December 31, 2022

Top 22 of 2022 (a little different this year!)

Every year, when I write my annual "Top XX of 20XX" post, I think, "How on earth am I going to come up with that many great things about this year?!" Then I start looking through all the photos I'd taken that year and I find SO many that I have to weed through them and pick the best ones.

I was looking forward to writing this post because I've had what felt like such a stressful year, and I wanted to look through this year's photos and find all the great moments I'd forgotten about.

Well, that was short-lived. By the time I got up through July, I'd only saved about four photos. And I hadn't even gotten to the worst half of the year yet! So I started to feel a little panicked. I didn't want to NOT do this post because it's become a tradition every New Year's Eve. So, I came up with another idea...

This post will be the Top 22 reasons that 2022 can go to hell. I love that tomorrow is a new year and I really hope that things turn around. They have to!

This post is meant to be fun and light-hearted, despite my writing about 22 things that made this year not great; so please don't tell me I'm being a total Debbie Downer. I realize that I have a fantastic life and I shouldn't be complaining, but this past year has been REALLY tough. And there is a lot I can't even write about! So, while I realize that I could probably come up with 22 things that were great about 2022, I think this post will be more fun ;)

Here goes... probably not in any real order. I'm writing this to read kind of like a Buzzfeed post--listed using short, sarcastic, mixed past and present tense, and second person point-of-view writing style. It just sounded better that way!

1. Taking your kids to Detroit Cookie Co., ordering a dozen different cookies to try all of them... only to discover that they all taste the same.



2. Finding out your sweet 14-year old cat has kidney disease.



3. Pulling out the weeds in the muddy landscaping bed and then feeling the wheelbarrow tip over in slow motion, dumping all of the weeds and dirt into the grass.




4. Learning what pantry moths are and that you have them in your pantry.



5. Getting The 'VID.




6. Trying and failing several times to make vegan cheese.




7. Getting in the car and finding your tire needs air, then discovering why.




8. Getting a new stick vacuum for the convenience, then finding out that it literally doesn't suck.




9. Finding out the hard way that Red Robin thinks vegans don't eat bread or french fries.




10. Getting excited to pull up the carpet and lay planking, then discovering severe water damage on the subfloor.




11. Finding out that your cat ate some string just six months after having $3,000 in emergency surgery to remove the last string he ate.




12. Prepping the entire floor to pour a leveler, only to scrap the idea and tear out the entire floor instead.




13. Not having a floor in your bedroom for several days.




14. Having zero privacy while on the toilet. For weeks.




15. Having a new shower but still having to share with your teenage boys because it isn't hooked up yet.



16. Drywall dust for days weeks months forever probably.




17. Asking at Panera for a couple of slices of avocado for your bagel, and then realizing that you were charged $1.69 for this sad slice




18. Seeing that you're staining the studs... with your blood.




19. Excitedly prepping purple potatoes because you've never had them before, and then leaving them in the oven too long so they just turn brown anyway.




20. Looking at the timeline of DIY projects... dotted on your legs. 




21. Crying in the bathtub while wearing your clothes because it isn't hooked up yet but you just want some goddamn privacy.




22. Feels like 30℉ below 0, but at least it'll be a white Christmas.


Haha! Just a couple more hours and 2022 can peace out for good. Have a safe and happy new year! I'm excited to write some goals tomorrow. That's the best part about a fresh new year (for me, anyway).

Here are my previous New Years Eve posts--happy ones! :)

Top 11 of 2011
Top 12 of 2012
Top 13 of 2013
Top 14 of 2014
Top 15 of 2015
Top 16 of 2016
Top 17 of 2017
Top 18 of 2018
Top 19 of 2019
Top 20 of 2020
Top 21 of 2021

December 30, 2022

Friday Night Photos #98 (a year of favorite photos)

I'm going to do something a little different for Friday Night Photos, considering it's the end of the year. Like I said, I like to do a lot of summaries this time of year--so I thought I would go through my Friday Night Photos posts from the entire year and choose one photo from each post.

These Friday posts are probably my least popular posts to write (next to the vegan recipe reviews, haha!) but they are my favorite posts because they are usually a quick recap of my week. Sometimes I have weeks with a TON of photos and other times I've only taken a few. Some weeks are incredibly boring, while others have all sorts of stuff going on. You never know! 

So, here is one photo from each Friday Night Photos post from 2022. There aren't 52 photos because I didn't do exactly 52 FNP posts. There are 47, though! So, I won't write about each photo because I wouldn't finish this post until 2023 (a lot of them are self-explanatory anyway).

Here goes... these are in chronological order, starting in January 2022.















































And that's all I've got. Looking through the posts brought back a lot of memories! Tomorrow's post is an annual favorite: Top XX of 20XX. (It started with Top 11 of 2011, and I continued each year, adding one item to match the year. So tomorrow, I'll have to come up with my top 22 moments/things that happened in 2022!

Featured Posts

Blog Archive