Friday's Letters.

Dear January, where did you go? It seriously feels like the past 31 days never existed. Dear February, so far you're off to a great start. Please keep the beautiful sunsets coming, and the horrible rain away! Dear boyfriend, I love you!! Dear self, it's February 1st and its time to get my butt in shape. Dear blog friends, what do you think of my new'ish blog design? I like the layout, but I am still undecided about my blog header. Oh, and have you entered the giveaway over at A Day in the Life of Me? Link here. There are only a few more days to enter!!  Dear Kristen, both you and your blog are amazing; thanks for organizing this giveaway!!

February's Resolutions.

At the beginning of January, I started reading The Happiness Project . Even though I am only four chapters in (yes, I am a slow reader; it's because I only read before bed time), I am absolutely loving this book! If you haven't already read it, I highly recommend that you do!

A big reason why I bought this book was because I wasn't feeling as happy as I used to. Don't get me wrong, I'm happy, but I have been letting the stress of work and whatnot get the best of me. In January, I decided it was time for change, so I started making a lot of effort to do things for me. Such as, going to bed earlier and getting 8+ hours of sleep. As well, I have started to clean different areas of our apartment that had been driving me nuts!

In an attempt to follow through with my resolutions, I made sure I was very realistic with them and didn't aim for the impossible. I can have a short attention span, so baby steps. One month in, and I am already noticing a huge difference. To continue with my own happiness project in February, I have added a few new resolutions to my list: 

- continue to get a minimum eight hours of sleep each night (it's amazing the difference a good night's sleep makes!)

- continue to clean the condo (we are about 40-percent done)

- continue to enforce our new one minute rule (if something takes less than one minute to put away, for example, we have to do it instead of leaving it for later)

- get started on an exercise plan (i want to try yoga, and re-start the 30-day shred) *new

- start drinking more water and ginger tea per day (and less coke) *new

Do you have any goals/resolutions this month?

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Recipe // Homemade Spaghetti Sauce.

Jo-Anna from A Pretty Life posted this recipe on her blog at the beginning of the month. I am a huge fan of spaghetti and meat sauce, so the moment I saw the below image of her sauce, I immediately had to bookmark and try this recipe for dinner one night...!

Ingredients

1 to 2 lbs lean ground beef
1 large onion, chopped
2 garlic cloves, minced
1 – 14 oz can tomato sauce (plain, no spices)
1 – 19 oz can diced tomatoes (plain, no spices)
1 – 5.5 oz can tomato paste
½ cup red wine (or beef broth if you don’t want to use wine)
2 tbsp Worcestershire sauce
2 tsp brown sugar
1 tsp oregano
1 tsp basil
salt & fresh ground pepper to taste

Directions

1. In a large frying pan, brown the beef with the onions and garlic. When the beef is cooked through, drain it, then return to the pan. 

2. Add the tomatoes, tomato sauce, tomato paste, wine, Worcestershire sauce, sugar, oregano, basil and salt & pepper. Simmer for about 1 hour, covered.

For some additional recipe notes/suggestions, head on over to Jo-Anna's blog here.

To be honest, tonight's dinner was a toss up between beef stroganoff or spaghetti. Spaghetti won, of course. I wasn't planing on trying this recipe tonight, but I goofed when opening a can of tomato sauce (diced tomatoes instead of crushed). Thankfully I remembered that this recipe used both diced and crushed tomatoes, so I decided to give it a go. The sauce still has 20 more minutes to simmer, but so far, it tastes AMAZING! ... I may be sneaking a taste of this sauce every 10 minutes while it simmers ... I cant' wait to eat dinner tonight.

Do you have a favorite homemade spaghetti sauce recipe?