DIY Workout Shirt

First off, I made an awesome dinner!  It was an omelet (the girls wanted breakfast for dinner.)  I added in sautéed mushrooms, onions, green peppers and leftover salmon.  It was AMAZING!

Now back to my regularly scheduled blog post LOL

I’m crafty!...Kinda.  I actually am rather bad at crafts.  I’m an amazing photographer (not that you can tell by my recent photos, but, just wait until I get my DSLR fixed) but, not crafty.  My crafts look like Kay or Mo did them.  Kind of embarrassing but true. 

                Today started off great.  When I stepped on the scale I was 1.4 pounds lighter.  I actually ate blueberries instead of the sweets that were cluttering my counters.  At 6 this morning I got bored and decided to make this,

I got the instructions from Vita Dolce

It’s really simple. 

11)       Fold shirt in ½ {make sure to match up the seams}

22)      Cut off sleeves and neck

33)      Cut off the bottom (I didn’t dye mine so I shortened it)

44)      Use a strip you cut off the sleeve to tie the back together.

And you’re done!!  Quick, simple and easy. 

I actually bought the shirt at Goodwill planning on making this shirt from The Clumsy Coquette.  I ended up completely messing up the original shirt so I searched for an easier one. 

You should try it and tell me how well yours went.  Hopefully better than mine.

Easter Aftermath

            Easter wasn’t as detrimental to my waistline as I expected.  I only gained .4 lbs.  I’m going to blame it all on my sister and my neighbor loaded my house with sweets.  My sister brought over a cake and my neighbor sent me home with a tray of goodies (various brownies, pies and coconut macaroons) when I went over with the kids for an Easter egg hunt.  I love sweets.  I can’t pass them up.  Especially free sweets.  Even before my surgery if my kids had dessert I’d steal a bite.  I’d regret it afterwards but, I couldn’t help myself.  But anyway, after eating a bunch of different sweets yesterday I’ve learned something important.  My body doesn’t like processed foods.  I ended up with horrible heartburn and I felt icky.  My dinner was sensible, 1 helping of fish, 1 roll and loads of veggies.  I’m not going to let this weight gain get me down thpough.  It’s only .4 pounds, it’s not 4 pounds.  And this experience is going to motivate me to eat cleaner, exercise harder and get toned quicker.  
          I’ve also decided to push back our sugar-free period to May.  It will run from May 1^st to Kay’s birthday then after her cake is gone we’ll start it back up until June 2^nd, her birthday party. 

This is how I need to live

                In order to make up for my indulgence yesterday here’s my workout:

AM	PM
50 situps 10 incline pushups (with my feet on the 3rd stair) 50 reverse sit-ups 30 second incline plank 20 minutes of stairs 2 miles (35 minute) beach walk	2.35 mile (58 minute) walk with the family

Hopefully it'll pay off tomorrow!

Easter food

Easter eggs the kids made

Happy Easter!  I hope y’all are having a great day.  I know I am. 

Mr. Amazing had to work all day so I’m saving him a plate.  Even with my dietary restrictions I love cooking for the holidays.  Actually I think I love it more now than before because it’s a challenge.  I am treating myself today because I’m allowing myself to have salmon for dinner.  The rest of the meal is 100% fat free. 

I was super excited because I found fat free frozen dinner rolls.  I normally make my own dinner rolls to go with special occasion meals but I really didn’t feel like doing that on top of all the other cooking I was going to have to do.  When Kay and I went to the store to get the stuff for dinner I looked at the labels on all the dinner rolls.  I happened across a fat free one.  They’re by Alexia.   They’re amazing and you can’t even tell that they’re fat free.

Here’s my menu.  Click on the dish to take you to the recipe

Main Dish – Salmon

                 Spinach Soufflé  (for my vegetarian sister and her boyfriend)

Sides – Roasted baby potatoes 

                Asparagus  (I just steamed this, nothing special)

                Succotash

                Rolls

Dessert – Trifle

Strawberry Trifle

Dessert was super amazing.  This trifle is my go to dessert when I want something fat free but semi-fancy.  This one ended up not being 100% fat free though.  I used Dream Whip and I realized after the fact that it’s not fat free.  Next time I’m going to mix the pudding with Cool Whip or maybe even try using a meringue mixed with the pudding.  Or just plain meringue would probably be awesome too.  My trifle had angel food cake, pudding, strawberries and strawberry jam (both bought at the farmer’s market last Friday.)

Recipe:

Ingredients

1 box angel food cake

2 large packages pudding (I used simple vanilla)

2 packages of Dream Whip (or you could use fat free Cool Whip)

1 pint berries of your choice (I used strawberries but, any berry would be good)

 1 jar jam or preserves (you can either match flavors with the fruit or do a complimentary fruit)

Directions

11)    Bake cake according to box mix

22)      Make Dream Whip pie recipe

33)      Put Dream Whip pudding mixture in fridge to rest

44)      Spoon some jam into a bowl and microwave about 15 seconds just to thin it out

55)      Tear/ cut cake into pieces after it’s cool

66)      In a pretty bowl layer it all

a.       Cake

b.      Pudding

c.       Berries

d.      Drizzle of jam

77)      Repeat until you reach the top of the bowl

This is simple, and semi quick to throw together.  If you don’t want it to be fat free you can use brownies, chocolate pudding or mousse and chocolate ganache.  This is the type of dessert that you can make to YOUR likings.  Search the internet for trifle and you’ll get some great recipes. 

How was your Easter?

Wacky Workouts

          On the days I can’t get away from the house to workout I find new ways to workout at the house.  Today I didn't feel like having my daughters give me weird looks so, I put on my shoes and workout clothes and headed into the backyard.  

          I started out with suicide drills using the longer side of my L-shaped yard.  I used the fence posts as my turn around lines.  After each complete drill I would stop and do 50 jumping jacks and 10 burpees.  I hate burpees but because of the fire ants in my backyard I decided burpees were the lesser of 2 evils.  Normally I would do pushups and sit-ups or planks.  I did this for about 5 minutes.  Then I sprinted the shorter side for 2 minutes.             Note:  I am not a runner.  Running kills my already bad knees and I normally don’t like putting myself in that much pain.  I also know that running burns more calories than walking so, in order to get a quick burn I run.  After I was done running I didn’t want to stop exercising so I looked around my yard and noticed that there were a few paving stones in one corner of the yard.  They were the perfect distance to hop from.  So, I started hopping from stone to stone.  I would alternate legs every few rounds.  I jumped side to side, front to back, I used 1 leg, use both legs…you get the idea, I switched it up a lot. 

                My workout for the day is below.  I need to start training more for my stair climb.  My time is really starting to not look good.  I’m going to go drink a nice big glass of water and ice my knees. 

Morning workout:

10 pushups

20 burpees

30 jumping jacks

40 reverse crunches

50 crunches

60 second plank (I did mine with Baye on my back)

Afternoon Workout:

5 minutes of stairs

5 minute suicide drills

250 jumping jacks

50 burpees

2 minute sprint

What’s your “wacky” workout?  How do you find new ways to exercise around the house?

Farmer's Market Friday and April Goals

Farmer’s Market Friday

I had another great Friday at the Farmer’s Market.  I found out that they added a dairy vendor to the market.  I'm going to have to up my market budget every month!  I love taking Kay and Mo with me.  We always have interesting conversations and a good time.  I also feel like I’m teaching them valuable lessons about food, money and shopping locally among other things.  The only downside was that my muffin man wasn’t there today.  A whole week without muffins!  What am I going to do?  How am I going to survive?!?!??  But I got a lot of good stuff, mostly stuff that I needed for Easter dinner.  I’m hoping I got enough to last us the whole week too.  But if not I’m willing to go to the grocery store to supplement my veggie needs.  Okay this week I spent only $40.  (I saved $15 by not getting my muffins)

Here’s everything I got:

2 bunches of bananas

2 containers of strawberries

2 pounds of mushrooms`

Medium bag of kettlecorn (Mo and Baye shared a bag today)

Celery

4 yellow onions

2 red onions

2 ¼ lbs of baby potatoes

1 lb of spinach

1 lb of baby carrots

Jar of strawberry jam

Not pictured:

5 honey sticks

Gummy worms

Last night I decided I needed monthly goals for myself.  I'm going to keep track of whether I do (or don't do them) every day.  I'll let y'all know how I did at the end of the month.  Here they are:  

1)      Get my waist measurement under 27
2)      Weight at or below 115
3)      Stop snacking
4)      Exercise everyday
5)      Cut out 99% of the fat from my diet
6)      Cut out 95% of all sugar
7)      Cut out 90% of all processed/packaged food
8)      Make it 12 days without sugar (April 9-19^th)   
9)      Limit carbs to 2x per week

Do you have goals for yourself?

Smashed Muffins and my Weekly Accountability

          One of the reasons I started this blog is because of the fact that I wanted to hold myself accountable for my weight.  And I figure by posting it for all the world to see then I have to own up to what I have done right and/or wrong every week.  I figure Thursdays are a good day for my weigh ins.  Last week I was 113.  Today when I woke up I was 118.  I’ve had a very bad week.  I’ve bounce around from 114 to 118 and back to 115 then back up.  Ugh.  I’m very not happy about it but, I figure what’s really important is the inches.  Today I woke up with a waist measurement of 27.5.  I want to be at 26.5.  I’ll post my monthly goals tomorrow.  On to a more interesting topic.

When I got back from the trip and unpacked the food bags I noticed that all of the muffins I had packed for myself were smashed.  Complete 100% crumbs.  I didn’t want to toss them so I started thinking about what I can do with them so they wouldn’t goto waste.  Mr. Amazing suggested that I make a cheesecake and use them as the crust.  I have no clue why I didn’t think up that idea (I adore cheesecake and have been only able to make crustless cheesecakes).

Here’s the recipe:

1 can of blueberry pie filling
16 oz fat free cream cheese, softened
8 oz fat free Cool Whip, thawed

1)  In a spring form pan press the muffin crumbs on the bottom to make a crust
2)  Mix the pie filling and cream cheese together with a hand mixer
3)  Fold in Cool Whip
4)  Pour into the crust
5)  Refrigerate for 2-3 hours


It came out really well.  It wasn’t as “cheesy” as I like my cheesecakes.  If I was going to make it over again I’d make a few small changes.  I’d put the crust in the oven for a few minutes to hopefully bind it together (it was very crumbly.)  Secondly I’d probably leave out the Cool Whip all together.  It mellowed out the cheese flavor and I think that it would be interesting to try.

I think that next I’m going to try using my fat free banana muffin mix to make a crust for a banana cream pie.  But first the family is going go sugar free for almost 2 weeks.  I’ve been really bad about allowing them to have too many sweets (something I never used to do.)  So I figure I’ll cut it out completely for a while and get them used to not eating it again.

Spring Break Camping

We got back from camping yesterday.  I love going camping with the family though.  It gives us time to enjoy each other.  No TV, no internet and no phones.  Mr. Amazing works evenings and weekends so we don’t spend very much family time together with the girls getting home from school so late then having to do dinner and homework and since Kay is in the Gifted Program at school she has A LOT of homework.  

This is our second time camping.  The first time got screwed up by me and my gallbladder and by Mo having some breathing issues (we think it was because of the cool October night air.)  But the family enjoyed the 1 night we spent camping and were excited to try it again.  Kay was the most excited.  I swear she’s the perfect girl for me.  She wants to roll in the mud, play every sport imaginable, but she wants to do it all in a skirt.  Last time I tried to be really healthy.  I packed salad to go with dinner, healthy cereals and milk, and a bunch of healthy snack options.  This trip though I decided to excite my kids even more by telling them that they were going to be able to eat crap for 3 days.  But, I am the Fat Free Queen so I can’t COMPLETELY throw health and nutrition to the wind.  Breakfast was muffins and dry cereal.  For me it was Krusteaz fat free blueberry. 

My yummy muffin and the girls cereal 

Lunch was peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, fruit and pretzels and chips.  Dinner was the typical burgers and hot dogs for the kids and Mr. Amazing.  For me it was Portobello mushrooms with some fat free cheese. 

I also brought a ton of snacks.  I made trail mix, granola bars, and apple chips.  For dessert we, of course, had s’mores. 

My trail mix.  Dried blueberries, strawberries, cranberries, raisins, cherries and some sunflower seeds

The granola bars

The granola bars I made were REALLY awesome!  Next time I’m going to try using Nutella instead of regular peanut butter.  Or, I’ll use my chocolate PB2 so they’ll be low enough in fat for me to eat.  They were a bit thick so I think that I’d bake them in a 9x13 pan instead of the 8x8.  Here’s the recipe:

Approximate nutrition facts

2 ½ c oatmeal

¼ c sunflower seeds

¾ c mixed nuts; coarsely chopped (I used leftover almonds and hazelnuts that I had lying around)

1/3 c maple syrup (I used sugar free)

¼ c agave

1 c mixed dried fruit (I used strawberries, cherries, blueberries and cranberries)

1 c peanut butter (softened in the microwave)

1. Mix thoroughly 
2. Bake in and 8x8 lined with greased parchment paper
3. 350 degrees for 25-30 minutes
4. Cool, cut then refrigerate 

See all the chunks of stuff in them?  Packed with flavor!

We ended up leaving the house 2 hours after I had planned for us to leave.  We got to the campgrounds at 4:30.  We had to run to Wal-Mart for some last minute stuff.  We finally started setting up at about 6.  I took the girls for a short hike while Mr. Amazing made dinner.  We ate, made s’mores at let the kids run around the campsite until about 9.  They played in the tent for a while.  After realizing that there was no chance of them going to sleep on their own I decided to go to bed.  Oh, did I mention Mr. Amazing forgot to pack the sleeping bag?  Yeah, he totally did.  So we spent the night lying on the hard ground with just a semi-thick blanket between us and a crushed shell ground.  I ended up waking up every couple hours due to lack of blanket.  Did I also mention that we had 1 sheet between the 5 of us and Kay is a complete sheet hog?  The next morning I ended up waking up at 6 and Mr. Amazing woke up around 6:30.  While he was at the store getting coffee I did my morning exercise.  I found this workout at Girl Heroes  I also laid on the picnic table and did 50 sit-ups and 25 bicycles (with hiking boots on.)  Mr. Amazing still wasn’t back when I was done so I ran about 5 minutes worth of suicide drills between the fences of our site.  We went hiking after breakfast and then searched the park has a ton of options trail rides, canoe rentals and a spring that you can swim in.  But, because we had the dogs and we found we couldn’t do anything so we decided to pack up and drive home.  Next time, I’m putting my dogs in a kennel. 

                But all in all our camping trip was a success.  The girls had fun and we are still having family time at home so, it’s not a complete waste of time and money.     

Have you taken your kids camping?  How'd it go?