30 Day Challenge - Day 1

Today was day one of the 30 day challenge!  After a long day of running errands and spending time with Sweetheart, it was time to take care of day one.  I decided to watch Army Wives while I walked on the treadmill ~ two birds, one stone.  :)

Day 1 -  complete!

Earlier today My Sweetheart and I went to Barnes and Noble to pick up some summer reading.   Since I (we) are starting this month off with a new challenge we feel recharged.  We decided to watch less television and read more.  So we strolled Barnes and Noble for about an hour looking for some good reading.  Normally, I run straight to the true crime section.  I love reading about true crime, specifically se.rial killers.  I am fascinated by them.  I have been since I was very young and read my sister's book called Hel.ter Skel.ter; a book about the Charles Manson murders.  I try to keep my love for reading about se.rial killers under wraps because some people think that's a bit creepy.  Really creepy, but that's a story for another time.

So today I ventured into the romance section.  I was tempted to buy 50 Shades of Grey.  Kind of.  I am not into romance novels, never have been.  But there were actually two books that I looked at.  When I ran into Sweetheart in the Science Fiction section, I showed him the three books so he could help me decide.  There was the 50 Shades of Grey, Great Aunt Sophia's Lessons for Bombshells and The Memphis Three (from true crime).   When I finally decided which I wanted I returned the other books to the shelves then remembered that I always wanted to read a book by Nora Ephron.  I've always LOVED her movies but never had a chance to read any of her books.  So I went searching for "Heartburn".  I have never seen the movie so decided this was a great way to get started.  So that's what I got:

When we got home we both found our comfy spots in the living room and started reading.  It was a very nice evening of quiet and reading and just being together.   It was a lovely way to end a great weekend!

Hope you had an equally wonderful weekend!

Turkey Meatballs

Ever watch The Next Food Network Star?  My Sweetheart and I love it!  Earlier this week I made these Turkey Meatballs.  I tweaked the recipe a little bit, I added spicy turkey sausage to it.  I have to say, it was pretty amazing!

The recipe is courtesy of Michelle Ragussis, one of the contestants.  They were so easy to make and absolutely delicious!  Here's a link to the recipe:   http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/turkey-meatballs-with-spaghetti-squash-in-tomato-sauce-recipe/index.html

Getting "Challenge" Ready

I'm getting ready for the 30-day challenge that starts tomorrow.  I put a calendar up in the kitchen so I can "x" out each day as I complete my task.  I'm stoked about it!

In other news, I re-arranged the furniture in the living room for the second time in two weeks.  Yep, that's how I roll.  My Sweetheart walked into the living room while I was in the middle of re-arranging and looked disoriented.  Of course, he had just come in from working in the back yard (it was 113 degrees today).   But regardless he's a trooper; he didn't ask any questions he just went about his business.

When I was done, I decided to move one of the lamps that I have on the end table to the front entrance way table.  Sweetheart liked it when he saw it.  I'm not sold on it just yet.  I'll give it a day or so.  This is not the best picture, I took it with my iPhone because I was too lazy to haul out the camera.

Tomorrow is July 1st ~ can you BELIEVE how fast the first part of this year has gone by?  Next month is pre-season of football.  Our first Cardinals game is on August 5th!

Well, back to cleaning!

The 30 Day Challenge

This week at work we were presented with a challenge. We were directed to TED.com -- where we were to watch a video about a computer engineer turned life experimenter. The idea behind all this is based on engaging in a 30 day challenge to make a positive impact in your life and/or the lives of others.

We were told the challenge did not have to be work related. But since this will be tracked at work via our manager, it behooves me to make this work related. Yes? Great, sign me up!

Now, being the over-achiever that I am, I decided to also have a personal 30 day challenge. I mean if I am going to do this I am going to go at it with everything I have. Pretty strong words for something that may not match the actual activity I chose. You'll see what I mean, read on:

I won't bore you with the details of my work challenge but I will say it's a pretty ambitious goal. However, I am up for it and I just know I will be victorious!

When it came to selecting my personal challenge I knew immediately what it should be. Back in January I begged my Sweetheart to buy me a treadmill; enter the Livestrong 13.0:

I was adamant about needing it immediately because I was going to jump on it every single night! Fast forward six months. My Sweetheart recently told me that our dog, Naboo, uses it more than I do. Really? I walked over to it and saw some puppy paw prints on it. Apparently it's easier for her to climb over it than go around it. Crap.

So my challenge is to get on the treadmill every single day in the month of July. Since I wanted to make this a challenge that I could actually achieve, I didn't really get specific with details on length of time on/miles walked. It's more that I am hoping that the result of this 30 day challenge will be a habit formed. Simply for the reason that up until now, the Livestrong 13.0 has become my nemesis.

Come on July 1st, I'm ready for you! I got this!!!

My Menu Board

Every day around 11am and 3pm and again at 4:30 pm, I get an email from my Sweetheart.  "What's for dinner" he asks.  Every single day.  So, I decided to post a menu on the fridge so he could check it any time he wanted.  At first I thought it would go un-noticed but I realized he really looked forward to reading the menu and either loving the menu selection or asking for a replacement.  Ha! 

I had been printing a menu every week but a couple of weekends ago my printer ran out of ink so I didn't post the menu.  As a result, the emails resumed:  "what's for dinner" he wants to know.  This was my solution to the ink-less printer dilemma:  

I used the frame with the burlap background as my "menu board".  Although, not an original idea, I felt it pretty clever of me to use this as our menu board.  I just wrote on the glass with a dry erase marker.  Easy to write on, easy to wipe off.  And the Sweetheart is very pleased that he knows what's on the menu! 

I think it's a pretty cute idea!

I think I'll keep doing this.  I'll change out the background every now and then to change things up.  

Boston!

I want to post about trip to Boston a couple of weeks ago. We had the best time ever. I just haven't had time to post. We have about 1,000 pictures that we took during our week there. I can't wait to download the pictures and post them. In the meantime, a quick summary of our trip as I described it to my BFF:


Hello Friend, 

Yeah, we were only gone for 6 days. I could have stayed longer, we had the best time ever. Did I tell you we went to NYC? Alex, M and I felt like two small town kids. We took the train from Boston to Penn Station. We walked up the steps from the subway and onto this great big, busy, dirty, amazing city! We were in AWE. It sounds silly, but I was overwhelmed with it all! M grabbed my hand and told me not to let go and to stay close. The streets were filled with people! We went to see Lady Liberty (I had been wanting to visit her since I was 7 years old and I saw a picture of her in a book) -- it was a breathtaking site. We had authentic NYC pizza at a local pizzeria. We were turned down by a cab driver – he didn’t want to take us all the way mid town so he said “no thanks” and drove off as we were getting ready to open the car door! It was classic! Oh, and we went to the Hard Rock Café in mid-town.

And Boston was equally remarkable! M and I are hard core tourists – and this time, we didn’t rent a car – we decided we were going to ride the subway while there. And we did. And we mastered it! We stayed in the heart of Boston so we had a subway station just ½ a block from the hotel. We took the subway to: Chinatown, Harvard University, Fenway Park, the USS Constitution, etc. We were subway riding fools! We even had to transfer a couple of times. Bostonians are not the most polite people on the planet either. By the end of the visit, we were shoving and pushing our way on and off just like them!

We took a tour of Fenway Park and then stayed for the game. That was really amazing. We had the best seafood (that I am not a fan of but ate it to soak up the moment), M enjoyed every minute of that. We did the Freedom Trail by foot -- saw Paul Revere’s house, the cemetery where they are buried, the first school and library in the US, the school where Ben Franklin attended, the site of the Boston Massacre, etc. We went to the top of the Prudential Building where they have a skywalk and a grand view of the entire city.

We have a TON of pictures that we haven’t downloaded yet. We slept an average of 5 hours a night because we were up early and in late. Our feet hurt, our legs were sore and it was hot and humid. We didn’t care because we had an INCREDIBLE time!

This will have to do until I can get some good pictures up!

The one with nothing to blog about

These days, my most accomplished task is cleaning the house, doing the laundry and getting the grocery shopping done.   We have had so many family and work commitments that the house duties end up being low on the priority list.  

This past weekend was a weekend free of any commitment.  So I took full advantage of it by not doing anything.  At all.  Granted, I could have taken on one of many tasks on my to do list, instead I chose to relax after my chores were done.  I did get the house cleaned, the laundry done and the groceries, but not more than that.  

There was one tiny change in the living room  See the plants in the picture below?  They used to be in the corner to the right (on the other side of the sliding glass window).  Sweetheart mentioned to me that with the heat of summer around the corner we should probably move the two plants to give them some relief from the heat.  I agreed so I moved them.  They look a lot better in the new spot.  The ficus actually loved the change, it immediately took to the new area.   Oh, the lights on the ficus tree, they are from Christmas.  About 5 years ago.  I never took the lights off the tree....

p.s.  those plants were Sweetheart's from his bachelor days.  The pots are old and crusty and do not match.  If you look close enough, you can see the saucer doesn't match the pot.   Replacement is very low on the "to do" list so they will have to be for now:

And in random news, this is what I see when I get home from work most nights.  All three of them on the couch, relaxing.  Naboo (the newest addition) really never got permission to sit on the chair...she just did it one day and I guess we never made a fuss so now she thinks that's her chair.   I'm totally serious.

Have a happy week!!