in my planner?
Although, let’s be real, I’ve procrastinated pretty successfully (by successfully, I mean I delay my work/responsibilities yet still manage to accomplish tasks on time), and this blog was born out of procrastinating prep/studying for exams back in my third year of university. Procrastination and Lisa are one.
Happy Holidays everyone, and if you haven’t entered the 365 Days of Baking 10 Prize Giveaway yet, you have until the end of today (Dec 16) to do it! So hop to it!
Disclaimer: This planner was given to me for free to review but all opinions are my own.
The post Top 10 Recipes of 2013 & Planner Review appeared first on The Viet Vegan.
