my fridge

...looks like this right now.



and I am quite happy! :)

***update***

I had scheduled this post after I wrote it a few days ago, and sadly...there are now NO DIET COKES in my fridge. I think I have a problem!! Now I am quite sad. :(

I got an award! :)

I don't really know much about this whole blog award business, but I'm excited to get one! So, here goes...



RULES 1. Post where you would like to be in 10 years

Hmm. 10 years. I always think about where I think I'll be when I get to the expiration date of my credit cards but 10 years! That's a long time. I definitely would want some kiddos (and I have two wonderful girl names I've thought up lately so that would be good to be able to use those...but throw a boy in there too :)) and hopefully will own a home that we are always fixing up (in a good way). I would love to have some sort of entrepreneurial thing going on the side with my hubby. I would love to have grown VERY much from where I am now as a person - less selfish, more generous, less me-controlled, more spirit-controlled. I hope to be better at loving my husband, and to still make time for him and me only often. I want to be fit (for a 36 year old! haha) and be good at feeding my family healthy, yummy foods and teaching my kids to be healthy and to enjoy food. I would also love to own two cars, haha. :) And I'm determined to be debt free! That's about all I've got right now.

2. Pass it on to 10 other special Bloggers!

Hmm. Lauren already gave it to a lot of people, but here are some:

Vicky at http://mckinneypenny.blogspot.com/ for her second attempt at blogging! (I fully understand slackers!!)

Can I give it back to Lauren at http://ricardoandlauren.blogspot.com/ ? She deserves it for giving it to me! :)

I would like to give it to Angela and Abi at http://littleabiwallace.blogspot.com/ because I think it'd be fun to hear about where miss Abi will be in 10 years :)

Annnnnnd everyone else has already been awarded. Ok ok I don't know what I'm doing and I'm not sure there is anyone else I know who would think it would be cool to be awarded this. Sorry I'm not a pro blogger! :) If you would like to take my 7 awards left, please do! Because if you want it, you deserve it!

Bodybugg update

I realized I haven't talked much about my bodybugg lately and thought some (or most) of you probably were thinking I had fallen off the bandwagon - and with good reason! (Remember the Zone, P90X, etc?) BUT, I am happy to announce that I have NOT! I have been wearing my bodybugg and entering my food religiously now since Christmas. That's 9 weeks! And, what's even more exciting - I've lost about 9 pounds! My goal is to have lost 12 pounds by March 12 (not for any real reason, just bc when you set up the bodybugg program, it creates a 3 month goal for you with a certain amount lost each week). After that, I will create another 3 month program and keep on going! :)

On another note, I "sold" a coworker on getting a bodybugg and I'm helping her set it up this weekend. So excited! I'll keep you updated on how I'm doing with it more often now that I've realized it would be a good idea! Good accountability. :)

I'm even toying with the idea of promising to post my "before" pictures with some "after" pics once I meet my goal. But I would have to be quite a brave woman to promise that!! Clint and I took some intentionally unflatteringly lit before photos in swimming suits before we started P90X awhile back. I can assure you that NO ONE will EVER see them if there is not a pretty dang good after photo to put next to it. Even if there is, I'm not sure I could bear it. Who wants to look at a pic of themselves in a swimsuit at a time of life when they've decided they need to lose 20 pounds?! But we shall see! :)

Clint ordered me a pink strap to accessorize with for v-day, they had not come out with colors when I got my bodybugg. :) I'm loving it!



I also thought I would start adding a little structure to my blog with some tips/helpful ideas/takeaways from the Brock's life posts. So here are a couple tips/ways I've been keeping my calories down! (my goal each day is to eat 1650 cals or less and to burn 2250 or more. Most days I eat about right but some days if I sat around all day I do not burn as many as I'm supposed to).

-SOUP. Soup is awesome. I mostly eat Campbell's, but it's almost a guarantee that anywhere you go, soup is a good choice. I do not even really go for the "healthy request" Campbells bc I don't like them that much and the calories in the reeeeally yummy ones - think Chicken Corn Chowder - are not all that bad. Most are under 400 for the whole can. So that is what I do a lot of days for main course for lunch at work.

-Lean Pockets. 290 calories, and I think they are yummy. Amy's burritos are also good but cost twice as much. Another good lunchtime main course staple.

-I can't just eat those things at lunchtime though. I always want more/something else. So I bring things that are low in calories to go with it so I don't feel deprived. Individual diced fruit cups (80 cals), Chewy granola bars (90-100 cals), sugar free jello pudding (60 cals), an apple (100 cals or so), cutie oranges (35 cals), oatmeal sometimes for breakfast or a snack (160 cals), great value yogurt - GOOD and only 38 cents! (80 cals), or even a piece of candy (50-100 cals). I'll just bring one or two of these and I feel quite happy all day.

-At Starbucks I order it skinny and/or with no whip sometimes, but I really like my drinks there with whip, so a lot of times I will just go all out and make sure not to snack as much in the evening. It works out.:)

-For dinner/evening I try to have around 1000 calories left. Usually I'll eat 500-800 of them at dinner and then I like to have snack room left. But with 800 calories, you can really eat almost anything. Most meals at Olive Garden, notoriously bad for you, top out at about 2000 calories. So, if you split the meal (and they are giant!) you end up about right. At home, unless you are frying food or making something that is mostly cheese or cream (or eating too much food in general - I was before!), its pretty easy to stay under 800 as well. But, I will say we have a food scale and I do alot of weighing on it to make sure I'm entering the right amount of food into the program.

-I eat a LOT of sugar free 15 calorie popsicles. They are awesome. Dreyer's also has some real fruit ones that are 25 cals each but they are a splurge pricewise. We almost always have popsicles in the house.

-I still eat cereal occasionally, but I measure out a serving (usually 1 cup, sometimes 3/4) so I know what I'm eating.

-I enter my food I've eaten before eating something else. Otherwise I will enter my food and end up seeing that I ate too many calories and I underestimated. I can enter food on any computer so that isn't too hard to do multiple times a day.

-Deli turkey meat. So low in calories and so fulfilling and GOOD! We usually have cajun style and honey roasted. Mmmm I had 3 slices today as a snack when I got home from work. :)

-Hot tea with splenda and a bit of milk. Constant Comment Green or regular. YUM.


Wow, this is a long post! Sorry about that. I hope you skimmed through if you don't care about food tips! I'm planning on updating more regularly about what I'm eating and maybe working out (which I don't do that much but am starting to more now). Maybe that will help me not have bad weeks where I kinda give up (Valentine's weekend made that week a no-pounds-lost week...oops!).

Thanks for listening! I'm so enjoying STAYING on the bandwagon this time. It's a much better feeling! I'm also staying on the blogging bandwagon better this time too! Hooray!

Happy Tuesday! Have a great week! :)

solving the mystery...

..of poached eggs. Never had one, never made one, never really understood them.

The inspiration:



Everyday Food magazine. They insisted that poached eggs were easy and that you could put them on/with anything. We bought an 18 pack of eggs on our last grocery run and had lots left, so I decided it would be fun to try.

I made a little english muffin-mozzarella-tomato-spinach-toast thing to try eggs with. Turned out looking YUMMY!




I asked hubby if he wanted to try my first attempt and he asked if I was making another one. When I said I was, he said he would like to try the second attempt. Ha! But he isn't too fond of things that are mushy and runny and seem like they might be undercooked, (even moreso when his wife is telling him she doesn't know what these are supposed to look like when they are done) so it was still sweet of him to give it a try on round two.

First try:



I thought it was pretty darn good and ate the whole thing. :) I had to leave it in the water longer than it said because I don't think I let it get hot enough before I put the egg in. But all in all, it seemed good to me!

Egg #2: Hubby did try this one and thought it was pretty good. The english muffin combo was dang good with it! (Lucky for me, he only wanted the one bite, so I got to eat the rest!) Looks like I almost broke the yolk, but it held, yay!



And egg #3...perfection!





I happily finished off this one as well. :)



So, poached eggs are quite wonderful, and I think I might try some other recipes with them another time. Still not sure I did it exactly right, but they were good enough in my opinion. Maybe I'll have to order eggs benedict next time I go out for breakfast. :)

Since hubby wasn't too fond of the eggs, he opted for this:



Which he insisted on eating out of the saucepan, as he always does. Very manly. To each his own!



Happy Sunday evening! Have a great week!

Love :)

What a wonderful Valentine's weekend! We relaxed a lot, saw Aunt Lea and Uncle Jake who were in town from Amarillo, watched the Olympics, and celebrated!

On Saturday when I got back from Ashley's shower (fun!) I found this:



What a sweet husband I have. (That little candy is a ring pop, my favorite!)

That evening we went to Kara (Clint's step sister) and Jason's house to hang out with Aunt Lea and Uncle Jake who were in town. Jason had smoked a bunch of meat including ribs and it was soooo good!! I even accepted their offer to give me some to take home and didn't share any of the leftovers with Clint. Poor thing! :) Now I want a smoker! (It turns out Aunt Lea had to go to the hospital last night unexpectedly for what they thought was a heart attack, but it didn't end up being one. So keep her in your prayers.) We had a great time with the kiddos too!

The next morning Clint found two pettifores from Stein's (his favorite) and a funny Valentine's card. He also started my morning right with this:



MMMmmmm. I love these. He gave me one in my stocking at Christmas and I was hooked.

I also gave him a Starbucks card...I've had one since Christmas that I have been using and I know he was jealous, haha, so it was the perfect gift! :)

We enjoyed a very relaxing day including lunch at Aboca's - an amazing hole in the wall Italian restaurant you MUST try if you live in Richardson - with Clint's dad. Thanks Keith! :)

After moving back the reservation from 7:30 to 8 because I wasn't ready yet, we headed to Koto for some yummy sushi. It's just right by our apartment, so we walked which was fun but FREEZING. We had a great time and were so glad that it turned out to be really yummy! It was our first time to try this place and we were pleased. We ordered off of a special valentine's menu that included the "Lover's Roll" which was even wrapped in pink soy paper. So cute!



The calamari and rock shrimp were also quite tasty. It was a lot of fun! I love my cute husband so much! :)



He confessed that he had just shoved the flowers in the vase however he could get them to fit, so I had some fun arranging them. I've always loved arranging flowers! So pretty! Can't wait to see them bloom.




Happy love day! :)

a day for soup

I just made this soup, which I made once last year (thanks to Katy's wonderful wedding present, a year of Cooking Light) and somewhat forgot about. The snow today made me want soup, and I remembered how good this was, googled it, and found it while at Target. :) Bought the stuff I didn't have, and came home and made it while Clint hung things on our walls. Yay for snowy days and warm soup and staying inside!

I modified the recipe a little bc Target was charging like $2.69 per bell pepper and we don't even like them that much, so I didn't put them in (except for the ones in the can of corn). Also they didn't have Serrano peppers and I googled them and they are hotter than jalepenos, so I substituted with mostly poblano (bc I knew they had a good flavor) and a little jalepeno (who knew a fresh jalepeno was like, 6 cents?!) to put a little heat back into it. The poblano pepper was a perfect substitute as it kinda filled in for the bell peppers too. YUM!!! It is very creamy despite the fact that there is no cream in it. The little flour at the beginning and the potatoes go a long way. I ate WAY more than a serving!!!


Ingredients

* 2 tablespoons butter (I used smart balance and some calorie free oil spray)
* 1 cup chopped green onions
* 1/2 cup chopped red bell pepper
* 2 tablespoons finely chopped serrano chile (about 1 small)
* 1 (4.5-ounce) can chopped green chiles, undrained
* 3 tablespoons all-purpose flour
* 1 1/2 cups 2% reduced-fat milk
* 1 1/2 cups fat-free, less-sodium chicken broth
* 1 1/2 cups frozen Southern-style hash brown potatoes, diced, thawed
* 1/2 teaspoon salt
* 1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
* 1 (15.25-ounce) can whole-kernel corn with red and green peppers, drained
* 1 pound peeled and deveined small shrimp
* 2 tablespoons chopped fresh cilantro

Preparation

Melt butter in a large Dutch oven over medium-high heat. Add onions, bell pepper, and serrano chile to pan; sauté 2 minutes or until tender, stirring frequently. Add canned chiles to pan; cook 1 minute. Add flour to pan; cook 1 minute, stirring constantly. Stir in milk and next 5 ingredients (through corn); bring to a boil. Cook 5 minutes or until slightly thick. Stir in shrimp; cook 1 minute or until shrimp are done. Remove from heat; stir in cilantro.

Nutritional Information
Serving Size: 1 cup

Calories: 212
Fat: 6.7g (sat 3.4g,mono 1.5g,poly 0.7g)
Protein: 19.3g
Carbohydrate: 18.3g
Fiber: 2.2g
Cholesterol: 130mg
Iron: 2.5mg
Sodium: 702mg
Calcium: 131mg

Let me know if you make this! I'd love to hear if you liked it.

The apartment is coming along but still not ready for its close up. We hung some things, but a pretty large glass plate then decided to fall back down and crash on top of my newly painted desk and crack into a zillion pieces. So I spray painted the scratches (yes, inside our apt) and pouted for a bit and got nothing else done. So there it is. Photos still to come. Sorry! I did score a lamp shade I really had wanted at Target for $4.24 though. Good things come to those who wait (and forget about things they saw at full price a long time ago and liked)! :) It looks perfect on the desk, even if it is a little big for the lamp I have it on right now. I'll just switch it out when I come across a taller lamp on sale somewhere. :) Me and Clint laughed at it bc it looks like it has too long of pants on or something. But I don't care. It's pretty.

Before and After

...of our new desk!

A couple weeks ago I searched and searched on craigslist for a desk with lots of drawers that was still cute and small, but could also house hanging files. It also needed to be not too nice so that I didn't feel bad painting it. I found the perfect one, paid $50 for it, and then it sat at my parents house for weeks while we waiting to move in and see what color it should be.



I had originally wanted to paint it a fun, bright color, but that doesn't really go with the modern, muted colors in our new place (which you will see in a post soon! we have a few more things to hang on the walls). So I ended up settling on a dark, muted navyish color, but bought the cutest green drawer pulls. It turned out better than I had hoped! Spray paint works wonders -- I highly recommend it. We had spray painted our bedroom furniture awhile back, so I kinda knew how it worked...but I forgot one very important thing - the spray handles! They make it so that you don't have to use your pointer finger the whole time. Hard to explain, but let's just say after a few minutes of spraying, my hands were stuck in a claw shape. BUT I had to keep spraying bc one, it was getting dark outside by the minute, and two, you have to apply the paint to the primer within an hour of putting it on, so I had to finish before it got dark. Not to mention the fact that it was FREEZING outside and the only shoes I had were my Uggs, which I did not want to ruin, so I was in my SOCKS on WET ground. Hence the almost frostbite. :) Though my forearms and hands had trouble doing simple things like locking my apt door or opening a can of soup today, the result was worth it! TADAHHHH!









I love it!!!

Cool post tomorrow, testing today

Using pixel pipe from my phone! Testing 1,2,3!?

Cool post tmw about how my hands are currently painted blue and my toes almost got frostbitten today. You'll see the result!!