Thursday Weigh In

It's Thursday already! Let me tell you it's been a rough week when it comes to my workouts/diet. And now my hunnie is on his time off (14 days) so I know these next days are going to he very slack. I really shouldn't be allowing myself to use that as an excuse but I totally am! Also, my sister is going to be here with her family in a couple of days so I have tonnes of laundry to do as well as get her bed ready. All that while trying to not get distracted by kids/boyfriend/blogging! :) You know, typical mommy stress.

In the last week there were 2 night we had take out which is out of the ordinary. Also 2 nights that I pigged out in front of the tv all while not working out during the day. SO BAD! I think I'm just starting to freak out like I'm never going to have junk food again so I'm getting myself sucked into binging on bad stuff. I need to get over that. Last night we had pepsi, ketchup chips, and snickers while watching a movie...and I had already had supper! Ugh!

Ok, so I weighed myself this morning and I was at 157.6 and I was really not happy. So I'm definitely up but I honestly believe it's because of all the salt and not drinking enough water. I'm going to try not to be too hard on myself though because there's no point in giving up now! Also, there's always next week :)

Until then,

What We Made Today.

Lately while at the grocery store, my kids have been asking for bananas. I don't know if it's because they're drawn into the big huge display of nice bunches of yellow bananas or what but they NEVER eat them. Little sister A used to eat them when she was a baby a lot, so much so that she would become constipated. But now, they sit on my counter and turn black; and every time I'm left wondering why in the heck I bought bananas again!

So what do you do when  your bananas are going bad? - Make banana bread of course!
I know I could have let them get a little blacker but I was craving banana bread so bad I had to make them!

We found the recipe here from food.com {formally recipezaar}

The loafs turned out very well and VERY moist! I can never make a recipe without changing something so here are my personal variations.

• I added half the amount of sugar {probably could of even used none}
• used half the amount of canola oil
• added 1 tsp pumpkin pie spice {could of put 2}
• used milk/vinegar instead of buttermilk
• forgot to put in nuts

I was going to freeze one of these loafs so I wouldn't eat so much but my hunnie said "don't worry I'll take one to the shop, I'll have no problem getting rid of it!" So that was that, I don't have to worry about the extra carbs. :)

Happy baking,

Reality Check!

         My little girl is officially growing up! Last night my oldest {almost 5} went on her very first big girl sleep over at my best friends house. Her daughter is 6 months younger than mine and they grew up together. My BFF recently went back to work full time so we really don't see them as much as we would like, which is hard to explain to a 5 year old. It would be different if they went to the same school but they don't even have that in their favor.


Anyway, long story short, two weeks ago I invited my girlfriend's daughter for a sleepover at my house and she did awesome! And it was so nice for the girls to have some quality time. So, when my friend texted me on Thursday asking if it was ok to take big sister M for a sleepover I thought it was an awesome idea, but I wasn't sure if she would choke come bed time and want to come home.

Night time came and went and there was no phone call. I decided to get my work out in {since I had chicken fingers,curly fries, and chicken strips for supper!} and I brought the phone just in case she called to say my girl wanted to come home. I grabbed my iPod to put my tunes on and I see that she had posted on my wall that all the kids are sleeping and she did awesome! I felt a lot better.


My little girl got a whole lot bigger in my eyes, and I know that it's only going to get worse from here. Soon she'll be going to school every day and giving me attitude and not wanting her mommy anymore! I hope I'll be ok. At the same time, I know there'll be a thousand more joys and great things that I should look forward to while my little girl grows up. There's just certain times that remind me how fast she really is growing up.


Talk soon, :)

Thursday Weigh-In

Another week has gone by and I've stuck to it! I've gotta say I'm pretty proud of myself for doing it thus far. But, I plan on keeping up with my progress for 6 more week so you might need to ask me how I feel then! This week has been pretty hard just because my daughter has been sick and with her waking up during the night I've been super tired. But I think I did pretty well considering.

This week I tried one of my Jillian Michaels DVD's that I hadn't tried yet and oh my goodness it kicked my butt! It's called No More Trouble Zones, I received it as a gift when I purchased her yoga meltdown DVD. What I do like about it is she goes through each exercise fairly quickly and there's quite a few exercises in each circuit so I don't feel like I'm begging for each to end. It's 40 minutes long altogether including 5 minutes each for warm up and cool down so it's a pretty decent workout. I can tell you though that I was happy it was over and I'm not sure if I would be doing it every day until I work myself up to it. I've been trying to work out 5 days a week at least and for the exception of the Jillian Michaels DVD day I achieved that by jumping on my elliptical for the other 4 days. Yay for me!!

So now, on to the weigh-in dun dun dun

This morning I jumped on the scale and it read 156.8! So that's some real results compared to my start weight of 160 two weeks ago. Mind you I've been pretty strict with my diet making sure that I don't sabotage my work out efforts :) Only 6.8 more pounds to go!

I do desperately need to compose a new workout play list as my play list I have now is boring the poop out of me! So that will be my motivation for this new work out week.

If you have time feel free to enter my first GIVEAWAY I'm anticipating super low entries :)

Until next week,

{CLOSED} Bausch + Lomb, Biotrue multi-purpose lens solution {Giveaway}

 Hey everyone! So this will be my first official giveway, and let me tell you I am super excited! Unfortunately I was unable to do a review on this product as they were not able to ship a sample to Canada. I would of loved to test out my personal reviewing skills for you guys but hey, there's always next time. But for now, here's a giveaway!

First here's a little snippet from their site http://www.biotrue.com/

Biotrue™ is formulated to work like your eyes. By studying how the eye naturally works to clean, hydrate, and keep itself healthy, Bausch + Lomb developed a unique and innovative solution to provide outstanding care for soft contact lenses.
Biotrue goes beyond cleaning by bringing together three bio-inspired innovations:

• Has a lubricant found naturally in your eyes
• Matches the pH of healthy tears
• Keeps certain beneficial tear proteins active

Sounds awesome, I know. Being a contact lens wearer myself, I know what it's like to have a good solution. Now, if you hadn't already you can try to win one of their tote bags for yourself on their Instant Win Game. If your not a winner there, or would just like to try your luck here... Five lucky readers of mine will win a Biotrue tote for themselves.

3 Canadian winners and 2 US winners will receive this super cute lime green tote bag that is perfect for pretty much everything. I will be using it for toiletries (including my lens solution) when we go out of town, grocery shopping, and most importantly now that spring is here and summer will shortly be following it will be perfect for park/beach days.  It also folds up super small into a little pouch for easy storage.

To enter to win: For you first mandatory entry, please follow me via GFC and state whether you're a Canadian or US entrant.

{Extra entries} (make sure you've completed your mandatory entry; one comment per entry) :

1 extra entry if you follow me on twitter

1 extra entry if you become a fan of mine on facebook

1 extra entry if you subscribe via email

3 extra entries if you grab my new button on the sidebar, please leave the link to where I can find it.

And that's it, it's that easy. Good luck guys!

For my U.S. readers feel free to use this coupon for $1.00 of your next bottle of Biotrue! (10 oz or larger)

A big thank you to Biotrue for providing me with a tote for myself as well as 3 to my Canadian readers and 2 for my US readers.  This giveaway is open only to residents of US and Canada and will end 4/7/11.

Ugh, what a week!

I haven't been blogging that much lately. My youngest daughter got the flu the other night and it's been a few days of one sick little girl! :(  Any time one of my children gets the flu/vomits I feel SO bad!! That's the worst thing to have to watch your little one dry heaving with that scared to death look in their eyes. My youngest is a trooper when it comes to being sick compared to my oldest. She will whine and cry all night because she hates even the thought of throwing up. So I felt lucky in that respect that it was only the little one that got sick. Watch, now that I've said that the school will give me a call letting me know my other one is sick too! It would be just my luck!

So, other than that I have been also having some major mommy guilt issues going on involving time spent on computer. Lately, I've trying to join as many blog hops as I can to up my followers and also trying to blog as much as I can to bulk up the quality of my content. With that being said, it's so hard to find time to do it! Especially with it being March break this past week and my daughter wasn't in school, I felt so bad to be sucked in to the computer. There was more than one day that I closed the laptop and didn't even touch it.  Is it normal to feel so guilty for having something of my own that I want to accomplish? I'm sure it is. Also, should I feel bad for taking time for myself. I know I could be blogging at night when they're asleep but that's the time that I usually want to spent with my hunnie so that idea gets thrown out the window. And then there's night shift, which he's on right now. So I could find time to blog then, right? Wrong! Night shift is when I want to get all my major spring cleaning done and by that I mean painting! I've put a fresh coat on the kitchen and primed my hallway which I plan on putting colour on as soon as little sister is 100%. 
The only conclusion I can think of is that it's one of the joy's of motherhood - feeling guilty or bad about something you're doing all the time! :P

As if that wasn't enough that I was worried about, I've been on this getting in shape kick. So also finding the time to get in a workout is trying as well. And I mean, there's no way in heck I'm getting up before the kids at 6 am like some crazy women I know! But honestly if it came down to it, I think I totally would if I was dedicated enough.

I hope you all had an awesome Spring/March break with lots of extra time spent with the fam :) 

Talk soon,

Thursday Weigh-In.

Alright, so this week has been trying. I've been working out basically everyday on the elliptical for 30 mins for the exception of one day because I had to go get the baby up. That day I did half of my program, but it's better than nothing!

Here's what my week looked like:

Thursday, Friday, Saturday - Cardio (elliptical) 500+ cals burned

Sunday: Rest

Monday: Strength/circuit, ?? cals burned

Tuesday, Wednesday: Cardio (elliptical) 260, 500+ cals burned

Today I'll probably be having a rest day or maybe doing my one of my Jillian Michaels DVD's. We'll see how the day goes! :)

Start date weight on Thursday was 160 on the button.

Now, this morning I weighed myself and the scale said 158.8...but that was when I first got up and after I went pee. So, after having a bowl of cereal and a coffee, I'll weigh myself now..................

159.8... basically I lost .2 lbs....lol. YAY! I'm guessing I've probably gained some muscle but I'm not sure if I should use that for an excuse. I'm going to have to keep at 'er and not give up...I'm not so much worried about the number on the scale as I am feeling healthy and good about myself. 9.8 lbs to go!! :D

Talk soon,

Home-made Laundry Soap.

The other day I was blog hopping and came across Home Sweet Farm's blog and she had an awesome recipe for home-made laundry soap that I knew I had to try. Living in the middle of no-where, groceries are expensive. Especially the big cleaning products like laundry soap. So how could I pass on an awesome recipe like this one? It's very basic which I like and very inexpensive, most people will have all the ingredients in their house.

The ingredients are:

1 bar soap.

1 cup borax.
1 cup baking soda.


I bought the Sunlight pure soap so I would have that "lemony laundry" scent. But you can use whatever you want. Or you could be extemely crafty and use home-made soap ;)








Basically all I did was grab my grater (you could also use a food processor) and grate away until the soap was all finely grated. I figured I should try to grate as fine as possible to avoid any chunks not dissolving in the wash.

Finally I had big sister dump in a cup each of baking soda and borax and she stirred away until it resembled powder laundry soap!

I am so in love with this! You can use 1 or 2 tbsp(s) depending on how big/dirty your load is. I kept the soap in it the bowl I made it in and just put an air-tight lid on it. I had an extra 1/8 cup (2 tbsps)  measure that I threw in there and it's works great and is incredibly easy to use. I recommend trying this recipe for sure, it'll be worth your while! :)

                                              ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Wednesday Blog Hops

Happy Wednesday Everyone! Have a great day :) :) :)

What We Made Today.





It was a baking kind of day today. I had been thinking about it for a few days now, and I finally got around to making some yummy desserts.


The Nanaimo Bars were calling me! 

And of course, big sister needed Chocolate Chip Cookies.

We had a lot of fun and the kids really enjoyed "helping" Mommy. :)

They even helped with the washing up!



Also, today I found a really cool recipe for home-made laundry soap that I'm going to be trying out. You can find it at Home Sweet Farm's blog here.

I'll let ya'll now how it goes, I'm really excited about maybe not having to spend so much on laundry detergent. Ugh, that stuff can get expensive.

'Till tomorrow, Happy Monday! :)

Getting in Gear!

It may not seem like it for many people, but spring/summer is fast approaching. As I look outside my kitchen window at my snow-covered vehicle, all I can think of is how flabby I'm going to look in a bathing suit this summer. Time to get my butt in gear!

Starting 2 days ago, I made the commitment to start a workout regime again. Last year, I had lost 20 lbs with diet and exercise. Mind you after having my daughter not even a year before that I had put on more weight after having her. It was all the breastfeeding and sitting on my hiney eating snacks and being immobile.

Jumping back into the saddle is never easy, so far this year I've tried twice. Working out maybe a week steady and then completely abandoning all things fitness. But, I figured if I have someone or something to report back to then I'll be more likely to succeed.

So, here's the dillio.  Every Thursday I'm going to weigh in, and blog about my week thusfar.  That way I'll have incentive to stay on track with my workouts. This week I've completed two 30 minute sessions on my elliptical and burned 500 calories each time. I plan on having one or two days with no cardio and work on just weight training. That way I'll have a rest from the elliptical which I can get so sick of.

As of Thursday, March 10th I weighed in at 160 lbs on the button

I'm hoping to lose 5-10 lbs max, just enough so my butt doesn't jiggle so much when I walk...LOL

 

Here's 2 of the swimsuits I've had my eye on, I'm 6'1 and have a long torso so I've also wanted to be able to wear a one-piece (especially after 2 pregnancies and those magical little things called stretch marks). These 2 are available in 'long torso' so I'm hoping that they will fit me.

The first comes from http://store.delias.com/

The second one is from http://athleta.gap.com/

Well, here's to summer!! Talk soon :)

Pay it Forward.

As you may have read, I received my very first blog award. The 'Stylish Blog Award'!! Thank you so much to Kelly-Ann for pickin' me. Now....here is the criteria to follow after winning abovesaid award.

1. Thank and link back to the person that has given you this award.
2. Share 7 things about yourself.
3. Award 15 blogs you have recently discovered.
4. Contact these bloggers and let them know about the award.

Ok, now on to the seven things:

1. I'm a stay-at-home mom. This is my greatest achievement; becoming a mother.
2. I'm 25 years old and I have two kids, UGH...makes me feel old. They are aged 4 and almost 2.
3. I absolutely love to cook and I'd really love to figure out this time management thing I'm having a problem with so I can cook/bake more often and blog about it.
4. I've only been blogging barely a month!
5. Last year I started on a weight loss journey and created my own fitness regime that helped me to lose 20 pounds post giving birth to my youngest. Yesterday, I attempted to re-start this fitness regime. I hope I can stick with it!
6. I've officially been with my hunnie for 6 years now, but we met in July of 2004.
7. My sister is my best friend.

Now to the fun part, awarding the 15 blogs that I recently discovered and thought were 'Stylish Blog-worthy'

.........drumroll.....

1. Maple Leaf Mommy
2. Aubut Family
3. Cars, Trucks, and Teething Rings
4. KD Buggie
5. Menopausal New Mom
6. Mommy Katie
7. One Busy Chick
8. My Happily Ever After
9. Reading With Joey
10. Take it From Me
11. Balancing Stilettos and Scrubs
12. House on the Corner
13. The Chickenista Reviews
14. Tough Cookie Mommy
15. Sleppery Mind

Weeell, there ya have it boys and girls! If you have some time, please stop by these blogs (if you haven't already). They are all great reads, I promise!

If you were one of the lucky recipients of this award and are finding yourself here, don't forget to pay it forward.

*if you would like to display the button on your blog/blog post just copy and paste the picture :)

Thursday Blog Hops.

Here's the Blog Hops I'm having a coffee with this morning ;)

          -- Bassgirafe's Thoughts

    -- Menopausal New Mom

Happy Thursday Everyone!

My Very First Blog Award.

I'm very pleased to announce that I have received a 'Stylish blogger Award'!! Thank you so much to Kelly-Ann at http://lean-soldier.blogspot.com for bestowing this great honour upon me! LOL - Nice gestures like these make all the hard work that goes into blogging worth it!

Welcome Wednesday

Hey all! Here is a great blog hop I've recently joined, you can find it at Take is from Me's Blog. From what I've read so far, it's a gooder; a blog I will be adding to my 'read often' list. :) I'll be adding her button as well to my master list of blog hops that I'm keep up with. 

Happy Wednesday Everyone!

Biotrue Multi-purpose Lens Solution.

Later this month I will be hosting a giveaway for my Canadian readers for Bausch + Lomb Biotrue Multi-Purpose contact lens solution. But in the meantime, for my US readers there is a great instant win sweepstakes to enter: 

  http://www.biotrue.com/instantwin.html

Not a winner? No problem, just come back the next day to try your luck again!

The game will be live for 30 days, meaning over 9,000 lucky Biotrue fans will be winners before Sunday, March 27th. This giveaway is currently only open is U.S. residents who are 18 years or older.  

A Multi-Cultural Lunch.

Usually on days that big sister is at school {Tues. and Thurs.}, I'll just make an easy, snacky lunch for little sister.  I'm never really that hungry as well so I don't see the point in making something huge for one little person.
As I was fixing her lunch the other day, I had to laugh at how many countries our food came from! 

• Dragon Fruit {Pitaya} - this fruit is cultivated many places including Mexico, Thailand, and Hawaii. But ours came from China!
• Tortillion - These babies come directly from Quebec, and are SO good! It is a roped, moist, salty cheese. We have a friend that lives close to one of the major factories bring us huge bags of cheese when he comes to town to work :)
• A good ol' Hard Boiled Egg - A strange addition to this lunch, but little sister loves them, and it's good protein! 

Yummmmmmmm - O ;)



Salon Grafix

Later this month I will be hosting a review/giveaway for Salon Grafix's 450 Degree Maximum Heat Protect Spray.  But in the meantime, they are needing a little Facebook Love :)

Please visit their fan page and make sure you click on the "like" button to become an official fan!

http://www.facebook.com/salongrafix

Thanks a lot!

Who doesn't like a good contest?

This is what started it all. My journey into blogging. I started contesting in November pretty much out of sheer boredom and hope.  My wins consist of a few travel vouchers, a Warner Brothers gift bag and a perfume. But that's besides the point. My real win is stumbling upon all of the  review/giveaway blogs and all the great authors that come with them. I'm so happy to have found something that I'm really interested in.

So on the topic of contesting, here are some of the one's I frequented. {these are all Canadian friendly}

http://www.tripcentral.ca/triptrivia/index.php

Enter to win a weekly prize of a trip for two to the destination of the week. Airfare from Toronto, no transportation to Toronto supplied.

Weekly entry.

http://www.designerdiscountperfume.com/

Enter to win a $100 GC to Designerdiscountperfume.com

Weekly entry.

http://houseandhome.com/promotions

Various contests/promotions always running.

http://steamykitchen.com/

Various contests running, usually kitchen/cooking inspired. Great site!

http://divine.ca/

Another site with tonnes of giveaways.

http://www.readersdigest.ca/contests

Reader's Digest Magazine - famous for great promotions. 

~These are just a few that I regularly visited. There are also a bunch of other single entry contest that I entered everyday as well as random daily contest that I found. It takes patience and dedication to be a good contester...and patience I definitely do not have much of ;)

Twitter Widgets

Hey there bloggers! Just thought I'd let ya in on a site I found today with super cute twitter widgets (if you all hadn't already known about it).

http://twitbuttons.com/

                                                            
 

I'm having so much fun adding and creating new things on my blog. But sometimes, I find, that I'm on google forever trying to find anything I want.

If anyone has a good site for blog improvements/widgets/buttons, don't be shy!!