Project Life 2014- Week 29

*Project Life was invented by Becky Higgins. You can learn more about it here. My Project Life pages can be found here.

Currently

Watching “Dead Body” shows. The Mentalist, CSI, and Elementary. Finished up this season of Top Chef.
Reading project Life blogs looking for inspiration.
Listening to back episodes of Paperclipping Roundtable
Making lots of blog posts (does that count?)
Feeling less stressed than I have all year.
Planning ways to decorate our bedroom.
Loving that Jason is getting home before it gets dark.
Going to the gym in the evening this week.
Keeping the grocery bill near $100 a week for over a month. (It was getting out of control).
Thinking of covering the entire house with double sided tape.
Learning new tricks in WireTap Studio.
Doing weights or Pilates every day this week.

#30Lists Day 5 (March Goals)

Before I get into this prompt, I’ll take this opportunity to review last month’s goals.

• Walk 40 miles again. (I’ll have to work a little harder to get this, since it’s a shorter month).
• Add Pilates to the mix. I like Pilates a lot better than regular strength training, so maybe that will be more motivating. I want to do one or the other 3 times a week.
• Try the stationary bike or elliptical. After 2 months of walking, I need to shake up my cardio routine.
• Catch up on blog posts I want to write, or let them go. Who wants to read about Christmas in February?
• Continue working my cleaning routines, and add in Weekly stuff. (ahem, mopping)
• Have an awesome birthday.
• Track meals for a week. I use the LoseIt! app.
• Try some new recipes for foods I usually buy in boxes and bags. This is why.

Looking at this list, I did a not so great job with goals. I think it as a really “off” month for me.

I didn’t even make half of my walking goal. I think I did 16 miles. I did Pilates and made it to the gym for biking and elliptical a few times, but not nearly as much as I would’ve liked.

I caught up on a few posts I wanted to write and I’m letting the rest go.

I actually did ok with the weekly cleaning stuff.

My birthday was awesome, but that had more to do with Jason than me 🙂

The thing I did the best at was keeping up with my meals on LoseIt! I figured out that you can set an alarm so that if I forget to log a meal, it sends me a notification. I did two full weeks of logging food in February and am going strong so far this month.

I tried a few new recipes this month, most notably this chewy brownie recipe. So good I didn’t even have a chance to take pictures before they were gone.

Now on to March goals!

Set a workout schedule and stick to it, using bribery if necessary.
Make plans for Jason’s birthday in April.
Look for new plants.
Blog fun and exciting things within the week they happen.
Do something crafty.
Go to the beach.
Celebrate spring.
Go to Hatsume or an Air Show
Start a new series.
Find something green to wear.
Catch up on Project Life.

February goals

I’ve decided to work on monthly goals this year instead of making New Year’s resolutions.

Here were my goals for January–

• walk 40 miles
• do 12 strength training workouts
• continue working through my Project Life for 2012 and start 2013
• work my daily housekeeping routines
• make it to 250 blog posts
• do some just for fun LO’s
• use my big camera more

I did walk 40 miles. I think I actually walked a little more than that. Yay! I think I do a lot better with this kind of goal than I did with doing a thing every day for a set amount of days. I like having the option to skip a day here or there and double up on other days. I did a few longer walks too, and that felt really good. I’m still mostly walking in my house to exercise videos. That may not seem like a good workout, but you’re using weights a lot and the pace really gets up there on some of them, to where you’re actually jogging. I continued walking through some knee pain this month. (non-exercise related injury) and I’m pretty proud of myself for that. A+

I did not do 12 strength training workouts. I did do seven, which is seven more than I did all of last year. My enthusiasm waned towards the end of the month. After 20 straight days of muscle aches, I just got tired of it. C

I did a couple of PL pages, but haven’t blogged them yet. I did Week 51, plus my opening pages for 2013. I also started Week 1. B

I started out really well working my cleaning routines. That tapered off towards the end of the month. My house isn’t messy, but it’s not where I’d like it to be. C

This will be my 247th blog post. I have one already scheduled for next week, so I’m “this” close to 250. I can’t believe I’ve kept up with it for a whole year now! I was going to take a break this month with everything going on with Jason, but I found that keeping up with the blog actually helped me this month. A

I did some just for fun layouts. I’ll post more next week, but here’s the first batch. A

I did not use my big camera at all this month, except to photograph this Project Life post. F

Overall, I think it was a good month, considering everything that happened. Now, on to next month!

I’m going to repeat a couple of goals that I want to solidify, and add a couple of new ones.

• Walk 40 miles again. (I’ll have to work a little harder to get this, since it’s a shorter month).
• Add Pilates to the mix. I like Pilates a lot better than regular strength training, so maybe that will be more motivating. I want to do one or the other 3 times a week.
• Try the stationary bike or elliptical. After 2 months of walking, I need to shake up my cardio routine.
• Catch up on blog posts I want to write, or let them go. Who wants to read about Christmas in February?
• Continue working my cleaning routines, and add in Weekly stuff. (ahem, mopping)
• Have an awesome birthday.
• Track meals for a week. I use the LoseIt! app.
• Try some new recipes for foods I usually buy in boxes and bags. This is why.

High Five for Friday

This has been a week of ups and downs. Here are some of the highlights.

1. Jason is on the road to recovery. He’s asked me to keep details private, so I’ll respect that. I’m just happy everything went well and he got to stay home a few days this week. So great to have him home all day. I think the worst is hopefully over and we can get back to normal in the next couple of weeks. So happy and relieved. This has been a stressful couple of weeks for us.

2. This soup. My first attempt at cream of chicken soup and it was fantastic!

3. How Stuff Works podcasts. I love almost all of these podcasts. A couple of recent favorites are the Cult of Domesticity from Stuff Mom Never Told You (a must-listen for any hipster/ lifestyle blogger/ home cooks) and The Parenthood Wars from PopStuff.

4. Netflix Streaming. We’re blasting through the last season of Alias right now. The implausibility verges on the ridiculous sometimes, but it’s a nice escape. And they still make our jaws drop every couple of episodes. Last weekend we had an Independent film marathon. Ten Inch Hero, HottieBoombaLottie, Splinterheads, and Miss Nobody. All really good. Nice, light funny movies.

5. Cooking at home. Sometimes I get so tired of cooking. I just want to grab a box or bag of something and throw it in the oven or microwave. We all have days like that, right? Well I think my days of boxes and bags are numbered. I found something so disgusting in a bag of fries last weekend that I think I’m completely turned off of processed foods for the foreseeable future. It still makes me shudder to think about it. So my new rule is, if I can’t see what’s in the package, I’m going to think twice before buying it.  Which means if I want fries, I guess I’ll have to learn how to fry things. Which I’m terrible at. Anyone know of any good baked fries recipes?

 

Random weekend stuffs

Pretty nice weekend. Nothing too exciting or earth shattering, which is a relief. It was my first weekend out completely sans crutches! I’m a bit unsteady still and I have absolutely no stamina whatsoever. We’re going to take walks in the evenings this week to hopefully build that up.

I got some good mail from Megan at the nerdnest.com. A journal for December Daily! I’m pretty excited to start, but I guess we need to get through Halloween first.

Speaking of Halloween, the decorations are continuing to go up. And I’m working on a pretty awesome Halloween box for the Little Man. I’ll do a post on that once I’m finished.

Jason is loving his stereo. It’s making the long commute a lot more bearable. He can play things directly from the iPhone through bluetooth now. He still likes the roadster, but unfortunately the radio stations fade in and out a lot between home and work so it was becoming a hassle.

The Little Man is now in student council! He didn’t talk a whole lot about it, because there were more exciting video games to discuss. But we think it’s pretty cool.

MK is being a pain in the butt, waking us up too early, scratching at the blinds and making a lot of unnecessary noise. Not sure whats up with her.

Oh and also in news that is only important to us, Jason installed my brand new super awesome antimicrobial magic toilet seat this weekend. It’s magical because it’s “anti-slam”, which means instead of slamming closed like a regular toilet seat, when you drop the lid, it slowly and gently floats down into place without making a sound. Like the feather in Forrest Gump. 🙂

We’re making plans for the holidays, which will involve NASA, so I’m super excited for that. I miss my space shuttles!

I think that’s about it. I’m so ready to get back into my normal routine of cooking and house stuff and being a bit more active. Lot’s of fun stuff coming up in the next couple of months.

Goals, plans, etc.

I had big plans for this month… I had my whole month in blogging/ scrapping/ decorating/ and making stuff all planned out in iCal. I was ready to go. Then I hurt my knee and I had to shift things around a little. But that’s okay. That’s the beauty of plans, they can be changed.

For my second list on 30 Days of Lists, I made this list of goals for September. Here’s how that went.

1. Take positive steps towards finding a part time job. I applied for a few more jobs and haven’t heard anything. Which that’s kind of a moot point right now with my knee. So this one is put on hold for now.
2. Blog about all the adventures we had this summer with the Little Man. This did not get done. Will work on it this month. Anything that I don’t get done this month will just not get done. I will move on.
3. Continue keeping up with my CT and mod duties at SDD. I ran a little behind with my CT stuff, but considering my promotion, I think I did ok,
4. Decorate for Halloween. I did get a little decorating done, but I want to do a few more things.
5. Start a new series with Jason, or finish an old one. I totally forgot about this one. We have been watching a ton of Big Bang Theory this month though.
6. Blog at least 5 recipes. Wow I actually did this one!
7. Do a video for my Twelve class (or at least do a post) Twelve for August
8. Make something with puff pastry (this has seriously been one of my goals since 2004 and I haven’t done it yet). Yes! Puff Pastry Pizza (not really phyllo like I thought)
9. Make something not related to food. Nope
10. Get through September relatively unscathed. I only wrote this one because my family has a “thing” about September. We have since the 70’s. We can’t even say the word September without a certain something in our voices. I’m not terribly superstitious, but I will no longer make flippant remarks about September. September knocked me on my ass, literally.

On to October!

This month I want to-

1. Go on a coffee date with Jason.
2. Get off crutches
3. Catch up with Project Life
4. Send the Little Man a Halloween box.
5. Finish blogging summer stuff
6. Go back to the pumpkin patch and try not to hurt myself this time.

And I’m going to stop there. I think that’s plenty.

So that happened…

It’s been an interesting weekend.

Friday I had to give Miss Kitty her first bath. I usually don’t believe in giving cats baths except in the case of dire flea or bowel emergencies. Let’s just say she doesn’t have fleas and leave it at that. So into the bath she went. She was not happy. I was not happy. It’s been years since I had to bathe a cat, and unfortunately I forgot an important component, a cup for rinsing off. So I had to dunk. It was traumatic, but thankfully I only had to really wash half of her.

The look of betrayal.

Saturday started out pretty great. We took the car for her 100,000 mile checkup. Everything came out well, which is good because we were worried about the steering. While we were there, Jason test drove a Fusion hybrid. He really liked it! We’re not in the market for anything new since we just got the car paid off last week (!!!). But it was really fun to try out something new. And the sales guy was super mellow and didn’t pressure us at all. We also looked around the lot and Jason found his dream Mustang.

We went shopping around a little and I found a fabulous grey sweater and a couple other things. I really don’t like shopping much and hardly ever find anything I like and that fits, so that was pretty exciting. Weird buying sweaters in almost 90 degree weather though.

We had Costco hot dogs/ swirly frozen yogurt lunch. Lunch for two for under $5, we’re cheap dates 🙂 And of course we had to pose with the huge stuffed animals.

Then we went to Bedner’s to look at pumpkins and maybe do a hay ride. I got one picture before things started going downhill.

We went down to the pumpkin patch. It was muddy and the ground was uneven. I got one of my feet stuck in the mud and down I went. My knee went one way and my leg went the other way. I could feel it pop out of place. I got it back in, thank goodness.

So we went to the ER to have it x-rayed to make sure nothing was broken. Let’s just say it was not the best experience and I will be making phone calls tomorrow. I am beyond livid at a couple of things that happened while I was there. But I’m not going into that. Keeping things on the positive side, most of the staff was very kind, most especially the security guard in the ER. She saw that I couldn’t walk well and brought me a wheelchair to the parking lot. She brought me ice packs and was generally awesome. I’m sure I don’t have to tell you how rare that is 🙂

When we finally got home, Jason went out to shoot the moon. Pretty great right? (I stole this from his blog).

I have a few more pictures from this weekend, but I’m pretty tired so I think I’ll hold off on them tomorrow.

Randomness

Just some random stuff from the past week or so…

Saturday we went bowling for charity with some people from Jason’s company. The proceeds benefitted Junior Achievement. I can’t say I was super excited to go initially. I’m a terrible bowler. So terrible that the last time I bowled I only scored a 12. And the guy from the bowling alley asked if I needed bumpers… also this was in front of my FIL, so that made it even more embarrassing for some reason.

We ended up having a really good time. As soon as we walked in and were doing introductions, one man shook my hand and said “Your husband is one of the smartest people I know”. That just made me grin because he is totally one of the smartest people I know too… and I know a ton of smart people 🙂

We brought the new camera, so when we weren’t bowling, we were taking pictures. I forgot to do my usual “I have a blog and do scrapbooking and such so do you mind if I plaster your face all over the internet?” speech, so I won’t put any up here. Except this one, which shows off Jason’s excellent form 🙂

 I’ve been working out here and there for the past couple of weeks. It’s crazy how out of shape I’ve gotten since I left work and I’m not walking 30,000 steps a day. I keep hearing all this junk about how working out gives you more energy. When does that start? It’s just making me tired…

I love Costco. I love Costco like some people love Target. I mostly love it for the ladies with the free samples of lobster dip. And apparently I love taking instagrams of the cart while waiting for Jason to finish looking at TV’s.

Oh and then there’s football. I love football season. Not so much for the actual football, but for the hours and hours of scrapping time. And pizza. And getting to see Jaws again. And C’mon man. And the Play 60 commercials.

Last Sunday was also National Step Family Day. Which according to Hallmark ranks right up there with National Apple Dumpling Day, National Cheeseburger Day, and Rice Krispies Day. I did talk briefly to the Little Man Sunday, so that was nice. And since today is National Talk Like A Pirate Day, I thought I’d just combine the two holidays and show a picture of my stepson as a pirate 🙂 From Feb. 2008. He’s so little!

So that’s a little bit of the random stuff going on with us. Oh and then there’s this… just because.

30 Days of Lists- Day 5

Today’s prompt is-

“Reasons to start…”

ugh… I knew what this one was going to be….

Reasons to (finally) start getting seriously serious about finding that ever-elusive “healthy lifestyle” for real this time…

ugh…

1. I want a long healthy life with Jason. That’s always the biggie. . I want to travel the world with Jason. I want to ride around the country in an RV together. I want us to die peacefully together in our sleep holding hands like that old couple in the Titanic. Except for the ship sinking/ drowning part.
2. Of course the next one has to be wanting to live a long healthy life for the kids. I mean, somebody has to teach these guys how to cook, even if it’s from a distance right?. That’s going to take years and years.  I want to see my sister marry someone awesome and start collecting a bunch of adopted multiracial nieces and nephews for me to spoil rotten. I want to see Little Man grow up into a Big Man.
3. I want to take trapeze lessons. Like a lot.
4. I want to run.
5. My body deserves better than what I give it.
6. I am getting old and finding that things like doughnuts and Coke actually make me sick. Should probably take that as a sign.
7. Last week I reached my all time highest weight ever. That happened. Moving on.

I guess this list is kind of hard, and not for the obvious reasons. I truly don’t have a lot of hangups about my weight. I think I’m way hotter than the rest of the world thinks I am, but that’s ok. Not really looking for outside approval on that. I don’t feel guilty about eating “bad” food. I love the hell out of every bite. I don’t necessarily think that my weight is holding me back from anything. (Except trapeze lessons). I still rock my bathing suit on the beach. I still go out and do things. I really like my life. Would it really be that much more awesome if I lost weight?

So far I haven’t had any ill effects from being this size for the past 13 years. But I know they’re coming and I guess that’s what scares me. I do not want to take a handful of pills every day for preventable diseases.

On the other hand, I would like to be more active. I have goals that would be more easily met if I lost weight. I would like to feed my body with better food. It’s a process. Sometimes I’m in it, sometimes not. I don’t have any answers today. If I get any, you’ll be the first to know.

Getting way too deep with these past couple of lists! Ready for the next one.

List made 9.2.12

Curious about 30 Days of Lists? Check them out here. See all my lists (so far) here.