Time to lose some weight!

 I officially started my diet this weekend. I always start out slow. Just let myself get ready for when I'm truly serious about losing weight. I just made sure to stay under 1500 calories the last two days. Going back to my last year diet plan. Main meal is going to be dinner. Eat whatever, but smaller portions, no butter, not much cheese.  Breakfast is still a few 10 or under pretzel nuggets with Peanut butter. Lunch will be raw veggies or low cal air popcorn, just for some crunch. I'm also going to not weight myself but take body measurements. Doing lots of cardio exercise, skiing, etc. adding in weights to tone up. I'm all in now.. and I Feb, March, April and May plenty of time to drop at least 20 pounds. 

I'm still going to bake and try what I make. It will be just a taste. This way, I can still do what I love and still enjoy. It's not about depriving, but a compromise of what I really want. I made these breadsticks yesterday after watching the British Baking Show challenge of the day. They should be all the same length, and be the same with good flavor, evenly baked and have a snap. I failed a little with the uneven baking, and looking the same. It was harder than I thought to get them the same size and looking exactly the same. The flavor was really good, sea salt, garlic, basil and parsley. 

Bake at 400+F for 15 minutes on parchment paper

I'm going to try doing the 2nd challenge of the day, making English muffins! 

Dinner last night was bread sticks with multi color pasta and roasted cherry tomatoes with garlic over a parmesan cream sauce. Not diet food, because I didn't start 100%, but not bad since I actually cooked.

Steve and Celina joined me cross country skiing yesterday afternoon. We went to another park close to home in Hastings. Less people and no hikers! 

It was nice going on a different trail to mix up my skiing. It wasn't as far, only about 4 miles total. 

We all got pretty hot skiing. I usually don't wear a big winter coat when I ski by myself. I just wasn't sure how fast we'd be skiing and if I'd warm up as fast. 

Our Saturday..

We made little progress to show on the flooring project going on in our 4 season porch. Steve fixed the floor level issue, but that took a few hours. We decided against getting another layer of floor sheets to build up the flooring to the same height. He just added some new wood and took out some hardwood flooring that was built up too high in the entrance of the porch. This fixed our floor heigh issue. Since that took all day, no actual new floor was installed. So, I'm hoping today is the day that real progress on the floor is made. 

 

My daughter no longer needs her semi new gray sectional couch. 

I'm not crazy about the ottoman fabric. I'll try to recover it or use our old ottoman and recover that one. We will put our old leather couch down in the basement. It's nice and large for a couch and should be a good size for our porch. 

We had fresh snow last night, around 4 to 5". It's going to be a great day to go cross country skiing! Now to get Steve or the kids to join me! 

My closet is similar in size and looks to this photo. I love how they made some cube shelves at the end. I need this for my closet! 

Saturday we started playing cards early! Early, is around 2pm. I purchased UNO after we all said we needed a new game to play. We've now played Uno enough times to get my money worth of the $5 dollar purchase. We still went back to cribbage. I might need to buy another new game just for variety! 

Don't look at the pile of books on the table and all the mess behind the kids. It's just all the stuff from the 4 season porch piled up till the room is finished! 

Look at this little cutie! Oh Madelyn is getting so big. We got to see my daughter, Kendra and her family yesterday for a bit while we picked up the couch cushion to check the color with the porch/ rug etc. It was nice visiting with masks on for awhile. She isn't quite sure of who we are. Being we have on masks and she hardly see us due to the darn virus. I'm missing out on being with my grandkids. I can not wait till we have the vaccination and can all visit like normal. I'm hoping at least by spring or summer.

Just a funny Zoey picture. Her favorite thing to do when we get home. Putting her head between our legs. 

I caught her sleeping with one of her babies. 

Friday, Dinner and home projects!

 I had purchased a pineapple and Steve came up with this for dinner. Made with my fried rice, Stop top grilled Chicken, with peppers, onion and pineapple in a ginger sauce. Delicious, a success! 

My favorite TV show on Netflix right now is The Great British Baking Show. Makes me hungry for bread, cookies (biscuits), and cakes (sponges). I'm learning British lingo! As they would say "Cheers!"

Thursday we cleared out our 4 season porch. Realized the TV in the whole house didn't work unless we had our main TV hooked up and working. So we had to put it back in the room and will work around the TV. We did move out of all the furniture, books etc and now my house is full of stuff everywhere! It's the worst part of making something better, the mess! 

We ran into a little issue with the transition from the main house into our porch. The floors are not exactly the same even with more 3/4" floor boards put down on top its still off. So we went back to Menards to get more floor boards to build up the height. Unfortunately, Saturday at noon is not the time to go! Too crowded, so we opted to take a pass and go back tonight at 7pm, when the crowds will be gone. Glad we both agreed this would be best to avoid Covid crowds! 

The old carpet sure was nasty! Stained from the kids spilling coffee and a worn path where everyone walked between the couch and ottoman. Yuck! No more carpet in my house! This is the last of the carpet as we got rid of the rest upstairs years ago and put in hardwood maple floors. Steve now has second thoughts about putting this luxury vinyl over the top of our old oak hardwood and cherry flooring. He said we should have just ripped it out and started with new real wood floor. I just think that's too big of a project and too costly. We are able to do our entire main level for around $3200

I waited 4 long years for this day!

 Finally we have a real President and VP! 

I'm going to pretend we went right from Obama to Biden and in-between in Biff's world never happened! 

I was counting down the days, hours and minutes till these two were finally official and sworn in to office. We once again have qualified people in charge of the Nation! Feels good to have real leadership for the next four years! 

Pop the champagne, we have the first woman as Vice President! 

Tonight we are celebrating with a turkey dinner, sweet potatoes, mashed potatoes, stuffing and broccoli. I made some hockey puck sized popovers. Tried to make them dairy free using almond milk and that didn't work. Celina made chocolate gluten/dairy free molten cakes for dessert. I made some white chocolate Biden decorations and hearts along with some strawberry/raspberry puree to decorate the plate. 

The table is all set and ready with our special guests, front and center! 

I can't ever say I've been this excited for a new President. 

Just one more day.. counting down the hours!!

 Who knew I'd be sooo excited to see a new President! I'm getting ready for the Big day! We have a turkey to cook for the celebration. I'll be watching TV, from noon on.. Excited and Hopeful for the future of this country. Let us hope the transfer of power is peaceful and there are no issues!! 

We have snow today. Light, fine snow coming down and it's pretty cold around 20. I will still find time to go ski this afternoon. First I must finish up our tax data entry! I'm almost done and done early this year! Feels good to get this out of the way and have it done. It usually takes me up until our accountant appointment mid February. With Covid, not going anywhere, makes it much easier to have lots of time to get it all done! 

Diet, its not going great! I just give up on myself every day and make poor choices, like chocolate ice cream at night. Time to break the cycle and just not have the stuff in the house! I have to start researching health meals and make sure I'm buying stuff to support better food choices! 

We are stalled on our home projects right now. Still no progress on our 4 season porch floor. I just need to get Steve motivated to finish up this room. Guess, if I start cleaning it out, he will have no choice. Sometimes it just takes a little push to get things going. After I'm done with my taxes, and skiing today. Oh, and washing bed sheets and bath towels, I'm going to start moving out stuff in this room. Kind of thinking I should wait till after Wednesday since this is our TV room! Okay, Thursday it is!!! A good project for the long weekend! Well, with some going to work too in there! 

What a great Idea!

 I saw some great ideas and will post. 

My kids get tons of candy for every holiday, so we don't need more around here. I do love this idea of packing a candy box with money and scratch offs. I might need to do this for Valentine's Day! Now where do I find boxes? 

I also thought this would have been a great idea to do with kids to get them to help out. I think seeing the money with in reach, would be a great motivator. I could use this now to get everyone to help out, but it would have to be filled with $10's or higher or they'd take a pass.  

We made burgers last night with wheat free buns. They turned out really good. I am sold on the wheat free bread! 

I'm thinking of replacing my floor mirror with a large mirror that just sits on the floor. I ended up with my mirror years ago and have painted it over a few times from the orig oak frame. I probably need to get rid of some photos on my dresser too. I'm collecting far too many and some can go on the wall. 

Let it snow!

 I woke up to about 4 inches of heavy wet snow. It's not exactly good skiing snow since the sticky stuff, coats the bottom of my cross country ski's making it like cement instead of going easily though snow. 

I did okay on my 1st day of dieting. 

Lunch was a can of veggie soup

Snack - sea salt popcorn and a slice of veggie pizza 

Dinner - chicken breast, tiny side salad and some roasted sweet potatoes. 

Lots and lots of water to drink all day long! 

Time to get serious!

 I have not been serious about trying to lose weight. I put on some Covid weight! I was originally losing weight at the beginning, back in march when I was super freaked out. Now I've started to stress eat. Time to start being hungry and just doing hard work again to lose the weight I gained. 

We are in for more snow today. I'm hoping we get at least 3" of fresh snow. We had a warm up and it kind of wrecked the ski trails. I need to get back to exercising and feeling good again! Although, you can not out ski or run a bad diet. So I have to really watch that I don't reward myself with food for working out. 

Here's my weight loss plan! 

1. Reward - a new ID bracelet, yes I need rewards to reach my goals. 

2. Plan healthy meals - soup, veggies and protein. 

3. Count calories 

4. Sit less, move more! 

5. Focus on the big picture! Summer, swimming, shorts and feeling good! 

Now let's do this! 

Time to be 100% honest: 

B-fast - 5 PB pretzel nuggets (60 calories)

Exercise am - cleaning for an hour (200 burn)

Lunch - Veggie soup -  1 can (160 calories)

Afternoon - skiing on fresh snow, 1 hour, 14 min! (600 burn)

Dinner- TBD

Snack- TBD

Total calories burned = TBD

Total Calories ate= TBD

I'm that woman! I don't make the rules!

 Good Morning!

I slept in and now it's almost 9! I don't like waking up late but it sure felt nice to actually sleep last night! That's a very rare occurrence! 

I made my lemon, lime, pina colada tart yesterday. I didn't have enough lemons or the juice, so I had to add all the lime juice too and still needed more to make a cup! So I added pina colada juice. It was good and easy to make. I just would have liked a deeper tart pan to add more of the lemon curd filling, as that's the part I like best. I've been in the mood to try more baking since I've been watching the British Baking Show. I have many seasons to go! lol.. At least I'm learning how to be a better baker by watching them. I just have to learn to make single serving size portions, so I can bake and not have a lot of junk around. I just want a taste. 

Yesterday was the first day since it snowed enough to ski that there weren't many people out at the parks. The weekends it's usually busy with mostly just hikers. I get mad seeing people hiking all over the ski trails. They have seperate hiking and ski trails for a reason! The ski trails get easily wrecked by people walking on the tracks! I have been saying to any one I see on the ski trail "Oops, looks like you're on the ski trail!" and I go on to lie, lol..saying, I just passed the park patrol and I think it's like a $100 fine for walking on the trail. On Sunday, I said that to an old couple walking ahead of me on the ski trail and the old guy got pissed off and said some crude things to me. Lucky for me, I can't really understand what they are saying because I have my music playing in one ear. I just said back that I pay for the trails and they wreck it by walking all over the tracks. I don't make the rules of the park. It is a misdemeanor, trespassing, disobeying  park rules up to $1000 fine. Boy did I ski off fast and kept going and going! Kind of scares me being alone and having some guy that angry at me for pointing out the obvious! I think next time, I might just take a photo of the people and turn it into the park people. It won't prevent me from speaking up. I try to say it in a nice way. At least I think I do till they want to argue with me about the rules. It's not like I'm going skiing on the walking path, mowing over people! I'm going to try  "Aren't you happy you don't see skiers on the hiking trail?" the next on someone I see walking all over the path. I'm that woman now. lol.. It's just not enjoyable when you have the tracks wrecked! There are clear signs posted everywhere, so there should be zero confusion! Plus plenty of hiking trails too, so zero excuses! It's just people being disrespectful. I'm not going to be silenced! 

Steve and I took a ride out to get some burgers in the country. We passed by all the trees covered in frost with this red house. Looked so pretty with the contrast of all the white and the pop of color from the red house. 

10 more days to go!

 I'm not counting today. I am really looking forward to moving on and starting fresh on January 20th with Biden as our president. It can not come soon enough! In the mean time this is what I've been up to! 

Kendra's dog Yasmine, is back home and doing okay for now. She has been eating and walking around since her night in the emergency room for Kidney failure. The vet was surprised that she was still doing good. They've been feeding her ground beef, spinach and baby food to keep her Iron levels up since her red blood count was low and she was very pale. So in all good new for little Miss Yasmine! 

My granddaughter Madelyn in her new snow suit. 

Kendra said Madelyn didn't like this baby seat when she was little but now loves sitting in it 

I've been watching far too many British baking show episodes on TV the last few days to turn out the news on TV. They had a technical baking challenge of making some chocolate Swiss rolls. Mine were kind of a flavor, cake and swirl failure. It still tasted good. 

 

Steve made breakfast this morning of hash browns and bacon. I made up some waffles with maple syrup. 

Celina pulled up some photos on my blog from years ago. Oh they were so little and cut back then. Can we just rewind the clocks and go back for a day? 

Sledding

 I met Evan and Kendra at the hill to sled. I think this was Sunday? Days seem to blur together the last week. With the death of their dog Coco, the Capital Riots, and all the news that followed, its been a stressful time. I am still counting down till January 20th. Although now there is news of  armed right wing riots on the 19th at the Capital. 

We did have a fun time going sledding. I went down a couple of times. My last trip down I decided to take a video and up and over the snow jump I went. I came down pretty hard, so that was it for me! 

Evan loved every minute of it. I brought extra sleds for him to use and since they were Logan's when he was small, I gave them to Evan to use. 

Steve and I also have been taking walks at another park close to home that goes around a lake. It's a little over a two mile walk. 

They don't clear the snow off the path, so we didn't bring Zoey since she'd be taking us for a walk. No need to risk falling and getting hurt. 

I was trying to ski every day till I pulled a muscle in my left thigh. I used a massage gun on the spot and it worked itself out by the next day. Who knew it would work! I'll be back to skiing today. I purchased the kids both season passes to ski. It's only $25 but I made them promise to use the passes at least 5 times! 1 done, 4 to go for them!