Getting healthy: Week 10

Hello again my friends.

I just realized that I haven't been updating all of you on how I've been doing on my new lifestyle. SHAME ON ME!

Well I have to say it is going pretty good!

I am currently in the middle of week 11. I will weigh in again on Friday.

So let me see.

I have been doing pretty good. I am keeping my calories pretty much in check. Usually I stay right around 1200-1300 a day but sometimes if I feel I need more like around that time of the month and when I have a cold (like last week) I will take my caloric intake up to 1500 calories per day.

As far as exercising..well I started planning my workouts in advance the weekend before last and it has helped me be more consistent with my workouts.

I also started doing Fitnessblender workouts on YouTube. If you are trying to lose weight and you want some great workouts then look them up. 

I know I haven't updated in a few weeks and I honestly couldn't tell you what happened but I know I was losing a pound or so then gained a pound and a half. Then last weigh in I had lost 3 pounds putting me at 154 pounds. So that means that I have lost a total of 9 pounds since January 1st and a total of 14 pounds since November.  

As I stated earlier I had a horrible head cold starting last Wednesday. I literally couldn't breathe!!

However, I did manage a couple workouts while I was sick.  I honestly don't know how I lost 3 whole pounds but I imagine it was the mixture of Zumba and the fitness blender workouts I did.

This week I have my workout schedule as follows: 

Monday-FitnessBlender- arms/cardio

Tuesday-Walk or Zumba

Wednesday- Fitness Blender Legs

Thursday- walk or Zumba

Friday- Fitness Blender Core

Saturday- Walk or Zumba or Yoga

Sunday- Rest and cheat day.

As far as eating: I kind of have it down to a science at this point.

For breakfast I will have a couple eggs with a little shredded cheese and salsa plus a cup of coffee with French vanilla international delight creamer.

Lunch I will have anything really. Usually it's a tuna on a whole wheat sandwich round or a salad. 

But sometimes I will have a few potato and cheddar perogies ore a couple of chicken and cabbage egg rolls.

Dinner will be whatever I fix for the family. However, if there is something particularly unhealthy (like 400 calorie per half cup serving of Mac n cheese) I will substitute it with a salad.

I also try to make sure I have a snack or two between meals if I am going to go longer than a few hours without eating. I will have some hummus and blue corn chips or some veggies and hummus, guacamole, fruit, muscle milk. 

I dunno. I just have a simple approach to eating. I know how many calories I  need to consume daily (at least 1200) I eat what I want to eat (I'll have a small piece of cake if I want it) and just make sure I exercise!

Also, Sunday is my rest day and my cheat day. I eat whatever I would like (in moderation) and I try not to go too crazy. I try to stay below 1500 calories that day.

So there you have it. Today's workout was a walk/run. I did 3.41 miles in 58 minutes and 22 seconds. I burned 290 calories. I'm happy with that!

Ok my friends, it's gorgeous outside today so I'm gonna go out and enjoy it before dinner.

Until we meet again,

Be Blessed,

Erin

Cleaning: Before and After; Just keeping it real.

Hello again my friends.

I'm going to apologize ahead of time if this post seems off a bit. I am still sick! 

My head is so stuffy it is hard for me to think straight.

My friends, I'm gonna keep it real! I'm gonna show you what happens when I don't keep up with my house every day! This is going to be a cleaning before and after of some of the rooms in my home. I didn't do the laundry room or the bathroom because those two rooms were pretty clean to begin with. I just picked up and mopped those rooms. I also didn't include my kids' bedrooms because I just feel a little funny about showing them. However, those rooms have been cleaned by their occupants. :)

Now for a little background. We had a sleepover on Saturday. The house was cleaned on Sunday. So that means that this mess was 3 days in the making. Now sometimes things will be worse than this (a lot worse) and sometimes better. This was an in between week.

So lets start in the living room.

Here in photo one you can see the blankets and just ordinary mess on the couch. Those laundry baskets are full of clean clothes. My hubby washes and dries the laundry and I fold and put it away.

Here is the other side of the room. It isn't as bad. I just needed to put a few things away and straighten up some stuff.

Here is a good view of the majority of my living room. I put everything in it's place and dusted and vacuumed.

Here is the other side. The room looks much bigger when it is picked up.

Now for my kitchen.

My kids's chores are to do the dishes after dinner every night so there are only the morning's breakfast dishes to wash. Other than that I just had to pick up a few things and empty the trash. I also swept and mopped the floor.

Here is my kitchen after I cleaned it.

Next is the dining room.

My dining room is only 10 feet by 10 feet. So I literally divided it up into two sections. First is the dining room table. This is where my hubby does his school work and my kids do their homework. I also spend a lot of time here planning, studying, and deciding on things.

Here is the other side of my dining room. It contains the kennels my puppies sleep in at night, the school supply tote and my really messy bookshelves that housed books we have already read and no one touches.

My dining room table looks so much bigger after it is cleaned off. 

Here is the after of the other side. I tracked down the lid to the school supply tote and I put a lot of our books in the purge basket. We will be selling them in a yard sale when the weather is better.

Next is my bedroom. When we moved into this house my hubby and I took the smallest bedroom in the house. My room is where everything goes when we are deciding what to do with it. I wish I could say it stays clean but most of the time it isn't.

This is how my room looked before I cleaned it up.

(Please don't be offended by the flag. It is a state of Georgia flag. That is where hubby and I met and where we are from)

Here is after. 

Our room feels so much bigger and comfortable when it is cleaned up.

This shows the same view as the before picture above.

My friends please don't think ill of me or think I don't keep my house clean because I do clean a lot. However, I just to keep it real! This is what happens to my house in just a few days of me not tidying up every day. If I am sick or if we are really busy and I don't have time to clean, this is what happens.

Mainly I just want to let anyone out there who is struggling to keep their house clean know that it is normal. I have 4 kids and 3 pets and honestly I have to tidy up about an hour every day to maintain a clean house. If I skip a day or two then I have to spend a day cleaning up. This cleaning adventure took me around 6 hours to complete from start to finish and as long as I continue to tidy up daily, I will maintain my house as it is now.

I hope you all enjoyed this "keepin it real" post.

Until we meet again,

Be Blessed,

Erin

Gardening: My garden is moving! New garden plans.

Hello again everyone. 

How are you?

I can honestly say I've been better! We had a glorious day here in Ohio yesterday! The temps were in the 70s, it was sunny, and I spent most of the day outside doing some yard work and garden planning. Today is a different story. I woke up to rain and dropping temps. We are supposed to get snow this afternoon! How crazy is that?!? 

I'm not feeling too well today. I woke up with a sore throat and a stuffy nose. As the day goes on this crazy cold keeps progressing. Now I have added a cough and loads of nose burning sneezes to the mix. You know, I really can't complain much because I have had fairly good health all winter long! 

Okay, enough of my ramblings, this post is going to be about my garden.

I know I have stated before that my poor garden beds were looking worse for wear because they were made out of wood and the termites and weather had finally got to them. I did get a good 4-5 years from those beds so I cannot complain too much. So at the end of the gardening season last year we tore up all the wood and just left the dirt mounds. Yesterday I smoothed out those dirt mounds because my plans were to build 3 new garden beds out of concrete block and to fill them with the true Mel's Mix from the All New Square Foot Garden book. 

Well, yesterday as I was smoothing out the dirt down the sunny side of my home I got to thinking. I am going to be spending $500 or more on garden supplies to rebuild my garden beds. Well, the area my beds sit in is also the area that my water line connects the city supply to my house. If we happen to have a water line problem, I would have to tear at least two of my garden beds apart just so they could dig up the line. I would be devastated if those types of repairs had to happen at the peak of growing season! I would probably cry my eyes out!!!

So, I have decided to move my garden beds to my back yard. I have a pretty small back yard. So I was worried about taking up the entire yard in garden beds. I still wanted to have room to entertain in my back yard. So I took some stakes and some yarn and measured and measured and measured and then did some mapping out and I came up with a pretty good plan that leaves a little bit of space in my back yard. 

Now, I don't have any pictures because there isn't anything to show so I will tell you about it.

I have a chain link fence around my yard. If you face my back yard I have an alley side on the left, straight ahead is the end of my back yard and to the right is my gazebo and a path that leads to the spot where my garden beds used to be.  My plan is to have two 8 foot by 4 foot beds with a two foot space between them about 3 feet from my back fence (3 feet so I can get behind my beds). Then I will have a 3 foot by 8 foot bed on the alley fence, right up on the fence which will be mainly an herb bed. I am really excited about being able to see my garden from my back deck and my gazebo. It will also be safer from people coming in my yard and picking my veggies.

I think the only problem I may have is the amount of sunlight I get in the back yard. During the height of summer I know I will get enough sunlight for my produce but it isn't like the previous spot that got sunlight nearly all day. But we will see.

I plan on getting most of the materials in a couple weeks and I promise I will take tons of pictures of the process to show you all! I may even take some pictures of the spots and let you see exactly what I'm talking about. 

Well that is all for now. My meds are kicking in and I'm feeling a little bit better so I think I will eat a snack or some lunch and get some more of my to-dos for the week checked off my list.

Until we meet again,

Be Blessed,

Erin

Let's Play Catch-up

My friends, I wish to send special thank you's to each one of you who read every post I put up.

I know I am very inconsistent with my blogging and I am truly sorry. 

I do have a valid excuse though. In order for me to blog properly I have to do it on a computer. The only computer available to me right now is my hubby's laptop. Now he takes online classes so I don't really like messing with it. I can post from my phone BUT I can only add one picture to the post and I just have so much more to share. So today I'm hijacking my hubby's laptop and updating you all on some things going on around Misadventure land.

 First up is the crazy weather. This has been the coldest and snowiest winter since I have lived in Ohio. For most of the winter the ground has been white and icy. Here are a few pictures. These pictures are after a bit of a thaw and I'm happy to report that the past several days have been lovely and we can finally see grass!

Isn't all that crazy! We could walk on the ice in the creek because it was so thick!

Secondly, I have been really lazy. If I was brave I would show you a picture of my bedroom. It is the one room in the house that doesn't get a regular cleaning. Usually I just throw stuff in there when I am cleaning and by the end of the day I am too tired to pick it all up! The rest of my house looks pretty good buy my bedroom mess really annoys me but I still don't clean it.

The laziness has extended to my couponing too. I got behind a few weeks ago because I just didn't have time to sit down and clip my coupons. So now I am several weeks behind. I do still use my coupons to snag great deals only I have to search through the inserts to find the coupons I need.

Both of these things I will be tackling this week. I find I just cannot cope and be productive when I have unfinished things. I dunno if it is a mental thing or what but I just cannot do it.

My hubby was on vacation last week and we spent a lot of time traveling around. So my diet suffered significantly. It is really hard to find decent foods to eat while out. So last week my diet was on a vacation as well. I didn't over eat but I did eat a lot of fast food. My weight on the scale showed it too because I gained 1.5 lbs. However, I am back on my normal routine as of today and hope to lose at least 2 pounds this week.

My hubby has had some exciting things happen on the work front. He applied for a job closer to home but with the same company in January. They called him and he interviewed and was offered the job. So this new job offered daytime hours, evenings and weekends off, but he would have to take a $1 paycut. He was going to take it! He would be home every evening, he would be able to go to church every Sunday and it was only 15 minutes from home. However, his boss came to him and asked him what he needed to stay at his current job and my hubby laid out his conditions. He got everything he wanted! Including a nearly $2 raise. So he will not be changing jobs afterall and he will be moving up in the company this year!

My daughter Faith's birthday was this past Friday. She turned 13 years old. We had her a sleep over party. She invited 3 of her friends. The next day we went to Chiller in Dublin and took all the kids including our boys ice skating. It was a first time for all of us and we had a blast. Here are some pictures.

Let me tell you, if that ice rink wasn't so far away I would go every day! I loved ice skating!

Finally, I would like to tell you about my garden. Right now I don't have a garden at all. We tore all of my garden beds up and I am in the process of spreading out all of the dirt mounds from my beds. We will be making all new beds this month. We are going to use concrete block for each bed and fill them with the mix of soil in the All New Square Foot Garden book. 

I just cannot wait to get my new beds put in and filled. We plan on using rock around my beds so we don't have to get the mower in that area. I am chomping at the bit to get some veggies growing. I miss my garden so much in the winter.

Well I think that pretty much catches you all up. I hope to begin blogging regularly. It may just be words without pictures but there is so much going on I want to share with all of you.

Until next time friends,

Be Blessed, 

Erin