June Highlights and Goals

Happy Summer! It has definitely heated up in the past few weeks here in North Carolina, and I'm absolutely loving it. This month was full of so many fun activities: we went to the mountains three times (backpacking for the first time, a wedding, and then a regular car camping trip), completed two triathlons, and celebrated my birthday! It was a really great month, but I think the wedding was the highlight for me. It was such a fun weekend to spend with friends and celebrate two amazing people that are perfect for each other. The venue at Beech Mountain was also incredible- nothing like a backdrop of mountains for such an incredible moment!


Let's get to the goals!


Annual Goals

Korean Vegan Cookbook


I actually tried two recipes from the cookbook this month- the Kale and Ramen Salad from the Kimchi and Salad section, and the Curried Tteokbokki Skewers from the Bar and Street Food chapter. The salad was just ok- it looked really pretty but was a little bland and I didn't like the ramen noodles in it (especially for leftovers- they got really soggy). 


On the other hand, the tteokbokki was AMAZING!! I'm a huge fan of rice cakes so I knew this would be good. The sauce was so richly flavored and was so satisfying. The process was a little finnicky and took a while, but the overall taste and experience of it was worth it.

Temperature blanket

I just finished month 6 of the temperature blanket and we're at the halfway point! It's really big already so I can't image how huge it'll be in December.
Here are some stats for June-
- I used a total of 3 colors and got to use red (over 90 degrees) for the first time!
- The highest daily temperature was 91 and the lowest was 73 (just a reminder, I'm only doing the "high" of the day so I didn't record the daily low or average)
- My most used color was yellow (used 20 times) which is used for the range 80 to 89 degrees.
- Now, the only color I haven't used is purple (under 40 degrees)!




Hike 100 Miles + Check Out 10 New Parks


I went on quite a few hikes this month thanks to camping and backpacking, and did about 15 miles. I'm now up to 75 miles and I think I need to increase my annual goal! Maybe I'll bump it up to 150 to give myself a good challenge?

I also visited two new parks- Grandfather Mountain where I went backpacking, and Hanging Rock where I went car camping. They both have great trails for hiking, and Hanging Rock has tons of fun activities to do. That's also much closer to me (just about an hour and a half away) so it would be great for a day trip!


Read the Goodreads Best Books

I didn't finish any Goodreads books this month, but I'm currently reading two of them. After I finish those, I will have three more left to go!


Work from a Coffee Shop Once a Month

Once again I didn't get a chance to work from a coffee shop this month. I had so many meetings that I couldn't really get out much at all unfortunately! Hoping to make up for it in July (and also hope that work is less stressful this month!!)


Last month I shared my "bucket list" for the summer, and I managed to cross of a few items. Here's how the list is going-

Summer Bucket List



  • Bike to a brewery or bottle shop - I biked to Fortnight Brewery for music bingo earlier this month. There are two bottle shops that are even closer and easier to get to so those are also on my list to get to!
  • Kayak or SUP in a new lake
  • Paint and picnic (bring my watercolors to a park and paint, and also bring snacks along!)
  • Crochet in a park - I brought a project along to camping with my this past weekend so I can count this one as done!
  • Hike somewhere new - I mentioned above that I went hiking at Grandfather Mountain as well as Hanging Rock.
  • Go to an outdoor movie
  • Go to an outdoor concert
  • Visit a winery
  • Bike the entire Tobacco Trail (it's about 22 miles so it's definitely doable!)
  • Go to a baseball game
  • Play frisbee golf
  • Go camping - Done twice this month! I want to go camping more this  year, but maybe in the fall when the temperature drops a bit.
  • Dine al fresco at a restaurant (bonus points if it's rooftop!)

Comments

  1. NGSJuly 5, 2023 at 9:36 AM

    As always, your summer bucket list continues to impress me! Go you!

    ReplyDelete
  2. AnneJuly 19, 2023 at 3:31 AM

    I would LOVE to hear more about the camping, if you're ever inclined to share! (I always want to try it, but... don't have anyone to show me the ropes, so... ) You're doing an amazing job on that summer list!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Gretchen BraunJuly 22, 2023 at 7:17 AM

      Ohh a camping basics post would be fun to share!! Thanks for the idea!

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Relationship Rules I Broke (and WEDDING PHOTOS!)

Image
Happy Thursday everyone! Today I have a different type of post to share today.  I don't talk about relationships or my dating life much on the blog, but I'm switching it up today!  I got married last Friday, and I thought it would be fun to share some relationship rules that I broke while Dan and I dated. I'll also be sharing some wedding pictures!  We got married at the Butterfly Falls at the Hidden Valley Inn in Belize (more on the Inn in upcoming posts!), and the pictures turned out absolutely amazing.  Since we had a "just the two of us" ceremony, there's not much to talk about the actual wedding.  In lieu of a full post on that, I'll be sharing some background information on our relationship, along with wedding photos and some #ThrowbackThursday pictures.  I hope you enjoy (and I promise- back to running stuff next week!) Guys are immature, so date someone older I've always read in magazines (which, by the way, have the worst datin...
Read more

Review- Group Power

Image
Happy Weekend everyone!  Today, I'll be doing a review of another group exercise I do at my gym called Group Power !  Let's get right into it. First off, the description in our program guide is "This 60-minute barbell program strengthens all your major muscles in an inspiring, motivating group environment with simple, athletic movements such as squats, lunges, presses and curls." I don't exactly look like this when I'm curling..but you get the idea! Let me tell you, this is one intense workout!  For the entire 60 minutes, we're constantly moving and lifting and by the end I'm a pool of sweat!  We work out all the major muscle groups - Legs, Chest, Triceps, Biceps, Glutes, Shoulders, and Core with light to moderate weights.  We also use a step to do exercises like chest presses and split squats. For each song, we focus on one muscle group, and do a variety of exercises with lots of repetitions, set to the beat of the music.  The tempo of the ...
Read more

Top Five Friday #46

Image
Happy Friday everyone!  Today I have a beefed up Top Five post for you all.  I feel like I've been skimping on these posts lately, so I made sure that this one is packed full of all my favorite products, some recent outfits, new songs, and TV Shows. I've got it all today, and I hope this makes up for the past few weeks!  As I mentioned yesterday, Dan and I finally got our offer accepted on a house, so the past few weeks have been really hectic.  Now that all of our applications and inspections are done, it should (hopefully) be smooth sailing from here!  Wish us luck, and now let's get to the favorites! Empty Products In the past, I've dedicated entire blog posts to reviews on empty products (you can see them here ).  I know that some of you don't like beauty-focused posts, so instead of completely nixing these reviews, I wanted to incorporate them into my favorites! I'm going through lots of products now that I'm on a spending freeze, so I thought...
Read more