The 30 Day Shred

I have started and stopped an exercise routine more times than I can count - I think that means I'm fairly normal. The longest I can ever remember doing a workout as a ROUTINE was after Nate was born - I did Jillian Michael's 30 Day Shred for 12-13 days, and then got sick and stopped, then was too lazy to start back, and then found out I was pregnant again and completely quit. Since Ben has been born, I've done the workout 6 or so times, and a couple Walk Away the Pounds workouts, but nothing really consistent.

But now I am determined to make it through the 30 Day Shred IN 30 days, or as close to 30 days as possible. I won't beat myself up for skipping a day here or there, but I am going to try my best to keep up with it and complete it. I really, really want to do the Couch to 5k program in the fall (when it's not 100 degrees out!). I've always hated running, and have no idea why I ran track for 3 years in middle school! But this program looks doable, although challenging! I think it would be SO cool to be able to run 3 miles without stopping... or heck, even 1 mile! I would totally be satisfied with 1 mile. But I want to make it through the Shred first, and go from there.

When I attempted the Shred last summer, I noticed something after the first week or so - I had a lot more stamina. I actually WANTED to jog, for some strange reason. I didn't! But I had the urge to, and the thought of running didn't make me want to crawl back into bed with my laptop and a Snickers bar. One other huge benefit of the Shred was that I could touch my toes after doing it for a week. I have NEVER been able to touch my toes, for as long as I can remember. Even in elementary school when we did the physical fitness test in gym class, I always failed at the toe-touching part (there was a specific name for it, but I don't remember what it was.) But after doing the Shred for a little while, I could REACH! I remember standing in my mom's living room showing her how I could FINALLY, after all these years, touch my toes! She thought I was kind of nuts.

Why I'm rambling on my blog about all this: I NEED ACCOUNTABILITY. Isn't the first step towards achieving a goal putting it in writing? (Okay, so that didn't work really well with my New Years resolutions.) I'm planning to come back here often and update on my progress and post specific goals so I can see how far I've come. Even if no one else reads my updates, I will go back and read and relish in my success (or hang my head in shame at my failure. wait. think positive!)

Overall Goals:

1. Complete the 30 Day Shred.

2. Lose 40 pounds. (obviously the 40 pounds will take longer than 30 days. how unfortunate.)

Prize for Success:

Some new shirts that fit.

Punishment for Failure:

Continue to look 4 months pregnant.

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Today: Level 1, Day 1 of the Shred complete!

Delivering a Baby and Other Exciting Happenings

So it's been a while.

I had a baby.

Said baby was baptized.

Nate turned one.

We celebrated our 2-year anniversary.

Summer is flying by.

Life is good!

I Can't Breathe...

It's been a month since I blogged last? Oops. In the day-to-day quest to keep up with everyone else's blogs I've abandoned my own. (I've found some new craft blogs and I now have 22 bookmarked. TWENTY-TWO! And most of the bloggers update every day. A lot of reading to keep up with. And that doesn't include the personal blogs that I read...)

I'm having some serious breathing issues right now. Looking at me now compared to a month ago you'd think my belly has dropped, but the fact that the baby is starting to put on some serious weight is having a huge effect on the amount of room my lungs have to expand. And considering the average 35-week-gestation baby weighs about 5-1/4 pounds, mine is probably 7. at least. He/she was measuring 2 weeks ahead, plus if Nate's birth weight was any indication of the future, I think I'm destined to have babies that are 2 pounds bigger than average... more chub to love.

I need to make myself a to-do list before the baby's born... that includes pre-registering at the hospital. Forgot about that one last time around. I don't want to be signing consent forms while in active labor.

And on a totally random note, I want her house. Or one that looks just like it, but that isn't located in Michigan.

ramble ramble ramble. time to do something productive. the fact that this blog post has taken me 2 hours to type means I should just stop here.

I know nothing about HTML...

Like my new header? It's quite a bit bigger than I intended, and for some reason it doesn't "fit" in the box at the top. On my (13" Macbook) screen it overlaps on the right side just a hair. I'm thinking on a larger screen it must be totally off center. And I have no idea how to fix it! So it will probably be gone soon... things that aren't symmetrical bother me.

I also don't know how to get rid of all the extra white space on the sides of my page (although I've been trying for a while!) without actually changing my template. I learned how to make my pictures show up bigger, but when I do, they get cut off because of my primitive blog-creating skills.

We have a pacifier black hole in our house, and I think it's located directly underneath Nate's crib. I used to have a stash on his dresser, and when he would wake up in the night I could give him a new one without having to search around in the dark... and that stash is GONE. We were down to 1 paci for a week, and finally found another one yesterday. 2 out of 9. I think I'm going to have my brothers search and offer to pay them $1 for each one they find - it's cheaper than buying new ones!

So to prevent the pacis from falling through the bars (which I THINK is unintentional, but I peeked through the door and watched Nate toss one out of his crib the other night, so I'm not completely sure about that anymore) I decided I'm going to make a bumper pad for his crib to match his quilt to keep them in. How hard could it be, right? We'll see...

I bought fabric for the bumper pad at JoAnns yesterday. Not JUST fabric for the bumper pad. LOTS of fabric. I couldn't help myself - it was all 50% off and I had an additional 20% off coupon. So I just emphasized how much I SAVED instead of how much I SPENT when I showed Brian everything I got. (He is pretty sympathetic towards my craft obsession, I must say, and is always kind enough to smile and pretend to admire anything new I come home with.)



These are definitely my favorites:



And this one I've had my eye on for a while, but couldn't bring myself to pay full price for it since I have no idea what I'll do with it. There was only a little over a yard left on the bolt, so I bought the rest of it and it almost cost me $212. Somehow 1.25 yards rang up as 61 yards... so I had to wait behind 11 more people at the cutting table to have my ticket fixed. I have NEVER seen that store as busy as it was yesterday (and I've spent quite a bit of time in there!)



And this was Nate when I told him he didn't have to go spend two hours in JoAnns with me this time - he could stay home and play with Daddy.


It's another rainy Saturday... 3 loads of laundry are calling my name!

And It's Done!

This project was much more fun than I anticipated. I think I only yelled at my sewing machine twice (?), and it was during the piecing together of the top. The quilting part wasn't so bad, even though my lines definitely aren't perfectly straight, and the binding was actually easy! I used this tutorial, but I machine-stitched the back instead of hand-stitching. (Hand-stitching - are you kidding? WAY too much work.) The quilt measures about 45"x60", which is the perfect size for a crib/toddler bed.


Here are some of the squares up close -if you promise not to look at the stitching carefully, and not to notice that the squares don't match up perfectly. Trying to cut 6x6 squares with a rotary cutter but NOT a ruler is not a good plan. (I was trying to be cheap. Needless to say, I bought a ruler this week at JoAnns. I was just waiting for a sale.)

The plan is to wash and dry it so it will be all crinkly. Unfortunately, I haven't gotten the opportunity yet... my washer/dryer have been tied up with lots of pukey laundry. I finally got my last load in the washer (there have been 3 of those kind of loads this week so far) & then Nate did it again. And I thought he was getting better... It turned out his fever had just spiked to 104.5 (!) We're pretty sure it's just this ear infection he can't seem to get rid of, and the accompanying medicine. After 7 days on amoxicillin he broke out in a rash, so we had to stop - but the infection hadn't cleared up yet. Now he's on a new antibiotic that I can't spell, and it does not agree with his tummy, nor his taste buds. I've been sneaking it into fruit purees... Needless to say, we're taking another trip to the doctor tomorrow morning. And I have yet another load of stinky laundry to do tonight. My poor little guy. :( Motrin is a wonderful thing.