Absent

I'm sorry I've been absent. The travel we did in February seemed to put us behind and I feel like we're not close to being caught up! Trying to coordinate our move is a bit challenging since we've got to get into our house to do a little painting and other things before moving all of our furniture in.

So, I'll probably be mostly gone over the next couple weeks or so, but once we're settled back in Savannah, I'll get back into it!

Oh, and I've lost 10 pounds in the past 6 weeks! :) It's all from just cleaning up my eating a little. I wasn't super strict with my diet, so I can imagine what weight I'll shed once I get into CrossFit and eat even better once moving home!

No TV

We will not be taking our TV back home with us in April.

We're trading it for a closet! It works out for all involved actually. It's one of those flat-screen tv's that I know nothing about. I just happened to win it in a raffle a couple years ago. I'd never won anything until that point and then I win a $1600 gift card to Best Buy for a big flat screen TV!!!

So when we moved to my mom's, of course the TV came with us and fits perfectly in their entertainment center in the living room. When we told them that we were moving out, they joked that we had to leave the TV. Haha, yeah right!

Well....then I saw a friend's closet system from IKEA. She lives in a small, older home like we are moving back to. I knew I wanted one, but didn't have $1000 in the budget to purchase one anytime soon. After I made my first trip to IKEA at the beginning of February, I realized that I indeed really, really wanted a closet system.

So, after some conversation, we negotiated a trade with my mom and step-dad! We are leaving our TV, video camera, and my Pottery Barn dishes. They are in turn giving us cash to purchase the closet system!

And the BEST part is that we got part of the closet system for a STEAL! We were back in Atlanta last weekend and I spent hours at IKEA getting ideas for when we move back home to maximize space in our small home. Well, in the closet area, I saw these huge sliding doors for the closet systems on super duper clearance. Seriously, they are the largest doors they have and are usually $800....we bought them for $249!!!! We totally didn't expect to buy part of our closet this trip, but at a savings of $550, we couldn't pass it up. It's also not my favorite color, but again, $550 savings would have probably convinced me to take anything that was on sale!

So, we'll have no TV when we move back home. Not a problem since I'd honestly already begun a blog about no TV for 30 days once we moved back home! I am so busy with my son during the day and my husband and I have a ton of projects we want to do when we move back. We have more than enough projects to keep us busy! We want to enjoy more time outdoors and more reading. We've both not been reading as much as we'd like.

Now, this doesn't mean that we disagree with TV's in the home. It's just something we're going to try for a while. Plus, I really, really, really want more storage space in our home! Seriously, if you saw the limited space we have, you'd understand too!

We're going to really work on non-TV entertainment in our home. We want to continue developing our relationships in our family and spend more time with our friends that we've missed since moving away from Savannah.

I'll miss HGTV and Food Network. I'll also miss my re-runs of the Golden Girls, Will & Grace and Sex and the City! But, I'll enjoy my new time to spend helping my family grow!

Week 3 check - in Food Challenge

I suck. I have eaten HORRIBLY for the past two weeks. The first week was awesome. I felt so great and loved that I was making the proper choices. This week I did even worse than last week. And I feel awful....and bloated....ugh.

I did find a jar to start my starter. I tried to look up the starters you can buy, but there were too many choices and I couldn't follow. So, I am attempting to make my own starter. I will wait until after this weekend because we'll be gone over the weekend back up to the Atlanta area - Stone Mountain for my husband's sectionals competition, one of the preliminaries for the World CrossFit Games. I don't want to have to worry about my starter on the trip up!

I was in Atlanta this past weekend and was able to visit Whole Foods. I love that place. I expected it to be pricey, but it wasn't at all. I wish we had that type of selection available to us here.

This challenge is a great challenge, but I'm afraid we'll have to put it into full effect in April, when we move back to our house and have complete control of what is in the house.

Online organization

Don't you just love the internet? I am addicted to it. Seriously. I love reading blogs and just information in general. I love that I can google anything!

After my recent post about needing to get organized, I went on a search for some kind of organization template online. What I found was so much better! It is an online schedule for your chores (or anything for that matter). It EMAILS you a reminder each day for the chores you are supposed to do!!! How cool is that? Okay, now my nerd side is really coming out. I really do think this will work for me. I check my email a lot, so to have the reminder come in my inbox is awesome. You can also choose to have the weekly schedule emailed to you at the beginning of the week if you'd like!

Basically you add the people in that will be doing any chores. Then, you add in the chores and you can categorize them (difficult, easy, etc.). You can assign certain chores to certain people or you can make the program choose randomly. You can also choose whether each person gets the same amount of chores or less. You can color code it! You can also decide how often each chore needs to be done. For example, you can even put a chore on there that you only do annually! You can also assign a dollar amount to each chore - I'm guessing that's if you have children that are paid an allowance based on chores.

It's awesome. It's free. It's what I need...I think. I'll give it a good go at least!

Chore Buster - http://www.chorebuster.net/

Real Food Challenge Check-in

End of week two in the Real Food Challenge.

I failed miserably this week. It's a bad feeling because I was so good the first week and felt so good about the food choices I was making. The only thing I excelled at was choosing real milk (raw milk) and that's only because we've been drinking raw milk for 3 months now! I did decide to make my own butter from my newest delivery of raw milk though! So that's exciting!

I'm determined to make week 3 a better week for me and stick to the challenge as well as I did on week one.

Time to get organized...

Ok. I admit. I need a schedule. Or a plan. Or a to-do list. Or all of the above.

I've never been a list maker. I always think I can remember everything. I intend do. And I usually do remember everything, usually too late. Frustration comes with remembering late.

Most importantly, we need a schedule to know when to clean our house. Sounds crazy, right? Who can't remember that their bathrooms need cleaning or floors need mopping? I remember, I just put it off. Especially since I stay home, I always think I have tomorrow. It never gets done when it should. It drives me nuts when my tub gets that disgusting ring of ick in it. But when it drives me nuts, I'm usually being pulled in five different directions at that time, so it gets put off yet again.

I've been against a household schedule because I feel like a child that needs to be reminded and it makes me feel like a failure as a homemaker. Shouldn't moms who stay home know just to do these things weekly or bi-weekly? I didn't take into consideration a toddler that knows exactly when my hands are in the raw chicken preparing it for dinner and he decides to open the cabinets and rearrange, by way of removing everything from the cabinet. It's the unexpected messes every single day that I do not prepare for. And it's constantly putting it behind.

Now, I'm not complaining about my cute little mess-maker. I LOVE being home with him, but I feel if I better prepared myself, it would make me not so out of sync when the messes happen.

We've been working on menu-planning for a while and have done fairly ok with it. We just need to do it more. It's so awesome looking at the menu every morning and knowing what we're having without having to think about it at 6 p.m. when we're all starving and only have 2/3 of what we need to make a complete meal. So we're forced to either go the grocery store, hungry, and make poor choices and then eat a very late dinner. Or, we go out to eat...again make poor choices and blew $30 on one meal, when we could have stretched that at the grocery store and gotten several meals from the same money.

I think if we've been somewhat successful with the menu planning then we should be somewhat successful with the household scheduling. We'll see. I'll discuss it with my husband and see what we can come up with.

In other news, my real food challenge is taking a hit this week. Can you guess why? LACK OF PLANNING. I'm so annoyed with myself because I have eaten so poorly today. I feel disgusting and bloated. I think that's what's prompted my intense need to organize right away. With the amount of time my husband and I are both around the house, there is absolutely no reason for us to continue putting off our normal household chores any longer.

50 day Burpee Challenge

Happy Birthday to me!!!!

And what better present than another challenge? CrossFit has a burpee challenge that circulates around and it's a 100 Day Burpee Challenge. Well, I'm not that optimistic. I would like to be, but I'm just going to be honest and say not quite yet! Once I hit day 50, I'll then reassess and hopefully continue.

I know, I know, I haven't posted a video yet on what burpees are like I said I would a month ago! So here is my wonderful husband demonstrating them. Burpee Example

Now that you know what a burpee is, I'll explain the challenge.

Day One - one burpee

Day Two - two burpees

Day Three - three burpees

and so on.

Don't miss a day. If you miss a day, you have to make it up. For example, if you miss day 20, then on day 21 you must do 20 burpees to catch up the day you missed and then you have to do your current day - 21 burpees. So don't miss one!

The good news - you don't have to do them all in a row. So for example - on day 20 - if you want, do 5 at a time throughout the day. You just have to complete them all in that day.

So, who's with me?