Baby Steps

So, I've decided on some goals for this year....finally!

1) I'm going to diet and work out.  Tried HCG for about 20 days, and it didn't really work.  Sure, I lost 10 lbs, but I plateaued and caved in to some cravings, and cheated a little....okay, a lot.

2)  I've decided that little by little I will declutter and organize and deep-clean our tiny little apartment.  I've already decluttered surfaces (and the inside of the desk) in the kitchen/dining/living room areas, put away all the clean laundry, reorganized the kitchen cabintes (the ones that hold food, at least), and cleared off the top of the wash stand at the end of our bed upstairs.  My goals for the coming week?  The upstairs hall closet, Marshy's room/closet, the rest of the kitchen cupboards, and our bedroom closet.

3)  I want to read 75 books this year.  Last year I read around 50, starting in July, so.....yeah. 75 isn't too bad, is it?

4)  I'm participating in OPAM 2011 again.  What does this mean?  I plan on finishing at least 1 crafty-related item a month....at least 11 this year (OPAM didn't start until the end of January).

5)  I plan on finishing the first 2 parts of my 3 part series.  I started writing it for NaNoWriMo last November, and got 3/4 of the way through the first part, and 1/8 of the way through part 2.

I've decided to stay small with my list of goals.  The more goals you make, the harder it is too keep them.  And right now, I'm planning on keeping these 5.     :-D

One of those days....

Today is one of those days.

The kind of days when things don't get done.

Why? Because I'm currently re-reading the Twilight Saga. It is way better than I remembered it.

Anyway, I have managed to get a few things done. Several quilts, in particular. This one was my favorite. It took me a week, but it turned out so good!

Also, I've started working out again. UGH! It is so hard. Last night was the worst, because we had a bbq right before. I would've put it off, but I know that I have to be good. Besides, I have a work out buddy and she was already at my house! haha

I'm also working on a few other things, so we'll see how they all go. Does anyone else ever feel like they are stretched too thin in a million directions? It's not just me, right?

Also, preparing for court at the end of August. I'm nervous, but excited. Again, I'll let ya'all know how that one turns out.

Next week I hope to be done reading the Twilight books, so then I'll have more time to actually post things here on my blog. :D

Fun New Game

Marshy discovered this really fun new game tonight. It's called "Put the laundry basket on top of you and sit there until Mom makes you go to bed." Fun, huh?!
If you look closely in the picture above, you can see his toes peeking out through the handle hole.

You can easily see his little fingers in this one, but his head is a little harder to see. It's right there above the fingers a few inches, though. He was practically bent in half! Oh to be that flexible again!

Which reminds me.... how is it possible that I can work out for 5 straight days, but the routines are getting harder instead of easier? Shouldn't they get easier the more you do them?? Seriously! Major pain tonight was what I experienced. OUCH!

Also, looked at an apartment in SF, and LOVED IT! Turned in an application. Hope we get it. The scary part is that they ask you how much debt you owe and what your monthly payment is. When you lump it all together like that it looks really bad. Good news, though, with Mike's nice paycheck, and my added income from quilting (and soon to be added medical transcriptionist income as soon as I finish the class in June), we have been able to make more than the minimum monthly payments (and we've been paying a lot in rent for where live). So, hopefully we'll get this place, and since the rent is a lot lower, we'll be able to pay off even more! Oh that would be so nice!! :) Fingers Crossed!!

Update

So! I've lost another 2.2 pounds! WOOHOO! Well, that was as of Monday. I weighed again today, and have lost another 0.7 pounds so far. YAY! I really can feel it, kind of. The funny thing is that I don't feel like I'm not eating as much as I did before. I'm just making healthier choices. I don't feel like I really miss anything....well, except for the Ghiradelli double chocolate brownies that come in the BIG box at Sam's Club.....

I am hoping that my will power and determination stay strong. I've started doing Power 90, from beachbody, and it is definitely a workout. It gets a little bit easier each day though, so as long as I stick with it, I'm sure I'll do well. Here's hoping for a big number at weigh-in on Monday!

One Project a Month Progress

Remember I joined this challenge? Well, here is my project for January. I am so glad it is finally done. I bought this fabric to use in a quilt, which ended up going to my cousin Andrea when her baby girl was born, just before Christmas. I had so much excess of backing fabric after the quilt was trimmed down, I seriously wonder what the pattern author was thinking! haha

I think it turned out okay. I am calling it Busty's Bag ver. 1.0. You can see closer photos and more details here. There are a few things I'm not happy with, so I will be changing them at a later date. The cool thing about this is that it is totally machine washable, and if I don't like it as a gym bag I can make it a diaper bag and use the ties on the side for holding a rolled up blankie or something.

There will be a pattern available, eventually, once I hammer out some of the kinks in the pattern.

If I only had a brain

Have you ever told yourself several times that you needed to NOT FORGET something, and then forgotten it?

I did that today. I was going to finish the NYD Mystery Quilt 2009. It is on the machine, just waiting for me. Of course, the one thing I needed to finish it was my 6 1/2 by 24 inch ruler. I told myself countless times: "Now, on the next trip out to the car I need to grab the camera, the diaper bag, our waters, and the ruler." Do you think I remembered? Sure! I remembered the camera, the diaper bag, and the waters. Totally forgot the ruler.

So, now I am a day behind schedule in my quilting. I figure if I can hurry and finish the mystery quilt, that I can maybe get 2 more done. Possibly 3. That would be nice.

To chart my progress, I only worked out for 1 hour today instead of 2. I think I might have strained my right knee a little, so I'm going to have to take it easy. :( I was doing so well, too! Maybe I can take some time in the middle of the day to go run on the track or something.

We almost bought an elliptical today. It was on sale at GNC.com. Really pretty cheap, actually. I was on my way to grab the credit card when I realized: "Where in the heck am I going to stick this thing once it gets here??" We're moving in a few months, to an unknown location, and probably won't have as much room as we do here. (Which reminds me, if anyone knows of a nice, cheap place with at least 2 bedrooms in the area between Payson and Provo, please let me know! We would like to move out the end of February if at all possible, and would need at least a 6 month lease...preferably a 12 month lease.) Instead of the elliptical, I think we'll save our money and buy a nice steam cleaner for cleaning the kitchens and bathrooms.

Today in a nutshell

Marshy woke up at 4 AM. Wanted to watch "Buzz". We watched Toy Story 2....twice. He fell asleep at some point during the 2nd showing, because he was out when I woke up!

It snowed. ALL DAY. UGH! I hate when it snows. Had to dig my car out. Well, not completely out, but I will tomorrow I bet. It's still snowing!

Went grocery shopping at the Sunflower Market. Bought a lot of healthy foods. Went to Sam's Club. Spent more than we expected to on food and other items.

Marshy fell asleep during the shopping trip. Came home, had sushi for lunch. Marshy ate 1/4 of a quesadilla. That is better than ever before! He never eats real food. YAY!

Took an unplanned, brief nap on Marshy's floor, in the doorway, half in the room half in the hall. Was rudely awakened by someone laughing because apparently it's fun to stand on mommy's legs and wiggle back and forth between the bones and the muscles. Yeah, painful.

Cooked a healthy dinner. Put a tired, worn out Marshy to bed at 7. Marshy didn't get out of bed like normal. He went right to sleep. YAY! Worked out for 2 hours for the second consecutive day (my goal: 2 hours a day for the first 2 weeks and increasing from there).

Am now going to study and hopefully finish the chapter on endocrine disorders, respiratory disorders, and maybe coronary disorders.

Going to work tomorrow to finish the NYD Mystery Quilt 2009. Hopefully it will turn out well. :)

The Weigh In, and another CHALLENGE!

We had the initial weigh-in tonight. Yeah, it was fun, but sad at the same time. We discovered that we all look different but weigh roughly the same. We also gave out funny pirate names on our board so no one would know who was who. I'm gonna just tell everyone that I am Pirate Delores the Staggering Drunk. Yup. That's me. Apparently I'm a drinker. Hoping to kick the habit with this whole weight loss thing. Maybe I'll lose that beer belly. It's about time too. You know it's time to lose weight when your silhoutte no longer has large bumps, flatness, and legs, but 3 blending bumps that almost look like 1. Yeah, it's a sad day. I went home and worked out for almost 2 hours. I feel a lot better now.

I also joined this awesome challenge:

I have a link to it in my sidebar, too, and hopefully will be able to post pictures of my progress each month. The idea is to finish 1 project, whether new or old, each month. This one will be so good for me because I have so many projects sitting around in bags, either started or waiting to be started. This is just what I needed to get my butt into gear!

The spending continues....

So the spending spree continues! With Monday, weigh in for family biggest loser, Mike and I decided to get some gear. We purchased dumbbells online (they are the ones that have the weight from 5-50 lbs without having more than one pair of dumbbells). Unfortunately, they won't get here until like next month :(

We went to Shopko to pick up some melatonin for our crazy hyper "can't go to sleep even though I haven't had a nap all day and it's quarter to midnight" child. While we were there, we checked out the workout equipment. This is what we bought: the iron gym, and the ball set. I went to Target later and bought the 2 lb weights, and all the excercise clothes.

The clothes were all on sale! It was awesome. Everything matches, too, except for the orange sports bra. But when it's only $4 and your size and the last one, you kind of have to get it. I couldn't wait until Tuesday to start (Monday is the weigh in), so I pulled out all of my work out DVDs and started watching them to see which ones I wanted to do first.

Then I pulled out the Wii Fit. OH! You should have seen the dust on that puppy! WOAH! It was gross. Apparently, I have only used it 4 times since we got it the night it came out (it came out in time for Mother's Day, I believe....yeah, sad). Well, I hopped right on that thing and played around for about 30 minutes. It was sure fun!

Mike put together the pullup bar. It's nice, because it doesn't drill into the door frame, since we're renting and all. Yeah, I can't do a pullup to save my life. Not even if I cheat and start on a chair. SAD! I thought I had pretty decent upper body strength. After all, I do have a 36 lb kid I carry around.

Hopefully this is not all for naught. I would really like to lose the weight soon. I realized today that I weigh around what I weighed when I was 8 months pregnant (I was working 50+ hours at a retail mall store, and didn't hardly ever get to sit down. I really didn't gain a whole lot when I was preggo, but still...). And I'm not pregnant. It really made me quite motivated to totally dedicate myself to this challenge. I am going to do it! I AM!

Setting this down now

Okay, so I am going to come right out and say it, because if I say it on here, then I have to follow through, right? RIGHT!

So, I have started making my New Year's resolutions already, and I am definitely hoping to complete at least a few of them.

1) Compete in, and hopefully win, the family Biggest Loser challenge. What is this challenge? Well, we as a family are going to be competing for about 3 months to see who can lose the most weight. Then, hopefully, as a reward we will get to go on a cruise or a nice vacation somewhere, without our children, that allows us to show off our new hot bods. Yes, I want to actually do this. It is motivation for me. A cruise? Yeah, never been on one. Sure would like to go though!

2) During the family Biggest Loser challenge, lose a minimum of 25 pounds. I know, it seems like a lot for 3 months, but I sure am hoping to be able to do that. That would put me back to my high school weight, which would be great because I like to think I was hot in high school! :)

3) Read the following 4 books (I'm afraid if I make it any more, I won't actually do it):
Persuasion - Jane Austen
Northanger Abbey - Jane Austen
Mansfield Park - Jane Austen
Vanity Fair - not sure who wrote it, but I want to read it now that I've seen the movie!

4) Pay off my loan entirely. Last August I borrowed a large sum of money from the bank. I would like to have it paid off by the end of this year. Yes, I have 4 years on the loan (so a little over 3 as of right now), but I feel like I need to get this done ASAP.

5) Finish the following sewing projects:
Marshy's Cars bed set
Christmas wall hanging quilt (which will apparently be for next year....)
"Comfort" quilt #2
Mario/Luigi bed set
Halloween wall hanging quilt (which will apparently be for next year....)
Backpack diaper bag #2
Mystery Quilt 2009
Bind the quilts I have in the other room that need to be bound (I think there are 3)

Okay, so that is that. I have set 5 for sure goals for myself to complete in 2009. As for the goals I made for 2008? ha ha ha ha ha ......yeah, no good. First goal: finish all of my sewing projects. HAHAHAHA Like they ever all got done! I got a good chunk of them done, but not nearly all of them. Second goal: keep the house clean all the time and make homemade dinner every night. HAHAHAHAHA Again....that never really got done. Sometimes the house was clean, but then we'd go out to eat. Or the house would be a little messy, and I'd make a nice homecooked meal. But it was never both. I guess part of it is that it is sure hard to keep the kitchen looking nice when your sewing machine is practically glued to the counter! So, I will try to continue these goals in 2009, but rather than set myself up for disappointment by not achieving them, I am just going to think of them as nice things to do, and not so much as "I have to do this or I have totally failed in life".

Quilt 4 progress, and Vay-cay plans

So, if you'll recall, I joined the Finish 5 by the end of July Challenge. I haven't reported very much progress on my 4th quilt lately, mostly because there hasn't been any. But, tonight I decided that it needed to get off of my kitchen table and into the pile of quilts that are awaiting quilting. I have come to a realization that this pile will never actually get quilted, but at least I realize it now, right? haha Anyway, here is my progress so far.

I don't know if you can tell, but there are two different sections in this picture. The main one, that I did some work on tonight, and a smaller one that I did in about an hour. The main section is the top of the quilt, and the second section is the bottom. I got tired of wrestling so much fabric on my machine table, so I decided to start at the bottom and work my way up as much as possible.
This is a bettter picture of what I accomplished in just an hour of straight sewing. I know, I'm so dedicated. Too bad that the only time I ever have to sew is late at night on a weekend! Hopefully I will have this done before we go on vacation, but I'll talk more about that later.
This is a close up of the quilt. As you can see, it requires partial seams, and I haven't finished them on the short edges of the blue rectangles. I will go back and do those all later. Right now I really just want to get the whole thing pieced together so I don't have to worry about losing any pieces. Hopefully I can get it all done tomorrow, and then work on the borders. My stupid instructions don't even tell me how to attach the borders, and I think they might need partial seams as well! Grrr! Oh well.

Vay-cay plans:

So, we are going on vacation at the end of next week. I am so excited. It will be super fun! I'm hoping to get a lot of sewing done, but we'll see. Marshy will probably want to swim the whole time. I don't even know if my swim suit still fits me! I guess I'd better check that one out, eh? hehe.

As for sewing on the trip, I just realized that I have another quilt I have to do! My cousin, Melissa, is getting married on the 5th of August. For some reason I had a brain fart and thought that it was further away than it really is. Today I realized that I don't have a whole lot of time to get her quilt done. I have the pattern all drawn up, but I don't have any of the fabric yet. Fortunately, the new quilt store in our area is having a sale, and I think some of the fabrics on the sale are the perfect colors! YAY!! When Creekside closed, she bought them out, and is now selling a lot of those fabrics at only $3.00 a yard! It's a great deal! She makes you buy 1 yard increments, though. This is alright, since I was planning on making 3 of this particular quilt, and I only need about 1/4 yard of each color for each quilt. Anyway, hoping to get that done on vacation.

Plus, I want to get all of my quilts bound. I have several sitting in the other room just waiting for binding. I'm such a slacker. I also have a diaper bag I've been working on that I would like to finish. And there are so many other designs floating around in my head that I want to do. Oh, so much to do so little time!

But, the main goal is to have fun, right? Hang out at the pool in all my orca fat-ness with my baby and get a tan on my pasty white body. That will be my priority. And maybe work out a little. We'll see. I'll take my running shoes, but I doubt they'll see much treadmill action. Who knows, though? Anything could happen on vacation.

Scuba

Have you ever been in a store that you "like", or think you "like", and notice that they have an email list sign up sheet? Have you then signed up for emails on said sheet? I have. It all started several months ago...okay, many months ago. I actually think it was last year. Anyway....

Ninja Scott, Mike, and I took several of the scouts up to Salt Lake City to try a Discover Scuba course. It was free, because the company was having a parking lot sale or some sort of cool deal. I wasn't sure if I wanted to do it or not. I knew I wanted to Scuba dive, but I didn't know if I wanted to show off my white whale lard body to all of the neighborhood scouts. Mike insisted.

We went to Dive Addicts for the course. It was actually really fun. Of course, I totally freaked out the first time I tried to breathe underwater. That must be a reflex or something. The instructor was really great though, and made sure we were all comfortable and knew the rules.

After the short class, we went and looked around the parking lot sale and inside the store. They were having a contest with all sorts of cool prizes. One of the prizes was this really cool pink set. It's by Tusa, and Mike could only find it for sale as a set in the UK. How rude?! It had a pink mask, pink fins, and a pink snorkel. Of course I LOVED it! So, I entered to win. They had a box you could check on the entry form: "Check here to join our mailing list". I was planning on getting certified, so I checked the box.

Needless to say, I am still not Scuba certified, yet I still receive the emails. I got one this afternoon. "Cave diving in Mexico" was the subject line. Are they trying to make me sad and wish I was certified with all of my dives??? Apparently the answer is Yes. And yes, I am too lazy to actually click the "remove me from this mailing list" link. I guess I just hope that someday I'll be able to go on one of those trips because I'll be certified.....and because I have $5000+ to drop on a vacation just for me. Okay, I guess I could take Mike too. haha

Sore

So I did about an hour's worth of workout on the Wii Fit yesterday, and all I can say is OW! I slept pretty good. But waking up was the painful part. My muscles aren't used to working that much. Sure, I get a good exercise chasing Marshy-marsh around the apartment, and carrying him up and down three flights of stairs several times a day. BUT, This is totally different. I don't remember the last time my abs worked that hard, and now they hurt really bad. I'm sure it will get less painful as time goes on, but there's only one way to find out, and that is by continuing to do it. I'm not very good at that, because usually I put off my working out until I don't hurt anymore....Like with Turbo Jam. My goal is to not do that with this though, because it was expensive, and I can't just let it sit on the floor under the TV cabinet. Wish me luck!