Well.

So much for my next two post goals. In all fairness, I did get quite a bit done at home this weekend. Spent a lot of QT with the dog outside, which was great. Also worked on my seedlings some more.

My biggest triumph is that I have survived my first week of eating clean. I think the key this time was that I did not overthink it. Before, every time I have tried to clean up my diet, I’ve over-planned, buying a week’s worth of food and then just not prepping or not eating the good stuff. I’ve been going to the market every day or two to pick up only a few things I need so that everything is fresh. Grapefruit is in season, so I’ve been having one or two of those per day. I have been drinking a ton of tea with all sorts of lovely antioxidants, and have been feeling… well… really great, physically. I allowed myself a little bit of cheat here and there… pizza Friday night was a treat, as was birthday cake on Sunday for my nephew Mason’s 1st. But otherwise, I’ve been really kicking some ass.

I’m back into the gym too, training twice a week, and doing cardio on the other days. Running is key for me to ditch this extra weight, so I’ve been trying to get out more now that the weather is a little nicer. Also, Blue has been really good about staying right next to me. She typically pulls and wanders, so I’ve been working on that discipline with her and she’s picking it up nicely.

Just wanted to throw up a little update in the spirit of keeping at it. Hopefully will be able to load some pics later!

Back on track.

See? What did I tell you. I never follow through with anything. 🙂 I start, get all gung-ho, and then NADA. Time to start keeping myself in check.

Let’s do a little recap, shall we? I’ve been making some strides as of late in the goal department. Or, rather, starting toward my goals. (Speaking of which… self interruptus… my goal is to write three more blog posts this week. One tonight with instructions on how to build a lighted grow stand, one tomorrow, topic open, and one Saturday with some pics.)

This week, I managed to build a lighted grow stand for my seedlings. I’m spending quite a bit of time planning my garden this year, and I wanted to get started the right way. Since seedlings need 14-16 hours of light a day when they are getting started, it’s difficult to start them in your house, even if you have a window or room with good Southern exposure. Enter the lighted grow stand. They sell these online for upwards of $600-$700, and it’s basically a shelving unit with adjustable flourescent lights. I figured out how to build one myself with materials I bought at Home Depot, and it cost me a little over $200. Not-a bad. I’ll tell you all about that later if you want to build a small or large one for yourself.

I also cleaned up the diet. A LOT. I’m pretty impressed with myself actually. I’ve been fighting off cravings and trying to substitute healthier options when the desire for junk food hits. I’ve been doing some meal planning and have been packing my food for the workday the night before. My only real issue this week is that Doritos has come out with Late Night Cheeseburger flavor. Do any of you remember these:

They came out in 2007 and were a mystery flavor. Totally a McDonald’s cheeseburger. You have the mustard and ketchup flavors in there, and I think some pickle too. And total beef flavoring. Well, they did the test and then never released them. Quel domage! I was SO upset. I searched the aisles for two and a half years, and even contemplated calling Frito-Lay to bitch. Lo and behold, my phone rings the other night with a very excited Kim on the other end, proclaiming that she found CHEESEBURGER DORITOS. The thing I have found, is if you eat too many, you kinda don’t taste the cheeseburger anymore. It’s better if you eat only two at a time. Impossible? For most, yes. But, alas, I’ve restricted myself to popping only a couple of chips a day, and it’s helped keep me sane.

I’m sticking mostly to lean protein and veggies. My body is not big on dairy and grains. Or rather, it GETS big. 🙂 I’m not intolerant… I just find I have much better weight management success when I pare those items down. I’ll throw in some complex carbs in the form of sweet potatoes or brown rice. I also like quinoa and wheat berries. Speaking of cutting down dairy, I was never crazy about soy milk. It was ok, but meh… Then this week I found a coupon for Blue Diamond Almond Breeze. Almond milk. Genius. Really really good too. Not almond-flavored, mind you, but milk made from almonds. It’s pretty yum, and I think it will do well to subsitute for my dairy.

Here’s what I’ve been making so far:

Grilled chicken with ginger garlic broccoli or steamed asparagus
Pork chops with vinegar peppers (I indulged in a little Russett potato with these)
Strip sirloin with Chinese cabbage

You get the idea. I also threw together a quick soup last night… it was slightly bland but that is because it lacks all that nasty sodium. The soup has a base of no-sodium added chicken stock with chicken breast, white beans, kale and celery. It’s a nice, light soup, and packed with nutrients. I made a large batch of steel cut oats last night and portioned them into smaller containers. I find that they reheat well with a little water added. They take about a half hour to cook on the stove, but I prefer them to rolled oats, so I experimented with making a large batch and it was successful. Lastly, this week I switched from coffee to tea. I did allow myself an iced coffee today, but for the most part I’ve been drinking green and red teas. Yay antioxidants.

Getting back to the gym today, finally… a buddy of mine is going to be training me two days a week. I am super-knowledgeable about fitness, but I’m a little crap in the follow-through department sometimes, so it’s good to have someone leaning over you, screaming at you to finish those last three reps. I don’t have super-specific “weight” goals per se. I know that I need to drop between 15 and 20 pounds of fat… that is for sure… and I’d like to balance that out with about 10 pounds of lean muscle. The eating is a huge factor in how your body shapes up, so I really have to keep myself in check with regard to what I’m eating. My body “role models” are some of the following ladies. I know their physiques are a little muscular for some people’s tastes (Nina!) but I figure I’ve wasted my figure’s potential for 32.5 years, so it’s time to get moving.

Ava Cowan

Jamie Eason

Amber Elizabeth

Hopefully I’ll be able to do more vids soon, but the format in which my digital camera shoots has to be converted to be edited, and the quality gets all ick (see my first video for example.) Sooo, for now, you are relegated to the written word.

Scahhhhhhhd foh life!

This week for Mama Kat’s Writer’s Workshop, I decided to choose this prompt:

3.) Tell us about that scar.
(inspired by Katie from Rooftop Harmonies)

I was thinking about this very topic recently… I do have quite a few small scars… most from cooking or kitchen-related incidents. I have never had surgery, but most of my scars do have a pretty interesting story behind them. I shall detail the major ones for you now.

We will start with one of the first scars I ever got, aside from all the times I skinned my knees falling as a kid, and of course, the chicken pox scars. (Luckily my grade school existence was not so unbearable that I had to resort to cutting. Gah.) On the side of my left hand, right where my thumb meets my wrist, I have a one-inch long scar. It’s jagged, but I think it’s really the coolest of all my scars. By now, the color has lightened and it has blended in with my normal skin tone. I was about eleven years old… around the time I was still wearing pigtails, not quite as straight as they should have been. My Mom used to take me to Disney World every year in October. It was an annual thing. She worked for an airline and so we flew for free, but we never went during school vacation because the flights were all overbooked. This one time, we happened to have gone with a couple of her friends and their children, so we stayed at a timeshare. I remember being in front of the condo and was jumping rope one afternoon in the sun. I, not always the most graceful person, somehow stepped on the rope or got myself caught on it, and wound up falling to the ground, the side of my hand skidding against the concrete. There are a couple of other smaller scars on the top of my hand from this incident, but they are barely visible. I’m sure this scar would not have been nearly as bad if I hadn’t picked at the scab, but really… what kid can resist a scab? Pff.

Another of my scars from when I was a youngster comes courtesy of my Junior High years when I thought it would be cool to show off my Grandmother’s sewing machine. Now… this was not your ordinary countertop model… no no… this thing was ensconced in what was basically a large mahogany desk/cabinet housing. The top of the desk measured about 2′ x 3′, and the sewing machine collapsed into the desk so it would be a flat surface. You would simply lift the sewing machine out when you wanted to use it. It was actually a beautiful piece of furniture that I’d like to get back. I think my Aunt has it. Well, to protect the desk, there was a solid piece of smoke-colored glass that you had to remove. This thing wasn’t exactly light. At this point in my life, the sewing machine was in our laundry room, the floor of which was tiled in pink ceramic. Wanting to show off the machine to my friends, I lifted off the glass and placed it on the floor, gently. I must have tapped the glass just so as to cause a split of about 6″ along one of the corners. Immediately, I freaked, knowing I just gave my Grandmother another argument with which to lambaste me aside from when I “broke her glass coffee table when I was three years old.” We dropped the sewing machine back into its place, and I went to retrieve the glass. Intelligent wonder that I am, I lifted the bottom of the glass by GRABBING THE EFFING BROKEN SECTION, and my index finger slid right along the sharp part of the cut. That took a nice 3/8″ long, triangle-shaped chunk out of my finger. (Do you have the willies yet?) Naturally, I started bleeding like the Dickens, but luckily my friend’s Mom was a nurse, so she raced right over and bandaged me up.

The rest of my major scars have somehow happened in the kitchen. The side of my right hand, where my thumb meets my wrist, is festooned with tiny circle scars from tapping my hand on the top of the oven when putting pans in or taking them out. I’ve found anything pasta-related can be dangerous. I have a small round scar on my right biceps muscle from where hot gravy bubbled up and popped and splashed on my arm. (NOT sauce… GRAVY!) I also have a fairly sizeable, 1.5″ round scar just above my belly button. I was cooking ziti and was wearing a thin tank top. As I lifted a piece of pasta out of the pan to test it (always have to test for al dente!), whatever water was inside the stupid little ziti came flying out and landed right on my stomach, the hot water soaking right through my shirt. It was pretty red for a couple of years, but now has faded to almost skin color. I mean really? As AJ Soprano once said, “MA! No fkn ziti?”

Now, if I ever disappear, at least you all can help identify my body. W00t.

Piercings in weird places.

Over time, I have become a piercing junkie. Upon meeting new people, I’m most likely to hear the phrase “have you seen her piercings?” out of the mouth of whichever of my friends is making the introduction. Over the years, I’ve had thirteen different surface piercings done. (Trying to dig up as many photos as I can.) They are like semi-permanent jewelry. As of now, I have four left… three barbells in the back of my neck, and one microdermal just above my cleavage. Previously, I’ve had a barbell through each wrist, three microdermals on my chest in an inverted triangle, one between my collarbones, one under each of my ears (think Frankenstein bolts) and two in my left hand between my thumb and forefinger. I do miss my neck bolts… they stayed in for a few months but, because the skin there was so taught, they rejected after a while.

The ones on my decolletage did very well… really no interference… but the ones under my collarbones wound up coming out after a while and I suspect it was due to irritation from my seat belt.

If you are unfamiliar with the concept of a microdermal piercing, its kind of like a toggle bolt… the piercer makes a small pocket under the skin with a needle, and then the jewelry is inserted.

This is when I had my hand done. I LOVED it, but it was in a tough spot and lasted only about a month. (Had it done twice.)

I may have my neck bolts re-done. I’m a little hesitant to do much now because it’s become more trendy… I had mine way before they were “cool,” but I still have people who stare at my chest, wide-eyed, and exclaim “is that a PIERCING?”

And no, before you ask, I have no tattoos. 🙂

Click on photos to see full-sized versions… that’ll give you a better idea of what they look like.




(That pink color is from beads that we wore at a bachelorette party. It rubbed off!)

Urban Decay goodness! eeeee!

If you are a fan of UD products, you know how AWESOME the Book Of Shadows palettes are.

This one contains sixteen shadows, two liners, and a travel-sized primer potion! Visit Urban Decay for more details! I first learned about it via my fave makeup maven, Kandee Johnson, when she received it to share with the world. UD had them for sale on the website on 1/15, and they sold out in no time! SEPHORA was taking orders last Friday… not sure how that went but I bet they sold quickly!

I ordered a few from SEPHORA on Friday and am please to announce that I will be giving away TWO right here on my blog! One will be a random choice, which you can enter simply by doing the following:

Subscribe to my YouTube channel. (link below)

After you do that, you can earn one EXTRA entry for each of the following:

1. Follow me on twitter.
2. Tweet about the contest.
3. Subscribe to my blog.

Please leave a comment here and let me know what you’ve done so I can keep track of you broads. And gents, if eyeshadow is your fancy.

I’ll tell you about the second way to win when I post my video. They are supposed to be arriving via UPS tomorrow, so once I get them in my hot little hands, I’ll do a quick look so you can see how some of the products look, and will tell you how YOU can enter to win this AWESOME palette!

In the meantime, check out my Project D YouTube channel and get a little background on “The D!”

Introduction.

It’s a tad long, and RIFE with y’knows, but it’ll give you a good idea of from where I’m coming. I have to re-edit because the conversion software made a pixel-y mess out of it, but I needed to at least get this up today.

Enjoy!