BRRR!

time: 7:42 am

indoor temp in front of the super drafty window: 58 degrees

outdoor temp: MINUS 12 degrees. As in 12 below zero!

Gold Stars!

Everyone needs some motivation in order to loose weight, eat healthy, exercise, behave, whatever the resolution may be. I jokingly mentioned using gold stars for when I make it down to the basement and actually USE my rowing machine.. and what did I end up doing? I got a pack of stars at the store a couple days later.

Once I "earned" a star and put it on the calender that is hanging on the kitchen wall, I imagined what it would look like with a bunch of stars. As lame and childish as the stickers and imagery may sound, that was encouraging! I'm not aiming to get a star every day. Rather just to have a bunch of them on there by the end of the month. If it's several days in a row, and then none for a few days, then so be it. I've got an almost 4 month old daughter to care for! To be able to SEE what I've done for the month at a glance seems to be helping more than anything else has so far. :)


Another step I've taken in my weightloss goal is to stop buying cookies (and forbid the Hubby from buying me ice cream!) If I really want cookies, then I have to make cookies. No more purchased goodies. So yeah, I've had cookies, but I know exactly what's in them - less weird crap, and more oatmeal! yumm... oatmeal chocolate chip cookies... good stuff! I do have to admit to buying one of the tiny Ben & Jerry's ice cream single serve cups the other week tho.. but it was forced self restraint, right? :)

I've also started shredding carrots into tomato-based foods. I got that idea from making a copy cat version of Olive Garden's pasta e'fagioli... I never taste the veggies in that soup, so I tried putting shredded carrots in taco meat last week. Neither of us could taste it! Our local grocery store also carries frozen chopped onion. PERFECT for those of us who hate chopping onion.. and those of us who don't like the texture in food can just cook a lil bit up really quick and add it to almost anything. With the fancy pants new blender that I won from Cranky Fitness, I've been thinking back to one of her posts about Jerry Seinfeld's wife's cookbook (which I can't find now, dammit!).. she basically purees veggies and hides them in regular foods for her kids. I'm so tempted to try that now that I've got The Blender..

Wa, you now know if you have spaghetti sauce or tacos at my house, it'll have hidden veggies!


And the ultimate motivation for me this week? stepping on the scale and seeing that I've lost 4 lbs since i re-started my weightloss project, post-baby. WOOHOO 4 pounds.. GO ME! :)

another random post

so I don't have much to say here.. especially since Lilly's starting to fuss, so I gotta go.. BUT yesterday I was at the store, and decided to pick up a box of that new Fake Sugar stuff, Truvia. yeah.. tried it in my coffee this morning, and I'm not impressed! It took off the bitterness of the coffee, but didn't really make it "sweet" per se.. and left a weird aftertaste. kinda like a odd film of flavor on the tongue. it's hard to explain! I say if you actually like sugar in your coffee, don't bother with the new stuff. Sugar is tried and true! :)

neighborly love

OMG I love my weird nosey neighbors right now! our house is surrounded by people on all sides so you KNOW we can't go outside without someone at least waving hi.. but since we got a good 6 inches of snow overnight and the hubby went to work without plowing... WOOHOO! the neighbor with the snowblower on his lawn tractor is now clearing our driveway! absolutely fantastic :) I'm SO making cookies to bring over later to say thanks! yeah, yeah.. I know I can use our snowblower. I've done it before. but with the baby in the house and noone to keep an eye on her while i spend an hour or so outside? I don't think so!

Snow day cookies for us!

yay!

my fancy-pants blender arrived today! just as I was trying to get the great dane Roxy out the door for only the second pee break of the day. Poor dogger was spayed yesterday, and on top of that had her teeth cleaned, nails cut, and droopy eyelid taken care of (drooped inwards and would irritate her eye. kinda like a perpetual eyelash stuck on your eye. not cool!) She's only eaten a lil bit of hamburg since getting home yesterday at 5pm, so we're a lil worried. the upside is that she's moving around the house a lil more now and we're waiting for her pain meds to kick in. Hopefully we'll have a nice, uneventful night.

and yes, of course while Roxy was keeping herself cooped up in her crate I couldn't help but think of our St Bernard that had to be put down back in May. We still miss you, Ellie!

so anyhow, my blender is here! woohoo! I'll have to play with it when my mom gets here later this afternoon.. if you're lucky, i might even post a pic of it! :)

a random link

It's F'ing COLD out here... like a whopping 9 degrees. Fahrenheit! rediculous... I'm procrastinating about taking the dogs out, so i'll write a random post. :)

Sometime today, I'll make it downstairs to my lonely rowing machine. My New Years Resolution? to actually use said machine more often. like more than once a month. preferably more than once a week! Maybe i should get some gold stars and put them up on the wall calander to mark the days I DO get down there. And silver stars for the days i DON'T eat ice cream? ehh...one thing at a time, I suppose

I found this blog post thru some "6 degrees of links" (yeah.. i'm coining the term, dammit!) but i think it's worth linking to here. For those of us who will NEVER look like this airbrushed teenager, here is a great Letter To Penthouse about how they present a more realistic image of the female body than the women's mags do: http://everygymsnightmare.com/?p=123