Working towards my goals…

Ok…so back to my week! I continued to be a little stiff and joints were hurting a little (because of the rainy and cold weather), but I continued my workouts. I listened to my body and did more slow flows and stretches and later on in the week, I was able to incorporate more vinyasa flows. While I love the slower, more restorative yoga, the power flows are the ones that help me to find my inner peace because I feel like I’m kicking butt!! LOL

Now….back to the main subject, which was to talk about my workout and crafting goals! Let’s start with yoga. After doing it for a year, I’ve gotten to the point that I need to start incorporating strength training. I used to do a lot of weights when I lived in Florida. However, I was lacking the stretching/yoga part. Now it’s the opposite, I’m back to missing the weights! The reason I mention strength training is because while I can (sometimes) get to crow pose (bakasana) and supported or tripod headstand (salamba sirsasana & mukta hasta sirsasanaa), it is not consistent. After a couple of tries, I notice that my upper body/core gets tired and cannot hold me for long periods of time.

Look at how long it takes me to get there! Also, I learned that using yoga blocks helps you to get the height in crow pose, however, I would like to be able to get into crow pose without it.

Not only is my goal to strengthen my upper body, but also my core. Having had kids definitely made my abdomen muscles weak, especially since I didn’t do a lot of core exercises after they were born. Both of these are my #1 workout goals.

After building up my strength, I would like to do a consistent crow pose (and not feel like I’m dying…LOL) and do a forearm stand (pincha mayurasana) and a handstand (adho mukha vrksasana) . To accomplish my goals, I’ve been doing a little research on what excercises I could do (since having a personal trainer is not an option right now). My plan is to do 3 days of strength training, core exercises, continue my regular yoga practice, and integrate 1 day of restorative/yin yoga. I haven’t hammered it out 100%, but I’ll let ya’ll know my plan when I figure out exactly what I want to integrate (and how). That’s pretty much my workout goal for this year.

My creative goal is that I would like to get more original with my crocheting and to crochet more. Recently, I crocheted a leg warmer and yoga socks since it’s been chilly when doing yoga. The pattern for the leg warmer actually came from a Red Heart Yarn arm warmer pattern. I added a couple more stitches so it could go around my ankle and calf, but pretty much followed the pattern the same.

I loved the leg warmer and would like to crochet another one like this. However, the yoga socks I didn’t love so much. I used a sports weight yarn, so it wasn’t too thick, but not super thin either. Furthermore, since the stitches were loose and far apart, they bothered me on the bottom part of my feet when I would do downward dog and staff pose. They are super cute though, so I will use them around the house. I am going to see if I can find another pattern for yoga socks that uses fingerling/sock yarn and the stitches being closer together. If I make a different yoga sock, I will definitely post it.

Another thing I would like to do this year is to crochet this G.G.Cardigan from Yarnutopia. It is a beast of a project, but I’ve had it on my “to-do” for the last 2 years. I would also like to finish a cute jacket I started during the summer. It is called Easy to Wear Cardigan by Katerina Crochet. She is another crocheter that I ran across her patters on Pinterest. So far, I’ve made two of her summer beach coverups (Sea Breeze Coverup and Romi Summer Dress) and a cute crop jacket. I love them!!

Katerina is another awesome crocheter. She has so many cute patterns (and they are free!!) that I would like to try. Definitely check out her blog if you are interested in cute, trendy crochet patterns! She even has a couple of patterns for little girls if you have a daughter.

Overall, I want to get better at the craft and would love to start coming up with my own patterns. Sometimes I modify patterns I see to match what I want (I guess that would be the first step!), but I would totally love to come up with my own! #CrochetGOALS

Just a couple other personal goals this year (in case anyone has the same one) is to read more! I loooove to read, but I don’t get much of a chance to do it. So….I put a goal on myself to read 5 nonfiction books (I struggle with reading nonfiction) and 10 fiction books (the genre I love). A couple on my list are:

• Can’t Hurt Me
• The Alchemist
• The Four Agreements
• Ultimate Guide to Chakras (bought this last Christmas and STILL have not read it!)
• The Secret
• Namaslay (already read)
• More Yoga books (have to find recommendations)
• High Voltage and Kingdom of Shadow & Light (coming out later this year) by KMM (loooove her Fever Series!!)
• and many more!! I need to find similar topics and genres!

My last goal is to take more time for self-care. Just little things like painting my nails/toenails, face masks, getting my hair done here and there. I am SUPER bad with all of this. I’m not really a girly girl (for lack of a better term), so pampering myself is not a thing I enjoy doing, but funny thing is that I love the results afterwards! My husband thought I was nuts when I said that getting a massage was stressful!!! I was so tense, that I was super sore afterwards and for a couple of days later!! LOL Maybe I’ll try the hot stone massage next time!

Welp, that’s it for now! A little insight on what goes on in my head and what I feel I need to do. Hopefully, some of these goals inspire some of ya’ll to do some goals of your own. They don’t need to be huge, start off small and go from there. I find that if you set the goal too huge, you might get discouraged if you don’t reach it fast enough. Smaller ones are quicker to achieve, and then you go to the next. For example, if I made doing a handstand my only goal, and I didn’t achieve it, I would feel like I failed. So I have to think to myself, “What do I need to do to get there?”, and that’s what would become my first goal.

Hopefully, this has been a helpful post! See you next time! I’ll let ya’ll know my progress on my (many) goals and any tidbits I have! Have a wonderful week!