Uninspired

Plainly feeling uninspired the last two days. Not sure why. I have no motivation to do anything. Although one reason could be the cold I have. Ugh. Its the only part I dislike about winter. Getting sick. I'm not running a fever or anything just a cough and a runny nose. I have been chasing it all over the house. Hopefully I will be back to normal in another few days. On an upside I am working on another set of wedding invitations, this time for my sisters mother-in-law. i have an idea clear in my mind. I just need beach sand! LOL. It will all make sense once I get it put together!

Growth.

Kinda sad tonight. I have spent every night for nearly 4 years singing my daughter to sleep and tonight she didn't want me to. *sigh* She is getting so big! I look back at pictures of her as an infant and wonder where that little tiny girl went. Then I look at her now and go "oh that's where." We want them to stay small and sweet forever and then at the same time cant wait for them to start walking, talking and do more then just lay there. Ah the life of being a mother!

Keeping On Keeping On!

I know allot of people just feel like life is pounding them into the pavement and its not hard to understand why. I feel this way sometimes to. As a friend said "Sometimes I just wanna punch life in the face" and I have to agree. There are times that all of us feel that way. But the important thing to remember is that if we don't keep moving forward, then slowly everything else will stop. It takes each and every single one of us to keep our lives, and this world, moving. We are all connected in some, though maybe minute, way. Call it 6 degrees, or 7 billion, of separation. (Sheesh I feel a quote from the Lion King coming on!) I recently watched a video via Facebook and it was quite enlightening. Just one small act of kindness can make the world go round. If each of us do one small kindness it will be seed planted, and as that one small kindness continues to spread and grow then we will eventually have a beautiful rose garden. All we have to do is stop being so blind to the world around us and open up our hearts. There's nothing stopping us but our own petty thoughtlessness and insecurities. Noting ventured nothing gained, and in this case all it is, is a smile.

Via Pinterest.

Sleep?

Lordy am I bushed today! Exercising at home then a Zumba class last night makes for one very tired mamma  I need a nap! But I wont get one (hangs head in sorrow.) Gosh I don't think I have gotten a nap, a real and truly good nap, since my daughter quit napping nearly 2 years ago. (That's what we get when kids grow up.) But at least this morning I have gotten a few things done like updating my blog and getting my daughter up and dressed for school, which Daddy took her to. Its very icy out around our house. It looks like we have a little snow on the ground but I am sure its closer to freezing fog crystals or something along those lines. Slow going to pick up my daughter and my friends son from school. But that's the way it is! So if you are anywhere where the weather is a bit dicey do be careful!

Another day

Lordy am I bushed and the day has hardly started! Darn kindle for keeping me up at night. LOL. I am a glutton for punishment. I can consume a single book in a day. I have a voracious appetite for reading (This could be the reason why I was voted Biggest Book Worm of my graduating high-school class.) I don't actually have a kindle but I have the kindle app on my tablet. It gets used the most. BUT I am trying to get to bed by 11pm. the last year its been 1am bedtimes and 7:30am wake-up calls. I have to change that, even if I only get to bed by midnight its better then 1am. LOL. and my daughter will be 4 soon, but her favorite way to start the day is to lay across me in bed and say "get up! get up!" i can hear the volley of groans from those of you with kids (Cause you know what I mean). The way I see it kids are the "most expensive form of entertainment" out there. You never know what they are gonna do or say and half the time it makes you wanna pull your hair (so this explains why I am going bald and I have grey hairs!) or laugh your ass of till tears run down your face. I love the fact that I come from a big family (the youngest child of 7) I think we exasperate my mother even now; but now I totally understand how she felt with us as kids around. I have to bite my tongue every time I mutter something that I remember my mother saying! Its astounding and maddening all rolled into one! Ahhhhhhh!!

Giveaways!

Something I have been wanting to do for a while are giveaways. I have attempted to do them before but with little success. I am trying again! Perseverance! I will prevail! LOL. Anyways I am lining up some goodies so I can do a giveaway every other week. I have a line on a few wonderful items; these first few things I have used or tried out myself and I truly think they are great! I hope you Enjoy them to. Simple guideline to follow: You must enter your name and email address as a comment under the post to qualify for the giveaway. I will use random.org to select the winner. See that picture above? The one that fairly screams GIVEAWAY? Well you will see a different one when I do a giveaway.... So keep them peepers peeled and lets have some fun!

New pages!!

I am congratulating myself on leaning something new on blogger: Pages! My posts will now be under the different pages! I am so excited about this. This will make navigating my blog so much easier for everyone, including myself, as I add to the varied list of things that I love to do! I am just this side of weird, and I enjoy doing all of these different things and sharing it with all of you! What I add to each page will be at the top of the page. The older stuff will move to the bottom. Each section will have a BOLD underlined heading. That way navigating will be easier. I hope to see ya'll come by and check it out!

The thing women loath!

Ok. So there are a few things that women just hate and the biggest one of them all is weight loss. Its the bane of our existence  Its so easy to put it on but to take it off?? Holy heck, you'll work yourself, or starve yourself, to reach that goal. This year I am determined to follow through with my plan. I am creating an exercise plan for myself for AT HOME. I neither have the time, energy or the finances to drive to a gym, pay for a gym membership, or arrange for a babysitter. Why waste the extra energy, time or money when I could devote it to a simple plan I can do at home and do with my daughter around? I find that its actually GOOD for kids to see their parents do things like cooking, cleaning (My daughter loves to help me, though ask her to pick up her play-dough and we have battle royale!) and exercising. It gives them a good role model to look at and sets them up to make better decisions as they get older. I firmly believe in this. Monkey see monkey do!

Since I hit puberty I have always been "Big." Doctors classify me as "obese" though that is a loose term for anyone we see as "fat" which is also another loose term. Quite frankly I know I am heavy and I don't need the reminder, its just depressing. BUT I really do need the reminder. I may be healthy, for the most part, now, but who knows what the future may bring? I am 30 years old, My daughter is nearing her 4th birthday and I really DON'T want to deal with the medical crap that has the potential to affect me as I get older. We have history of Diabetes  heart disease and a slew of other maladies in my family. As of now I have three things that affect me. Bipolar disorder  Osteo-Arthritis in my lumbar and I am overweight. Starting today this is going to be a chronicle of my weight loss journey. I am not going to be doing stuff like Jenny Craig or nutri-system or any of those fads, I am simply going to Eat like I normally do (though I may increase my fruit and veggie consumption) and exercise. That's it! I have a wonderful friend who is keeping a blog about her weight loss journey and we are working on getting fit together. Its so nice to have someone to commiserate with. LOL. Anyways, here is her blog link. Right now she is recovering from surgery so shes not exercising with me yet, but she will be soon :-) We are zumba buddies too. Here's her link!

http://muffintopchronicals.blogspot.com/

So On with the show. One of the things I have taken time to do is create a chart to keep track of my measurements. Sometimes we don't see a whole lot of change on the scale but by keeping track of our measurements we can really see where we are working it. The other thing I had to do was buy a scale...Yup I didn't have one. So that was accomplished today. You can save this measurement chart to your computer and print it off on an 8.5x11 sheet of paper. Week 1 for me was just doing my measurement and getting all my stuff together so that when week 2 starts I am ready to roll. I will be posting recipes and things that I have found, and work for me, that may be of some use to you. If my pudgy butt can do this so can you (whether you are pudgy or not.)

Look for the next post where I go over the different exercised I am using and how to do them properly. I actually had to look some of them up cause I didn't know their exercise techno names. Weird, Right?

Animal crayons!

Oh how do I love messing with crayons?? I used to call them cre-yons as a kid (sounds like an offshoot of the Klingon's and Romulans) and I still like doodling with them. Well I decided to make shaped crayons for my nephews for Christmas, I had this genius idea of using my Nordic Ware muffin tins! They are perfect for this project! I went out and bought two brand new box's of crayons for this project. I wanted to have whole crayons to work with, makes removing the wrappers that much easier. So here goes!

Supplies:
*Crayons (I fully recommend you use Crayola crayons. The wrappers are not glued to the crayon. "Generic" brands glue the wrappers to the crayons and are a pain to remove. You end up needing to scrape the crayon with a butter knife or a spoon to remove the wrapper glue.)
*Large pot or bowl
*towel
*Shaped muffin tin (Nordic ware is my fave by far, pictured are the garden bugs and the Zoo friends shapes) (silicone shaped pans work great too, I have a turkey one I used for the metallic crayons, these are not shown)

Step 1: fill your pot or bowl with warm water and dump all your crayons in. Make sure you push them down under the water so they all get wet. Let them soak for a few minutes. Use your hands to mix them a little. You may notice the wrappers already coming off.

Step 2: once the crayons have soaked for a while (5 minutes), gently start to peel the paper off.

Step 3: Set the crayons on a towel to air dry, or you can dry them individually to speed the process along. LOL

Step 4: Group the crayons how you see fit, (for one batch I grouped them into contrasting colors) and break them into 4 pieces per crayon, (I have found that if you dont break them down like this they dont melt evenly and you end up with solid chunks sticking up.) and place into your pan. (I am missing the image for this step but I will get it up soon)

Step 5: Place pan in oven set at 200-225 degrees for about 10 minutes. (You will need to watch your oven as each one varies.) Once the crayons have all melted pull them from the oven and let cool. (I experimented by placing a pan in the fridge to cool it faster and it worked, but i ended up with micro-fractures and these crayons broke very quickly, so i suggest letting them cool at room temp, then once cool, you can pop them in the fridge for 5 mins to make sure there are no mooshy spots.)

Once they are cool, pop'em out and have fun!