Wednesday, November 28, 2012

Still alive!

It has been brought to my attention that someone actually noticed that I've been a huge blog slacker lately (hi, Lindsey!!:)), so I'm here to make it right and get back to posting.

I've been meaning to post, but I just...haven't. It's winter, I have the blah's. That's a poor excuse. :)

When I last left you, I was on my way to teach a nail care class and I promised to update you. The update is the the class was super awesome and I loved it! Playing nail salon with 12 year old girls is kind of awesome. They had fun, I had fun, a good time was had by all.

Thanksgiving was nice, but very low key. We didn't go out of town this year like we normally do, we just hung out at home. We decided to do Thanksgiving our way this year so I made ham and cheesy potatoes instead of turkey, because we all like ham better. We watched movies, I did some online Christmas shopping and we had some fun family bonding time for a few days. Sometimes it's nice just to hang out at home with nothing to do for a few days. We all enjoyed the break.

But now school is back in session, Shawn has gone back to work and life is moving full steam ahead again. I do pretty much all my Christmas shopping online, so Amazon.com and I have had a close relationship for the past week. I've pretty much got all the kids shopping done, which is nice, since it's not even December yet. My kids are fairly easy to shop for. The only problem with getting all the Christmas shopping done in November is that now I have a lot of exciting secrets that I have to keep for a month! I love gift giving, but I have no patience. I want to just hand out all the presents right this minute.

In diet and exercise news, I officially suck. My diet isn't super awesome and I've stopped running for the time being. I think there is something wrong with my left achilles tendon and I have a doctors appointment on the 11th. I have had a little lump on that tendon for years, which occasionally hurts a little bit, but ever since I've started running it's gotten worse. I'm pretty sure it's just tendonitis and hopefully there is an easy fix for it, but lately it's been really painful to walk at times, so much that I'm having a hard time getting up and down stairs at times, and I live in a three story house, so that's a bummer. So I'm giving my foot a break until I can get into the doctor and maybe he can tell me what to do about it.

So I really have nothing to report on that topic. I'm not giving up, I'm just taking a break for now while I get through the holidays and get my foot looked at. I fully intend to start back up. I know, that's what they all say. :)

Oh, sort of on the topic of exercise (well, not really), we're working on our guest room/workout room renovation project! So you've heard me talk about the guest room before. We live in a six bedroom house and we have a room down in the basement that is just an extra catchall bedroom. For years it just had a Aerobed in it for occasional guests (we almost never have guests) and then eventually we put a real bed in there with no headboard or anything and then eventually we added a headboard and there is some assorted old crappy furniture in there and that's also where we keep the exercise stuff. For years it was the least used room in the house. It's where we store stuff that we don't know what else to do with.

Then I started exercising down there and spending a lot more time down there and sometimes when I exercise I get bored and start coming up with big ideas. I've decorated that room in my head a million times! We put a flatscreen TV on the wall a last month for exercising purposes and once we did that our big ideas just took off. Suddenly that room seems like it has all sorts of potential to me and Shawn! He jokingly dubbed it the Monte Carlo Suite and now we've decided to turn it into our own little hotel getaway room. You know, the place you go when you really wish you could go on vacation but you have three rowdy kids and no vacation budget. So I found a screaming deal on some fancy hotel-like bedding for the bed that I'm completely in love with and we're picking out paint colors to hopefully get it painted in the next few weeks. I have two nightstands out in the garage that I've been meaning to paint that will go in there when I get them finished and I'm working on designing some artwork for the walls using my own photography and my vinyl cutter.

And the best part that I'm super excited about, is that I found an electric fireplace on Amazon during one of their Black Friday deals. It's one of those with a wood mantel that looks like a real fireplace but it just plugs into the wall. It's a small one, not super fancy, but perfect for the room. It's due to arrive tomorrow and I'm way excited about it. When the room is done it will have a fireplace and a flatscreen TV and swanky bedding and fun artwork. The perfect place when we need a break and want to pretend like we've gone on vacation. Yay! It's just the project I needed to cure my winter blahs. I will post photos when we're all done.

So that's what's happening around here these days. We're getting ready for Christmas and opening up a private one room hotel in the basement. :) There's always something crazy going on around here! :)

Wednesday, November 14, 2012

A polished presentation

Tonight I am teaching a nail care class to a group of 12 year old girls. I'm ridiculously excited about it! Which is funny, because normally I HATE speaking to groups. I don't like to teach things and I don't like to be in front of people. I live in fear of being asked to teach or present anything. Despite what it probably seems like from my blog, I'm really quiet in real life except around people I know well (and those people probably wish I was quiet, lol). I generally prefer to sit in the back of the room and observe, not be in the front talking.  I am not a social butterfly.

But I got asked to teach this class (it's a church youth group activity) and I immediately got excited. It's probably the first time in my whole life I've been excited to teach something. Yammer to a bunch of 12 year olds about nail polish and play nail salon with them? Yes please! I kind of feel like a 12 year old myself when it comes to my love of nail polish, lol.

So this afternoon I'm going through my supplies, deciding what to bring and what I'm going to show them. I'll teach them how to do nail art and how to file and paint their nails and all kinds of fun stuff. Yay for nail polish! :) I will let you know how it goes.

Thursday, November 8, 2012

I love this!!

I've been planning on painting and redecorating the guest room where the treadmill is and I've spent the past week or two looking at bedding for the bed, thinking about paint colors and trying to find inspirational quotes that I could put on the wall since its where I do my exercise.

Someone posted this on Facebook today and I absolutely love the quote! I feel like it sums up this journey I've been on so perfectly and it just makes me happy to look at it.

I don't know exactly how I'm going to incorporate it into the room but it's going to be in there somewhere. That's the quote I want to look at every morning when I exercise. It's perfect!

Feel the burn!

Working out has gotten harder lately. It's cold and dark in the mornings and I SO don't want to drag my lazy behind down to the basement to get all sweaty. I used to look forward to my morning exercise. Lately I dread it.

So I'm trying to switch things up a bit to make it more appealing. This morning I did 15 minutes of vigorous bike riding on my exercise bike (how come I can't go that fast on my real bike??) and then I did 15 minutes on the treadmill, but the last 8-10 minutes or so I slowed down the treadmill a bit and worked with hand weights to tone up my arms while I walked.

After all these months of daily exercise you would think that I wouldn't be so wimpy anymore, but I'm still pretty wimpy! Five pound hand weights hurt after a while! My legs are tired, my arms are tired and I'm all sweaty but I completed my work out even though I really didn't want to.

So there. :)

Sunday, November 4, 2012

chocoholic

Hello, my name is Wendy and I'm a chocoholic.

Seriously, I've eaten an obscene amount of Halloween candy in the past few days. Please tell me I'm not the only one! This time it was a bit of a planned diet break. I love Halloween and I love Halloween candy. I planned all along to give myself a little break for a few days around Halloween. It's one of those things where it's better just to get it out of my system and move on rather than make myself miserable trying to avoid it and beating myself up when I fail. I kind of take the same stance with the kids when it comes to Halloween candy. Pig out on it for three days, get it all out of your system and out of the house and then move on and get back to normal. After today I don't want to look at it anymore. I think I'll send Shawn to work with whatever is left.

Anyway, as a result of my extended candy party I'm sure my weight is up a bit. I haven't checked it in a few days. It's OK, I'll run it back off this week. The Halloween celebration was totally worth it. :) My new goal is to carefully stick to the diet and exercise every day from tomorrow until Thanksgiving, when I plan to give myself another diet break for a few days. I'm losing weight super slowly, but honestly, I'm OK with that at the moment. I usually gain a little over the holidays. If I can manage to get through November and December and lose even a few pounds it will still be way better than the five I normally gain this time of year!

Winter is hard for me. I tend to shut down a bit when the sun goes away. This year I've vowed to be patient with myself and just do my best to keep moving and keep up with the diet and not beat myself up if I'm not perfect at it. I'm just going to push through it and do my best and when the sun comes out in the spring I can get back on my bike again and start pushing it harder. Someone remind me I said that when January hits. I'm always super moody in January, lol. I swear I need to move to Florida. Winter is no good for me.

This afternoon Shawn and I watched the other two episodes of Nashville that we hadn't seen yet. I am officially in love with that show! There have been a few really good songs on it so for. There is a song from the show called I Will Fall that I really love. It's really pretty, it's been stuck in my head all day. Now that we're all caught up on the show I'm anxiously awaiting the next episode!

For now I'm going to enjoy one last hurrah with the Halloween candy and then I'm going to banish it from the house. It was fun for a few days. Back to reality tomorrow! :)

Saturday, November 3, 2012

Nashville!

It's been a long week and Shawn and I decided that we really needed a date night. Unfortunately actually leaving the house didn't work out tonight so we had a home date, which is something we perfected when Clarissa was younger and we weren't ready to leave her with a babysitter yet.

We ordered Applebee's take out and we went down to the guest room for dinner and a movie. I know that sounds so lame, but it's kind of an awesome home date! We don't spend a lot of time in the guest room so it sort of feels like our own little hotel room when we go down there. We did end up putting a flat screen TV in there last weekend for the treadmill, so there is a good TV in there and we can shut the door, eat our take out, watch TV all by ourselves and pretend like we went on vacation for an hour. It's kind of awesome. :)

Shawn says it reminds him of the episode of Married With Children when Al Bundy goes on vacation to his living room and he puts a little fence around the couch and makes everyone leave him alone for a week. Yeah, it's kind of like that.

Anyway, we couldn't decided on a movie to watch so we decided to watch the first two episodes of Nashville, which is a new drama on ABC. I've been wanting to check that show out but haven't had a chance until tonight. So far I LOVE it! I think it's going to be really good, I'm excited to have a new show to obsess over. It has music in it, which I love. A twisty TV drama with country music? You really can't beat that. :)

So check it out if you're looking for something new to watch. I think it's going to get really good!

Also, Applebee's really isn't on my diet plan. Neither is the two tons of Halloween candy I've eaten in the past few days. My diet starts again on Monday, I swear. :)

Thursday, November 1, 2012

Happy (day after) Halloween!

I had big plans to make a blog post yesterday but my day was crazy and I never got to it.

Halloween was super fun! I love Halloween, as you can tell by my recent posts. :) There are a few holidays that adulthood has not managed to lessen my joy for. When I was a kid Halloween was one of my favorite holidays, and it still is. I love the costumes, I love the candy, I love the excitement of it all.

This year was probably the most fun with Clarissa so far. She actually seemed to remember last years Halloween and knew exactly what was coming, and she was REALLY excited! Clarissa loves any chance to dress up anyway, so a day where EVERYONE dresses up is like her dream come true!

I picked out her costume over a month ago. I searched online for quite a while and as soon as I saw it I knew it was perfect. It was a strawberry! If you've been following my blog for a long time, you will remember that before Clarissa came home they sent us a photo of her in Korea wearing a little strawberry outfit. I stared at that photo for hours a day. I even carried it in my pocket. For a while strawberries were my favorite thing. :) So as soon as I saw that strawberry outfit I took me back to how much I cherished that photo of that sweet baby girl I hadn't yet met and I knew she needed to be a strawberry.

Josh's costume was trickier this year. He's 12 and this is the first year that he was starting to ponder whether or not he was going to dress up and go trick or treating. Some of his friends decided they were too old for it this year, so he started to wonder if he was too old. He still wanted to go, but I think he's hitting that age where he has to weigh whether or not it's a cool activity to participate in, lol. In the end he decided to go but we decided to tone down his costume a bit. Usually I go all out with the costumes. I let them choose what they want to be and I shell out money for the good costumes. This year he decided to go a little more subtle, although when you look at the photo of him in his costume, I don't know if you'd exactly call it subtle! He decided to go as a Boise State fan. Boise State football is a huge deal here. We're not really hardcore football fans, but the rest of the city seems to be, so putting together a costume was pretty easy. I bought him a Boise State sweatshirt and we painted his face blue and orange. He would have fit right in at a Boise State game!

Matthew's costume is actually Josh's costume from last year. There is good and bad about being the middle child. He tends to get all of Josh's hand me downs, and because I'm a middle child myself I'm sensitive to his plight and I'm careful to make sure that he has his own identity and his own things, but generally he actually really likes Josh's hand me downs. Matthew is a super laid back kid. He's just happy to go Trick or Treating. Find him a costume and he's good to go. So he was excited to be a clone trooper and he looked awesome!

They were all pretty hyper yesterday afternoon leading up to the big event. Clarissa was running through the house like she'd been drinking Red Bulls. I had big plans for a photo shoot and I did get few photos, but it was difficult! It's hard to take Clarissa's picture on a good day. Yesterday she wasn't sitting still for anything. By the time I got to the boys photos the sun was going down and they were ready to get on with the trick or treating, so my big plans for a photo shoot didn't really happen like I had hoped. Someday my kids will be glad that there are photos of them in their Halloween costumes, but at the moment they're pretty much just humoring me and hoping I make it quick, lol.


Anyway, here are the photos of last nights fun, and for the first time I'm actually going to post the famous strawberry baby photo of Clarissa in Korea. This photo cracks me up, because the look on her face is like a deer in the headlights, lol. You have no idea how much time I spent memorizing every detail of that sweet face before Clarissa came home. Seeing her all dressed up as a strawberry last night was kind of awesome. :)