Projects and Goals, is there ever anything else?

Less than four months between posts!  I'm getting better at this.  Last post I mentioned that I was really working on my health.  I'd proud to say I've stuck with it and I have currently cost 24 lbs since January and my blood pressure has been in normal ranges for two months straight, without any medication for either!

I actually hate weight loss medications and fad diets, or even diets in general.  I believe in diet changes and life habits instead.  Now I will once in awhile take some time off sugar and/or fats like butter, but in the long run, I like chocolate cake too much and it tastes much better with both.  My biggest lifetime diet change this year was ixnay on the energy drinks.  Cardiologist referral and energy drinks just don't mix.  Although I'll admit, I still haven't made that appointment.

Tonight I hit a nice goal, I broke my FitBit step record.  I was ready to call it a night when I noticed I was 113 steps away from my highest step count this year and decided I couldn't end the night that way.  It's the eve of the first day of school here and while we've been working on getting on a school schedule for three weeks, Zakk was still tossing and turning in anticipation of his first day of seventh grade.  So while I'm pacing the hallway trying to beat my record, my kiddo's yelling out from his room every time I walk past his door.  "Love you."  "Love you."  "I still can't sleep."  "I'm watching you."  "Love you."  "Still awake."  I finally hit over my goal, higher than the last one because my OCD demanded zeros at the end and he's passed out with his head at the foot of the bed.  It only took about 15 minutes total, but I'm sure in his head it was more like an hour.  Oh 5 am, I haven't missed you.

But while we're talking about my current projects, I do keep a list of them on the left hand side.  I've actually finished up a few of those, completed some that aren't there and started new ones.  I'll get some pictures up soon of those.  I always have projects going so there's always changes there.  Even if I'm not posting, I try to keep that list up to date.  Mostly just to remind myself what I'm supposed to be doing!  I do use Pinterest A LOT and have both an "Up Next" and a "Finished" board, so feel free to follow me: JTStripling

Halloween Happenings Part 2

So months ago I found this picture on Pinterest and fell in love with it. Unfortunately, I can't find the original page this was actually posted on to give credit.  Shalyn, being a 9 year old girl, loves Hello Kitty and I knew she'd absolutely go nuts over it.  After explaining to her that it wouldn't light up, it was a go.

We started off by spray painting with a white semi-gloss.  I think she may have had more fun playing with paint than she would've scooping out pumpkin guts.

The hat, eyes, ears, whiskers and nose were all cut out of felt.  I made the bow out of ribbon.  I used a hot glue gun to put dots of glue on the pumpkin and then she placed the pieces.  I did the pressing to make sure they stayed cause that glue is hot and I didn't want her burning herself.

She absolutely loved the end result.  She took it back to her mom's house where friends and neighbors went nuts over it.

Of course, I couldn't let her get away without getting all goobery!  She helped Sabrina and Dustin empty out another pumpkin.  Zakk was sick this day, so he didn't join in.  He stayed home from school for three days, trying to get better before Trick or Treating.

We worked on his pumpkin Friday afternoon while everyone else was at school and work.

Curiosity almost gets Tye a bath

Tye had to get involved as well after I joked about putting him into the pumpkin for pictures.  If I thought I could get away with not having to bathe him afterwards, I would've done it!  Zakk's pumpkin finally finished.  He drew on the face and I did the cutting.

Every year, the older two say they're not going to dress up and then the day of they change their minds.  Every single time.  Of course, this late in the game, they can't find anything decent so they end up creating their own costumes.  I prefer them to make their own so I love seeing what they come up with.  Sabrina cut ears out of the felt we had leftover from Shalyn's pumpkin.

Dustin pretty much just dressed normal, lol.  The only difference was he carried his guitar around all night, playing the entire time we were trick or treating.

Zakk choose to be a ninja warrior and had a great time trick or treating.  He brought in quite the haul tonight.

Shalyn went as a Monster's High skeleton.  I'm so glad she choose something other than the Mermaid costume.  Even though we're in the South and 66 degrees may not be cold to some, it's cold to us!

Us adults even managed to get some treats of our own.  I'm pictured here (no makeup again, after two miles of walking in what I see as freezing cold) with my husband's cousin and his sister, holding our treats.  I had to fight zombies to get to that wine dang it!

I hope everyone else had a wonderful Halloween and now I'm off to sleep off this sugar high.  Tomorrow night, I'll enjoy my wine, I think I've had enough sweets for one night!

Regulating

I have a horrible ability to adjust to things easily.  Most people would see this as a good thing and honestly, most of the time it is.  I adapt to new situations without much struggle at all.  It's terrific really but what's not terrific is the fact that my body adjusts quickly as well.  

Over the last 20 years as I've been treated for this and that, I regulate to my doses extremely fast.  My last doctor would switch me between medications every three months because of it.  I thought that since it had been so long since I had been on medication, I'd take awhile this time.

Nope, not even close. 

My RLS is worse.  My muscle spasms are worse.  And the back pain is back.

I have an appointment with my doctor on Monday, but it really sucks!

But onto more interesting stuff.  Monday, Sabrina started her Phelbotomy classes, woohoo!  She's loving them and came home tonight with specimen tubes, needles and a tourniquet.  She's been going around all night practicing with the tourniquet.  Wrapping our arms and pointing out the veins: cephalic vein, basilic vein, median cubital vein.  Then she practices her one-handed removal of the tourniquet.  I'm so happy she's enjoying it that I even volunteered as her first guinea pig.  See?  There's my arm in the picture.  The gorgeous, young thing is Sabrina.  You'd let her practice on you, right?

Saturday night, Zakk stayed with his cousins at his grandparents house and they all went out for pizza.  He and my nephews were so excited to go, they all piled into my brother-in-laws Tahoe way before everyone was ready to leave.  So in Zakk's boredom, he decided to buckle himself into my youngest nephew's car seat and was in quite a hurry to get out of it before I could get a good picture!

The next day while Dustin and my brother-in-law were being nice and doing an emergency brake job on my SUV, Sabrina took Zakk and the nephews to Steed's Dairy.  

Sabrina

Zakk, Corran, and Brennen

After they came home, I snapped a quick pic of the face paintings they had done at the dairy.

Zakk, Brennen, Corran

Today, I finally finished weeding my garden and thinning out the radishes.  I had been almost done on Saturday when Zakk begged me to take him to Grandma's and wasn't being patient at all!  I also trimmed up my basil and since I had lost three broccoli plants, I filled in the bare spots with garlic.  It's really the only thing that can be planted this late in the fall and I wanted a full garden, so now we will have 26 garlic bulbs to dry out and enjoy come summer.

I went out in the early afternoon hoping to avoid the mosquitoes this time but it didn't work out that way.

All that was after taking Dustin to the doctor, I thought he had strep after loosing his voice over the weekend but it was bronchitis.  I'm not happy with him but that's because I'm probably going to end up with it.  

I don't let the kids have soda except for special occasions and the rare treat.  Grandma's doesn't count.  But I drink soda nonstop, trying to keep the kids from developing the habit, and Dustin will pick up my glass and take a long swig off of it.

  

Good thing I don't drink alcohol often and try to disguise it!  I kept telling him to knock it off because he was getting sick and he'd shoo me saying it was just allergies.  So if I get sick, it's completely and totally all his fault!

And what did I do with all the basil I harvested?

I made basil oil and then topped baked chicken breasts with it, tomatoes and mozzarella for some yummy Chicken Caprese.  It was a hit!!  Incredibly easy and incredibly delicious, basil oil is awesome!  I had never tried it but I think it's going to become a staple around here.  In fact, next planting season I will have to at least double the amount of basil plants.  I made mine without straining the basil out afterwards because I like the color and wanted a stronger flavor, but a lot of people like to retain the look of the oil.

Basil Oil

2 cups fresh basil leaves, tightly packed

1 cup good quality extra virgin olive olive

salt and pepper to taste

Directions

Blanch leaves in boiling water for one minute.  Remove and place immediately into an ice bath to stop the blanching process. Dry leaves with paper towel.

Place all ingredients into a blender or food processor (I used a smoothie maker just for convenience), pulse for one minute.  Let rest for 30 minutes to let the froth die down then either pour directly into storage jar or strain the basil out, then store.

Oil will last up to one week in refrigerator, but let it warm to room temperature before use.

Baking, Beauty and Bugs

Did well today.  Late last night I ended up making some dark chocolate chip pumpkin bread, which I honestly didn't like but the rest of the family did.  That tends to happen a lot.  I'm a "eat to live" while the rest of the family is "live to eat" and it causes us to have much different tastes at times.  But I like making them things, so I'll keep trying new recipes.

Fridays, my father-in-law and I have a standing "date" where I run him to his Diabetes Dr. followed by lunch.  Had some nice chatting time with him and then we hit Popeye's Chicken afterwards for lunch.  I tried the new Hushpuppy shrimp on his recommendation but wasn't really a fan.  I don't like fried food, but every once in awhile I'll eat it.  Fried shrimp and hushpuppies are both a nice liking of mine, but I didn't like the combination.

I also got out into my garden today.  A couple of weeks ago, I planted green cabbage, garlic, broccoli, radishes, spinach and basil in a raised bed.   I lost a few broccoli plants and one of my cabbages is struggling but other than that, it's growing!  I seriously have a black thumb so I'm surprised it's lasted this long.  I'm doing exceptionally well at growing clover.  If Lucky Charms ever runs out, I can help!  Pink hearts, orange stars, yellow moons, green clovers, ya know?  This afternoon, I thinned my radishes and spinach and pulled all the little tiny clover patches.  In half the garden anyway.  The mosquitoes chased me inside before I could finish.

Sabrina and I also received our favorite shipment of the month: Ipsy!  Below is my haul.  The Warm Love is a pumpkin exfoliate mask.  The Indie Lee is a facial cleanser.  I also received a Tattooed eyeliner in black, Starlooks lip gloss and Rose Berry hand cream in Fig and Rouge.  The eyeliner was full size.  I plan on reviewing them eventually.

Sabrina's haul included Ayres Body Butter, Epice Facial cleanser, the same lip gloss by StarLooks, Volumeyes mascara and Nicole Opi nail polish in On A Gilt Trip.  Both the mascara and nail polish were full size. 

I received my monthly Birchbox as well which included: Vasanti Brighten Up facial exfoliating cleanser, Ellovi butter in vanilla (for body and hair), Ojon Hair Oil Therapy, Jouer Matte Moisture Tint and ModelCo Powerlash mascara.  I'll be reviewing these as well and seeing if I can get Sabrina to review hers.

This evening, it was just me, Sabrina and Zakk in the house.  As a lot of ten year old boys do, Stitches has stinky feet.  So I jumped on the "girl's night +1" bit and did a pedicure on him.  Started with an eucalyptus and spearmint foot soak.  Normally he clips his own toenails, but he's a boy and hates doing it so they always look horrible.  I clipped those, pushed his cuticles slightly back then scrubbed them down with a pumice stone.  I then followed with a peppermint and plum foot scrub.  After he was all rinsed off, I gave him a nice foot massage with Burt's Bees Almond Milk cream, tossed on a clean pair of socks and told him to keep them on til morning.  Zakk has always loved foot rubs so he ate up all the attention big time!

I also finally picked up my used iPhone 4 from my sister-in-law.  I've been fighting getting a touch screen phone and she bought a new one, so handed me her old phone.  I happily accepted it mostly because of the better photos I could get with it, lol.  So, I've been having a little fun playing with it and of course, all pictures in this post were taken with the new phone.  Still don't know if I'll ever turn into an Apple person but we'll have to see.  All in all we had a really nice day. 

Speed Bumps

Sometimes the hardest part of writing is coming up with the title.  A title should be something that completely sums up the entire post.  While thinking of the days events, I recalled an incident that just had me laughing today that involved speed bumps and that definitely applies to this post.

I've been having a couple of decent days lately with my depression but today it started creeping back up on me.  I wanted to just be lazy, but there were a few things that had to be taken care of with Sabrina.  So I sent her off to get the mail while I got ready for the day.  That involved getting dressed in something comfortable, brushing my hair and teeth and throwing on my tennis shoes.  No make up, no great hair style (or even my usual mediocre attempts at styling my hair), nothing fancy.  We got in her car and headed out.  The car is still being sketchy but I refuse to give into it.  Hubbie was home so I knew we had a rescuer, if needed.

We ran around having a great time of it, laughing but still getting things done.  At one point, we pulled into a parking lot and Sabrina was having so much fun going over the speed bumps that five stores past the one we actually wanted, I had to remind her that we had to park if we were going to get anything done.  She wasn't flying over them but going over speed bumps in an SUV isn't the same as doing it in a compact car.  Her little car doesn't handle bumps like my SUV does, oh no, not at all!  So she had some fun with it.

About halfway through our errands, the tiredness hit me.  Full on exhaustion which really made it hard to get through the rest of the day.  We finished up and headed home about thirty minutes before it was time to head out for church.  The kids ended up going by themselves even though I had committed to helping out on Wednesday nights.

We had decided on salads for dinner and didn't run to the grocery store while we were out.  I had two and a half hours to run to the store down the street and pick up stuff for dinner while the kids were at church.  It took me almost that long to get myself going.

I also missed a deadline for a project Zakk had in school.  He was actually supposed to turn it in on Friday and I just haven't been up to helping him with it.  After a call from his teacher today, I had to tackle that as well, past his bedtime.

I'm definitely dropping the ball here and it's so hard not to feel guilty about it.  The guilt only makes the depression worse, but how do you let go of it?  Life is full of speed bumps.  You run full force day after day until one of these little devils creeps up and slows you down to almost a crawl.  I normally have such a hard time slowing down but lately it seems it's just one speed bump after another.  I want back on that interstate, but can't seem to find the right road.

Hubbie's been patient with me for the last two weeks, that ended tonight.  He had gone to bed and got back up a few hours later, upset that I hadn't gone to bed yet.  I'm depressed, I have a houseful of people.  It's nice to have some quiet time without anyone making any demands on me.  He doesn't understand that.  He doesn't know how to handle this situation.  Normally, I'm the one keeping everyone straight, figuring out schedules, making sure everyone's where they need to be when they need to be there.  I'm making sure kids are getting homework and chores done.  I'm the motor behind the wheels and now, this motor is needing a serious overhaul.  I spent two years working full time and going to school full time.  For a year, I was the sole bread winner while he dealt with a job loss and depression of his own.  I was burning my candle at both ends and now, this candle is just burnt out.  We'll get past this of course, just like we always do but this is one speed bump it may take a while to get over.

If you neglect to recharge a battery, it dies. And if you run full speed ahead without stopping for water, you lose momentum to finish the race.

– Oprah Winfrey

Family Introduction

Welcome to my crazy family!  This is most of us, missing are my oldest son Austin, his wife Jessica and their daughter, Victoria.  Hoping to get a picture of the ENTIRE family this year.

Top Row (left to right): Sabrina, Hubbie, Me, Dustin and Billy

Bottom Row (left to right): Zakkary and Shalyn

Billy is 19, Sabrina 18, Dustin 16, Zakkary 9, and Shalyn is 8.  

I adopted Austin, pictured holding my first grandchild Victoria, when he was three.  I married his father who had full custody and his birth mother allowed me to adopt him.  Sabrina, Dustin and Zakk are my birth children.  I divorced their father and married my current hubbie who brought Billy and Shalyn into our family.  Hubbie and I have been together for almost six years, married for three.

Stitches holding Victoria this summer.

Now for the children that I nanny.  I've been with the family for about two years and they've definitely become a part of the family.  Sabrina attends high school online so she co-nannies with me affording me the opportunity to attend classes.

Surprisingly, I don't have a clear picture of all three of them together.  Gave them nicknames just so I don't have to worry about anything.  So first up is Ace, 7.  He's a first grader so I really only see him occasionally.

Then we have Flutterby, she just turned 5 and those are her absolute favorite pants in the whole wide world!

Lastly is Bullet, he's 2 1/2.  Nicknamed appropriately, this little guy keeps Sabrina and myself on our toes.

Besides the Basketball team of children, we also have two basset hound/lab mixes.  They're brothers from the same litter but they don't look like it.  Bo is Dustin's dog and he's about the size of a basset.  Harley is my dog and I swear he was mixed with a great dane!  I wanted dogs that we could keep in the house without destroying everything, it didn't quite work out.  Harley's tail takes out anything he walks by!

Bo (mostly white here but now mottled brown/white) and

Harley (mostly black) at three months old.

We also have two cats, both male as well.  We had a third, who my sister-in-law let out of the house accidentally one day and she came back with our oldest male,Tye, as a surprise.  She lucky only had the one kitten but she passed away soon afterwards.  Tye is solid black shorthair and is also Dustin's pet.  

Tye, Dustin's cat.

Bandit the day we found him being held by Shalyn after his bath.

Bandit is the newest addition, one I wasn't wanting but couldn't say no.  He's a black and white with medium fur which belongs to Sabrina.  She had been begging and begging for a kitten for months and I kept telling her we already had a full house.  Well, parked outside the grocery store with ALL the kids in the car on a cold, rainy night, we saw a tiny bundle of fur sitting in the middle of the parking lot.  He was dripping with both rain and blood.  Sabrina ran out of the car, put her hand out and called him over.  He came right to her and he became a part of the household.  Luckily, he just had a small cut on his nose that we were able to take care of easily.

Bandit a couple of days after he joined the household.

Well, that's us, we've definitely got a full house, but it makes for a full heart.