2026 Goals Make a New Recipe with Me

Hi, how are we? It's been a minute since we've been in the kitchen. Ignore that my kitchen is a hot mess. It's the holidays, it's a hot mess, and I have everything on the counter. Also, I went grocery shopping, but I didn't put everything away yet, so I still have stuff lying on the counter everywhere. But it's fine, it's fine. We're gonna get dinner started and then your smile lit up like a sunrise glow. But I thought today, one, I'll ramble on because we haven't been in the kitchen in a hot minute. I'm making a new recipe, but I also thought we would go over my 2026 goals. Come on, listen to me, be slightly psychotic in the kitchen. I'm not gonna follow this recipe word for word. It says do you powder garlic? We're gonna use real garlic. Okay, guys, I'm a big fan of real garlic. I have all my goals here. It's a new recipe, so I have the recipe off to the side. I'll post it in the description box so everyone else can make it if they want. But it is a chicken bake. Am I cutting to myself right now? Yes, please don't do that, children. I listen to no rules whatsoever. It says to use chicken breast, but I'm not a fan of how chicken breast cook. It just takes too long, in my opinion. You smell chicken, don't you, Noor? Did you hear me say the word chicken? Noor does love chicken. I also need to clean my oven and that'll be a later project. Obviously, no, we're not gonna be using it. Look, Noor, we has a spoon out yet from when I had to measure stuff for pancakes. So this recipe says season your chicken with garlic powder, salt, and pepper. Again, I'm gonna use minced garlic instead. I think that's a much better way to season your food. Who doesn't like garlic? Okay, but 2026, while I'm doing this, while we're seasoning all of the meat. 2026 goals. I have them separated into different sections of what type of goals. I'm not going to share all of my goals. Some of them are very personal. I'm obviously not going to share the ones that are super personal to me. But to start out with, we have my YouTube goals for 2026. One, I want to do a video every week. I've been currently putting that on Thursdays. I think I'm gonna change my time from like seven in the morning to like 4pm EST slash EDT. I have everything planned out for January. I do have to finish books for it. But I do have everything planned. And then along with videos, I want to get at least two weeks ahead on the videos, just because that is less stressful to me if I have everything, you know, kind of figured out ahead of time. What do I got to do with dressing? Put it in a big dish. Okay, great. We'll do that. And then we'll just season the other side. I also content wise want to post like at least a short every week. And I think I know what I want to do. I kind of want to start posting like mini book reviews. Because yeah, I do have like most of the books I read do end up in videos. But there are some that I just read because I want to read them. And I think I just want to share my like little tidbit review. So I think going forward in the new year, I want to start posting those as like a short. That's gonna be my goal. And I mean, that's gonna be like 100 something a year because I do read like over 100 books a year, typically. And then I guess I need to share my content more like I post it and then I don't share it anymore. And I really should share it. And you know, there's several discords that have designated channels for you to share your content. So I feel like I should share my content more. And then I want to do continue doing two sprints a week. It might get a little dicey. I'm not gonna lie in February. My mom is getting married in February. She's having the wedding reception at like two weeks after the wedding. And I'm going to a work conference might not happen in February. But the rest of the time it should work out just fine. I'm just adding more garlic because he doesn't like garlic. So that's kind of what I have planned YouTube wise. The only thing I'm debating about is, would you guys be interested in like crafty sprints? Like I would still do reading sprints twice a week. But I'm debating if I do like, not like a full length, like I do four reading sprints. But it'd be like one session, like two 45 minute sprints, like once a week. And we just work on craft stuff. You can also read during them, of course, but they'd be shorter sprints. Like I said, they'd be like 45 minutes instead of like my typical 75 or 90 minute ones. Just to like get some crafty stuff done. Let me know. Let me know in the comments if that if that'd be something you guys are interested in. Next we have my personal goals. So one of my personal goals is I'm really inconsistent with working out. So I'd like to work out five times a week. More likely if I do it twice at this point. So I kind of want to like I want to challenge myself. So I kind of want to up it to five times a week. So that's going to be the goal there. And it just needs to be some kind of workout. It doesn't have to be like cardio every single time. But I just want to do at least something. I also want to cut down my eating out budget. So I have like so much that I budget every month for it. I want to cut that down by 20%. And just eat at home more. So that I just I'm spending less money. It's like saving money that way. If I just cut my budget that I've been currently using this past year by 20% is kind of what I want to do. And it's still enough time like if I want to go out like every week and eat something I can. And then the other personal goal that I'm willing to share that I want to get around is I need to clean every night before bed. Like I need to clean everything before I go to bed. I need to do the dishes. Like I have literally a sink full of dishes. You guys can't tell but most most of them are lunch dishes. Most of them are stuff I brought to work today. But like this disaster happening on the counter. This needs to be picked up every day because this is what it looks like on a regular basis. And I need to pick this ---- up. That's what I need to do. And then the other thing I need to clean up Ellie's stuff. Ellie has stuff everywhere because Ellie gets out everything every day. But like I trip over it in the morning. I just need to pick her ---- up at night. That's what I need to do. And then lastly I have some of my reading goals. I did a very poor job of it this year. One of my goals to read half the books I buy. I did not do that obviously. And then one of my other goals was to buy less books. But I didn't know how many books I actually bought in 2024. So it was really hard for me to judge if I was buying less books in 2025 than I was in 2024. So my goal is to buy less. I'll put on the number on the screen here how many I end up buying in 2025. I had to finish updating my my log that I actually started keeping this year. So I'll put that number up on the screen. But that's something I need to get around to. And I just need to buy less of them in general. Something else I need to do is I need to read my book of the month books. I subscribe to book of the month. I get a book every month. I don't read the books every month. It's ridiculous. I have 28 unread ones. I in general I don't get like more than one a month. There's like the two months of the year I do where I get like one of the finalists and like my extra birthday book. I'm like two years behind. I actually have a book from 2021 that's still on there. That is ridiculous. I need to read that now. And then one of my two of them kind of go hand in the last two is I want to complete 50% of a TBR this year. At some point I need to complete 50% of it. It'd be great if I every single one I could do 50% like my winter, spring, summer, fall. If I could complete 50% of all of them. But my one like stretch goal is I need to completely finish one of my TBRs. And I put 20 books on it every single time and I read like two or three. 50% on all of them would be great. That's going to be the goal. It'd be great if one of them this year just at least one if I complete all of them and like the season is going to be like my big stretch goal. But those are kind of the goals I have this year. I don't think I have any other goals. But um we're going to find out what else I have to do with this. I have random stuff I can talk about. Don't you worry. Put the chicken in a dish. Pour the sauce over the chicken and spread evenly with a spoon. Okay, so I'll leave that spoon out. It says to use marinara sauce. I'm not a big fan of that. So I bought roasted garlic parmesan. It's usually not the one I use but they didn't have the one I use. Usually I use the roasted garlic and herb one but they didn't have that. So this was on sale. That's probably why. It also says to like only how much should I say to use. I didn't like how much they said to use. One and a half cups which is like 12 ounces. I like sauce. We're using 24 ounces. Sorry about your guys's luck. Well I probably won't pour all of it onto the chicken. Maybe just like half the jar here because I'm gonna make pasta to go with it and I'll just put the rest of it on the pasta. But I don't even need to need to smooth it out really. I covered the chicken quite well. I did that quite well. What do we do next? Okay well I'm gonna let it bake first and then put the cheese on because one my chicken is kind of frozen to begin with. Not gonna lie I did I did freeze it so I pulled it out of the freezer. So we're gonna let that bake. Um let's set a timer between here. Make sure my volume is all the way up. Clock. So something just random I want to talk about is that I'm like low-key annoyed. And why am I low-key annoyed? So we got an email today at work that we are switching our PTO system. So currently our PTO system works on a accrued basis where you have to work to earn PTO. And so and you get you accrue so much per hour worked based on how long you've been there. So it's like zero to three years you it's like some weird decimal. And then it goes up when you hit your four years there and that increases again when you hit seven. And then it increases again when you hit like I think it's 11. And basically you get years zero through three you can accrue 14 days worth. I think it's 14 days worth. I am currently at five. I'll be there for six years in January. Well in a few weeks actually because it'll be in January here. I'll be there for six years so I'm still in this same like time range. I get seven I can uh get 17 days a year. I have way more than that. I use a ---- ton of PTO because I work you guys know how much overtime I work? I work a ---- ton of overtime. So I always got more hours than that. Well they decided and we could always carry over like half of what we accrued in there. Well they decided today that effective immediately we will um be getting our PTO all up front. So we will be getting like I will be getting all 17 days up front as of January first or I guess second because we're close on the first. Which annoys me because again I accrued more than that because I've worked so much overtime. But I will not only be getting 17 days and I can only carry over and when I say 17 days it's like 136 hours based on an eight hour work day. I can only carry over 40. I currently have 72 hours. It's 72 point something hours because we accrue it based on hours you know it was stupid. Yeah I have like 72 hours right now and not all of it has been taken out. I don't know how they're gonna do it though. Like does it reset after we get paid next or are you gonna take that out of my current bank because they'll let me carry over 40 hours. However I have booked 16 hours for last week for Christmas because I took off the 24th because we were open and I took it off and then I took off the 26th. But we were closed on the 26th but we wouldn't have paid we had to use PTO. So I try to use my PTO for a long time is that so my PTO transferred. Does that transfer does does that get taken out of my 72 or are you automatically knocking me down to 40 hours. They're supposed to be paying us for like whatever hours we had over 40. Um however I don't want paid for like 30 hours. I want to use that PTO. I don't want you to take it out of my 40 because we we already got our last paycheck for the year last week and our ex-paycheck we get paid bi-weekly. So are you taking it out of that 40 or are you taking it out of 72. I prefer if you took it on my 72 and then just pay me out because after that if they did that they just pay me out the difference of 15. I feel like that's how they should do it because all of my PTO that I have scheduled was technically in 2025. It was you know Christmas Eve the day after Christmas and I took half of Wednesday off because we're not open on Wednesday afternoon. So I took four hours of PTO. So that's how I'm wondering if that works like don't take it out of my 40 that I can carry over because technically I did use it in 2025. I don't know I gotta ask them tomorrow they literally send it out like literally at the end of the day like they send out everything literally at the last minute end of the day. So I gotta clarify that with HR tomorrow because like I said I really don't want them to take it out of my 72 hours and if they take it out of my 72 hours I might actually lose my ---- this week because I was already gonna lose my ---- yesterday at work. I talked about it on my stream I was like literally gonna lose my ----. So I gotta talk to HR and see how about taking that out because like I really don't want them to take it for my 40 hours because I planned. They're like it's so you can better plan your vacations. Bitch if you work you know how many hours you're gonna have a year. It's not that complicated. Maybe show up to work. Like we're now we're rewarding people who routinely call off by giving them all their PTO. Whereas if you called off a ton you just didn't get out your PTO. I think we're rewarding them now. That's my point of view and it's not my fault that people didn't plan ahead how to use their PTO based on accrual. That's not my fault and now I feel like I'm being punished for it. Because like like I said earlier I have days off scheduled in February because my mom's getting married. I have 16 hours scheduled there around the weekend of her wedding and then I have the day before her wedding reception planned off because I just don't want to have to people that day. And then I'm I mean I'm missing a little bit of work for the work conference but it's really not that direct. So like like I won't take it off like because we carpool down to it from work on a Friday because it's like a Saturday conference. But we always go out to dinner on Friday night and so we always leave work at like 2 33 o'clock. It's like an hour to an hour and a half difference. Like I really don't worry about it like I'm usually over 40 hours by that point anyways. So I don't I don't typically worry about that but like that's 24 hours I have scheduled in February. And I mean I know I'm going to get 136 on top of the 40. I just feel like that's like shitty for me because I planned ahead you know. Like and we announced this last minute like if they would have announced this like in November I wouldn't have had too much of a problem. I would have just taken off a bunch of random ass days in December you know. But now they're announcing it literally on December 29th that effective Friday that we're going to this new system. So I'm kind of pissed off about it quite frankly at the moment. So I have a lot of questions for HR tomorrow. That's the gist of it. But um since we're in the kitchen we're doing a cooking chat. I will be back in a little bit um with like how the chicken turns out because I feel like you guys need to know that. Um this is the pasta I'm going to make with it. Some elbow pasta. I don't think you guys need to see me get a pot out and I'm going to boil water on the stove and pour the noodles in. I don't think you guys really need to watch that. So I'll be back when we actually have something like concrete food wise to show you. Okay I slightly moved the camera angle because like I was playing trivia. But I got dinner done. I have my pasta and I have the chicken. It's a mess in the pan. It's fine. It's gonna have to soak. It's fine. But here we go. Here's it looks like a mess. I promise. It's I haven't tried it yet but like it's just mozzarella chicken bake with that I throw in some pasta and I mixed in some of the the extra sauce into the pasta. Because I'm not one of those people that pour pasta sauce on it every single time. Just throw all the pasta in at once. It'll be fine. And then I made some um just like some breadsticks and the uh air fryer. So I'm gonna sit down and eat this. I'll put it on the screen if I enjoyed it or not. But it smells delicious and I'm starving.