love-hate...

Ahhh.... working out.  We have a love-hate relationship.

Dieting.  Love-hate.

Tracking my food.  Love-hate.

I think the reason that all of these feel like a love-hate, is because it brings back lots of GOOD memories, and lots of BAD memories.

More about that to come...someday. 

But right now, I am doing this for me.

Working out at the Y 4-5 nights a week.  Sore, and loving it.  It feels... good.

Tracking all of my food on www.myfitnesspal.com.... feels good.  

Eating healthy, every day.  Good.

Not feeling like I'm going to be in trouble with someone if I slip up and eat something not so healthy.... great.

Down 10 pounds so far... and lots more to go. 

But learning more towards the LOVE part of this right now instead of the hate. 

the day the tanning salon burnt down...

I live in a small town.

Small enough that when a business is on fire, everyone and I mean EVERYBODY comes out to watch.

I was grading papers wasting my life on Facebook today, and a few pictures popped up of black smoke coming out of a building in the center of our town.

And for some odd reason, I have a strange fascination with things like this.  I know, weird.  And if we are being honest, I also have an odd fascination with polygamy, school shootings, and TV prison shows.  Glad I got that out. 

My wonderful husband, knowing that I am fascinated by things like this, offered to drive me down to the BIG SCENE so I could see what was happening.  We had to go into town anyways that day, and since our small town is pretty much two intersecting roads, we were going to go by anyways.

Fast forward 4 hours... we are back home now.  Yes, we ended up watching for FOUR hours.  

It went from being contained to one business, 

to spreading to the ones next door,

to taking over the whole building.

Apparently, it started in a Dessert Sun Tanning salon.  A facial bulb EXPLODED while a girl was tanning.  It started smoking a bit, and she went out to the front.  The girl at the front came back to look, and it was on fire.  And because NO ONE had a brain knew how to use a fire extinguisher or thought about cutting the power, it quickly spread to the rest of the store.  And because the store is connected to a bunch of other ones... we lost a hearing aid shop, cigar shop, travel agency, beauty supply shop, and 

my favorite coffee shop.  The only decent drive through, my favorite place to meet up with friends, and a central hub in our town - gone.  

I saw more people today out there that I knew then I do going to church on a Sunday!  So that is the story of the day the tanning salon burnt down.   

gift cards...

I have a love-hate relationship with gift cards.

LOVE that I can pick and choose what I want....

HATE that I always forget I have them....

LOVE not having to pay for something with my debit card 

HATE having a wallet full of them....

LOVE not having to decide which envelope to take the money out of (thanks Dave Ramsey!)....

HATE having $0.53 cents left on it and feeling the need to keep it and not waste those precious pennies...

Exhibit A:

I went through and found all of my gift cards... including the ones I just received for Christmas and my birthday

 I have a gift card problem.  

Today, Ryan and I decided to go and return a wedding gift (long story... yes, we got married in MAY, but the post office lost the package and we JUST got.  Bad news is that we had already had that item), and I had them put the balance on one of my Macy gift cards (pictured in the right center on my board above). 

Because we had a pretty good size balance left, we decided to see if we could find a new comforter for our bed.  We had been wanting a down comforter to go in our duvet cover, but they are SO expensive.

After trying out many different thread counts, weights, down alternatives, and allergy/asthma sensitive ones,

we did a lot of thinking (yes, that is a thinking face, not a mad face) and found there right one!  And the best part was that it was 60% off, plus an additional 10%, so we got a $300 dollar comforter for about $70!  That also means I have $16.37 cents left on my gift card...guess it goes back up on the board.

We put our new comforter into our duvet cover we got off of our gift registry...so cozy!  Not exactly what our bed looks like, but we LOVE the design on our cover!

Tomorrow, I think we shall get Starbucks coffee (2 gift cards), maybe do some shopping at Old Navy (3 gift cards), eat at Red Robin (gift card), and then get some yummy Blu Berry fro-yo (10 gift certificates).  Ha!

high five for friday...

Here are five of my favorite things from this past week!

1. New earrings from Target...on clearance!  They are gold and silver...and covered in little flowers.  In the center of each flower is a little jewel...they are so dainty yet chunky at the same time...is that possible?    

2. Trying out this new cupcake recipe...yummy!  They looked so pretty, and tasted delicious!

3. Maybelline Baby Lips... I am in LOVE with the Grape one... the perfect amount of color...some gloss, and not sticky (which my hubby appreciates).  Plus, it smells great and makes my lips super soft!

4. Getting to spend my a few hours snuggled up with my hubby by the fireplace in our house.

5. By the end of this first week back to school after break, I was so happy it was Friday!

Now to relax for the rest of the weekend...and soak up these rare moments of peace and quiet with my man.

raspberry almond cookies...

When I was younger there was this shop in our local mall that had every kind of 'scent' you could imagine... I can't for the life of me remember the name, but there were tons of little jars with delicious smelling perfumes you could mix to make your own scent.

There was one in particular...It had a sweet, delicious almond smell that was out of this world. 

And so began my love affair with almond extract.

I found this recipe over at www.tastykitchen.com, and decided to make it last night.

I liked that I had all the ingredients, and it didn't take a lot of time... plus, eating fruit on my cookies makes them healthy and fit into my diet...right?

Raspberry Almond Cookies

  

Ingredients
1 cup Butter
⅔ cups Granulated Sugar
2 cups Flour
½ teaspoons Almond Extract Or Vanilla Extract
1 jar Raspberry Jam (I only had mixed berry...but it was delicious!)
1 cup Powdered Sugar
1 Tablespoon Water (I used part almond extract and part water...yumm!)


Cream together the butter with the granulated sugar. Mix in flour and extract. Scoop out a spoonful of the mixture and shape into 1-inch balls. (The mixture will just barely come together.) Put each ball onto a cookie sheet and press your thumb into each one to make an indention. Put as much jam as you can put into each thumbprint.


Bake 14-18 minutes at 350 degrees.
Once cookies are cooled, mix together the powdered sugar with the water and drizzle onto the cookies.
Makes about 24 cookies.

as so it returns...

Tomorrow I return to my usual schedule... my routine... my passion.

And while break has been awesome... 

I'm excited to get back to see 26 kiddos. 

I don't do so well when I am home alone and don't have a purpose... although today I was able to get quite a bit done! 

Had coffee with a good friend, did some grocery shopping, and then cleaned up a bit. 

Thought someone broke into my house, had my Dad come over and clear my house (which actually looks quite different than in the movies) and good news: no one was in there.  Too many cop shows over these past few weeks.

My older brother who lives in Maryland is home for break right now, so R and I went out to dinner with him...yum!  Went off of my diet a bit tonight... but luckily I ate really good all day, so it balances out...right? 

Off to bed early tonight... back to work tomorrow!

2012 list...

Ryan and I sat down last night at wrote out some of our goals for this new year.... so looking forward to 2012!

	Eat Healthier Eat at the dinner table Exercise more Read a marriage book together Go to bed on time Take more pictures Blog on a regular basis Pay off our debt Keep our house more organized - Bake more Read more and watch less TV No TV on Sundays Date night twice a month Spend more time with family Be still and spend time with God Walk outside more Do more craft projects Take REAL vacation