JustaBlog

Simply Business

I know I know it's Christmas and who wants to talk business at all, but Clay's parents are going to be here the next two days and I'm going to be off this machine for those two days.

Well if you haven't heard, it's time for me to leave Scrapartist. This has been an amazing, amazing time for me as a designer and Nan and Michelle took a leap of faith hiring me to their great team. For that I am eternally thankful.

Until the end of the year, all my stuff is on sale. Yay! I am retiring a bunch of items and they are on deep, deep discount. Once January rolls around, they will be gone FOREVER! Now's the time to use that Christmas money you got and stock up!

So go on over and do a little post Christmas shopping.
Oh yeah my storefront is here:
http://www.scrapartist.com/shoppe/manufacturers.php?manufacturerid=4

Okay off to read for 20 minutes, get up early, finish cleaning the house. Okay quick ramble.

Can I just say that the day after Christmas might be one of the worst days to visit people? Now don't get me wrong, I am REALLLLLY happy to see Clay's parents. They are wonderful and helped me through some hard times. And I can't wait for them to see Garrison. But man the house always gets SO messy on Christmas. I spent all of Christmas Eve cleaning and by the end of today it looked like a tornado blew through here. So I did a couple big things like clean the downstairs bathroom and will just have to get up early to finish. The baby's crying now and I'm just downright tired.

Sidetrack over.
Merry Christmas again. Night.

Merry Christmas

Here's a little gift from me to you to say Merry Christmas. Thank you to all those out there who read and post regularly, Lauren, Becki, Edhish, Sarah and loads more of you. This little blog isn't much but it's nice to know there are people that do read. And thanks to all my customers as well who make this design thing worth while. Here's a little gift for you.

DOWNLOAD HERE

I hope you have a wonderful holiday with your family. Christmas morning isn't even here yet and we have. Our Christmas Eve? Well for me, it was loads of cleaning to get ready for Christmas AND Clay's parents coming. I cleaned all day. BUT also there was a grand game of UNO where Frankie acted like such a goofball the whole time it had everyone laughing to tears. I made haystacks, pictures and recipe coming in the next couple days, made a huge stack of toad-in-the-holes for dinner, though they were really pig in the holes since I used PIG cookie cutters to make the holes, I set up the monkey bread so I could bake it off in the morning (yummy), we read the Nativity story in the Bible, an AMAZING thing happened that is worth an entire post and will save the truly phenomenal story for then, yeah it's phenomenal, the story is, and we watched the movie The Nativity Story. Then after putting the littles to bed we put out all the Christmas presents, hung stockings (will show those beauties soon too) and Clay played Tomb Raider. I'm about to go read my book and go to bed. I have an early morning!

So I hope you've enjoyed your family. I hope you have a great Christmas. 

It's coming..

The New Year. Yeah I know Christmas is really what's coming but the closer the New Year gets the more I feel like I want to DO something. Remember my DO something post? Clay's parents are coming the 26th and 27th so that has helped motivate everyone to do something. I've cleaned out and reorganized the bathroom shelves - Look aren't they fabulous? I have always envied people who when you go to their house everything seems in place. The towels are all stacked perfectly, everything has a place. That's one of my home goals in life, to get to where everything has a place and everything is in its place. So right now I LOVE my bathroom closet.

I also did school shelves, closets, washing laundry, cleaning every room top to bottom, yard cleaned and looking great, cleaned the upstairs bathroom that rarely gets used so it rarely gets cleaned (eek) and a million other things. Now of course the dishwasher has stopped working so dishes being my least favorite chore, it has thrown a monkey wrench in my "keep the kitchen constantly immaculate plan" I was working towards implementing. But still, a little pre-Spring cleaning has been going on anticipating their arrival.

It's been hard though cause I have all these projects I want to start doing around the house. We can't really afford them right now but I keep telling Clay that if we start the projects, do the things we don't need money for like tearing the wall down :) when we get a spare $20 here and there we can buy things to finish the wall project and it will slowly get finished instead of never getting finished if we just wait to have all the money we need. Honestly I have SO many projects I want done. We've been here for what? 7 months now and the house still doesn't quite feel "home"y to me. My first plan of attack after this whole Pre-Spring Cleaning thing gets wrapped up? The kitchen. Our house is small. It is. Our kitchen is small. It is. But here's a picture of it as it stands right now. Please excuse the couple dishes and the pots I am about to wash (please refer back to my no dishwasher issue and all that)

Okay so the plan? Simple butter walls with white cabinets. Clay's building me an island with a butcher block top and an overhang for stools. It will have cabinets underneath of course, to help defer the pain of losing the two top cabinets on the left of the picture. We really want to open the kitchen up to the room to the left that is supposed to be the dining room but is now the workout room. So we're taking out those cabinets and putting a hood above the stove. Well those are our tentative plans at the moment. Oh we're also replacing all the trim, painting it white, painting the door, and all sorts of other little touches. Our table will be moved over to the dining room that I will now be able to see from the kitchen and all the chairs (okay we need new chairs but one day I will have the simple country chairs I want) will be painted a countryish Robin's egg type blue.

Now won't that be cute? I'm still at a loss of what I will do after that to the living room to make it feel like home, but I couldn't be more thrilled with how my imaginary kitchen turned out. I can't wait to get started. We did get a $75 Lowe's card for Christmas already so that will help me get started. It won't get me to the finish line but you know the plan.. get started with what I can and chip away at it from there. Hopefully in the next month I will have the trim removed, the walls and cabinets painted and Clay will have done my island. Wishful thinking? Better wishful thinking that pessimism I guess. IF you have any ideas for the kitchen or see some major flaws please please let me know. Okay here's a question? Do you see a better place for that microwave? I have toyed with the idea of having an over-the-stove microwave that has a hood/fan built in but wouldn't that obstruct a lot of my view to the kitchen/dining room table that will be on the other side of the stove? I'd give my left arm for the perfect place to put that microwave, one that wouldn't be directly in my line of sight from the front door like it is now. And the more I look at my imaginary kitchen the more that I am not so sure about the open stove hood thing. I'll have to measure and see how high I could comfortably use a microwave. Maybe it'll be high enough to still be able to see to the other side easily. Who knows.

Okay sleep is calling me. I do want to start brainstorming my other big project in the making - the garden. I'm starting to plan it now. And Clay's come up with a fantastic idea for the beds. Oh it's going to be gorgeous. But that's for a later date. I've blogged, read loads of past posts at Pioneer Woman, so it's time for bed. This baby tonight wouldn't fall asleep. He fussed and fussed and would cry and just now officially fell totally and completely asleep - and um... it's 2:27 AM!!!!!!!! Clay luckily went to the store and bought cereal this afternoon so that I could sleep in. I knew there was a reason besides his cowboy boots and Wranglers that I loved that guy.

Just cause

Just cause I miss blogging I'm going to stay up later and ramble on. Anyone who knows me knows the paradox between being super shy and being so talkative I drive my friends crazy. Okay one of my good friends is more talkative than me so we're perfect like that. At times this blog serves as the outlet for my nonstop rambling that my husband is glad I don't expect him to be all the time. Once I really get going talking, moving from topic to topic fast enough to make your head spin, he starts to smile and then I say "okay I'll stop" and smile bigger back. And he chuckles under his breath about how cute I am, and then I don't mind one bit that he is a man of few words and I am a woman of a million. I suppose if we both talked a lot there would be just too many words to even be able to have a decent conversation. Good so now I've definitely convinced myself more than ever that he's perfect for me.

Anyways, Christmas is almost here. We've been all sorts of broke so once again Clay and I weren't doing Christmas gifts. But I never know if he's going to stick to the no gifts plan. Sometimes he does sometimes he doesn't. So I never know whether to get him anything. This year I had no moolah so I didn't get him anything. So today he comes home from work and there's a big something in the back of his truck. And he comes in more loving than ever to tell me that's MY Christmas present! Well after 10 attempts typepad isn't letting me upload the picture. So.. it's an elliptical trainer machine. Love it.

 

I couldn't believe it. We didn't really have the money for one of those but he knew I wanted one (and I think he wanted one too lol). But I've been struggling to find times to exercise. He tested this one out and it is super super quiet so I could be on it in the morning in the bedroom and not wake up the baby. I assume he will probably do it in the morning and see if he doesn't wake me up. I loved the elliptical when I went to the gym. We are slowly building up a home gym. I would love to add a full weight maching, a recumbent bike, a full set of neoprene dumbbells for me instead of those mamoos Clay uses, some medicine balls, etc. I would just love a full home gym.

To switch topics, our Christmas tree is dead. Okay it's not totally dead but getting there. I guess Clay didn't think about the fact that the trees at places like Lowe's were cut down in August. They're fine if you want them for a week, but not a month. Next year, mom and pop Christmas tree lots here we come. So despite keeping it full of water, despite it having periodic fertilizer treatments, that thing is dead. It's still green, but a dull, pathetic shade of green. Man I need to take a picture of it. Let me describe it for you.

Okay, so we have kittens, so the bottom three feet of the tree have NO ornaments, no nothing. They have a string of lights that keeps getting pulled off by the cats cause I'm too lazy to deal with it, but aside from that, bare. Yeah bare. Let's think about what bare means for a dry brittle Christmas tree. Everywhere a cat has walked by, swatted, climbed in, bumped, is BARE. No leaves/needles. So yeah pretty much the tree is sticks for the bottom 3 feet. Then comes the sweeping. Twice a day I sweep under the tree. And I remove a huge, huge pile of needles. Darn if every time I would try and sweep those bare sticks weren't getting caught all in my broom. So I had enough. I took the kitchen scissors and did some makeshift pruning. A landscape artist I am not. So NOW, our tree is bare for the bottom three feet, and the entire left side of those three feet is nothing. Yeah, nothing. No needles, no BRANCHES of any kind. Just a gaping hole. Yeah it's bad. Bad bad bad. But Cassie cries when I talked of taking it down before Christmas. Does she not understand what a colossal mess all the wrapping paper, children in jammies, and the mountain of needles will be? Christmas tree..... your days are numbered. Though the real adventure will be getting that thing out of here without covering every inch of it's path with needles. Ahh the holidays. Good times.

So quickly before I go how about a quick little random list of things I was thankful for today,
1. well that rocking little elliptical of course
2. a husband that applauds my weight loss efforts and is supportive whether I lose or not
3. Finding that I actually OWN the third book in a 4 book series I am reading. I was SO bummed to have read the first two books then not being able to afford the other books until I got paid. So now I can move on reading!
4. the yummy BBQ that Clay brought home for lunch
5. that today was the first day of Clay's one week vacation!!!!!
6. that Cassie is such a great help with the baby
7. that everyone had clean laundry today and has it for tomorrow as well
8. that I have an amazing women's board that i can ask whatever I want. Today it was knitting questions.
9. that I signed up for that 5K. I haven't been working out and today got all scared about the race and now realize that I HAVE to. I am very thankful to have things that force me to work out.
10. that I have a nice king size bed that I can crawl into in about 5 minutes.
11. that there are people that care about me that read this blog and are able to stay connected to my life
12. sleep. the sleep I'm about to get.

Well that sleep is calling me. Good night all. And if you actually read all that, I know you're one of those afore mentioned people who love me. hehehe. I was going to post another picture but due to technical difficulties, it will have to wait.

Night.

 

The Rubber Meets the Road

Well... I guess the rubber meets the road on this whole dieting naked thing. So I haven't blogged since I decided to blog my weight journey. One can and should assume that there's always a reason for that. Remember that thing long ago faithful blog readers where I talked about how I withdraw when things go bad instead of reaching out? Well so goes the eating and exercising.

All those out there with a significant amount of weight to lose... ever just feel crazy? Like you want to just shake yourself asking "what's wrong with you?!!!" I feel that right now. I get all gung ho, have a few great days, lose weight! then fall right back off the wagon and find myself eating 8 Snickerdoodles. I know I need to embrace that whole "make a small mistake jump right back on board" but man once I eat that cookie I feel so deflated and throw my arms up in the air. They go up and come down with another cookie. I literally take bites between loud sighs about eating said cookie. So why oh why if I felt the need to sigh, I didn't just put the cookie down you ask? Well if I knew the answer to that question we wouldn't be having this discussion would we? So that one bad day snowballed into a bad weekend that ended with.... sitting here now.

So there was a time before Dr. Phil became the new Jerry Springer that I watched that show. HE was always asking people these questions. One of which was about WHY you give yourself permission to do things. Well Dr. Phil come on over cause I need the answer. WHY did I ask Clay if he wanted me to make him Snickerdoodles knowing that I had given myself permission to eat some dough and a cookie? Why did I tell myself that was alright? Why did I grant permission to make myself miserable? Then of course he goes on to talk all about the payoff. I can hear him now with that Texas twang "Well you must be getting something out of it. What's the payoff? What are you getting out of being FAT?

What AM I getting out of it? That always seemed like the dumbest question on the planet when he said it. Like I GET anything out of being overweight. So WHY did I feel at ease giving myself permission to eat cookies? Do you know? I don't.

So tomorrow I will resume some normal blogging with pictures and talk of the family. Just had to vent at MYSELF for a minute while I worked on going to bed. Well I have a shirt to iron then bed. Night.

I WON!

I just got this email from Tamron that says"

Congratulations!!

You are the lucky winner of the Tamron 18-250mm lens for the Digital
Scrapbooking Day sweepstakes.

I forgot I entered that contest!!!!!!!! That's a $500 lens. Rock on.

Dieting Naked

I just read something that explains fully my decision to try and blog my weight loss journey.

DIETING NAKED

What dieting naked means "You unveil yourself, diet in plain sight without shame" So now everyone, all of you know I am trying to lose weight. My mom knows, grandmother knows, YOU know and I know you know. Customers of mine know, people who like to smack me down on the bad blog know. Not that most of you care LOL but I can imagine you do. I mean we ALL think people care about what we wear, look like, etc. when in reality pretty much they all just don't give us a second thought.

So begins my stripping it all away and exposing this journey for what it is, exposing my weight. Perhaps my before picture will come soon.

The dreaded word.

WEIGHT.

Barbara's blog journey has inspired me to do something that scares me, something I consider drastic. I admit I am only a fraction of the way through her weight loss journey but I am changed. I have decided to document my weight journey here on my blog. As I type this I feel this overwhelming urge to either throw up or run out of the room. But I need to force the issue.

In my weight loss journey lately I've had to face some truths about myself. I don't begin to think I understand it. I wish I did! I don't yet know the WHYs of my weight issues. But I have been trying to look at myself and see my behavior for what it is. I think often like with any other addiction, people who are overweight are in denial about how big they are, how much they eat, why they eat, everything. We know it's out of control but don't want to admit it all to ourselves or we would just sit and cry. So I've been trying to be honest with myself.

I didn't realize how out of practice I am with being honest with myself. I always thought I was someone who really knew who they were. But when I took the time to really stop and look, I don't. We don't want to look and see that we are lazy, that we lack self control, that we despise ourselves, that we don't think we deserve to succeed. I'm not sure I understand that last one, but for some reason I feel it's true. It always seemed like psychological mumbojumbo that I thought was a crock but now it seems true (though it still seems like mumbojumbo lol). So I've been forcing myself to look.

And one of the things I know about myself is that I am a quitter. I don't follow through on what I start, pretty much ever. Julie on the Biggest Loser was wearing one of those shirts of why they are losing weight, and hers said "to finish something I've started for once". I literally cried. I NEED to finish this. I NEED to keep working and hit the finish line with my weight, if for nothing else but to prove to myself that I CAN.

So that's why I am doing this. Now of course, given that last paragraph I suppose there's a good chance that I won't keep posting LOL! but hopefully this will be something that will be part of the journey to be someone who follows through, regardless of whether I post here like I want to or not.

So on to the hard part. But I'm not scared of the numbers. I am starting on a weight loss journey. I'd like to say I will never be the weight I am right now again but I can't. What I can say that these numbers have meaning now. When I am down they mean a victory, if I'm up it means I have more work to do, that I have to look at what's going on with me. The numbers are just part of it, they are not IT, and they are not ME.

Last year I lost 40 lbs. I started at 222 and was down at 182 before I got pregnant. After the baby and the lbs I've put on since then I am now at:
Last Week's weight: 202.2
Today's Weigh in: 201.0

Okay so I'm down 1.2 lbs. But it's hard because I gained 7 while my mom was here so I feel like I'm just catching back up to where i was. See? See how hard it is to just be proud of ourselves when we lose? So time to pat myself on the back and say good job. There's always... But I still have 80 lbs to go, or I was up last week so this doesn't count. or I should have been more. Enough already people! I need to learn to say good job and push forward.

I need to come back and post about food (as I am hoping to make myself accountable for what I eat here as well. For now, I've eaten a sunflower seed milkshake (with sunflower seeds, ice, carob powder, caffix (natural fake coffee flavor), a pinch of raisins, and stevia). I think I'm about to eat an apple with the children then do chores. Until later.

For relatives that print these blog posts I will always put my weight post on it's own so you don't have to print it. :)

If you read this, go now and drink a glass of water. I'm sure you need it! :) (oh and if you WROTE this blog entry, go drink water - you DO need it!)

A Mid Day post

I never do these well... because I don't really have time. Usually when I post it's really really late before bed. But I am letting the littles watch LazyTown and am going to do this for ME.

So Thanksgiving was good. We did it on Saturday because my mom was coming on Thursday and it was too crazy. Her visit was good. The children LOVE their Nana and always have an amazing time. The children and I are really blessed to have her in our lives. It truly makes me happy that she is so close to them. She knows them as PEOPLE which is something that is something I truly cherish. She stayed for a week and a half. We went everywhere, bought some things, stayed up late, she let me sleep in a lot YAY!, the children played with her and she read them books, we visited with our friend Nancy and their family, we went out to eat a number of times, went to the movies, just had a general great visit all around! My sweet Mama did buy me a new CrockPot (amongst some other AMAZING things). I have already jumped right in using it. I couldn't love CrockPots any more than I do. And get the real Rival CrockPots - no hot spots, even heating, just better. In the last week I've made two of the 5 meals with it. First I did a big pot of beans with onions, chili powder and loads of Louisiana Hot Sauce. I shredded our leftover turkey in it, made some pico with these fabulous tomatoes my Mom had bought, onions, garlic, lime juice, sea salt, and some Sambal Olek (I'm not going in the fridge to find out how to spell that). We had that over brown rice. It was generally just yummy. Then yesterday I put a bag of chicken quarters, loads of garlic and onions, white wine, stewed tomatoes (that Cassie squished) tomato sauce and paste. That simmered all day, then I pulled all the meat from the bones and had just a great chicken spaghetti dinner. LOVE Crock Pots. Everyone should have one and use it regularly.

Well I thought I was going to post all these things but I got wrapped up in making homemade graham crackers (which would have been better with graham flour lol) that we ate with peanut butter, telling stories while we ate them, getting people in their quiet time places and now the baby is screaming. Will try again later.

8 Things Meme

Another great Meme. And yes I'm going to tag people today! Carrie, CD (when she sees this lol) and Meredith to force her to do a blog post :)

8 Things I'm Passionate About:
1. Learning to truly love the Lord
2. Raising my children to love the Lord and each other
3. Raising Animals, right now mainly Chickens (but one days other animals)
4. Learning to work with my hands (sewing, etc.)
5. Making my husband happy
6. Living a SIMPLE life (still in the starting to learn stage)
7. Being healthy, eating healthy, whole foods, and losing weight
8. My digital designing

8 Things I Want To Do Before I Die
1. Go to Israel and Egypt.
2. Have cows
3. Be totally debt-free!!!
4. Be at my goal weight
5. Be able to sew myself a real dress. Not a jumper, a dress with buttons down the front and a nice collar
6. Read through the entire Bible start to finish
7. See one of my children have children
8. Bring someone to the Lord

8 Things I Say Often
1. Dude
2. Enough!
3. Cassie grab the baby
4. Sit right here next to me
5. I love you too Babydoll
6. Psssttt (at the naughty cats)
7. Yeah yeah
8. Like (this bad habit needs to STOP)

8 Books I've Read Recently
1. The Bible
2. When Cricket's Cry
3. The Betrayal
4. Pursuit of a Godly Seed by Denny Keneaston
5. Biblical Holidays
6. Managers of Their Homes
7. Charlotte's Web
8.  The Wizard of Oz

8 Songs I Could Listen To Over and Over
I don't really have a list of these. I'm not the biggest music person. I like all music and listen to whatever. The only one I can think of is the song from the Breakfast Club. :)

8 Things That Attract Me To My Best Friends
1. Their Optimism
2. Their Kind Hearts
3. Their Strength
4. Their Love of Jesus
5. Their Sense of Humor
6. The Generosity
7. Their Acceptance of Me As I am
8. Their General Love of Life

8 People Who Should Totally Do This Meme