Back on Track

(Image found here)

Jess, Ross and I have been trying to stick to a weight loss challenge between the 3 of us. Our last go around was derailed by a couple of a vacations and a busy tax season.

Yesterday, we started a new challenge. I'm hoping magazines like this one will help with motivation and tips! It will be an 8 week challenge. We will measure ourselves each Thursday evening and whoever loses the highest percentage of inches has to treat everyone to Miss Lisa's ice cream. Our last challenge was won by Ross, he won $15!!

I've learned that even though I lose inches, I don't necessarily lose weight, so we went with inches, and for some reason sharing our weight is more embarrassing than sharing our inches. Who knows!! My goal is to lose 5 inches by May 20th.

In order to lose those inches, I not only have to eat well, but I also have to work out hard. I'm hoping to buy some equipment for my apartment to weight train with if I decide to run outside on a nice day. Maybe I will buy a couple of things this weekend. I am mostly looking for an exercise ball, a 10 lbs medicine ball, and a pair of dumb bells ranging from 5-12 lbs (the expensive part!!).

There are 2 great fitness blogs that I read everyday. meals & moves is a great blog for work out tips, and weight training moves using your typical gym machines and equipment. Janetha is currently sticking to a Body for Life eating plan, and following a similar work out plan in order to tone up for her upcoming wedding. She does a great job mapping out all of her work outs, and gives great tips on meal planning. Just seeing her success is a huge motivation.

The Fitnessista aka Gina, is a certified personal trainer. She also give great work out routines and holds challenges of her own. I participated in her Winter Shape Up challenge, and found some great moves from her weekly weight training schedules. These were great because they required very little, or no gym equipment, just dumb bells and exercise balls. Gina also posts amazing recipes. I am in love with her breakfast cookie and I also made her Sweet Potato Black Bean Chili, it is AWESOME! Her mostly raw and vegan lifestyle is admirable.

These two blogs will help me stay motivated for the next 8 weeks! Wish me luck!!

New Blog

I have a new favorite blog! It is called bread & honey . It's a food blog written by two young women who love food. One of the women, I believe it is Summer, bakes all kinds of yummy desserts, and Alicia takes most of the photographs and makes more of the meals. Every recipe looks and sounds so good.



This pulled pork sandwich looks good, I may have to try out my new slow cooker this weekend.





Here is the recipe. Directly from the blog.
For a 2lb pork butt:
In a bowl, combine 1 1/2 cups brown sugar,
a few generous pinches of salt,
cracked black pepper,
some chili powder,
some garlic powder,
and rub on the pork.

Keep it overnight in the fridge letting the rub soak in.
In the morning, throw it in a large crock pot with one large white onion, diced, a few smashed cloves of garlic, and about 2 cups of apple cider vinegar.

After simmering for many hours (we did ours from about 8 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.), the meat is easily fork-shredded into bite-sized pieces

Here is the slaw recipe more or less.

half a head of green cabbage,
about a quarter of the red cabbage-
a couple of carrots,
some celery,
and then a LARGE dollop of mayonnaise, thinned out with some apple cider vinegar and seasoned with salt & pepper."

Mmm doesn't that sound really good? For a ton more recipes check out their blog !

Best Berry Cumble

My mom and I picked a ton of blueberries a week or so ago, and they've just been sitting in my freezer so I decided to try a new recipe. I found it through The Daily Green newsletter I've been getting sent to my email. Since I don't have a computer or Internet at my new apartment yet, I couldn't upload any pictures of the final product, but it was delicious. The recipe calls for blackberries but they were pretty pricey at the store so I just substituted more blueberries. I scooped it on top of vanilla ice cream while it was still warm and it was so good. Ross even ate it! He ate a lot of it! He's pretty much a chocolate guy, so for him to like this is saying a lot. Here's the recipe and a photo from the website. The pie looking thing in the right background is what it looks like.



BEST BERRY CRUMBLE

Crumbles are great sprinkled on your favorite ice cream. They're also good when mixed into hot cereals.


SERVINGS 4

COOK TIME 15

TOTAL TIME 45


INGREDIENTS
2 cups blueberries
1 cup blackberries
1/4 cup sugar
1 tablespoon lemon juice
2/3 cup flour
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
6 tablespoons butter, cut into small pieces
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
3/4 cup old-fashioned oats
whipped cream or vanilla ice cream


PREPARATION
1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Adjust oven rack to upper third.
Toss blueberries and blackberries with sugar, lemon juice, and 2 tsp. flour. Turn into 9" pie plate.
2. In medium bowl, mix remaining flour, brown sugar, butter, cinnamon, and oats with fingers until crumbly. Sprinkle topping over berries.
3. Bake 30 to 35 minutes until fruit is bubbly and top is browned.
Serve warm with whipped cream or vanilla ice cream.

What Happened to April??

Wow,

Not one post in April. Good thing I don't have a huge fan base!!!

I joined Paperbackswap.com yesterday. It seems like a really good idea. I added 10 books in order to get my first 2 credits. I'm not sure that I like that you have to have credits in order to request books. The only way to get credits is if someone requests one of your books. Other than that it seems good. The main idea is that you post your used books that you no longer want and request others' books for free. You only pay for postage and shipping when you ship one of your books. You pay nothing to receive a book. I haven't requested a book yet, so we'll see how that works!

I haven't been doing much crafting or photography. I hate how I do that, I get a big kick then it fizzles, that's what happened with photography. I will try to get back into it now that there's sun light for more than 6 hours a day.

Oh, I made some great granola last week. Here is the recipe. It is so good. You can add whatever you want. I'm not a big fan of chunks or 'stuff' in my food so I just went for the oats and the coating. There is a generous amount of coating so I may try adding more oats. The coconut option sounds really good too. I may try coconut next time and craisens would go really well in it. Slivered almonds would also be a good addition. The granola is awesome in yogurt. That's all I've used it for but there's enough crunch and spices to make it really good. And it's all done in the microwave. Really good!

Well I guess that's it for now. I will try to add some pretty pictures for the next post.

Happy Valentine's Day!

I finally got my camera to connect to my computer!!! So I'm back online with the photo blogging, now I have no excuse not to continue posting my thing-a-day projects.

With Ross being unemployed we decided not to do anything big for Valentine's Day this year. I decided to make him a chocolate chip pie that I found here. My parents and Ross and I went to Jack's located in our local Holiday Inn for their famous perch dinner. And it was as good as ever. Then we came home and had this delicious pie.


Ross had two interviews today. One was for his internship and he got it! Yay!! Getting so close to that diploma! The interview is with a woman who makes her own jewelry right here in Spring Lake. She is working on opening a new studio and she wants Ross to help her with that and several other computer related things. She was generous enough to give Ross a pair of earings to give to me for Valentine's day and I love them. I will post more on this later, I haven't photographed them yet, but I will because they are beautiful. I will also post her website and other store information. Her work is really beautiful! I told Ross to get me an in with her so I can do something I really enjoy with my time. He did say she will be looking for an assistant in the near future!! I'm ready!

Hope you all had a great Valentine's day! I have a photography class this Saturday so hopefully I will have some interesting photos to post!