I must apologize again for neglecting my little bloggy space. I guess I just haven't had anything go on in my life that I felt the urge to write about. Even now, I am struggling to think of something interesting to say. I spend a good chunk of my day reading blogs (yes, I should be working, but business is slow....I can't stare at a wall for 8 hours ya know) I read about all of these interesting people and marvel at how they can continually come up with witty, funny, and inspiring posts day after day. It really makes me realize how utterly boring my life is. Other than work, my life consists of cooking, cleaning, Facebooking, and wedding planning. What will I do once the wedding is all planned?

Speaking of wedding planning...there have been a few new developments. I made my first payment toward my dress....only 9 or so more to go!!! I'm toying with the idea of using silk flowers for my bouquets instead of fresh. I went out and bought some that I really like, but I have no clue how to arrange them. My future mother in law and I are going to go out this weekend and get some more stuff and play around. We are also going to play around with centerpieces and see what we can come up with. I am craft challenged, so it will be interesting to see what happens. I made the joke that if I made the centerpieces there would be glue fingerprints all over them.

I'll be going home in May. Words cannot express how excited I am for this trip. For once, I will be home without something else going on (funeral, wedding...etc) I will be able to enjoy my family and friends with no pressure of HAVING to be anywhere. Other than wedding appointments I will be home free. The bonus is that my mother is buying my plane ticket. As my younger brother so aptly put it...."Holy shit....Hell froze over?" I hate to say it, but it's true. I love my mother, but she is the worst with money. Like I'm one to talk there though...c'est la vie!

I have been chugging away at my diet. I am currently down 6 pounds and I am so proud of myself for that. I would like to be down 10 more by the time I go home in May, but i have been sitting at 6 pounds lost for going on two weeks. I really just need to step up my working out. I've gotten a little slack in that lately and I need to not be.

Part of my diet entails me being able to have a little homemade sweet snack. So far I have been baking away making a yellow cake with frosting (from scratch), sugar cookies with icing (from scratch), coffee cake (okay it's all from scratch) and lastly chocolate and butterscotch chip cookies. I think being able to be "bad" once a day is keeping me motivated. I hate the deprivation that dieting gives you. I hate walking by store fronts or restaurants, thinking, man I wish I had one of those. Or going to the store specifically to buy a candy bar because I couldn't take it anymore....oh and a package of cookies for good measure too. If I consistently have something baked around me, I am less likely to overindulge when the cravings get to be too much. In these past few weeks I have found a new love of cooking and I have been trying out a bunch of new recipes. So far they have all been home runs. If you are looking for a great recipe site, then I definitely recommend www.sparkrecipes.com. Unlike other recipe sites, you can type in the ingredients you are cooking with along with the serving size and it will automatically calculate the nutrional values for everything. I have used it both to find new recipes to try out and also just to see how healthy my current recipes are. So far, not too bad.

Well, I suppose that is all for now. Take care

I'm Still Alive!!

Ok, so I know I haven't posted since we left for NY (obviously) so yes, we made it, and yes, it was a blast!! We rented ourselves a nice SUV this time around and let me tell you, the car makes the difference! It was so much easier to spend two days in that car as opposed to in my poor cramped Jetta. So the wedding was awesome. I still can't believe that my little brother is married! And can I just say that I absolutely LOVE going down to sea level after living in the mountains? I swear, the day of the wedding I drank at least 3 beers and a good 4 gin and tonics (which were not small) and I was still able to stand on two feet. I didn't even really feel like I was drunk. I was able to pull of the peach dress, much to my surprise. I didn't think that it would be my color, but I got several compliments on it, so I guess I did ok. HAHA. Maybe they were all just being nice.

I took Pete to Niagara Falls for his first time ever. We actually went for a hike in the Niagara Gorge one day and went to the Falls the day after the wedding. The Gorge absolutely killed me though. It's a good 50 foot drop down natural stone steps. Then there are "trails" that lead down to the river. We had the dog with us, and thoroughly tired her out. We ended up taking one of the sketchy trails down to the river where I proceeded to fall on my ass giving myself a nice gouge and bruise. It was totally worth it though. We hiked over to a rock and sat in the sun for a little bit watching the rapids. So beautiful. When we went to the Falls we decided to go into Canada. So we parked over in the State Park and walked over the Rainbow Bridge into Canada. Pete smuggled a knife into the country. It was a funny story though because we didn't mean to do it. For any of you who know Pete, you know that he always has his knife on him. Well I didn't even think to tell him to take it off. So we are at the Canadian border and the guard there asks if we have any weapons to which I automatically say "No". Then after I say it, it dawns on me that he more than likely has his knife. The guard lets us through and after we get a good way down the path I say under my breath "you have your knife on you, don't you?" Sure enough there it was. So he just unclipped it from his pocket and stuck it all the way in so no one would notice it. So when it was time to go back to the US I tell him not to say anything about the knife unless they ask. So when the guard asks if we have anything to declare I can see him starting to say something about the knife, so I cut him off and say "No". The guard looks suspicious at this and says "So you didn't buy anything when you were in Canada?" Again I say "No" and he lets us through. After we got through I just started laughing because he almost let it slip and that wasn't even what the guard was asking.

I finally have my babies back and that has been going well so far. The dog has been really good. I was worried about her being able to poop while on a leash, but so far we haven't had any problems.

The diet is going well. We cheated really bad when we were on vacation, but were able to get back on track when we got home. I am back down to where I was before I left for NY, so the pounds are still coming off. I am hoping to be down to my goal weight by New Years, or at the very least within 5 pounds of it.

Other than that, I do have some other news to share, but that will be in a different post at a different time......

Nothing like a good cliffhanger, eh?

Smashing Fat and All That (part 2)

So I have reached Day 10 of the Fat Smash Diet, and I must say that I am thoroughly inpressed with it. I lost just under 8 pounds in the first 9 days!!! Pete lost almost 10 1/2 pounds, so we are both really happy with the results. So now it is on to Phase 2. In this phase we get to bring meat back into our diet. The book says that you should have 2 meat servings a day, but I think I am only going to have 1 per day. I actually enjoyed eating the veggie burgers and fruit for lunch, so I am going to keep doing that. Some of the other things I found that I like....tofu, and soymilk. I've found a milk I can drink without gagging!! (or getting sick) So all in all, it's been a good experience so far. Of course our trip to NY is going to derail us a bit, but we are going to be packing a cooler with good food to eat for the car trip there and really we will only be eating bad for 2 days. I decided that I am going to go back to the detox phase when we get back so that I can reverse the damage I do during our vacation.

My friend E is coming up this weekend and we are going to be going back to the cabin we went to on the 4th. I'm really looking forward to it. I will definitely try to get more pictures this time.

Pete is up for a promotion at the company he is currently working for. We are both pretty excited about it. He will be getting a pretty good pay raise. His hours will be pretty crappy, but I think we can both deal with that. He is still waiting to hear about whether or not he got one of the police jobs he applied for. Keeping my fingers crossed on that one.

Other than that, life is good. :-)