DOING WELL!!

My last post concerned the fact that I was going to have to start cooking more healthy for my hubby, Danny, which we did.  But then we decided about in August of last year we would try Weight Watchers and see if we could lose some weight (which we both needed, badly).  Danny's sister, Diane, had kept us up to date on her success with WW and she lost over 70 lbs in less than a year.

So, we started in August and have been doing fairly well.  We are losing very slowly which is a good thing.  Up 'til now Danny has lost about 45 and I have lost almost 35.  That's not a lot considering it is into our ninth month.  Sometimes, it's a little disappointing but the results have been so overwhelming in other areas of our health that it is encouraging to continue on this path.

Danny's doctor has cut his blood pressure meds down to a quarter of what they were. And said she may eventually be able to take him off one of them entirely.  My weight loss has aided my asthma condition.  I can do more and last longer when I'm exercising than I ever could before.  I am having a problem with my body temperature though.  Going to go to doctor and have my thyroid checked again.  I am taking some levothyroxine for that and I am thinking that the weight loss may have triggered a small upset in my dosage.  I can go from freezing to sweating at the drop of a hat.

We are eating healthier and exercising more.  I swim and walk and Danny uses the Nautilus equipment at the gym.( Oh, yeah. We got a membership at a gym to help out.) We bought some bicycles and Danny rides his a lot.  I am scared to death of falling so it has been hard for him to get me on mine.  But I am getting braver and I have ridden more this past few days.

One of the best things we have done so far with this is, we have gotten our daughter, Ambre on WW.  She came to visit at the end of March and went to our meeting with us, and we got her signed up.  That was on a Thursday night and on Tuesday after she went back home to NC, she attended her first meeting where she lives and in just those few days, she had lost over 5 lbs.  Since then she has lost a total of 15.4 lbs in just six weeks.  We are so proud of her.  She is going to be a real success story.

Well,  I will try to keep posting on our successes after this and maybe someday we will both be back to a weight we need to be at.  Bye for now!

KITCHEN DUTY!!

      Have I ever told you how much I really despise the kitchen?  I really, totally and absolutely despise a kitchen.  I really can't tell you why...I know why...but I can't tell you why.   Does that sound reasonable?

     Well, not long ago, my sweet hubby promised me that when we started drawing our Social Security and thing were looking up, he would take me out more often so I wouldn't have to cook.

     Today, his doctor put him on a "eat more healthy diet".  Well, I thought we were doing pretty good.  I wasn't adding salt to his food and was broiling and baking as much as possible...not frying.  But now, we have to basically change our whole way of fixing food and the foods we eat.  No more unhealthy snacks for him ( peanut butter crackers, chips, moon pies...etc).  Now I guess I will be making a lot of trips to the grocery store for fresh fruits and veggies.

Do I sound as if I'm whining?  Well, yeah you do!!  Uh oh, I'm losing it..I'm asking myself questions and then answering them.

Uurrrgggghhhh!!!  I hate the kitchen!!!!  Have I told you that?   Oh well,  I must keep my hubby around a while longer so here goes.......!

QUICK FIXES!!

I am a plus size person..".right now anyway."...said I for the last forty years!  LOL.  I hate to shop for myself.  When I was younger all the sizes for me looked like they were for women who were sixty and seventy years old.  Hey, I'm not saying anything against older womens fashions..'cause frankly, I have reached the age.

As the years have gone by and Walmart and Kmart have emerged as the biggest seller of women's affordable clothing, especially when you live on a Walmart size budget, the fashions have changed and now clothing is more stylish for women young and older.  But the one thing that really bugs me is the fact that for the last four or five years, clothing manufacturers are making almost all large women's fashions, especially blouses, with huge necklines that tend to show everything up top.

Do they not realize that some women are still modest and some don't think their necklines are all that pretty, so some prefer to wear blouses that are not so revealing.  I get so frustrated when I go shopping and can not find anything that has a normal neckline.  Even the winter blouses and pull-over sweaters are very revealing.  Do you know what it's like to try and keep warm with a blouse that is showing your babies behind.

Anyway, when I went shopping today with my "birthday bucks"....I really had one goal in mind.  I recently acquired the cutest pair of seersucker capris in baby blue and white pinstripes. I didn't have a blouse to wear with them and have been searching for weeks.  Well I found one at Beall's today that was suitable in color but you guessed it....the neck line revealed more than my babies behind. 

So being the ingenious person that I am I fixed it.  The capris were a little too long, so I shortened them and used the leftover to fix the blouse.  My before and after pics.

FINGERNAILS

As many of you know, I have chewed my fingernails for years.  Since I was a child.  There were times when I got older that I would try and grow nails but never had any luck.  The draw of nail chewing was just too much.

There was a period that I went through getting my nails done in acrylic and even went as far as getting my own nail tech license to make the "big bucks"!  What a joke that was.  Never made enough to cover the cost of all the supplies I bought.

Having your nails done in acrylic is very bad.....and I MEAN VERY BAD!!!.  It damages the nail beds, causes ripples and ridges in your natural nails and even can cause fungus's that ruin your nails forever.

I have always lamented that my nails have always been so thin and easy to break and split and even worse....peel.  My sister, Joan and my Mom, always had really hard beautiful nails but alas they got all the calcium and left me with none.....lol.

Last year, I heard about a new nail technique that did not damage your nails but made them strong so they could grow better.  About 8 years ago I quit biting my nails but still lamented they wouldn't grow out before they would break, chip, split or peel.  So I decided to try this new technique.  It's called gellac but pronounced...Shellac..  You heard me right.  It's pro-nounced just like the clear stuff they put on furniture.

Whether it is the same stuff, I could not tell you but I do know that I am extremely happy with the results.  I've had them done four times now and my nails have NEVER looked better.  I do have to warn you though...some of the techs seem to want to use the little electric grinder to take off the shellac when you go back for re-do.  DON'T LET THEM...THIS DAMAGES YOUR NATURAL NAIL.  Have them use a buffer pad.

I've included a couple of pics of my nails...this time I just left them with clear but have had color and french.  It all works well.

PAYING IT FORWARD

     At the beginning of the year, a bunch of people on Facebook decided to do the Paying it Forward gift giving thing again this year.  The whole premise was that if you signed your name under the person who wanted to partake in the PIF promise, then you had to paste the PIF promise on your page and have people sign up that you would send gifts to during the year. 

     There were a whole lot of promises made last year but then no one ever heard or said anything else about it.  Well, this year, we did it again and I decided...if you are going to sign up then you need to carry out your promise.

     So, I had a whole bunch of leftover yarn from prior projects and had recently told Danny as a joke..."you know, I'm probably gonna die and you're going to have to get rid of all that yarn, 'cause I don't have anything to do with it".  Little did I know that my PIF promise would give me an out to get rid of all that un-used yarn.

     I started crocheting a "scrappy afghan" out of the un-used yarn.  The first one turned out really good, so I decided I'd make all the rest of my sign-ups a "scrappy afghan".  Well, I've used up a lot of yarn.  So much in fact, that I've had to start buying more.  It's so funny.  I am having a blast making these afghans.  I've made a lot in my lifetime and can truthfully say that these are by far the prettiest and most colorful I have made.

    I am including a picture of my yarn holders.  The small basket on the left is basically what left of all my old yarn.  Most of what is in the other two has been bought to help finish them.

I hope everyone who receives their "scrappy afghan" enjoys it as much as I have making it.

A Handy Kitchen Helper

A long time ago when I was  a teenager, my Mom, used a kitchen device designed to keep scrap food in rather then putting in it the trash, especially if you don't have a garbage disposal under the sink.  It was a metal frame with a small trash bag that  fit over it.  The only problem was that it didn't have a cover, so after a while the flies would get to it, so you had to change the bag daily, which lead to a lot of cost, even back then.

I have come up with a solution to that by utilizing the same concept but with a Folgers coffee container.  You can dress the container up with contact paper or whatever you can come up with in your decorative colors.  My kitchen is done in red, so the red can goes well.  I only use the Folgers can because it it basically round on the inside and has small handles for better gripping.  The Maxwell House can does not work as well because the handle is separate and it's harder to get the filled bag out ( chance of tearing the bag).

Watch the video and see what I mean.

A GREEN THING

Being Green Checking out at the store, the young cashier suggested to the much older woman, that she should bring her own grocery bags because plastic bags weren't good for the environment. The woman apologized and explained, "We didn't have this 'green thing' back in my earlier days." The young clerk responded, "That's our problem today. Your generation did not care enough to save our environment for future generations." She was right -- our generation didn't have the 'green thing' in its day. Back then, we returned milk bottles, soda bottles and beer bottles to the store. The store sent them back to the plant to be washed and sterilized and refilled, so it could use the same bottles over and over. So they really were recycled. But we didn't have the "green thing" back in our day. Grocery stores bagged our groceries in brown paper bags, that we reused for numerous things, most memorable besides household garbage bags, was the use of brown paper bags as book covers for our schoolbooks. This was to ensure that public property, (the books provided for our use by the school) was not defaced by our scribblings. Then we were able to personalize our books on the brown paper bags. But too bad we didn't do the "green thing" back then. We walked up stairs, because we didn't have an escalator in every store and office building. We walked to the grocery store and didn't climb into a 300-horsepower machine every time we had to go two blocks. But she was right. We didn't have the "green thing" in our day. Back then, we washed the baby's diapers because we didn't have the throwaway kind. We dried clothes on a line, not in an energy-gobbling machine burning up 220 volts -- wind and solar power really did dry our clothes back in our early days. Kids got hand-me-down clothes from their brothers or sisters, not always brand-new clothing. But that young lady is right; we didn't have the "green thing" back in our day. Back then, we had one TV, or radio, in the house -- not a TV in every room. And the TV had a small screen the size of a handkerchief (remember them?), not a screen the size of the state of Montana . In the kitchen, we blended and stirred by hand because we didn't have electric machines to do everything for us. When we packaged a fragile item to send in the mail, we used wadded up old newspapers to cushion it, not Styrofoam or plastic bubble wrap. Back then, we didn't fire up an engine and burn gasoline just to cut the lawn. We used a push mower that ran on human power. We exercised by working so we didn't need to go to a health club to run on treadmills that operate on electricity. But she's right; we didn't have the "green thing" back then. We drank from a fountain when we were thirsty instead of using a cup or a plastic bottle every time we had a drink of water. We refilled writing pens with ink instead of buying a new pen, and we replaced the razor blades in a razor instead of throwing away the whole razor just because the blade got dull. But we didn't have the "green thing" back then. Back then, people took the streetcar or a bus and kids rode their bikes to school or walked instead of turning their moms into a 24-hour taxi service in the family's $45,000 SUV or van, which cost what a whole house did before the "green thing." We had one electrical outlet in a room, not an entire bank of sockets to power a dozen appliances. And we didn't need a computerized gadget to receive a signal beamed from satellites 23,000 miles out in space in order to find the nearest burger joint. But isn't it sad the current generation laments how wasteful we old folks were just because we didn't have the "green thing" back then? Please forward this on to another selfish old person who needs a lesson in conservation from a smart mouthed young person... We don't like being old in the first place, so it doesn't take much to piss us off...especially from a tattooed, multiple pierced smart mouth who can't make change without the cash register telling them how much.