A New Plan

I think I have mentioned a couple of times this year that I have been trying to get the weight off that has slowly crept on.  A while ago, I posted about my frustrations in the weight not coming off like I thought it should, so I was going to increase my workouts.  Since June, I have really tried to get 3-4 workouts in per week at the gym, and do something physical on the weekend.  I have only missed a couple of weeks here and there, but I have always managed to get at least a couple of gym workouts in each week.  Even with the extra workouts, I wasn't seeing the weight come off.  In two months, I lost only two pounds.  I was frustrated and at my wits end.  I went to my doctor and asked her to test my thyroid; no such luck.  My thyroid was fine, so on to a new plan. 

I made up my mind that the only thing left to change was my diet.  I don't think I have ever been a terrible eater.  Even as a kid, I loved fruits and veggies.  We have been watching our sodium intake for several years now, and I always try and keep food on the healthier side.  My solution; cut the carbs.  I can't tell you how many times I have scoffed at low carb diets.  I love carbs, and always thought there was no way I could ever cut them.  As much as pasta, bread, sweets, and potatoes are friends to my stomach, they are not friends to my rear, thighs, or midsection.  We are currently rounding out week one of the low carb diet.  Andrew is also participating with me. 

As with any diet, grocery shopping this week took some planning.  We always go to the store with a grocery list, but I normally turned to a lot of stand by recipes.  From what I have read on low carb diets, I tried to make sure we were eating meats at every meal as well as veggies.  I'm also trying to tell myself you don't have to have a starch to complete a meal.  Dinners this week consisted of pork chops, chicken, and omelets.  Shopping for lunch was rather frustrating.  Normally, I eat a Lean Cuisine meal for lunch when I don't go out for lunch.  Standing in the freezer section at the grocery store looking at labels, I figured out I needed to have a plan B.  Each meal I looked at had at least 30 grams of carbs.  My solution; tuna.  Tuna with a little mayo and a little pickle relish and no bun to make it a sandwich.  I also picked up some Babybel cheese to throw in my lunch.  I'm a huge cheese fan, so I'm glad I was able to keep something I liked.   Towards the middle of the week, I discovered that I needed to have something on hand at my desk that was an ok snack food, so I turned to sunflower seeds, which are very low in carbs.

My other rough spot came on Monday when it was time for my afternoon coffee run.  In the mornings, I bring my coffee from home.   I make black coffee with a little bit of creamer, and no, carb freaks, I'm not giving up my creamer.  At this point, my potatoes, sweets, pasta and bread have been taken away, I refuse to touch my morning coffee.  My afternoon coffee, on the other hand, is another story.  Normally, I would order a Mocha or something equally high in carbs and calories.  Monday, I tried a soy latte with sugar free syrup; disgusting is the only thing I have to say for that.  The rest of the week I opted for black coffee with a little bit of 1/2 and 1/2 in it.  It isn't the Mocha I really want, but it gives me the boost I need in the afternoon.

Now, I'm a quick results kind of person.  When I have been waiting for two months to see any kind of weight loss, I have about run out of what little patients I had to begin with.  I'm happy to report that one week in on my low carb diet, and I have lost 2 1/2 lbs.  I can't express just how excited I am about this.  Heading in to week two of the low carb diet, I will attempt to look for some new recipes for dinner, so I don't get burned out too quickly.  I will be sure to keep you guys posted on the progress.     

 

A Pinteresting Experiment

Now that we are in the new house, I am going to try and tackle my growing Pinterest boards.  I have accumulated a lot of pins over the last couple of months while I was on a project hiatus, but I'm excited to dig back in.

First up: towel refresh.  I don't know about your towels, but ours had a little bit of a smell to them.  I'm going to call it a boy smell.  Don't worry, Andrew knows I think boys make smelly towels.  I don't know what it is, but it is a problem.  Have no fear; Pinterest to the rescue!  Not only did this take the smell out of our towels, it made them so soft.  I'm telling you, these towels smelled so good when they came out of the dryer I wanted to put them in a pile on the floor and lay in them.  Ok, that might be a little extreme, but it is really nice to step out of the shower in the morning and have a clean smelling towel.  It is the simple things in life sometimes that I find pleasure in.

So, here is the pin.  I did this on a Wednesday when I was working from home so I could stay on top of the cycles.  Just another note, if you don't have a gigantic jug of vinegar in your home that is specifically for cleaning, you should probably get one.  I can't tell you the number of uses I have found for it. 






So, there you have the Pinterest project for this week.  Like I said, super easy and well worth the time. I'm going to try and get back into tackling my pins, so I hope to have more projects up here soon.  I'm working on some fall decoration ideas at the moment.

Finally, A Fence

It is true you don't know how much you take something for granted until it is gone.  Our previous home had a six foot privacy fence when we moved in.  Other than putting bricks in a couple of spots where boards were loose, we were able to turn Buddy loose on his own in the yard for hours.  When Maya joined our home, it was hard to get her to come in from outside.  She spent her first four months of life outside, so I think she feels at home outside.  Don't let her love of the outdoors fool you though, she will certainly make her home on any pillow she can find inside.

It took a month, but our fence is finally up at the new house; halleluiah!  I lost track of the number of times I had to run after Maya when she caught the scent of a squirrel and took off.  Our second weekend in this house, we had to coax the dogs out of the woods by shaking the treat container.  Buddy will run for treats, Maya just comes to see what Buddy is doing.  After we learned there was a fox in the woods, I grew increasingly concerned about the dogs getting loose in the woods.

It's nice to be able to have neighbor dogs walk by and not have to go running after Buddy and Maya.  Just last Saturday, I was standing out in my pajamas because they woke me up at 8:30 AM to go outside, and I had to chase both dogs to the front yard because they saw a dog and its owner running on the sidewalk.  That will teach me to go out in my pajamas.  Yes, before you judge, I was still sleeping at 8:30 AM on a Saturday morning; these are the things I enjoy before the years of kids waking us up at 6:00 AM on a weekend.

So, here you have the new fence.

 

Now that we have a clear outline for the yard, we look forward to pondering landscaping projects over the winter.  I think the one thing we are going to do this fall is plant a tree.  We want something that will eventually create some shade for the deck.  Perhaps we will plant the tree for our anniversary!  

Recipe Wednesday - Healthy Version

It wasn't until the last month or so that I started cooking with kale.  I have read about it and how great it is, I have heard people talking about how good it is for you, but I never actually wanted to try it.  I have to be honest, the first time I saw kale in the store when I got it for a recipe, I thought, "this is going to be disgusting."  I'm still not 100% sold on it.  Don't ask me to take a big bite of kale and look at you with a smile on my face, obviously after I chew the kale.  If I'm going to have it, it better be chopped to the point that it is almost unrecognizable.  Call me picky, but that is the way it is.

My recipe this week, which we both really enjoyed, involves kale chopped to the point of almost nonrecognition.





This recipe was definitely easy, but did take some forethought.  I started the rice as soon as I got home since it has to cook for a little bit, and then went on about my normal routine of feeding the dogs, etc.  By the time I got back to the kitchen, the rice was almost done and everything else is easy!
This has lasted us through a couple of meals and it still good warmed up.   

In house news, we got our fence put up this week!!!!!!!!!!  There aren't enough exclamation marks to tell you how excited we are about this.  I know Buddy and Maya love it too.  They can finally run around the yard without us calling to them to come back all the time.  When neighbor dogs walk by, I don't have to worry about going on a 100 yard dash after Maya.  There are some other house updates too, but I will save those for another post. 

Office Makeover

A day late, but as promised, here is the office makeover from this week.  Excuse the mess in the after photos, I'm still not done with the putting back together phase.  I have one more shelf I would like to hang before I am "done". 

Here is the office before we moved in:

And, here is the office now:

I used Valspar City Storm.  I was going to do each wall a different color, but thought better of that idea once I remembered that I was going to be hanging my travel photos on the wall.  With the colors in the photos, I didn't want to give my eyes too much color to focus on.  I'm really happy with the way it turned out, and I'm excited to get some things up on the walls that I haven't had up since I left for college.

I'll try to post some better pictures once I have the place cleaned up a little bit.   

Kitchen Update

Last weekend, I decided to tackle the wall where my coffee station is sitting.  Since we moved in, I thought it would be great to paint that wall red to match the accent wall in the living room.  We have about two dozen paint cans around the house, so I was able to locate the brand and color of paint that was used in the living room.  I was glad we didn't have to try and match reds, because it was going to be a difficult task.  The paint in the basement was from 2005, so I bought another can.  I opted to go for a half gallon, which worked out fine because we had just enough with a little left for touch ups.  The color is Bay Red from Sherwin Williams.  I love Sherwin Williams paint, but it is a little rich for my blood.  Luckily, the guy working the day I bought the paint was feeling generous and gave me a discount. 

Here is the wall before:

Here is the wall now!

I took this right after I finished painting, so there were still a few tools around.  The shelf I actually made based on another shelf I purchased at a craft show last year.  I used a cabinet door that I purchased last year to use as a stocking hanger (you may remember this project).  

We had a shelf that was actually Andrew's from when he was a kid and the brackets to go with it that were the perfect size to fit on the cabinet door.  I gave the shelf and the brackets a coat of Kilz primer first and then gave it a couple coats of semi glossy black paint.  I like to use Rust-Oleum paint for these projects, I think it holds up really well and always has nice coverage.  Once the paint was dry, I attached d rings to the back of the cabinet door to hang it on the wall and attached the brackets to the cabinet door.  The shelf on top is just sitting on top of the brackets.  The shelf I purchased at the craft show had the top shelf screwed in to the brackets for extra support.

We are both really happy with the way the wall turned out, but decided now that wall kind of makes the rest of the kitchen look a little naked.  We aren't as sure on the rest of the kitchen as we were on that wall, so I think we will hold off on doing anything for now.

Andrew was away on business a couple days this week, which meant project time for me.  I like to keep myself busy while he is gone.  I finally started to tackle my office, so my next post will be the office makeover!  

Recipe Wednesday

Today is another recipe Wednesday. This is a recipe that I have only made once, but we have done several modifications on this recipe and enjoyed each of them. Neither of us are normally pork chop people, but they are quite tasty on the grill. Lately, we have fixed them with grilled corn; yummy!

Recipe Wednesday... It's Back!

I'm going to try and bring back recipe Wednesday.  I always feel like we are a little more creative with our foods in the summer, so I will try and post some good summer recipes for the next couple of weeks.

This week, I wanted to make something light and easy.  It doesn't get much easier than this salad I threw together a couple of nights ago.  I will throw a disclaimer out there though.  This salad is not good leftover.  So, either make it when you are planning on more than two eating, or knock the portions back a little bit.



As you can also see, this is a pretty healthy option for dinner, which we are trying to find right now.  When we moved, things kind of fell apart with my workout schedule for a couple of weeks, and it was bad.  But, I'm back on track now sticking to four workouts per week in the gym and then trying to do something active on the weekends.  Since we are watching our budget for fast food and eating out, our diet should be a little easier on the waist line now as well. 

Weekend Recap and a Dillema

I have a dilemma.  I spent most of this past weekend thinking about what color I want to paint my office.  Right now, it is a little darker than what I would call taupe.  There is nothing wrong with the color it is, but it appears to only have one coat of paint and clearly could have used two.  White is showing through in several spots.

 

My dilemma started on Friday when I decided I was going to hang up some of the artwork I wanted in my office.  I went to Lowes to buy a laser level to make the project easier.  While I was at Lowes, I was looking at paint colors.  I stood there looking at the paint colors for what felt like an hour, and felt totally overwhelmed with the options.  Do I want my office to be pink, which is my favorite color, or would that just be too childish?  What about green, sage green, blue, teal, yellow, plum; so many options that I just felt a rush of panic and left the store with only my laser level.  I went home and took to Pinterest to see if I could find some inspiration there.  I saw some cute offices in a green apple color.  But, would I get sick of that after a while?  I loved the color I painted my last office space when I painted it, but after a couple of months I was kind of over it.   I don’t want that to happen. 

 

I don’t know if I want my office space to be bright and cheery since it is in the basement or something that is going to be warm in cozy.  Does it need to coordinate with the basement living room which is going to be GREEN AND GOLD!!  Yes, we are going to have a Green Bay Packers basement, and it is going to awesome.  Then we get back to the issue of what I want to put on the walls. I have so many travel photos that I would love to display, but I don’t want it to look like a hodge podge of stuff.   Last night I had a thought of putting my travel photos up in the main hallway wall, but Andrew didn’t seem too keen on that, so I had to rethink that plan. 

 

Update: I went to Lowes after work tonight to look at paint colors.  I think I have a couple picked out, but I'm debating on the third.  One of the walls I want to paint a plum color, and the main color is going to be a light mocha brown.  What I'm still debating is the third wall.  I don't know if I want to have one accent wall with the plum color, or two accent walls.  If I do a second accent wall, I'm also having a hard time picking between a sage green and a brighter green.  So many choices!  

 

I tell myself I don’t have to decide on the paint color now, I can wait a while and live in it before I decide.  My problem with that is I don’t want to hang all this stuff up on the walls and then have to take it down to paint.  I would rather paint and then put stuff on the walls so I don’t have to rehang things.  Such a dilemma. 

 

While I was trying to decide what to do about my office this weekend, I did manage to get some other things done around the house.  I got the garage a little more organized than what it was.  I put some shelves up and got some of our lawn chemicals out of boxes and up on the shelves.  Andrew mowed the yard this weekend even though it is rather dry with the minimal rain we have had.  Some spots in the yard were growing and it looked a little strange.  

 

My highlight of the weekend was grilled corn on the cob and bratwursts on Saturday night.  We have been trying to cut back on our eating out since moving; we went a little crazy during the move with the fast food and eating out.  Saturday night we didn’t want to get too fancy, so the grill was our go to.  The meal was fabulous; I love the tastes of summer in the Midwest! 

 

I hope you all have a wonderful weekend!