I'm Still Alive and Losing Weight

I know that I've been a bad, bad weight loss blogger. The good news is that I have lost a ton of weight since the beginning of the year, between 14-15 pounds to be exact. That was enough to get me back to what I was this past August which meant I got to dig out some smaller clothes to wear! 

An outfit that hasn't fit for a while that I wore this week.

So even though I haven't been posting as regularly, I've been keeping up on eating right and working out. Most of the time I go to the gym 2-3 times a week. I do the weights two times and go on the treadmill once. I got a "warm" day this week and took a walk outside which was a nice change of pace. I took some pictures of the machines that I use at the gym, so I hope to get a post up about that soon.

I thought I'd use this post to write about a few things since my last post from my daily life. I've gotten a few rewards for my weight loss recently. I got a Chuck Berry CD and a $25 iTunes gift card as part of my rewards system that I set up for myself. I spent my iTunes card on Young the Giant and the newer Fleet Foxes albums. The video below is for "Cough Syrup" by Young the Giant which is the song that got me to listen to the band and buy their album.

I'm about 1.8 pounds away from my next reward of a key chain photo album which I can use to show the doggies off to people. I also won a weekly raffle for the walking challenge at work. I think I'm supposed to get a $20 check, but I haven't seen it yet. I can't remember if I talked about my last Diet Bet, but I did complete my goal of losing 4% in a month and got $21 (I put $10 into the pot).

 

Way back at the end of January the hubs had to go to a conference for work in Orlando for a week. Some people were even taking their spouses with them, but I couldn't go. :( I can't take off of work for a week for one, and secondly I can't miss my grad school classes. The hubs was nice though and bought me a present. It is a Cheshire Cat pillow pet.

 

 

We've actually seen a few days of winter weather (aka snow) since I last wrote, but we haven't really had a blizzard or anything like that. I'm kinda thinking that we might get away with a mild winter for Northwest Indiana.

I've been spending more and more time doing things for grad school such as reading and writing assignments on Blackboard. Both of the classes I am taking have big group projects that we are starting to work on, so grad school will be taking up more and more time. I'm happy to have two monitors though, because it comes in handy for having Blackboard on one screen and Word on the other.

 

The bed in my office works great for stacking papers and books.

The dogs also like to help me with my homework...

Lilly barks at me until I put her in my lap which isn't always convenient.

Sebastion likes to take over the bed and make a mess of the pillows.

And this one, Benjamin, likes to...

tear the futon mattress apart while I'm in the other room.

Here are some random pictures of meals and snacks from the past two weeks that haven't been posted on here yet.

Christmas 2012

I'm starting to feel the Christmas spirit a little bit more since there are now festivities going on. I spent the weekend before Christmas and Christmas Eve mostly cleaning and organizing the house. The house is clean, but I had to stop organizing just to get it clean in time for the holidays. On Christmas Eve I went to a restaurant called Tiebel's (it is a nicer restaurant where lots of gatherings are at) with my hubby and FIL. We all ended up getting the all-you-can-eat chicken. The whole meal included potato soup, salad, rolls (their rolls are wonderful), mashed potatoes, fried chicken (in which I peeled the skin/breading off but I did steal a few bites of breading), and peppermint ice cream for dessert.

Christmas morning I went to my sister's house for breakfast and opening presents. I got to see my parents, sister, niece, and brother-in-law. My sister made a bunch of goodies and breakfast items. I started off healthy with scrambled eggs, tomatoes, and cheese on a wheat tortilla. Then I went for the sweets.

After breakfast we opened our presents. My niece is three, so she is at the right age to be really into opening presents. She had a very Tinkerbell Christmas, but also got some Barbie stuff and a wooden rocking horse. As for my presents, I got some Bath and Body Works stuff from my sister, a license plate frame from my dad, and a Nook tablet from my parents.

My sister and niece checking out the Tinkerbell doll set.

My mom and dad opening presents.

My dad's present to me.

My parent's present to me.

My sister's present to me (and the stuff in the next picture too).



 

My aunt gave me some music books (pictured above) and made me a little scrapbook of pictures from the concerts we have gone to together.

My birthday present from my sister. I also got it on Christmas since my birthday is at the end of November and we haven't seen each other since then.

I went back home to have lunch with the hubs and FIL. My hubby cooked us a wonderful dinner of a turkey breast, green beans, stuffing, and acorn squash. Unfortunately I was starting to feel ill at this time and wasn't very hungry, but I do have plenty of healthy leftovers.

After lunch we opened gifts starting with the doggies. They got a bunch of those flat, stuffing-free dog toys. They went nuts playing with them. Sebastion grabbed a few, went in the kitchen, and played by himself.

Lilly had fun shredding the paper off of the gifts.

Benjamin went into toy hoarding mode.

I got my hubby the Sonic Racing game for the WiiU, a Mystery Science Theater 3000 DVD set, some history DVD's, some work pants, a calendar featuring our dogs as the pictures, and a bunch of snacks in his stocking.

As for my gifts, I got a new computer monitor from my FIL to help out with grad school.

My hubby got me a food steamer, a Final Fantasy music game for the 3DS, two necklaces, and my stocking had one item- a wool scarf (very soft and he got it at a good price!).

I also got some hand made ornaments in the mail from a family member that lives in Georgia.

For dinner we went to BC Osaka's and tried their buffet. The buffet was huge with many choices and you could also have something grilled up with your choice of ingredients. I had mostly chicken with broccoli, fried rice, some green beans, and ice cream for dessert. A very unconventional meal for Christmas Day, but it was a good one.

The day after Christmas we got to spent with friends. Two of them are from out of town and we don't get to see as often, so it was good to see them. We went to Abuelo's for lunch and the hubby and I split an order of chicken fajitas.

Hey, it is my always sideways picture. Gotta take a new one sometime!

After that we came back to the house to talk and play some video games. Later that evening one of my hubby's friends (that was with us earlier that day for lunch), decided to surprise my hubby with his Christmas present. When the hubs and FIL went out for dinner, he came back and we assembled his Christmas present of a new office chair. His friend left and I acted like nothing happened to see how long it would take the hubs to notice his new chair. Unfortunately, he noticed it right away! Not as surprising as we thought.

Thanksgiving and Graduate School

I know that I've been a bad blogger since I haven't updated in a while. I've had a lot of stuff come up this week that has kept me busy. It is all good news, but no good news on the weight loss front as of now. Sometimes I eat healthy, sometimes I don't, and it shows on the scale. I really do need to focus in December, so I can lose a little bit of weight by the new year.

Monday I did some cooking and baking for the week since I took the day off. The real reason why is in the next paragraph... Anyway, here is an easy recipe.

First cook up some ground turkey, chicken, or lean beef (which is what I used this time).

Then preheat the oven to the time on the crescent roll container. While your meat is cooking and your oven is preheating, take some reduced fat crescent rolls and shape them into a muffin pan. I used two packages of rolls and only had two leftover.

When the meat is cooked, add some barbecue sauce to your liking.

Lastly add meat to the crescent rolls and top with a little bit of cheese. Bake them for the time on the crescent roll package. They come out looking like this.

I also made some chocolate cupcakes with just cake mix and pumpkin.

Monday the 19th was a big day for me. I know I haven't written about it in a while, but I have been in the process of trying to get into graduate school. Monday was a group interview with some of the faculty. There wasn't much of a way to prepare, so I was super nervous. They started off the interview with a little bit of information on the program. Then most of the hour and a half was spent on questioning the nine of us. A couple of questions I was prepared for such as "Tell us about why you want to be in this program." and "Tell us about a situation where you had to deal with diversity and what you did in this situation." Then there were questions that I wasn't prepared for such as "Give us one word that you would like us to remember you by and then explain why in one sentence." and "Tell us why someone else in the room would make a good therapist in one sentence." We were told that we would find out in about a week if we made it in or not. After going through everything a week felt like forever to wait!

I took this picture in the parking lot before the interview. I really don't think that most people want to trespass in a marshy, wooded area.

Tuesday and Wednesday were normal work days for me. I unintentionally kept wearing stripes even though the stripes challenge ended last Friday!

I wore this outfit for the interview (and pajamas the rest of the day) on Monday and for work on Tuesday.

I wore this striped dress, sweater, leggings, and boots on Wednesday.

Tuesday I got an exciting e-mail:

I consider that close enough to being a grad student and a part of Purdue, so I got myself a sale sweatshirt on black Friday:

We had a two hour fog delay on Wednesday morning. I was kinda worried that I would have to drive in the horrible fog, because I work in a school in the city that usually doesn't call off for fog. The school in my rural hometown called off school for the whole day! Here are a couple of pics of the fog from my house:

On Wednesday I got my birthday present from the hubs. He asked if I wanted to wait until my birthday next week or get it now since I had a four day weekend and some time to try it out. I went with lets try it out now. :)  He ordered a Wii U (the new Nintendo system) and we got it on Monday. It came with a game called Nintendoland which looks like it would be fun to play with friends. My present was Sing Party which is singing game. You can practice singing by yourself or play with a group of people (that is really what the game was designed for). There is a wide range of songs from the '60's to today's hits. I found out that I really suck at most of the songs only getting two or three stars out of five. I still can't wait to try it out with my friends though!

Thursday was Thanksgiving, so I had lunch with the hubs and father-in-law at Cracker Barrel. It has been a tradition for us the past five or so years. There is only three of us and it is actually cheaper to eat there than cook the same stuff at home! We all had the Thanksgiving special with our choice of sides and dessert. I had turkey, sweet potatoes, green beans, stuffing, cornbread, and no sugar added pumpkin pie.

For dinner I went to my uncle's house (my dad's brother). I haven't been over there for Thanksgiving for two years, so I thought it would be nice to go there and see some relatives I haven't seen for a while. I didn't take a picture of my meal, but I had turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing, carrots, and shared a piece of pecan pie with the hubs.

The rest of the exciting stuff from this week will be in the next post.