Books of 2016

Another year is coming to an end, which means another year of book learnin' has gone by. Last year I shared all the books I had read during the year (click here to see that list) and this year I'm keeping the tradition alive.

Sadly, I didn't read as many books as I was hoping I would. I was going for 15 but hey, 12 ain't too bad (11 books, one book of poems, one  short story/book).

There were some good books, some half finished books (not included in this list), and some very silly books, but all together it was a decent reading year.

Here are my 2016 reads:

Smoke Gets In Your Eyes: And Other Lessons from the Crematorium- Caitlin Doughty
This was byfar my favourite read of 2016, and it happened to be my first. It's a biography of a young woman's first job in a crematorium. It was so freaking interesting. You honestly have no idea what happens to peoples bodies before they get buried or cremated. I basically spent the entire time I was reading this book shouting out interesting facts to anyone who would listen.

The Grownup- Gillian Flynn
This is my short story/book. I am a huge Gillian Flynn book (specifically Gone Girl). I wasn't too in love with this short story. It was definitely interesting but the ending was a bit of a flop for me. It's a quick read if you'd like to find out for yourself though.

The Girls- Emma Cline
This book was definitely a close second for favourite book read this year. It's told from the perspective of a middle aged woman looking back on how she joined a murderous cult when she was a teenager in the 1970s. It has such amazing commentary on what it is to be a girl. I would highly recommend this to anyone!

Everything I Never Told You- Celeste Ng
Everything I Never Told You is the story of a chinese-american family in the 1970s. Their oldest daughter is found dead in the lake by their house and each family member goes through their memories and how they could have gotten to this moment. It's a super interesting read about how much you truly don't know about the people closest to you and a great commentary on how it feels to be part of a different race in America.

The Burn Journals- Brent Runyon
When Brent Runyon was 14 years old her put on a gasoline soaked robe in his bathroom and set himself on fire. He survived the suicide attempt and the novel is his story of recovery and the effect his actions had on his family and his life.

Where Did You Sleep Last Night?- Lynn Crosbie
Lynn Crosbie imagined what it would have been like if Kurt Cobain had been reincarnated. She tells the story of a young girls obsessed with Kurt Cobain who tries to kill herself. Both the girl and Cobain are reincarnated and fall in love, going back through a lot of Cobain's mistakes in his past life, from stardom, to a new tumultuous relationship, to another life of heroin use. It was definitely an interesting read for a Nirvana fan but Crosbie's writing style threw me off sometimes. I think it needs a second read to be fully appreciated.

On Writing- Stephen King
Weirdly enough, I've never read a Stephen King novel, but I picked this up and loved it. I love a good piece of advice from a successful writer. My preference would be Chuck Palahnkiuk but I think Stephen King did a great job. He also gave some interesting glimpses into his personal life as well.

Yes Please- Amy Poehler
As a big Parks and Rec fan this was a super fun read. I really liked her personal stories, I laughed out loud a few times and her message to girls was super empowering. Highly recommended.

I Didn't Come Here to Make Friends: Confessions of a Reality Show Villian- Courtney Robertson
In my life I have watched one season of The Bachelor and Courtney Robertson was the villian of the season. My sister and I were obsessed with that season and watched it together every week to see what Courtney would do. When she came out with a book we both had to read it. It was a really fun read and another great thing to share with my sister. If you watched this season/are a Bachelor fan you should read this. She holds no secrets back.

The Glass Castle- Jeannette Walls
This book is Jeannette Walls' memoir of growing up in her dysfunctional family. From the beautiful stories her father tells her, to growing up poor, and running across the country to flee bill collectors, it's a great read on dysfunctional family dynamics and how children eventually learn to take care of themselves. It's going to be a movie coming our in 2017 I believe so read quick!

Strong Looks Better Naked- Khloe Kardashian
This was a super mindless read that I more or less enjoyed. I would bring this to the gym with me and read it on the elliptical and it was pretty motivating to hear Khloe's fitness journey. She really doesn't share anything too groundbreaking though (duh) and the book is littered with "I believe" or "I think" followed by scientific facts...which I don't think you really get an opinion of FACTS but nonetheless it was a easy and fun read.

They Left Us Everything- Plum Johnson
Plum Johnson's mother lived until 93 in their monstorous house in Oakville. Plum had spent the last 20 years taking care of her parents before they died. Now she had the task of cleaning out their gigantic house. It's a great, local book that says a lot about family heritage and learning things you never knew about those closest to you.

Milk and Honey- Rupi Kaur
This book was recommended to me and I would now like to recommend it to you. It's a book of poems and it's fa-reaking amazing. Rupi Kaur has the best social and internal commentary, especially about love and womanhood.

So Merry Christmas friends! I hope you get gifted a good book this year!

From the desk of:

Taylor Brown
Bibliophile

A Year of Change

Ohhh what a year. It honestly feels like SO much happened and also so little. It's going to be our second Christmas in our house and in that sense, a lot of things are the same as we start to make traditions and settle into what a year looks like around here.

There's also been a lot of change.

For starters, we got a cat. I have been wanting my own cat for SO long. I love cats so much but unfortunately, Jordan did not so I  had resorted myself to the fact that a cat was not happening for us. I did not want to get a cat myself and deal with living with someone that could skirt all the responsibilities of an animal in our shared home. No way Jose. Then one day Jordan turned to me and said "You wanna get a cat together?" I responded with "YUP." This was the day I was waiting for (crazy cat ladies unite!). Jordan had finally broken down and felt guilty for denying me a cat for so long. That's how Peter came along. We went to the humane society and picked him out together. Now we take care of him together, cuddle him together, and bitch about how much of an asshole he can be together. True cat ownership!

The biggest change that happened to me was my entire career was turned upside down. While working at my customer service corporate job I had the opportunity to go on a tour with the United Way. The company I worked for did a lot of fundraising and they wanted to show us where the fundraising actually goes in our community. We took a tour of a youth homeless shelter and I immediately felt so drawn to the shelter. I could not stop thinking about how much I wanted to be a part of what that place did. I emailed the shelter and applied to be a volunteer and after a short interview, I was in. Volunteering at the shelter was one of the scariest experiences I had ever gotten myself into. I felt completely uncomfortable, completely unqualified, and completely in over my head. But I kept coming back. I volunteered every week and started to feel so much more comfortable helping out there. I got to know the kids better and my passion for social work grew. I officially made the decision that a career in social work was what I truly wanted. I have been researching schools ever since and have decided that I will be getting a masters of social work within the next couple of years.

During that time I received the offer to go work with Jordan and my parents at their financial planning firm. Since I'd been in the insurance industry now for almost two years in my current job, it would be an easy transition. It also offered me a lot more flexibility to go back to school in the future and to be honest, I was miserable at my current job and this was just the opportunity I needed to finally get out of there. I was worried I would regret my decision but I'm so much happier now and know that this was definitely the right choice for me.

A couple of months ago there were openings for part time staff at the homeless shelter I was volunteering at and after a few pushes from the staff there I decided to apply. I felt completely unqualified but the staff continued to reassure me that schooling means so much less than the natural instinct they have felt that I'd been exhibiting. I took the leap to apply and ended up getting the job! Now I work at the shelter part time and it feels SO amazing. I truly love this job and it feels like I had a dream and I actually took the steps to achieve it. So now I'll be working there for a couple years before I apply for my masters. It's definitely a long plan but I'm incredibly excited about what it will bring me one day.

This may have been the year of Trump and Harambe but a lot of good happened for me personally and I'm excited to see what can happen next year.

Here's to 2017 and hoping even better things are on the horizon (like a Trump impeachment maybe?)

From the desk of:

Taylor Brown
Part Time Social Worker (WOO!)

Cabo Cabo Cabo

Two weeks ago Jordan, my mom, my stepdad and I jetted off for a vacation in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico. I had very high hopes that we would stay at the resort that everyone in Laguna Beach stayed at but alas, we did not.

No complaints here though because our resort was b-e-a-utiful!

I was honestly awe struck with Mexico. The desserts are gorgeous, the water is the perfect turquoise to indigo colour, and the weather was perfect!

We stayed at an all inclusive resort which meant we basically lived in the lap of luxury for a week. Drinks all day, amazing food, room service whenever we wanted, and trips to the spa filled up our days.

The highlight of the trip was the excursion Jordan and I took. We went an hour off the resort to go dune buggying. It was so amazing! The winding tracks took us through the desert at top speeds and brought us to the ocean throughout. It was so gorgeous to be surrounded by cacti and mountains one moment and then to have the landscape open up to a beautiful beach. I cannot say enough about the breathetaking nature we saw there.

<< Dirty, happy faces>>

We actually weren't there just for fun. Jordan and my stepdad work together and they were there on a conference. This meant that we had a couple of dinner events to attend and one was a formal night so Jordan and I got dressed in our best:

We were also lucky to be in Mexico during two holidays! One was Mexico's independence day, which led to fireworks and the other was American Thankgiving, which led to food!

I'm so glad we had that little getaway. It was the perfect, relaxing vacation after a very busy year!

Sadly my tan has pretty much faded (or peeled) by now and I'll just have to try to remember the warm Mexican sun while I'm scraping off my car every morning.

From the desk of:

Taylor Brown

Bad Hombre

Whole30 #2- A Recap

I know I told you that I would intermittently update you on my 2nd Whole30 but to be honest, even I didn't want to hear about my Whole30 journey this time.

Now to preface, I love Whole30. It's all clean, whole foods. By the end of the 30 days I felt amazing! Healthy, alert, confident and in control of all of my cravings. During the entire Whole30 (my first and second times) I was thinking about all of the delicious foods I was going to eat when it was over- which is totally not the point of the Whole30 but stay with me here. By the end of both of my Whole30s I was searching for healthy recipes for the transition, had completely lost all those ice cream and cupcake cravings and binging on junk was the furthest thing from my mind. It's kind of awesome how that works out and probably why you NEED to do 30 days so you can even yourself out by the end. If I had stopped half way through it would have been a completely different story.

Now for my issues with this Whole30. My motivation this Whole30 was a lot lower. The first time I was gung ho to learn new recipes and really immersed myself in the habit of cooking constantly. This Whole30 I was so busy and so unenthused with the process that I really rested on the recipes I had learned last time. This quickly left me to get burnt out on the same old meals and I lost a lot of my love for food.

The biggest problem with this is that is actually caused me to under eat many times. I had no interest in making anything because I just felt so tired of cooking that I often put off dinner and made a meal of eggs or potatoes. One weekend I ate eggs for every single meal. It was brutal.

This is totally not in the spirit of the Whole30. I should have been thoughtfully preparing each meal, making sure all the food groups were present. I was just too tired and couldn't quiet muster the strength.

I do love Whole30 and I do believe I'll do another but I want to do it right next time. I want to give it the effort and energy it deserves, otherwise I'll spend my month unhappy, under-eating and under-representing some very important food groups.

So for the next while I'm working on balance. I want to really take the spirit of the Whole30 and it's focus on nutrition and unprocessed foods and bring that into a manageable lifestyle for me.

If that's all I got from this Whole30, that's good enough for me.

From the desk of:
Taylor Brown
Whole30 Vet

I'm Doing the Whole30...Again!

If you follow along you may remember that I did a Whole30 earlier this year. If you don't well you can go back in the blog and see my day-by-day recount of my experience. Here's my post about what the Whole30 actually is, go ahead and read it..I'll wait.

Basically, it's a month of clean eating. No added sugars, no wheat, no dairy, no grains or legumes, no added preservatives, no fun *kidding!*.

It was a great, and very hard, experience when I did it in February and I've been thinking about doing another for a while now. It took a bit for me to even consider it again, but I would occasionally mention it to Tessa, who did it with me the first time. Last week she was the one who pulled the trigger and said "lets just do this thing again!" I said "Dammit...okay!"

Today is day one and it's going okay thus far. I cooked myself a delicious breakfast of homemade breakfast sausage and scrambled eggs, packed up about 50 tupperwares full of food for the day/night, and drank my black coffee on the way to work today.

This time we're doing things a tad different. This is a very strict plan and while that's part of it's beauty, we also can't put our lives on hold again for an entire month. We've decided that we will follow the plan to the very very best of our abilities but we will also not stress if we have to go out to eat and we can't read the label of the salad dressing or be 100% sure if there was butter on the grill before they put a chicken breast on there. Trust me, it's not fun to be that person asking the chef to make sure there's not added sugars in things. We will still order food that follows the Whole30 but not stress about the minuet details. We are also *considering* drinking on Halloween. This is a big no-no for Whole30 but its Halloween and guess what, we will if we want to. Biggest thing for us is to enjoy ourselves as well, while also make sure not to go of the plan food-wise. Other than that we're sticking with whole, prepared foods, and following the rules as best as we can, just not as obsessively as last time.

I'm super excited to do the Whole30 again because I honestly felt like a damn rockstar by the end of the last one. No joke, you finish off and you are feeeeeling yourself. You are just so healthy, so accomplished, and ready to take on the world. I've also got quiet a few bad habits I need to break pronto. The Whole30 makes you think about everything you eat and how it tastes, what's in it, and what it will do for your body without the worry of calories or fat content. There's no need to worry about the scale or counting calories because you're just eating real, whole food.

I'll be updating the blog with my progress throughout but no day-by-day this time, I'm sure we're both letting out a sigh of relief on that one.

So wish me luck friends and Happy Whole30 Day One :)

From the desk of:

Taylor Brown
Masochist/Soon to be Rockstar

Keeping it Basic This Fall

Every fall there's always two things on my to-do list: apple picking and pumpkin picking. I'm not original in this thought but it truly rings in fall for me and without it, I feel like the season has passed me by.

So on a rainy Sunday Jordan and I hoped in the car and headed out for some fall fun.

Our first stop was apple picking at Orchard Home Farm . It poured on our way there and then right when we got out of the car the rain stopped and we had the orchard to ourselves and a few brave souls who had ignored the rain. It was perfect.

 << Pink apples! My heart flutters :) >>

After picking our apples and picking up ciders, honey, and gourds on the way out we headed to Stroms to buy ourselves a pumpkin. Stroms is the most beautiful property and has really expanded. They now have a barn with snacks and treats and the usual kids area and corn maze. Our eyes were on the pumpkin prize though and we walked out with a giant orange beauty.

I have yet to carve my pumpkin but I am beyond excited to roast those delicious seeds up!

Happy Fall :)

From the Desk of:
Taylor Brown
Basic

Birthday Bliss

<<How amazing is this sign Erika made me!? Sweetest friend evah!>>

August 27th marked my 25th birthday and let me tell you, it was one of my best birthdays yet.

I spent my birthday surrounded by so many very special people in my life, it was a perfect mash of friends, family, craziness, and pure happiness.

My official birthday was on Saturday so my friends planned a night out for me on the Friday night, that way we'd be out partying when the clock struck 12. Erika showed up with the best birthday cake of all time (she used two bottles of sprinkles on it!) and giant 2 5 balloons. The basic bitch in me screamed with excitement. Of course we took a ridiculous amount of pictures.

After getting ourselves sufficiently sloshed we headed out to the bar where Katie and I massacred a karaoke rendition of "If You Wanna Be My Lover" by The Spice Girls (hashtag no regrets).

We all passed out back at home at god knows what hour.

The next day my alarm woke us up and we shuffled our way out of the house like zombies. Erika and I were spending the day with my sister and Mom seeing Matilda the Musical in Toronto.Our hangovers really hindered our get up and go but eventually we snapped back into and were able to enjoy the play and meet up with Shauna for a delicious dinner.

When we  got home that night Jordan took me out to a movie. It was the perfect end to a whirlwind birthday.

Thank you to my wonderful friends and family for the most perfect day (or days) in birthday history!

From the desk of:
Taylor Brown
2-5 and Still Alive