So I guess I should start out this post by stating that I am so excited to say that since my last post back in February I started a new job! I am so happy to be doing something I love! I actually wrote the previous post entitled "Change" as a writing sample for my new job. The people are wonderful and I feel like this is going to be something great. The only thing I can honestly say that I am unhappy about is the fact that I completely set aside my goal of getting back into shape and losing the weight that I gained. In fact I gained some more. I am really unhappy about that. I am really hoping that I have the resolve to commit myself back to being where I want to be. My goal for the month of April is to be consistent. Stick to my plan and hopefully see results. I've added a few things into my plan to help me out hopefully. I'll let you know more as I go. I am not doing any craziness, but I would like to see how things progress before I put it out there. I will say I am back on my gallon of water a day. This picture is my new head shot for my new job. I am please with how it turned out! My little buddy broke his arm about a month ago which threw a wrench in our baseball season, but we are hopeful he will get to finish the season. I had my birthday! I was very nice! Got some flowers, dinner and fun! Ok well this is a short post... gotta run get my mom and dad at the airport. But I will keep you posted about the month ahead! But I'll leave you with this sweet pic. XOXO

Ok so here is the run down, Friday through Monday. Since I'm covering four days I will not go over everything that I ate, because honestly its not crazy important. I will tell you the facts about those four days though. I've been at this now for a week, I'm down 5.2lbs. I weighed in this morning at 144.4. I am completely ok with that. I focused all week on eating lots of protein, veggies, and not many carbs. My main focus was getting in a gallon (or as close as I could get in) of water a day. I did VERY good at this during the week, and by week I mean Monday through Friday. For some reason I just have a harder time getting in my water durning the weekends. Probably because I'm running around and it just is not as handy. Food wise I did really really good. I ate exactly how I wanted. I had one cheat meal on Friday night and it was so yummy! Calazone from our local pizza place. I'll be honest, I jump on my scale almost every single day. I'm just one of those people. I plan on changing that a little through this process. Part of the reason I do it is so I can see how each day shook out, but honestly you really should only hit that scale once a week. I know this, and like I said I plan on sticking to that more throughout this process. I will still jump on it, but maybe not every.single.day. I can tell you that Friday I weighed 143. something, (right now I can't remember if it was 2 or 4) and on Saturday morning after my Calazone I weighed 145. I was not discouraged by this at all. Here is why, first off I enjoyed my dinner! Second, if I limit myself forever I will never stick to anything. I know this about myself. And lastly, I knew that I planned on eating good the rest of the weekend, and I did. I packed in lots of protein and veggies/salads. I was super proud of myself by the end of the weekend, they have always been the hardest for me! We headed down to the beach on Saturday and stayed until heading to work/school yesterday. We had such a nice weekend trying to escape the heat. 104 at my house all weekend! The beach was great. We rode our bikes there on Saturday, 8 miles round trip. So I was happy I got a little exercise in! I do plan on doing more of that, the exercise thing....but the heat here has been almost unbearable. I will do it!________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ So this week I am going to be setting some small goals for myself. I started reading Choose more lose more for life by Chris Powell, and I will be starting the carb cycling soon. I would like to read a little more so I can't say for sure whether it will be sometime this week or next but soon. In the meantime I will be sticking with my protein cuz it works for me. One thing I read that I really liked was making goals/promises to yourself that are within reach. Not huge or vague ones that are untainable. I'm not going to say I'm going to lose 40 pounds or that I'm going to go to the gym every single day. It is not something that will ever happen and then I've just set myself up for defeat. He talks about SMART goals... Specific Measurable Achievable Relevant Time-Bound, this makes a ton of sense to me. So while I'm still getting further into the book I plan on setting some SMART goals for this week. I actually will also be setting some daily goals as well and I will keep you posted on how I do. I plan on starting each day with a promise to myself! I'm holding myself accountable through this blog even if I'm the only one who reads it. Ha ha... So here are the first of my SMART goals... __________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Today's promise to myself____ I will do something ACTIVE!________________________________________________ *****This weeks goals/promises***** 1. NO soda this week (yikes, I love me some diet dr. pepper) 2. Exercise at least 3 times this week 3. Be at 136 by October 7th - that equals out to 2.8 down per week 4. Get in my gallon of water (even on the weekend) 5. Goal weight for 9/23 (next Tuesday) 141.6 Here's to a great week!!! XOXO

Don't flip out because I have posted for the last three days. Even I have surprised myself! I realized that I did not post Buddy's interview this year so here it is! What you will notice is that Buddy doesn't change much but is a cowboy through and through! 1. What is your favorite color? Black 2. What is your favorite food? Pizza 3. Who is your favorite person ever? My mommy (obviously!!)** 4. What is your favorite show to watch? Cheyenne (Cowboy show) 5. What is your favorite dessert? Ice cream cone ** 6. Who is your best friednd? Max ** 7. What is your favorite thing to do? Dress up as a cowboy 8. What is your favorite song? Ole Red 9. What is your favorite toy? Leggo Cowboy's 10. What is your favorite snack? BBQ Chips 11. What is your favorite thing to eat for lunch? Spagetti 12. What is your favorite thing to wear? Cowboy stuff ** 13. What is your favorite animal? Puppy 14. What is your favorite thing to do outside? Play cowboys 15. What is your favorite cerel? Lucky Charms ** 16. What do you want for dinner on your birthday? Spagetti ** 17. What do you want to be when you grow up? Cowboy with a puppy * 18. What do you take to bed with you? My nanni 19. What is your favorite holiday? Christmas and Halloween ** 20. What do you want more than anything? A puppy ** All of the ** = the same answers as last year! XOXO!!

I hate resolutions. I have every intention of keeping them I work really hard at them for about 4...hours and then I think maybe tomorrow. Needless to say, I have not lost the 10lbs. I wanted to for the last four years. I was not as crafty as I wanted to be, although I must say I did a couple kick butt things this year, and even surprised myself at how my vision for my cookie exchange desserts came out. Its really no fun to get halfway through the year and be discouraged because you didn't stick with your dumb resolutions. Last year my theme was "New". I did take this theme seriously. I got a "New" hair cut. A new job. I tried lots of new things. I thought my "New" theme worked out pretty well. A theme is much better than resolutions in my opinion. This year I would like to do something completely different. My theme for this year is "Inspire". I feel like there have been so many sad events over the last few months. People that I love are hurting and I feel at a loss in how to help them. I truly feel like God has put it on my heart to do something. Is this something new, no. I have felt this for about the last two years. But I have pushed it aside and not done anything about it. I think part of this years theme is that I want to inspire others, but also inspire myself. I still have a lot that I want to accomplish this year,and of course I'll list those things shortly but really I want this year to be about others. Hopefully I will look back at the end of 2013 and be pleased with this years theme. I don't have any details about how this theme will unfold, but I ask that you would please be patient and follow along and I am hopeful that it will be "inspiring"! Along with my whole inspire theme, I would really like to accomplish a few things. No these are not resolutions but they are things that I would be excited to get some of them done and checked off my list. It would make me happy! So here is my list of things I'd like to accomplish: 1. Hit my goal weight 2. Start and stick to a budget 3. Save money 4. Have more date nights with Little Joe 5. Do at least 2 large scale "craft like" projects that i have on my list 6. Couch to 5K (dang, I just put that in writing) 7. Do at least 2 bible studies 8. Really listen to what God is telling me 9. Blog more! 10. Be more positive in 2013 11. Have the bulk of my Christmas shopping done by October Each of these things can be accomplished. I just need to do it. What I plan on doing is a running list. This is the beginning with 11 things. As I check them off I'll add another. I may also add them as I think of them, but this is a start. I will try to hold myself accountable here :) I hope that you will follow along with my "inspire" theme. Let me know what you think. Anywho, two posts in two days. Already working on one of the things on my checklist! We'll see what happens tomorrow! xoxo

So I have this awesome craft that I have been meaning to do for Pinspiration Sunday but yesterday when I was cleaning prior to working on my project I thought of something that I had been wanting to do. I have seen all of these cool cleaning tricks that I have been wanting to try so I thought that this week for Pinspiration Sunday I would try those, especially since I still need to pick up a couple items for my fun project. So here are the pins that I tried out. I hate to admit that when I clean the bathroom every week I mostly focus on the floor, toilet, and the sinks. I have neglected the bathtub/shower area, so this whole idea would be perfect. So I started out with my cleaning essentials... Almost all of these pins suggested using baking soda and vinegar to clean, but I enlisted a couple other tried and true cleaners just for the extra help. Here is what my bathtub/shower head looked like before I started. (I'm embarrassed to show you but for this project it was necessary). So I started out with the shower head. I filled my baggie with the suggested 1/3 cup of baking soda and then added the cup of vinegar. Guess what happened? Once the vinegar hit that baking soda it started bubbling and overflowed out of the baggie (wasn't expecting that) I added a little more vinegar to the baggie and placed it over the shower head. Then I set out to clean the rest of the tub. I should note that before I had decided to do this project I had already sprayed the whole thing down with Mr. Clean, but I went ahead and added the vinegar and baking soda solution as directed. Then I waited a little while, then started scrubbing. And then guess what.... it didn't come clean...hmmm imagine that. I scrubbed hard to, it was sort of annoying. So since I had gotten this far I decided that I needed to enlist the big guns... .....and started scrubbing..... And low and behold it started to come clean. Magic eraser and elbow grease, imagine that! I didn't even realize how yucky the walls were until I started scrubbing them as well. The worst part of that whole thing is that I know exactly why there was so much build up. I bought the Costco/Kirkland brand bar soap and boy is it yucky! It leaves a gross film on your skin and everywhere else. I actually don't even use it I use body wash but bad mamma that I am let Buddy use it because honestly the box of soap was like $13 and I didn't want to waste the money. When I was done my tub and walls looked like this.... I then took the baggie off of the shower head. (the pin instructions said to leave it on for an hour to over night) it was definitely better but not perfect. I do think I may try it again tonight and let it sit overnight and see if that makes a difference. Overall, it took me about an hour to do all the cleaning err experimenting and then cleaning. In the end I'll just stick with the magic eraser and save some time. So save yourself the trouble of not trying any of those pinterst cleaning techniques...maybe some of them work but really cleaning twice when they don't is no fun! BTW- sorry, when I save the pictures that I took off my phone for this post they appear to have saved small. Oh well you get the idea! xo, Heather

Well, I know that I said I was going to do this post on Saturday but man, Saturdays are a killer. So I made the executive decision to do Sunday Pinspiration instead. Works out better this way :) I had every intention of doing something crafty but decided on cooking something as Buddy requested Ba-sketti for dinner. So I thought this would be the perfect opportunity to try one of the yummy looking baked spaghetti's that I've pinned. Of course the one that looked super yummy to me seemed a little fattier than I wanted so I decided to try to make it a little more waistline friendly so I decided to change it up make it a little skinnier and get some veggies hidden in there that Buddy might not notice! The result Uh-MAZE-BALLS! It really is super yummy and Buddy loved it!!!! Here is the pin pic.. of course hers looks awesome Looks yummy I know... And here is mine and step by step preparation and recipe. (Hey I'm not a professional food photographer, but trust me this is really good) and no I didn't cut a slice for you...hee hee First I wanted to get some veggies in there because Buddy does not like anything green and if he see's it then he's done with it. So I grated two full zucchini's. This way he wouldn't "see" them. I also added an entire package of baby bella's (mushrooms in case you couldn't tell from the picture). I browned some Lean ground beef (season with garlic salt and pepper) and drained any fat that was in the pan. Then I added the mushrooms and the grated zucchini to the meat. It smelled really good at this point. After the meat and veggies cook for a few minutes I added a jar of spaghetti sauce. I used Ragu just because its what I use and what I had in the pantry. At this point I HAD to make sure it tasted good so I tasted a spoonful and I was very happy! For the noodles I just used regular old spaghetti noodles. And boiled 'em up! I always add salt to the water, just 'cuz I like it that way. After the noodles were boiled and done I put them in a separate bowl and added an entire container of fat free cottage cheese, 3 heaping spoonfuls of fat free sour cream and a good amount of pepper. I sprayed the glass cake dish with olive oil spray, and then I layered the first layer of noodles into the dish. I followed that by a layer of meat and veggie sauce. Then I added a layer of cheese, 'cuz everything is better with cheese! Then repeat Then I popped it in the oven for 20 minutes at 350. So here is the run down on what I used... 1 lb. extra lean ground beef (but to make it skinnier you could use ground turkey or soy taco meat)Garlic, salt and pepper to taste 1 bottle spaghetti sauce (your choice) 1 package spaghetti noodles 1 16 oz. container Fat Free Cottage Cheese 3 Heaping table spoons Fat Free Sour Cream 1 16 oz. package shredded mozzarella cheese 2 Medium zucchini's grated 1 package sliced baby bella mushrooms That's it! Don't think I missed anything. I loved it! But just to be sure that I wasn't giving you a bias opinion, I asked my neighbor Charlie if he wanted some dinner and asked him to give me a review. He took enough food to feed two people but hey that's Charlie. He gave me a nine out of ten. Said it was a nine because when he took it home to eat it he noticed I didn't give him garlic bread or wine... oh well I'll take a nine! But, the opinion that I valued the most my little buddy gave me two thumbs up...and ate two helpings. Never once did he mention the "green stuff" or the mushrooms, just said "mmmmm this is good!". He just ate it up and asked for more. What more could a mama want. Hope you like it! xoxo!!! I linked this post to the following blogs:

Holy Heck kids, its Friday and I am so excited for a three day weekend that I can barely stand it. I look forward to sleeping in, hitting the gym, hanging with my mom and dad and of course my baby boy and hot hunk of man. I need three days off for sure! I'm also really excited about my "high five", so without further ado lets begin.... 1. When I got home from work yesterday there was a nice brown box waiting for me at my doorstep. I was very excited when I saw that it was from one of my favorite friends Lisa!! Those boxes are always fun! I opened it up like it was Christmas morning and believe me when I got inside of this dandy box it WAS like Christmas! Inside there was some fabulous and U-H-M-A-Z-I-N-G jewelry inside. I was and still am so giddy I cant even describe it. The pieces are so fun and me! It was hard for me to decide which pieces to wear today. I put on a few that I loved. Oh yeah I am one lucky lady!!! 2. Thursday was my Papa's birthday. I should say that my Papa is in heaven and has been for gosh 6 years now. Doesn't seem that long. That being said Buddy and Papa never met. But you would never know that to hear Buddy tell you. He talks about his Papa and how he misses him. Isn't it funny how kids are. Anyway, I told Buddy that it was Papa's birthday and Buddy says.."So Papa is having birthday cake with Jesus"...and I replied yes he is. When we said our prayers that night we sand Papa happy birthday and Buddy asked Jesus if Papa could come home to us. My baby is such a sweetheart! 3. I am just feeling extremely blessed with my boys this week (big boy and baby boy);) Sam has just been so awesome lately and I just feel like we are in such a good place. I love him to pieces and am thankful to that Buddy and I have him! Those boys are so cute together! 4. Ummmm did I mention the three day weekend???? Waaaa whooooo!!! 5. I heard something somewhere that said "What would happen if you woke up tomorrow and all you had were the things that you thanked God for today" I try to thank God for all of the blessing that I have but man there are so many...so...I am thankful for my family, my parents who lets just agree are the best parents and I wouldn't trade them for ANYTHING or ANYONE, my sweet buddy, Sam, for the home we have to live in, for my job that allows Buddy to go to an awesome school, for my salvation, and for my friends who love me and support me. I see all these things that are good in my life and how could I be anything but happy! I hope that you are happy too!!! xoxo

Ok, so I have been meaning to post some updated photos but never seem to have the time. So I made some tonight. Some shots from Easter...we are happy! Ahhhh I love my family!! xoxo H~