End of Fitness Week

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After today I’m moving most of fitness talk to my new blog, Centsably Fit. In January 2011 I dedicated a whole month to fitness and weight loss.  I was pregnant with Grant at the time–how time flies!  It was before I met Holly and joined Fit Yummy Mummy, but it’s still some of my best stuff.  Below you’ll find a list of those posts and links to read more.

Tomorrow we start a new topic, Organization!  I’ll tell you more about what to expect in tomorrow’s intro post.

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Here’s a quick directory of Fitness Month.

Simple Math = Weight Loss

Meal Planning for a Healthy Weight–This is a good one with downloads at the end

Keeping a Food Journal

Measuring Food for Success

5 Ways to Stay Motivated

About Protein

About Carbohydrates

Water

A Typical Day of Food and Exercise

Fat and Alcohol

About Salt

7 Ways to Boost Your Metabolism

The Most Effective Type of Exercise

Some Days You Should Eat More: Set-Point Theory

How to Think Thin

The Adaptable Omelet

Reduced Fat Peanut Butter Spreads

Combining Fitness and Family

The Many Faces of Stir-Fry

Where to get “diet” foods at the best price

Soups

Salads

Light Homemade Salad Dressing Recipes

How to Give your Recipes a Healthy Makeover

6 Ways to Beat Hunger

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When burning fat a little hunger is to be expected.  Some of us feel hunger more deeply than others.  Just like some people feel pain more strongly than others.  If you are making sure you get 1500 calories or more, you are eating enough to keep your metabolism strong.  Hunger then is just a signal that your body is getting ready to burn fat.  Learn to see it as a happy thing :).

First thing to make sure is that you aren’t really thirsty.  Start with a nice drink of water and wait a few minutes to see if the feeling goes away.  If not and it’s not time to eat try some of the things below.

Here are some things I do when hunger almost gets the best of me.

1. Chew gum

2.  Eat a Dill pickle spear.  (This is especially good if you are craving something sweet.)

3.  Brush your teeth–nothing tastes very good right after a fresh brush with strong mint toothpaste.

4. Drink something warm and low calorie such as fat free broth; herbal tea with stevia; or tomato soup.

5.  Distract yourself with something you find really fun.  Reading a novel; sewing a project; a little crochet; planning your smaller wardrobe, or scrapbooking.  Avoid anything that might show you pictures of food–like pinterest :).

6.  Put on some music and dance your heart out; go for a run; or other physical activity that you find fun.

chai tea

Here’s a recipe for a warm drink that has antioxidant power, will boost metabolism and help you feel full.

Dairy Free, Sugar Free Chai Tea

1/2 cup water

1/2 cup vanilla unsweetened almond milk (15 calories)

2 tsp stevia (amount in 1 truvia packet)

dash each of cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, black pepper, and cardamom or allspice.

Warm all together then add a tea bag.  Black tea is traditional but you can use green or white tea too.  Brew for about 3 minutes then stir and enjoy.

 

Quinoa Sweet Potato Hash

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When my husband first saw this dish he said, “Well, that looks interesting.”  My kids said, “We are not eating THAT.” And I said, “That is gorgeous, I wonder if it tastes good?”

I made 3 servings.  I took my husband one in his home office.  (He works from home 3 days a week–which is amazingly wonderful.)

I ate the 2nd serving myself.  And then I quickly ate the 3rd serving before he found out it was available.  Yep, it’s that good.  It totally overcame my selfless nature….bwa ha ha.  Now that I see the nutrition profile (below) I understand why I wasn’t hungry until mid-afternoon, lol.

Here’s a recipe for 1 serving and you can multiply it as you wish.  I cheated on the veggie chopping of it all and used frozen Southwest blend veggies that I snagged on sale for $.69 a lb.  It was cheaper than buying bell peppers this time of year too. (Next time I’m adding some spinach just before I drop in the eggs.)

1 cup peeled and diced raw sweet potato

1 cup mixed chopped bell peppers, onions and mushrooms

1/4 cup quinoa, uncooked and rinsed

1 strip turkey bacon diced, optional

1/2 cup water

1 egg

Add veggies, quinoa and diced bacon to a non-stick or cast iron skillet.  Saute for 3 minutes or until quinoa is toasted.  Add water, bring to a simmer, reduce heat, cover and set timer for 15 minutes.  When all the water is absorbed, put the quinoa mixture aside and crack an egg in the middle.  Cover and cook for 3 minutes more.  Salt and pepper to taste.  Add a few parsley flakes for garnish.

If you want to reduce calories a bit, try cutting the amount sweet potato in half.

This recipe was inspired by: http://www.howsweeteats.com/2012/08/quinoa-breakfast-skillet/

Centsably Fit

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I’ve started a new blog! I’m allowing myself this week to share some yummy fitness related recipes with you at groceryshrink.com and then I’m moving this kind of talk over to my new blog.  This will be where I share my food and exercise journal with the NYTC 2013 challenge.

What you can expect:  cell phone snapshots of my food right before I devour it, a brief description of my workouts and any muscle improvement or soreness, screen shots of my MyFitnessPal Journal, and measurement progress reports.

It launches on January 7th–the day the NYTC begins.  I’ve already posted my goals for the challenge, so pop over, check them out and get subscribed for email updates.

P.S.  I’ll still be updating Grocery Shrink regularly and have a year of posts mapped out for you here.

Is This Your Time?

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Is there a fitness goal on your resolution list this year? Was there last year too?  I’m right there with you. Let this year be your year to make your dreams a reality.

It’s been over a year since I started working out with Holly Rigsby, owner of Fit Yummy Mummy.  I’m stronger than ever and gearing up for more fitness gains this year.

I’m 36 years old, have given birth to 6 children and need to be serious about fitness.  My family counts on me to be strong and have energy to meet all their needs. When I eat right and exercise we all benefit.

Any healthy eating plan and exercise program that you will follow is the right one for you.  If you already have a program you love and can stick to, I don’t want to change that.  If you don’t have one yet, I recommend Fit Yummy Mummy.  The workouts take 15-20 minutes a day and the food is normal sensible food that can be found at discount grocers like Aldi.

Holly will start her New Year Transformation Challenge January 7th, and I’d love to see you there.  All FYM club members can participate in the challenge with all the extra coaching for no additional charge. If you have had trouble sticking to a program in the past, the benefit of the support group, the journals, extra coaching, and prizes might be the extra motivation you need.

Registration starts January 2nd

Don’t sign up yet unless you are already a ClubFYM member or already have The FYM ebook package. 

Because you can get the first month free.

I encourage you to register early as the whole process can take an hour or so (since you will need to take measurements and photos and upload them to your secure journal.)

Here’s the theme for the challenge:

If you don’t already have her digital ebook/video package, I recommend it.  It makes it much easier to get started with the program and has simplified sets of exercises more suitable for beginners than the monthly workouts that club members get as part of their membership every month.  I saved the member workouts and used them later when my strength was built up.

When you buy the ebook package the first month of club membership is free.

After that it’s $20 a month if you choose to continue.  For your money you get a new set of workouts every month; online support from other club members; an opportunity for personal training from Holly (you can upload video of yourself doing the exercises and she will suggest form corrections) or you can just ask questions about exercise modifications etc…During challenges, Holly gives extra homework assignments 3 times a week to help us get to the heart of being successful with our goals and to keep us motivated.  She also offers extra training periodically in the form of conference calls or video chats.

If you will be joining the New Year Transformation Challenge with me, leave a comment and let me know!  My user name at clybfym is AngelaCoffman so I’m easy to find there too.

Disclaimer:  I am an affiliate with FYM and a portion of any ebook purchased through a link on this site goes to support my family.  All the opinions in this article are mine and were not requested by any FYM representative.

Happy New Year Gift for You :)

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Previous years my resolutions have been pretty awesome.  So awesome that they never got done :).  So this year I’m making one simple resolution and made it in a chalkboard print to hang in my office.  If you click on the link below you will get a printable PDF version that will trim to an 8×10 and fit in a standard frame.

Click Here to Download New Year chalkboard prints PDF

I made these after seeing Nest of Posie’s blog post here. Her Christmas prints are super amazing, way more amazing than these here.  I really like the chalkboard look, but not the chalkboard dust.  It’s a win-win :).

 

 

Jamberry Nails

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Have you noticed my new advertiser? Heidi Perkins, Jamberry Nails Independent Consultant.  A few weeks ago, Heidi sent this cute little kit in  the mail.

I didn’t try them right away because I was afraid it would be time consuming and hard to learn to do.  I was so WRONG! I broke a nail a few days ago which forced me to do something quick.  And these nail decals seemed like the perfect solution.  They were!

These are super easy to do and while prep was really important (buffing and cleaning) it took less time than I expected. Plus there is no drying time like with nail polish, so I could get up and get back to work right away.  There are a ton of cute styles. I chose the red with white polka dots for Christmas, and this style would also be amazing for Valentine’s day.

Here are some of my other favorites:

https://www.heidiperkins.jamberrynails.net/home/products.aspx?id=55

 

The nail sets are $15 each, but are good for 2-3 sets of toes or fingernails. Shipping is just $2.99 on most orders. And it’s buy 3 get 1 free! These would make really cute end of the year teacher gifts with some pampering manicure set items.

Each set of decals comes with 18 individual nails in various sizes. I was able to get two fingers out of each decal by cutting them in half down the center–making 36 decals.  Which means 2 sets of fingers and 1 set of toes for me, plus some for my girls to play with.  The decals are supposed to last 3-4 weeks.  I’ve only had mine on for 3 days, so I can’t say yet how long they last for me.  I have washed dishes and showered with no trouble.  Peeling stickers off of new toys lifted the edge on my most used finger but it smoothed down afterwards just fine.

These are different than the real polish strip on the market.  There are more than one set of nails in each package, but they don’t come with application accessories like a cuticle stick or buffer-things we should have on hand anyway.  Jamberry nails are vinyl and odor free unlike the real polish strips.  And they are more durable too.  You will need manicure scissors or clippers, a good file, a buffer, a cuticle stick, a hairdryer or other heat source (like a microwaveable heat pad) and polish remover to apply. This might sound overwhelming, but don’t let it be. Gathering all the items together was the hardest part of the process.

Here’s a video to show how easy these are to use:

 

Christmas Photos

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Monday we had 32 guests for Christmas and it was wonderful. But busy.  I just enjoyed the entire day and forgot to take a single picture! But the highlight of the day may well have been Darren’s sister’s kids playing a violin/cello duet of Oh Holy Night which was as beautiful a thing as you can imagine.  And at that moment the UPS man came with a Mary Kay delivery.  I hope he knew that gorgeous music was live!  You just don’t hear something like that every day.

 

Christmas morning I made sure to snap a few photos to remember things by.  This is our first Christmas in this house and the first Christmas Grant will remember–or not remember.  I can’t remember much from when I was 20 months old, come to think of it.

Our new tradition is to open up the sun room French doors where the children’s tree is.  They get their own tree to decorate with their precious hand made ornaments and whatever they want.  And I get my tree in the formal living room that is all silver and gold and as sparkly as I can make it.

We light the fire in the family room and the space heater in the sun room which looks like a fireplace too.

Stockings are first.  The kids don’t have to wait for us to open them, but they did. I’m glad.  As soon as I got up I slid the overnight breakfast casserole in the oven.  I made 2 small pans of it.  One with just sausage, egg, and cheese.  The other had green and red peppers and onions.  I was elated to find a southwest veggie blend in the frozen veggie department and all was on sale fro $.59 a lb.  Score!  No chopping veggies for this busy mama on Christmas.

The kids were so sweet together.  They each bought each other a gift–which made 30 items to open just from each other!  Then Darren and I bought them 3 things each.  Nothing was super huge and most of the children gifts came from Dollar Tree or Family Dollar on their black weekend 50% off sale.  But it took a lot of time to open everything.

Heidi helped Grant open his first gift which was a new rubber ball.  But after that Dub opened a remote control car which Grant wanted.

When we gave it back to Dub, he was NOT happy.

But unknown to us Grandma bought Grant the exact same remote control car which he was super excited to open later in the afternoon.

The best gift that I gave was a Dollar Tree dinosaur hat and a handmade dinosaur tail made from this tutorial.

Dub got one too.

But his favorite toy was a cardboard box.

Seriously we could all save a bunch of money and just give our kids big boxes and markers, lol.

Darren got a homemade bathrobe from me.  I bought the fabric for it 5 years ago and am just now getting it done, lol.  I also got him some beef jerky, special flavored coffee creamer (which he uses to flavor his workout shakes–we aren’t coffee drinkers.)  And a new pair of cuff links for his French shirts.

Darren didn’t get me a gift–his perfectionism got in his way of buying anything because nothing was just right.  But it made him a little miserable Christmas morning.  Thank goodness gift giving isn’t my love language.  I’m just as happy with a generous dose of praise.  But he promised me a shopping spree together which is way more fun anyway.

But I did get a gift from Jamberry nails–my new advertiser.  And I LOVE it!  Seriously ladies, you have to check these out. Click on the link to the right.

It just so happened that the day before I broke a nail below the quick–you know where it really hurts.  It didn’t break all the way across and I didn’t know what to do.  I couldn’t cut it that short and I couldn’t just leave it.  Then I remembered this package just waiting for a few minutes of fun.  The Jamberry nail decal smoothed right over the break making it strong and invisible.

We headed over to my  mom’s after morning packages and my nephew dog greeted us at the door.

Bwa ha ha ha!

My grandmother arrived about the same time we did.  And I noticed her festive nails right away.  So we took a picture together.

I’m so lucky to have Grandma still.  My kids have 2 great-grandma’s still with us!  And Grant especially loves them both.  He spent quite a bit of time playing a peek-a-boo with grandma through all the little sections in her walker.  And she enjoyed the attention too.

At some point the kids decided Grandpa would make a great dinosaur.  And they were right.

And my Aunt Christy told me about running a marathon 2 weeks ago for St Jude’s hospital in Memphis and made me cry.  She told me how at mile 23 the course went through the courtyard of the hospital and all the children were lined up along the side holding signs telling what their illness was and how long they had been there.  My Aunt is a beautiful woman but no spring chicken but she said to her friend, “There is no way we are walking this stretch.  Run now like you’ve never run before.”  And even though I wasn’t there I sat at her feet and cried.  And I held her finishing medal and cried some more.  And I told her I would consider running on her team next year–though getting away to Memphis the second week of December sounds like a hard thing right now.  And when I think how hard running the 5K was this fall–which is only 3 miles, running 26 sounds…well…crazy.  But I love St Jude’s and what they do for the children–and that makes me think that I really will try.

And then at some point we all giggled while Darren and Uncle Dave, both boyscout camping experts, struggled to put together a Doll tent. Which turned out super cute and has been played with a ton since.

And this is how I know the dino tails were a good idea.
image

This was my little dinosaur at the library today 🙂

Russian Orphans and Gingerbread Houses

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I’m going to be a sewing maniac today, but first I wanted to share a few photos from the weekend.  Friday night our family worship group gathered in my home to put together Christmas boxes for an orphanage in Russia.  One of our member’s father visited there a few weeks ago on a missionary trip and what he found just about broke his heart.  Every child there was so precious and had so many needs. He felt almost powerless to help.

His daughter had the idea to recruit some help to gather necessities and some fun items to send out to the children.  All of our children helped choose what to gather.  Then on Friday we put it all out on my dining room table.

There were handmade hats and scarves (from all over the USA) and gloves.  Toothbrushes; soap and washcloths.  (Check out how cute these are!  Pam bought plain white washcloths then appliqued a heart on each one.)

For the Girls

For the Boys

There were small baby dolls; toy cars; bouncy balls and yo-yos.  Stamps; crayons, coloring books, calendars, pencils, silly bands, and bookmarks.  And for the older girls journals and lip gloss.  There was also gum and several kinds of candy.  Each of our children drew the age and gender of a child from the orphanage, then walked around the table choosing the right things for that gift.

Then the kids headed back to their parents to wrap a gift box so it could still be opened by Russian officials at inspection.

With 6 boxes to wrap (that was tricky!) I stopped taking pictures here.  But what a great evening!  It wasn’t without a little drama.  Some of the kids were confused and took more than one of each item for their bag.  It was traumatic on their egos to spread things out. But after explaining how the children might feel to find their friend with 3 and themselves with none…it made more sense. And my dear little Brandon thought he was making a gift for he and his best friend Isabelle to share.  When he found out that wasn’t the case, it was pretty awful. But after a few tears he was able to find the joy in giving a gift to a child he didn’t know who has nothing and will be able to truly appreciate it.

Then the next morning, I packed up the kids and headed to Grandma’s for our traditional gingerbread making party with cousins.  No kits were used here.  My mom bakes everything from scratch using a cast iron mold that she has had for nearly 20 years.

My nephew, Sean (what a cutie!)

Aunt Erica helping Brandon

My Heather

Heidi, almost 13! and my niece, Maddie.

Caleb

It was a hoot trying to get all of them to look at the camera at the same time.

Doll “Quilt As You Go” Tutorial

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This adorable doll quilt is the perfect companion to our dollar tree Doll Bassinet/ Moses Basket. Tutorial here.

I used the leftover scraps from the basket to complete it.  It took about an hour from start to finish. This same technique can be used to make quilted bibs and larger throws for real babies or for nursing home residents.  It goes together super fast since you quilt it as you go and there is no hand sewing. (My choir students are working together to make a larger version. It’s a little more fiddly to make it bigger, but it still works.)

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