My 30th Birthday: The Birthday Book

As today is my 30th Birthday I thought I would share with you a special birthday project my friend Nikey and I came up with. Nikey and I have come up with some crazy ideas over the years, but our crazy ideas have always led to something amazing - like a trip around Europe. In our university days when we were roommates we watched the movie The Bucket List and promptly spent the rest of the night creating our own bucket lists, each over 100 items long. These lists have encouraged us to step outside our comfort zone - sometimes way out - like jump out of a perfectly good plane for the hell of it, but so far it's always turned out well! I think I have more then half my items completed.

Sometime during our 26 year we found ourselves continually saying "I hope when I am older..." "You better not let me do ____ when I am 50" etc. As this kept happening we would just reassure each other that yes, we will be there to remind each other of whatever we needed reminding of later. But then a new idea was born: The Birthday Diary. It would have been ideal to start on our 25th birthday, but we were a year late. Although this project can be started at any age!

My Birthday Book

We both bought journals and spent a couple weeks thinking about what we wanted to tell our 30 year old selves. The idea is that every 5 years on our birthdays I give Nikey her diary and she goes me mine on my birthday. We have a couple weeks to read our past entry, add a picture from our recent birthday and add a new message for the next birthday. This way every five years you have a message, dreams, hopes, goals, reminders, and a glimpse of the past.

What did 26 year old Alexandra think was important? And what did I expect my life at age 30 would look like, versus what it actually is. When I was 26 I had only been dating Jeff for 6 months, although I did write about him, knowing he was the one. Here is the picture from my 26th birthday and a couple excerpts from my book:

If not already, down the road this journal will be an amazing keepsake and a glimpse of different stages of our lives. It will hopefully allow us to remember the things our younger selves wanted us to remember. I also note my favourite hobbies, foods music etc, which is fun to see the changes or what always remains (I can now say Pitbull is not on my favourite music list wtf?!) My 26 year old self was very hopeful of where my life 4 years away would be and although I didn't foresee the infertility issues, I would say everything else is exactly as I hoped.

I am excited to add my 30th entry and make wishes for 35, although let's slow things right down because saying 35 (while I know it is still young) scares me haha

Bathroom Renovation

One of the things on my winter "To Do" list was to renovate our upstairs bathroom. It was not a big project, just surface level things that I wanted to do and thought would make a big impact.

My List:

- New mirror with more pizazz 

- New light fixture (anything besides the pop star plain bulbs that were there)

- Paint the vanity and medicine cabinet

- Install new hardware on the vanity (it had never had handles - strange I know)

- Repaint the bathroom (the same colour but new coat)

- New pictures for the walls (still not done, haven't found anything I like yet)

I thought this would all be pretty easy, but it turns out it took a lot longer then I thought, also because I was learning how to do all these new things like patch holes, sand, install handles etc. It was not always pretty, but thanks to some help from my dad, and Jeff it is complete!

Here are the BEFORE pictures:

Bathroom BEFORE pics (I didn't know they were going to be used for this, so they aren't very nice)

AFTER:

I love the cabinet colour - it was the colour of the door and trim in the room so it fits in nicely

I used leftover paint from the original bathroom renovation.
The mirror took forever to find the right one, but in the end Homesense came through!
The hardware and light fixture I got at Home Depot.
The decorations are from various places, lots from Homesense (that store is the best!)


Side by Side View:

Side by Side Comparison

Tasty Tuesday - Coconut Chicken Fingers (gf)

Dipping, coating assembly line

I like them with some crispiness 

Sorry for my terrible photos.

Coconut Chicken Fingers

Ingredients

  1.5 lbs of chicken cut into strip size

• ½ cup of coconut flour

• ½ teaspoon sea salt 

• 2 eggs + 1 tablespoon water

• 2 cups sweetened coconut flakes

• 
  

• Asian sweet chili sauce, for dipping

Directions

Preheat the oven to 400'F and line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Cut up the chicken into strips. Prepare 3 bowls - one with the egg and water mixture, one with the coconut flour and salt and a third with the coconut flakes. Take each piece of chicken and toss in the flour, then egg mixture and finally the coconut. Place on the baking sheet and cook 15-20 minutes until the chicken is cooked through and coconut starts to brown. Serve immediately with sweet chilli sauce for dipping. These work well to freeze and save some for another time as well.   

                                                                 Enjoy :)