2021 marks the end of my third year of blogging. My blog is three years old and still going strong. I was able to maintain a consistent blogging schedule and received a few paid jobs for posts and photos. Unlike my second year of blogging, I wasn’t able to travel or cover any events. I’m hopeful that next year I’ll be able to maybe one or two. With it being the beginning of the new year, I wanted to take a moment to look back at my third year of blogging.

When I moved to Kansas City about three years ago, I had hopes of settling down. I’ve lived in seven different states. Growing up my dad’s job had my family moving every few years. We ended up settling down in Michigan. Where I meet my now ex-husband, he was in the military so that called for moving every couple of years. When he finished his term, we left Tennessee for Missouri with the intention of making it home and buying a house. It was something I was looking forward to, I’d be able to get involved around the city, making new friends, and no more apartments. After a few months in Kansas City, I started to rethink my original plan. It went from a place that I’d call home to the place that broke me.

After Thanksgiving, I had a lot of leftover cranberry sauce. I usually only make a little to go with my cornbread dressing, but since the bag of frozen cranberries had been sitting in my freezer for a while I cooked the whole bag. As a result, I had a bowl full of cranberry sauce that I had no clue what to do with. I’m not someone who doesn’t like to waste food, so I try to find a use for leftovers. While I’m used to having leftover cranberries after Thanksgiving, but not leftover cranberry sauce. I searched the internet for ideas but came up empty. The recipes I came across called for whole cranberries and not cranberry sauce. After coming up empty I was worried that my cranberry sauce was going to go bad and I’d have to throw them out. So I decided to get creative and try to make a cranberry sauce coffee cake with the leftover cranberry sauce.

Christmas is upon us, and this year I won’t be able to do much. My new place will be available for move-in on Christmas eve, so I’ll be making the 9-hour drive to Denver and moving into my new place. There’s always next year. In the meantime, I can still make decorations for next year. My new place will be a lot smaller, so I won’t have room for a tree but I can still put up garland and lights. To make it easier on myself with moving I haven’t been doing a lot of shopping. Since I’m downsizing I’ve been focusing on decluttering and using things up. And one thing I have way too much off is felt. I use it a lot in my craft projects and it’s cheap, so I have piles of it.

Well, I’m one of many who buys bananas to let them ripen so that I can make vegan banana bread. I’m not a fan of bananas, but I try to eat them every once in a while since they are packed with potassium. I put them in smoothies, make peanut butter and bananas sandwiches, or have them as a snack. But when I have a bunch and they start spotting I make vegan banana bread. I like to have it as a snack with my tea or as a quick breakfast when I’m on the go. It’s also a great way to keep them from going to waste. I usually have the ingredients to make banana bread in my pantry, so I can easily take an hour or so to make banana bread.