I've decided that my new diet lifestyle change will start on the 19th. Olivia's 18 mth birthday. My first long term goal is to drop 25lbs by her birthday. At 24 weeks to go that barely over a pound a week. Doable right? HA!
The first 5lbs will fly off simply by water weight. Not only have I not been drinking my water, but I haven't gotten off my ass in over a month. I can see that first 5lbs off before 2 weeks are gone.
The next 5lbs should still relatively fall off quickly. Just tracking my food portions and not snacking will take care of that. Those should go in another 2-3 weeks.
The remaining 15lbs will hang on for dear life and I'll have to threaten anorexia on them for them to even start looking like they're gonna go away. Unfortunately my fat knows I love food waaaaaay to much to go close to anorexia so it'll probably take me until July 18th to come even close to my 25lbs goal.
Now, I guess to start I'll have to dust off the scale.....
So I took the advice of a friend and found a toaster oven that would fit my bread pan (it also fits a 8in square pan so I can make smaller casseroles too). Such a life saver! I'm back in the bread business!
While completely without baking capabilities I used my breadmaker as it was intended... to bake bread. I didn't like how the loaves were formed, kinda like a cube. One sandwich was about the size of 2 since the bread cube was so large! I did find a yummy recipe though that I'll have to try in the oven/toaster oven.
Lee is of course thrilled since he had been bugging me for a while to buy one, but I didn't see the point since we had a perfectly good oven.....
I'm curious to see my electric bill next month. While I am still using the stove part, the toaster oven says it uses 68% less energy than a regular oven. If my bill is noticeably lower I think I'll keep using the toaster oven unless I need the larger size of the regular oven!
I've always hated New Year's Resolutions but I love goals and lists and challenges. Today I started 101 in 1001. This one I didn't sign up for formally (the official site is down, so I'm doing it on my own), but it looks like fun and was quite challenging to come up with my list. I was going to post my list on this and my homeschooling blog but thought it would be easier to make a separate blog for it and just link it to my existing ones.
I also signed up for a reading challenge (for me? super easy!). That one I've signed up for through my homeschooling blog so head over there if you wanna follow along or sign up yourself!
A friend of mine pointed me to a blog that rubbed me the wrong way. I read both the post the link took me to and the previous one that "caused" the author to write the linked one. I can TOTALLY see the humour in the posts, but the blog read to me that BECAUSE toddler behaviour is normal, we as parents should just sit back and let our toddlers/preschoolers, hell, teens, do whatever, because their behaviour is normal for their ages.
And yes, I'm betting the author DOESN'T just sit there and smile while her child pisses on the floor, but it reads like she does. Unfortunately I see this too often. Parents that just let their kids do whatever. This was one of the reason I pulled Brianna out of school to homeschool her. Cause a lot of parents don't give a crap anymore! They don't raise their kids, they let other kids do it or the media. There is no more teaching of manners, courtesy or appropriate behaviour. It's just easier to tell them to go play.
I could go on and on about this topic, but in this day and age it's like beating a dead horse.
The oven is dead. I bought a new element, tried it out, took almost an hour to heat to just 250F. Should take less than 5 to get to 350! Now I need to find a new stove *sigh*
My element blew again. I've had this oven 4 years, am now gonna replace it for the second time. I've never in my life had to replace an element (the inside the oven bottom one) before this oven. POS However, I need a new fridge and only want a new oven. Short of this stupid element, the oven works fine. My fridge on the other hand is wonky.
I discovered this by making bread. I had run the dough through the breadmaker, did it's 2nd rise and was preheating the oven to bake it. 10 minutes later the oven is only reading 120F! Crap.... So I turned it off, waited for it to cool and checked it out. The top element is slightly warm, the bottom one? COLD! Unscrew it, yup, one of the prong thingies is black. Fried. *sigh*
It's Sunday night... hmmm.... maaaaaybe Canadian tire is open. Drive up there, nope, closed. Sears sells ovens.... nope, closed. Well I don't know if Zellers sells ovens, but they do sell larger appliances so maybe... they're open, no elements. *siiiiiiigh* Drive to the other end of town to Home Depot. They DO sell elements, but at over $30! The one I bought from Canadian tire was under $20 so I only brought $20 with me *cry* I'll have to wait til tomorrow to go to Canadian Tire.
Thankfully my next door neighbour was home so I borrowed her oven for a half hour so at least I didn't have to toss the dough (which thankfully hadn't dropped by the time I got home!). First thing tomorrow... element shopping!
Toys R Us puked in my living room and I could barely stay up to watch the ball drop. The basic summary of Christmas and New Year at my house! We've had a pretty good holiday but because of Olivia's age the tree came down early and now my house looks sad :(
Now of course, it's the new year and that means another attempt at "The Diet". I have no set start date because I have no will power so I want all the junk in my house eaten before I even try. I haven't even stepped on the scale yet cause it scares me.
