Author: admin (Page 30 of 89)

I know a couple I’ve posted before, but they are so cute!!

Happy birthday, Mae Christine!!

Every time over the weekend that Dad would suggest we stop somewhere to look at something or do something else, I would say “Focus, focus.” Our weekend was about getting the porch on 126 fixed and shingled. And we almost got done. The project took WAY longer than we expected. We started out right away Saturday morning taking the shingles off and ran into our first surprise. There wasn’t just one layer like it looked. There were three or four layers – finishing off with cedar shake shingles on the bottom. And it was very wet and very rotten. We weren’t surprised there was some damage, because the reason for doing it was that it was leaking. But the extent of the damage was a surprise. So that meant Dad taking a lot of time to figure out what could be salvaged and what needed to be replaced with new wood. And then we had to do a lumber run, once we saw what we were going to need. We went to the lumber yard in Bloomer and just bought enough stuff for the first half, because we could see that was all we would get done on Saturday.

Dad had to work at The Garage at 6:00, so we had to stop after we had the first side repaired, new roof surface (plywood) on, the style D roof edging and the weather stripping on and the whole thing covered with the tar paper.It wasn’t done, but it was a lot more weatherproof than it had been when we started.

Yesterday we couldn’t start until after lunch, because of church. Plus Dad had to run to Menards and get the rest of the lumber for the second side. We got there at about 1:30 to find the roof VERY HOT. But the good thing was that the shingles were softer and easier to get off that second side. Our tenant (Victor) was helping and he and I got that side totally stripped and all the nails out and ready for plywood by 3:00.

At that time it seemed we would easily get done, but things started to go slowly because of all the fussy work with the two valleys and all the edges and what-not. Long story short – we were there until 9:15, when we couldn’t see anything. We almost finished – all that is left is a couple shingles at the peak of the middle section and putting on the Boston ridge. But we covered it with tarp in case we have a really wicked storm. Otherwise it would be fine even if it rains.

I don’t remember ever being as exhausted as I was by the time we left. If I’d had my own car, I’d have left around 6, because my body was already so tired and sore. So that is why I’m not going to roof with Gary today as was previously planned. Dad is off to help him, but I’m staying home to get some work done, since I was out of the house the entire weekend.

I got these chairs and a table with no top at a garage sale today for $15. I thought that was good. The chairs are super sturdy. The table basically was free, because the chairs were marked separately at $4 each. Anyway, I’m thinking of painting them each a different “sherbet” color, like raspberry, orange, lime green and I’m not sure what else. What do y0u savvy decorators think? As you can see, my deck is pretty boring.

And what do you think I can do with the table?  I love the curly-cues, so I hate to hide them under a solid top.  My old table needs paint, too, but I don’t want to get rid of the umbrella function, because we use that a lot. We just need to figure out a way to stabilize the umbrella.

And for all you organizing buffs, here are some pictures of my newly organized and cleaned food cupboards.

Weight Loss Post

If you can pinpoint your biggest challenges to success when you try to eat more appropriately, you can begin to work on conquering them. If you don’t know what they are,  it is much harder to make the necessary changes.

I actually sat down and analyzed what it is that causes me to not lose weight. Basically, for me, it breaks down into two things – things I eat that I don’t count in my daily total, because they seem insignificant (but are not), and things that I don’t count because the day was too awful to even think about, so I just forget it and assume it didn’t matter. But it did – what I ate caused me to gain or at least not lose weight.

Then I wrote down all of these things and actually estimated how many calories each of them added to my intake on a weekly basis. It was staggering. But the good thing is that conquering these things will make a big difference in my weight loss.

Let me just mention a few to get you started on your own personal list:

Not measuring things like pasta and yogurt. It is so easy to be eating twice what you are counting as having eaten. Total: as much as 800 calories a week, because I have yogurt every day.

Not stopping at just one cookie, but having two or three (or eight or nine). Each one contains the same number of calories, whether I want to accept that or not, so three is three times as many calories as one would have been. Total: Anywhere from 300 to 1200 each incidence – I won’t even say what that might be on a bad week! (Which is why cookies are now banned from my house!)

Eating “routines” such as having several sandwich cookies in the lobby at church while I’m listening to the sermon for the second time on Sunday, or having a McDonald’s cone after every Thursday choir practice.  Total: could be over 1800 per week, if I’m at church a couple times and up for choir as well.

Adding things to dishes and underestimating their impact – this could be granola on my yogurt or nuts and raisins in my oatmeal.  Total: Probably about 400 calories on an average week.

If I’m going to go to Culvers or Dairy Queen (and I AM going to go, eventually), having a big treat with all sorts of toppings, rather than just having a simple small sundae or cone or even just a small dish of the flavor of the day. I really don’t get that much more enjoyment out of the big treat, so why eat it? Total: Of course, I don’t go every week, but the times I do, it could save 300 or more calories.

My list goes on and on, and yours probably will, too. What I am doing now is trying to conquer a few of these things each week. I started with the very easiest and am leaving the really hard things, like my evening eating for the end, when I am feeling empowered by success in other areas. That is another dumb thing I tend to do – going after the worst things first. Sure it would be great to conquer the worst thing, but it simply isn’t going to happen until I’ve practiced conquering smaller things.

As of now, I’ve just about totally eliminated snacking on handfuls of nuts and sunflower seeds. And I’m working this week on measuring every bit of yogurt that I eat, as well as not having ice cream around the house at all, for now.

Next week – the cookies at church!

I’ve been watching What Not to Wear again, so when I tried on clothes today to see what in my wardrobe went with what, I tried belting the waist over top of the blouse with a skinny belt, like they recommend. With the right bottoms (waist band at the waist and not lower), it really does dress up an outfit and make me look taller. Taller is good. I came up with about a dozen dressy outfits with just a pencil skirt and my cuffed crop pants. I think they all look good on me, and it is important to me when I’m trying to lose weight that I have clothes that I can wear NOW that I feel I look good in. You might think it would make me not care whether I lose weight or not, but actually it makes me feel that it is possible that I could look REALLY good, so I am willing to try harder.

Anybody else feel that same way!

How are you other gals doing on your food control and exercise? Still motivated to make this the summer we all do it? Wouldn’t it be cool if, by the time we meet in August, we lose an entire person (in weight, of course). It might be a small person, say 60 or 70 pounds, but we should see if we can do that together. I hope to contribute 20 pounds lost and Dad will contribute at least as much. He is really motivated to lose now, too.

The banker that is on the board of the youth center did our paperwork for a loan and it is his opinion that we should wait a year to build. We took quite a loss on our rental business in 2013 because the Georgia house sat empty part of the year and 117, of course, was empty all year. Plus, because I quit my job, he can’t count that income into last year’s income, but he can only count last year’s music income and not the higher amount I’m projecting for this year. So our loss is too great and our income too small on paper.

I would have thought I would have been a basket case getting this news, but I know God is in it, so I’m just looking at it as God not letting us do something stupid. So our summer is quite a bit less busy than we’d thought it would be. We are going to finish 117, then move on to some things that need doing at 126 in New Auburn, then list that one for sale, because if we sell it this year, we don’t have to pay taxes on what we make, since we’ve lived in it over 2 of the past 5 years. Then we’ll work on getting Ladysmith in better shape. And we’ll keep saving money. If things go as predicted, we’ll have a fully funded emergency fund by the end of October. And I’ll try to figure out how to actually earn money doing personal training.

Joyce Mohr is having breast cancer surgery on Thursday and she and Gary would certainly appreciate your prayers. This has got to be a very tough time for both of them.  I’m not sure what time on Thursday, but God knows.

The second recital was this afternoon and it went just as well as the one last week. Same number of performers and same size audience, within one or two. They ate more ice cream, though – we finished the whole gallon. But Dad did walk around asking people if they would like a little more. I have a lot of brownies left, but that is not necessarily a bad thing.

So, all that is left for the year is one jury to play for Tuesday and the middle school concert a week from Thursday. In three weeks, I have a totally empty calendar, something I have not seen in some time!

We worked down in New Auburn on the house after the recital. I worked on sheetrocking the downstairs closet while Dad was mudding the upstairs room. We didn’t get either totally done before we decided it was time to head home for the evening. But we got some done, and any progress is progress!

The neighbor came and plowed our garden plot out in the country, but he still has to come and disk it (or is it disc?) Right now it is rows of fresh turned-over dirt, nothing we can really do anything with. Disking it will knock it down a little more, then rototilling it and raking it should get it ready to plant. Dad didn’t think it looked big enough, but I thought it looked plenty big. I was envisioning hoeing all that dirt and it is a lot!

Good turnout! Everyone did well, although some better than others! We had enough food. Just enough!

I just did a fun project this morning (since its raining). I made a food catalog. I wish I would have had this when the kids were still at home and I had more people to please with my meals.

What I did first was make a whole bunch of card-stock squares (about 2 1/2 inches square). Then on each one I wrote first an item of food that we eat, then what it was I liked about that food – was it sweet, comforting, crunchy, creamy, healthful, hearty, etc.? I also wrote the point value since I keep track of that, but you wouldn’t have to.

I worked in categories, because we eat a lot of food. I did fruits, vegetables, breads (which includes cereals and grains), lunch main dishes, supper main dishes, beverages, and fun foods (which are snacks or desserts.) When you start listing them, you will realize you enjoy really a lot of things, but you don’t eat a lot of them very often because we all get in a rut.

Once that was done and I had all these stacks of cards, I found an old scrap book that I’d gotten at a garage sale and put them all in the book, labeling each category and leaving space at the end of each one for more ideas, because I’m sure I didn’t think of everything. I didn’t have any scrapbook glue, so I used a glue stick, but ran out very quickly, so ended up taping them in, which isn’t idea. Scrapbook glue would be better.

I plan to use the book to make my menus, because I’ve been in a rut again of eating all the same things, then overeating because I’m not really satisfied (because I’m bored). But if you have kids still at home, you could let them choose meals from the ideas in the book and they would probably not always ask for the same 3 or 4 things. You could all sit down on Sunday and plan the meals for the week and let each one have a certain number of meals or a whole day or something. If they have chosen the foods, they will probably eat up the meal better, too!