I am so late posting today, I have been sick since Sunday and finally feeling back to normal today after getting my first real nights sleep in four days! Playing catch up form the last few days has been fun for sure.
Progress is being made on my friend's cardigan, the left front & back are complete and now I am about to star the right front, then on to the sleeves! I hope to have this wrapped up by next Friday's FO posting (not this weeks!).
Pixie's owl sweater is also coming along nicely, I am at the sleeve split and will hopefully be done this weekend.
I have 3 new projects I have started this week as well and of course I forgot to take a picture of one of them.
A pair of socks for my friend Tabatha, who helped create a resume for me
A cute little baby sweater for my friend who is due very soon, this will have a matching hat and booties too!
Not pictured are my best Gothy yarn dyer's socks in the awesome Sailor Saturn colorway, I cannot wait to get further along on these as I am using a structural technique I have never used before.
Mmmmmmmmmmmmm mmm YUMMMM! Tonight I made Mediterranean Pizza, recipe from the $5 dollar dinner mom cookbook. I cannot even begin to tell you how DELICIOUS this pizza is and everything is made from scratch! In fact I am pretty sure this dish alone makes the price of the book totally worth it. And really it isn't that expensive. I got mine for free by redeeming my Amazon GC's from my Swagbucks searches. If you haven't signed up with swagbucks I highly recommend it. It really doesn't take long to "earn" 450 sb's which can be redeemed for a $5 Amazon GC!
Back to the Pizza now. . . like I said everything is made from scratch right? I have always, kid you not, been a pizza crust from scratch making failure. No matter what recipe I have tried it just doesn't turn out right. The recipe in this book is flawless and the instructions leave out any guess work. I mean check these babies out! (I doubled the flour & water to make 2)
So easy and so so very yummy! Next came the sauce, the kids like tomato (and there is a simple and cheap!!! recipe in the book) while the husband and I prefer a white sauce. I followed the basic white sauce recipe and added parmesan cheese to it. While the kids only had fresh sliced roma tomatoes on theirs (they are so boring!), ours was a masterpiece of veggie delights. This masterpiece included fresh roma tomatoes, fresh sauteed spinach, bell peppers, some Japanese mushroom, and on my half black olives. WOW! The pictures really do not do these pizza's justice, and yes the kids did have some of ours after they devoured theirs!
why yes one of the boys did request spinach on his slice
Just like I make meal plans (sometimes the weeks are themed, meatless monday, taco tuesday. . . ) I have been thinking about a daily theme on my blog posts. I often don't write because I just don't think I have anything to write about, perhaps by giving myself a theme this will clear some of my blog block.
So today I give you Tony Thursday, errr maybe I need to work on that name. Whatever. Tony Horton, that crazy dude that does the P90x, yea, I think I love him. After getting bored with Body For Life and then falling off the workout wagon for a few weeks I decided to just go for it, jump in and do the P90x even though I don't have anywhere to put a pullup bar and nevermind that I don't even have the strength to manage even 1 full pullup. The first week I literally thought I was going to die, of course I was also walking 3 miles every morning before starting and that really wore me out and made it hard on me. At the end of week one I ended up with a pretty bad finger injury (not due to the workouts, just my own stupidity) that meant I couldn't do the yoga nor use weights with my left hand. Ugh another week off!
Starting the count over again I jumped right back to it once my finger was capable of handling the dumbbells and yoga and pushup positions. That week was considerably easier, while still hard I at least was not exhausting myself before I even started. Week two was awesome! Now I am finishing up week 3 and my body is screaming at me. next week is an "easy week" to give the muscles some rest before they take another intense pounding. I added up how many pushups I did this Monday and shocked myself to find out I did at least 100! That is just incredible to me, especially considering how difficult some of the different positions are. I do find that I am much more tired this week and that is making my workouts a little harder. My body is just so sore, but it's a good sore, a good tired. My biceps are freaking amazing and my calves are looking pretty hot too. I just wish the midsection and thighs/bum would catch up. If anything can fix my abs I would say it has to be ab ripper x, that shit is intense and hard and serious crazy! After 3 weeks I am so close to be able to do all 25 reps for each position and that makes me very very happy. I look forward to the 30 day pictures and measurements next week!
I got this fun idea from a fellow knitting friend to post what I am working on on Wednesdays. Since I have so many projects to work on over the next 6-8 weeks I thought it might help keep me focused. On Friday's I think I will add to that and post my finished projects for the week!
First wip and most important that I am currently working on is an Arachne Cardigan for my friend Tasha. I am a bit further along than this picture shows but not as far along as I would like to be. I am knitting it in my favorite German yarn Wollmeise colorway pesto
Next I am working on an Owlet sweater for the Pixie, no picture of it since it is currently only to the waistband ribbing but when finished will look like this only in purple
Third project, again not pictured but I will have one on Friday, is a pair of stripey socks knit for Xander in fun autumn colored striped of pumpkin & brown.
I try to keep my working projects to 1 charted pattern that needs my concentration and at least 1-2 easy patterns that I can work on in the car, in bed, or just when my brain needs a break! I wonder what next weeks wip Wednesday will have in store :-)
It Get's Better is a project that has been started in support of LGBT teens in direct response to the recent suicides of several teens over the past 2 months due to the relentless teasing, harassing and bullying of their peers. It's a tragedy when in this day and age our teens have to fear for their lives, for their safety because they are different. They hear over and over how their high school years are the years they will look back on and miss the most, their golden years. So is it any wonder that when they hear something as ridiculous as this (I don't know about you but I don't know anyone who looks back fondly on their high school years) that they feel so hopeless. I mean if it doesn't get any better than that then what is there to live for, to look forward to.
STOP. High School SUCKS. That popular, pretty cheerleading captain that appears to have it all, it sucks for her. That student over there getting straight A's and has a lot of friends and extracurricular activities, who always has a smile on their face, yup sucks for him too. Look around you. Does everyone look exactly the same? Do they act the same, talk the same, dress the same? Nope. They are all different and unique and perfectly OK just the way they are. AND SO ARE YOU!
I am 100% behind this new project, but hope to see it expand. You see it's not just LGBT that deal with horrific bullying and harassment. Anyone that seems a little different also suffers. We need a project that gives all teens this message, it get's better. More than that is that we really need to focus on stopping what is happening, we need to STOP the bullying. So many workplaces offer these little clinics to talk about harassment but give me a break, by then it's too late. This needs to be started very early on. Tolerance needs to be taught, consequences need to be had. We can't make it better if we don't first focus on fixing what is broken.
Parents, you need to be involved with your kids! You need to know what is going on in their lives even if you think they don't want you to know, even if you feel they are shutting you out. Learn and know the warning signs that your child is being bullied, or is the one doing the bullying. It starts with you, it really does. You have the greatest impact on how your children behave and how they react to peer treatment. I really cannot stress this one point enough.
It get's better. No matter where you are in your life today, tomorrow it get's better.
I find myself 9 days past my last blog post and falling into some really old bad habits. Poor budget planning (and forgetting about an automatic withdrawal) left us very low on funds so I had to plan meals/grocery shopping very carefully. Since I was not going to be able to buy enough food to eat properly for my workouts I didn't do another workout after Wed. Now here it is, a few days after payday and I am still not back on the workout wagon and rather enjoying my freedom from it all. Not making myself sit down and eat 3 meals, plus snacks & supps, not forcing myself out to the garage for an hour long workout where I usually end up stressed out not 5 miutes in to it b/c one kid after another (and often the same one over and over) have to stick their head out into the garage and bug me about something. Never mind that the 2 hours prior to that no one paid me any attention or needed me at all. Nope, it's just when I am breathless and exerting myself that suddenly I am the most needed person on the planet. Is it any wonder I don't look forward to my workouts? The funny thing is even though I do get irritated and stressed during, I absolutely LOVE how I feel when I am done. Like I know the first 10-12 minutes on the elliptical is the hardest and I really have to push myself through them, but then the endorphins kick in and I am almost sad when my 30 minutes is up as I could likely go longer.
So this past week I have been eating like crap, skipping breakfast, 1/2 a pnut butter sandwich and a piece of fruit for lunch, and then dinner was 1 of a few different varieties of hamburger helper. We even had a sloppy joe night and 2 nights ago we had pizza (thanks to a power outage that was 4 hours long right at dinnertime). The few times we have had to revert back to the junky crap dinners (hmm I think it's been almost a year since the last time!) I find myself suddenly craving all the bad foods and not wanting to eat anything that is good for me. I think I have now gotten myself into the mindset that I'll pick back up my workout regime after the kids go back to school next week. I'll have the house to myself and no one to bug me! Until then though I need to work on getting myself back into my healthy eating habits. The good news is that even though I have been eating like crap and not exercising, the weight is still coming off and I am down another pound this week! I will be happy for the weight loss to stay in the 1-6 more pounds down range, that's a good healthy weight for me and where I used to strive to gain to be that weight. Guess all I needed to do was move to the PNW and suffer serious Vit D deficiencies, and thus suffer major health issues in order to gain that weight.
