lovely day

There are so many things that are good about today! I am having such a lovely day today.

First off, I won a giveaway!! And not just any giveaway, but a lovely Tollipop giveaway! I am so thrilled--she has one of my very favorite blogs, and this is my first time winning a giveaway like this! Hooray! I am so happy!

Second off, I get to take a Communications Skills class all this week for half of my workday. This is very exciting because the class is all about fine-tuning public speaking skills, and we are videotaped and analyzed. Already, I feel like I have learned so much! I have so many strange quirks when I give a speech :)

Third, it is almost Chinese New Year and Chinatown is decorated with all the flags and laterns and colors. So fun and makes me excited for the parade! I am really starting to have such an appreciation for the Chinese community. So much culture, history and so much color!

Also, I should mention that I am working on organizing my life, like all my papers, documents, miscellaneous objects and artifacts lying around, my closets. It is a work in progresss, but I feel like I am on the right track. I have decided that having things all over the place is my equivalent of slowly losing my mind, so that is being fixed, piece by piece! I need some sort of order in my life. I think that physical clutter actually makes me feel sort of chaotic in my mind, so to create the mental clarity I crave, I will clear some of the physical clutter.

The lasagna that I made came out pretty good, even though I winged it and didn't consult a recipe.  I have a bit of trouble following directions/recipes/specific instructions. I generally think that "good enough" is just fine by me. I certainly am not a perfectionist when it comes to this stuff :) I just don't have the patience and usually I think that things are "good enough." Sometimes it works out and other times, not so much, but the lasagna is "good enough" and that is a-okay in my book! Also, I made the most amazing coconut cupcakes from Barefoot Contessa, and they are so so good. I love Ina Garten--that woman makes me feel so relaxed and cozy. And her recipes ALWAYS turn out the way that I want them to.

Dreaming of warm and sunny places today where I can lay on the sand and have the glorious sun warming my face, and then going for a swim in the cool ocean. Ahhh, I crave this so much. Probably because it is overcast so often in this city that I love and call home. So yes, dreaming of a tropical beach today with nothing to do but relax in the warmth...sort of like when I was in Belize. That sounds so nice right now:

Hope you are having a lovely day my friends! Sending you warm thoughts and visions of sunny days!