a low week

Unfortunately, that "low" doesn't mean "low weight" but "low emotionally". I've gained back some weight. I'm really not surprised since I've been more or less completely off my game. It still makes me feel bad, though. It makes me feel like there's no point...I should just enjoy the food and forget it. I know that's not really what I need to do. It's just what I feel like. So, I'm working on wrapping my head around getting going again. I know that I need to lose more weight. I know I need to keep going. It's just motivating myself that I'm working on. I hope to be able to give a much more positive report next week!

signs of spring

only a week late

Well, I made it. I lost 10 pounds. I'm a week late, but I'll take it. Honestly, I'm rather surprised. I have really eaten this weekend! I took a break from the eating good to eat GOOD. :) Now, let's see how much I can lose between now and our anniversary in May.

crayon roll

I've been itching to make some things lately. On my "I think I might like to make this" list has been a crayon roll. I found a tutorial here. Well, this afternoon I made one. It didn't take too long and I used materials that I had sitting around. I had a couple problems that I will fix if I make another one. Hopefully it will get some use, though.

my twenty-tenth birthday

In honor of my twenty-tenth birthday, I would like to enumerate 30 things related to my life...but I haven't come up with things for all of them. If you have any suggestions, let me know!

1 - great husband
2 - wonderful children
3 - number of times I've donned cap and gown for a school graduation
4 - car accidents I've been in
5 - cameras I distinctly remember owning
6 - months between getting engaged and getting married
7 - years I've (almost) been married
8 - years I lived in Atlanta...actual Atlanta address, even
9 -
10 -
11 - countries I've visited
12 - houses/apartments I've lived in
13 -
14 -
15 - quilts made
16 - hours spent in labor for each child
17 -
18 - age of my first "real" haircut
19 - years spent in school
20 -
21 -
22 - age when I got married
23 - states I've been in at some point
24 - months working in a "real" job
25 - age when I had my first child
26 -
27 -
28 - age when I had my second child
29 -
30 - years since my parents heard "It's a girl, and she's redheaded."

edit: I was not married at the age of 22, but rather, 23. The funny thing is that my husband, mother, mother-in-law, and plenty of other people who knew the right age looked at this post and didn't notice my mistake. At least my best friend knows how old I was when I got married...even if I don't. :)

a couple pictures

Here are a couple pictures from our trip to Toccoa Falls.

weekly update

Well, as of Friday, I had lost another pound. However, as of today, I am up .2 pounds from last week. The difference? For the last several days, I have spend most of my time either on the couch or in the bed. I have been sick. My best guess is that it is a mild case of the flu. At any rate, laying around isn't so good for losing weight. I'm hoping to be better in the next day or two and be able to get back into things. I'll still be happy if I can get to 10 pounds lost by the 14th (because that's probably when I'll start eating yummy things for my birthday). I'm just going to have to make sure to get some exercise in!

B&A - front flower bed

(there are three new posts)

Here is the big work...or at least what I feel like has been the biggest work. As you can see in the before pictures, the bed in the front of our house was filled with large old bushes. There were several different kinds...holly, azalea, hawthorn, etc. They were ok, but several of them had lots of dead areas. I don't like holly bushes to begin with. It really bugged me that there were so many different kinds. And...Matt thought they were too big. So, back in the fall, I started cutting down these bushes. Last weekend, we moved the last of them. There was one azalea that we decided to move over to an empty spot in the bed at the side of the yard. That left a bunch of stumps to be removed. That was Matt's big task this weekend. My hope was just that the bed would be empty. I was very happy when Matt was able to finish quickly and we were able to go ahead and prepare for planting our new Camellias. We bought them last weekend, but I didn't think we would get to planting them quite yet. Anyway, we were able to get everything cleaned out and the Camellias in. They are small now, but eventually, they will fill in the whole space if we let them. For the near future, however, I plan to put a few more things in this bed. I just have to find something that I like. We're also going to put in mulch, but we haven't gotten that far yet. I considered waiting to post pictures when we get all that done, but I was too happy with our progress to wait. I'll get more pictures up when the rest gets done. Anyway, here are the pictures. I also included a couple closer pictures of one of the Camellias and one of the flowers. (sorry that the pictures were taken during different seasons)

B&A - bushes at the side of the house

We have some nice big bushes that run along the side of the house. Three of them are hawthorns. I don't know what the fourth one is. They were growing higher than the windows, so they were really too big. I didn't think that I would get to pruning them this year, but I had some time this weekend. I needed to cut a foot or more off of them, so they ended up with very few leaves. At the moment, they look a little funny. I am expecting that they will fill in nicely when Spring arrives. For now, though, you can appreciate the work by looking at the before and after pictures. Oh yeah, Matt also cut down the Pampas Grass at the corner of the house. We haven't decided yet what we're going to do about that big massive thing at the back corner of the house. We may just cut it down completely.

B&A - side azaleas

When I was picking out some before pictures for the front and side of the house, I ran across a picture of the azaleas at the side of the yard. These are the ones in the front of the house along the side fence. This was part of the massive pile work. You can see in the before picture that there was a good bit of dead stuff and they were also getting a little big. Now, they're about 18 inches off the ground. Hopefully, they'll grow out nicely. Our neighbor, Mr. Crenshaw, assures me that they will.

the numbers are working for me

Well, the numbers are looking up this week. I've lost enough to put me at a total of 8 pounds in 8 weeks. Yay! Part of me feels like 8 pounds isn't really all that much, but I'm keeping my sights set on the big picture. I know that a pound a week is good and that is my goal. I know that if I can keep up that rate, I'll be doing great by the end of the year. Mainly, I'm just taking it one day, one choice at a time.

how I painted those lines

Ok. I am no expert or anything, but I thought I would make a post about how I did the lines in Nathan's room. I started to add it to a comment, but it was going to be too long. So...here goes.

When I first started on the lines in the room, I thought "I better not set out to make them truly level because this is an old house." So instead, I thought I would pick a measurement off the floor and make my lines that way. Well, that didn't work. The lines looked funny. So...I decided to try the level approach. That looked much better. I was really surprised, though, because there is quite a variation from one side of the room to the other in relation to the floor. Anyway, I used both a laser level on a tripod and a normal two foot type level. The two foot level helped me to get the laser line exactly level. The tricky part was getting around the corners. They looked funny with the laser up and took a couple tries to get the tape where it needed to be.

Once I got the first line up around the room, the others were pretty easy. Since my first line was nice and level, I could measure down from it for the next line. I measured three points and then used those to align the laser level. That worked really well for getting all the other tape in place. So...the time that I spent getting the first line right was really worth it!

did you know?

You can now watch MacGyver on cbs.com - season one. Pretty cool.

B&A - Nathan's Room

Well, there are still a couple rooms that I haven't posted pictures of on the blog. I'm going to try to get some up this week. For today, here are a few pictures of Nathan's room. This room originally had green carpet and the typical beige walls and trim. The carpet was taken out and the hardwood floors refinished. The ceiling, walls, and trim were all painted. This room took a little extra paint than the others did. I think the paint that was on the walls may have been the original paint for the house. Also, after we moved in, Nathan and I painted stripes on his walls. They didn't turn out exactly like we were expecting because of the texture of the walls, but I think they still work. As in the rest of the house, the outlets and switch were replaced. We still have plans to get Nathan a different set of drapes (he loves the traverse rod that he can open himself), but we haven't found what we want at a good price yet. In the meantime, he is using the ones that were originally in the living room.

not so great choices

Well, I've been making some not so great choices lately. I haven't done horrible, but... The majority of problems is just drinking calories. The milk at home and the tea at restaurants just calls. I handle water ok for a little while, but I am just not a fan. Anyway, the scales couldn't decide exactly what I weighed last night. The number I decided to record is slightly less than last week's number. Hopefully, though, the reality is one of the smaller numbers that the scales gave me. I am now adding some exercise to my routine. I still haven't figured out how to get some good cardio in, but I am starting to do some things at night while watching tv. I'm not jumping into anything too major...just making sure that I'm moving for at least 30 minutes each night. I'll be doing some weight lifting, some situps, etc. So far, making small choices with my food seems to be working (when I do it) so I'm going to stick with the same idea for exercise. At the very least, moving for 30 minutes uses up a few calories. Hopefully, I'll be building muscles, too.

behind on the weekly updates

So...I'm like a week and a half behind on my supposed weekly weight updates. It really wasn't intentional...really. Anyway, there's no particularly good news to report. As of Tuesday the 5th, I had gained a pound. I wasn't surprised. I didn't eat so great. As of this past Tuesday, I had lost .8 of that pound. So, on average, I am doing ok. (Just over a pound a week.) However, I really need to get back on track. I'm not so sure what is going to happen this week. I'm now on a second round a prednisone for my poison ivy. It is known to make people gain weight. We'll see. If I can get back on track, I can be at 10 pounds lost by my birthday. That would be good. I would be happy with that.

flashback

I have been going through pictures lately so that I can get some printed (finally) to put in albums and in frames. As I go through them, it's nice to reflect on the circumstances that surround the pictures. Here is one that has a soft spot in my heart. This is the last picture with Mommy and her only child, Nathan. I was actually in labor at this point. Nathan was all packed up and ready for Grandma to pick him up. The next time I saw him, he had a little sister.

more pruning

Well, I didn't put up pictures of the actual pruning, but here is a picture of the waste. This pile is from the weekend project described below as well as the additional bed that I pruned. The new one was on the side of the house toward the front. (Actually, you can see the very edge of it behind the big green trash can.) It was another group of overgrown azaleas. These weren't as bad as the ones in the back, but there wasn't any way to prune them to look nice without cutting them down to about 18 inches. In the process, I got poison ivy or poison oak or something like that. No fun! Anyway, I'll be back pruning before long, but next time I'll wear long sleeves and baby oil and take a shower and wash my clothes immediately afterwards.

weekend project

We did several things around the house this weekend, but the biggest project was the back corner of the yard. In that area, there were a bunch of very overgrown and yucky looking azaleas. There was also a big pile of rotting tree branches. Well, I worked on cutting back all the azaleas to about 12-18 inches and Matt helped me clean out the branches. He also hauled most all the stuff I was cutting up the hill to put beside the road for the trash people to pick up (I hope they have an empty truck when they get here!). I would share some pictures, but they just wouldn't do it justice. The "before" pictures that I have were taken back when things were green and there were leaves on the trees. The "after" picture is all brown and leafless. So...you just can't compare very well. Maybe after the leaves grow back and the grass is green I'll put some pictures up. I'm just enjoying knowing that the corner of our yard is now a usable space rather than a "don't dare go in there" space. It's like a breath of fresh air!

is it right?

Well, I hesitate to believe it, but the scales say that I lost another 2.4 pounds last week (for 6.4 pounds total). I honestly don't believe it. I didn't do so great this past weekend. Between Caroline's party and out of town guests, eating just wasn't "normal" or as controlled as I would like for it to be. However, I didn't snack quite as much either. We'll see if this number holds through next week.