WW Wednesday

YAY!!YIPPEE!!YAHOO!!!YEEHAAWW!!! Can you tell I am excited!!!!!? Todays weigh in was pretty good :) I am finally back under 200 again!!! I have now lost a total of 17.4lbs!

So today was really busy and I am super tired so this is gonna be short

Tonight was my last Cub Scout meeting as den leader, I will be released this Sunday. It was bittersweet, we had a great meeting, we got a new scout and we made some really cool, really creative scarf slides. I brought treats for the boys and wasn't even tempted to have any, and I gave all of the leftovers to the young men so there was nothing left to bring home to tempt me later.

I am off to bed, I have a busy next few days too

We have survived!

Ok, before you all get nervous thinking something devastating happed for us to have had to survive it...stop worrying, it was probably only devastating for me. Well, ok, it wasn't that bad.

Sierra had a FCCLA conference this weekend, and actually it wasn't even the whole weekend, she left yesterday morning and I just picked her up from school about 20 minutes ago so she was only really gone 31 hours, but it was plenty long enough for me.

Yes I was nervous, I mean, what mom wouldn't be nervous sending her 12 year old daughter off to some crazy hotel hours away from home with 22 other teenage girls, knowing that there were gonna be hundreds of other kids there too!? Well, I would. Then she informed me they weren't even in a hotel, they were in a cabin by the lake! Even better!

So you are probably shaking your heads wondering why I would do such a crazy thing? Right? I know I am. So I will explain. First of all FCCLA stands for Family, Career and Community Leaders of America. This was an ACCESS Conference which involves classes on teamwork, leadership and speech etc. Sierra LOVES to be involved in school and is a natural born leader, not really sure where she gets it. When the opprtunity for her to go to this came up, I just couldn't tell her no, it meant so much to her and I knew it would be a great experience for her. She wanted to prove how responsible she could be too, and what a perfect opportunity!

She proved it alright, she went to bed at a decent hour...even though the rest of the girls in her room stayed up almost until dawn, so her 11:30 seems pretty responsible . She earned $8 last Thursday by babysitting for a friend, and we gave her $45, so she started out the weekend with $53. They were going to be stopping by the mall when they got to Osage Beach for the conference. She was responsible for all of her meals while she was there too, so she went to the mall, bought 2 meals and and still managed to bring home a WHOPPING $36!! I was so impressed!! So when I picked her up and she asked if she could buy dinner for us with the money she had left over, I couldn't tell her no, besides I really didn't feel like cooking tonight even though I know I really should.

Card Challenge

This is my card creation for Challenge #1 for Seriously...So Cute

The plan was to choose a vacation photo and use the colors in the picture as your inspiration for a card. I had a lot of pictures from our Yellowstone vacation that I absolutely LOVED! Choosing one was difficult. Putting those colors together, well now that is another story. This was really hard for me but I am satisfied with the end result!

This was my photo:

And this is my card:

What are you doing to make a difference?

Today is Make A Difference Day! Did you know that? So, what are you gonna do about it? I am getting ready to leave to go to church where we will be making lap quilts for a local nursing home. We did this last year and it was so much fun! I will post some pictures tonight when I get home. Steve and Sierra are contributing by sitting out in the woods all day, freezing their hineys off so they can hopefully put a deer in the freezer and save us from spending so much at the grocery store. Maybe not the ideal way to make a difference but it sure will make a huge difference in our house! I hope she gets one...it will be her first!

WW Wednesday

This was a much better week! I lost another 1.2 lbs this week and have lost a total of 15.2!!!

Ok, I found this amazing blog called A Year of CrockPotting and can be found here: http://crockpot365.blogspot.com/

She posted a super simple recipe for apple butter. I love apple butter but I have never known how to make it. This is her recipe:

--apples. 14 large apples fit in my 6.5 quart crockpot

--2 tsp cinnamon

--2 cups white sugar (see note below)

--1 cup brown sugar (see note below)

--1/2 tsp cloves

--1 T vanilla

Well, I followed her recipe for the most part, I did tweak it a little bit. I only used 1/2 cup of brown sugar and 1/2 cup of Splenda instead of the regular sugar. Not sure how many points this would count for in my WW but it sure is tasty!!

Before and After

This is my kitchen before and after, these were the only pics I could find that actually showed my kitchen before, notice the ugly blue and peach backsplash before, and the newly painted, yes painted, pretty backsplash and the ugly wallpaper

Well. I am done....ok well kinda, I really need to do another coat of paint, but I just don't feel like it. So for now I am done. Steve says he doesn't care for it, the kids LOVE it and I am still undecided. I do like it better than the nasty outdated wallpaper that was there, and the whole kitchen seems brighter and cleaner, but it isn't quite the color I was thinking, I think maybe I should have gone a little bit darker. Now I just need to get my new concrete countertops...and new flooring, new sink, faucet....ok that list just keeps getting longer

Color inspiration 26

I love these challenges, they are so much fun! I find myself looking forward to them and I spend a lot of time thinking? about what I can do, then the colors come out and my mind goes blank! What is up with that?! Well here is mine for this week

WW Wednesday

Had a rough week this past week, I took the kids to McDonald's last week and I thought I did pretty good, I only ended up using 2 of my allowance points, the real kick in the pants was this weekend. See, I was babysitting for a friend and between her 3 kids and my 3 picky eaters, I figured easy stuff that can please kids. We had pizza Friday, which is one of my favorites, but I didn't count my points, Saturday I didn't do much better and Sunday was even worse...I even had dessert...and a lot of it. So thinking back, I wasn't very smart in food choices and I have learned from it. I did manage to lose some though. I am now sitting here typing this 14lbs lighter than when I started. Didn't quite get my goal this week, so I am just gonna have to work that much harder for next Wednesday, and next week I WILL be under 200 again!!

2 Page Tuesdsay

Ok, so this one is a little late tonight, but I almost forgot it was Tuesday because I had yesterday off work. Yep, that's right, Columbus Day...who ever actually gets that day off? Well, we do now. This is the first year my work has given us that day off. It was nice...except that I spent most of the afternoon in a doctors office, but that is a whole other story. I have to confess, I had this idea for a weaved look on these pages but it didn't even come close to what I was thinking and I am not exactly happy with it, but here it is anyway because I don't have time to do 2 more pages tonight.

Kristina's color challenge #25

I designed this card for the KWerner Color inspiration challenge. A friend from work LOVES tie-dye so I made this for her by giving the edges a tie-dye look. I had to substitute the blue and green since I am still fairly new to StampinUp products and I don't have a whole lot to work with --YET (sorry Honey, I love you!)

Fire Prevention Week

This week is fire prevention week, sorry I am a little behind here seein as how it is Thursday already and the week is more than half over now, but here is a really cool website that I wanted to share http://www.sparky.org/

2 page Tuesday

Well, I am gonna kind of cheat this week. I am actually using 2 pages that I did a couple weeks ago, but in my defense, I did get something done. The kids and I spent about an hour tonight ripping the wallpaper out of the kitchen. This is the ugly mess that was underneath it all. I do have new paint picked out and ready to go up this weekend.

Ok, now here is where I cheat. I LOVE the way these 2 pages turned out, so since I didn't take the time to do my pages today I am gonna share these instead.

Seussical Musical

Sierra is going to be a Who in her schools production of Seussical Musical. She is excited about it and I am too, but in a way I'm not. She has to stay after school 3 days a week all through October and 4 days a week through November! That seems like an awful lot of practices all at 2 1/2 hrs each! I guess it's not so bad though...I work 1/2 mile from her school and I get off at 3:30 so I can hang out at the scrapbooking store between the two or I can get my shopping done at Walmart, or I can go home, sit down just long enough to get comfy then have to get up, run back to town and pick her up....this could get expensive! :)

Flashback Friday

Hunting season is in full swing again. This is a picture of Sierra sleeping through her first deer hunting trip with daddy. Ok, she didn't sleep through it all, just most of it. This year she was drawn for a managed hunt at Weldon Springs and we are all so excited! The place is HUGE! Shouldn't be too hard to find somewhere for her there. She was sooo excited when she found out she was chosen :) She says she will stay awake this time.

Color Inspiration Challenge

I am gonna try this again. This weeks colors are so pretty together and I couldn't help myself. Color Inspiration is brought to you by Kristina Werner over at http://kwernerdesign.com/blog/2008/10/color-inspiration-23-1.html

This is just a quickie I came up with after work today

Sierra and I will be making some more tonight or tomorrow hopefully

Weight Watcher Wednesday

It was all about looking back and seeing what kind of mistakes we made in the past and how we then took those mistakes and dealt with them. Are we now doing things better or the same or worse. For me I think for the most part I have learned to do things better. I am no longer a stress eater or a boredom eater. I don't realy do much excercise, but I have been trying to get on the treadmill more often. I have made small steps in the right direction though. I lost another 3 lbs this week!!! AND I had strawberry shortcake to boot!!!! I have now lost a total of 10.8 lbs. I am halfway to my 10% goal. So looking back on last week, the thing I need to improve on is actually getting on the treadmill because I didn't do it at all last week...not even once.