HOW TO: KEEP A FOOD JOURNAL

Writing down what you eat and drink lets you take look at your eating habits and make healthy changes. Use the following guidelines to help you as you go:

• Get in the habit of recording everything immediately - right after you eat or drink.

• Write what you were doing (i.e driving, watching t.v. etc) and how you were feeling (i.e. rushed, depressed, excited) when you were eating

• BE HONEST! This isn't something other people are going to read it's only for you and your own good.

PS— a few ways to keep your journal: online/on your phone, in an actual journal, or print out some of these every week

(photo from here)

HOW TO: BE A HIPSTER

These posts on How To Be A Hipster from the blog Verbal Vomit are hilarious. If you follow all the steps you can go from this:

To this:

In just a few simple steps. It also gives important tips on all things hipster, like how to approach other hipsters:

And what every good hipster should have on their iPod:

Check out the full post here for more :)

(photos courtesy of Verbal Vomit)

HOW TO: KEEP YOUR RESOLUTIONS

It's that time of year again. Out with the old and in with the new. People everywhere make New Years resolutions yet it has been determined that about 90% of people don't keep theirs...me being one of them. Every single year I fail to keep every single resolution I make and apparently so do you guys. So that being said here are six steps for keeping them.Don't worry it's not from me, it's from this article :) 
Here are the bullet points:


1. BE SPECIFIC and keep it simple. i.e. How much weight do you want to lose and how will you do it?
2. WRITE IT DOWN - every single step of it
3. MAKE TIME to actually accomplish it
4. LET GO of all negative thoughts holding you back.
5. GET HELP. Find someone you trust to keep you accountable - friend, trainer etc
6. DON'T STRESS. Feeling overwhelmed or stressed makes you more likely to slip up so relax.


PS-  if you need some inspiration read these New Years Resolutions the Buddha Might Have Made. I would be so much better off if I could just keep a few of these!!!


PPS- Artwork is originally from The New Yorker but can be bought here along with all the other cartoons.

CHAMPAGNE TOWER

HOW TO: BUILD A CHAMPAGNE TOWER

I've never actually seen one of these things done and it looks like a lot of fun, so what better time to try it than on NYE. But if you're even half as disaster prone as I am you will need a little guidance to avoid a Champagne flood. So I found 

this article  on building Champagne towers from marthastewartweddings.com. If you don't feel like reading the whole thing...here is my version:

1. Build your tower on something with a firm base and put a tray under the glasses to catch spillage.

2. You have to use coupe Champagne glasses (the round ones you see in all old fashioned movies) and they all have to be identical.

3. Make your tower up of successively smaller squares. For example, if the bottom square is 10x10 make the next one up 9x9 then 8x8. Don't get all crazy with your shapes.

4. Each glass must touch all its neighboring glasses. If you're doing it right you should see diamond shape gaps in between the glasses.

5. When making your layers always center the stem of the glass over the diamond shape gaps.

6. Repeat. repeat. repeat until you have one lonely glass at the top.

7. Grab your biggest bottle of Champagne, gather all your friends around and START POURING into the top glass while chanting the festive phrase of your choice. (if you have done the other steps correctly it should trickle down into all the other glasses) 

8.  If you are using the tower for decorative purposes only...you should probably reconsider that decision and drink all that good Champagne :)

ps- my instructions vary slightly from Martha's.

Hope this goes well for you!

(photo from here)