Cheat Meal!!

Wine and Ribeye last night. It was so good! A petit verdot has never tasted so good. I had it with a salad, no rice, no pasta, no potatoes, no bread - so it was a half cheat, don't you think?

I had to think about it for a little bit and try and figure out how the rest of my week was going to go. We are only allowed one cheat meal a week, so it is all about the planning kids! I think I can do it. It gets easier everyday to not drink wine and drink more water and no carbs. There better be some change on that scale next monday or the Weggmans wine section is going to get hit HARD by the lomester's credit card!

So far so good!

I cannot believe I have not cracked under the pressure! No wine. No pasta. No bread. No rice. AND, I am not DEAD! Can I get a woot woot!?

To top it all off, this week is hell week at work. I work in finance and the first week of the month we are closing out the previous month. I am responsible for submitting the revenue for a big account group. Every month I get the same questions from the same people and I have to explain the same process again without loosing my cool. Granted, you will hear me grunt and shudder after hanging up the phone, or hitting the send button in an email, but I have not yet told someone "really?! this question again?! are you kidding me?". So I say I should get extra points for not having wine during hell week.

I can't believe I have comments on this leetle ol' blog by the way. It has been so long since I was regularly posting, that I was sure I lost my faithful audience (of about 10 peeps). Even my best friend had taken me out of her blog-reading routine.

Gratzee, thanks so much for your comment! I would love to get some recipes. I need to get more mini meals during the day, so I would love to make one big meal and partion it off during the week so I don't tire myself with greens and chicken.

I am in it to win this competition!! (can you guys see the facebook note?) Ok, honestly, if I do not win the whole thing I would love to win a personal training session or two. I used to do that a couple of times a week a few years ago and I loved it. Sure, I complained and cried and whined, but I started seeing some changes, especially in my teenie tiny arms. The problem is that it is way too expensive when you have a mortgage, so FREE sounds about the right price for me.

At the same time, my company is sponsoring a new year new you contest. Basically, an employee earns points when they either a) join a WeightWatchers program and go to meetings b) Excercises. Well, I already do b) so umm, no brainer! The more points you accumulate, the more chances to win! We can win iTunes cards, ipods (woot woot!). Wii Fit games, and top winners will be eligible for cash winnings.

If having a small butt was not incentive enough, FREE stuff is! And now that I have put it up on a very public site, I cannot back down from it - can I?

Day 1 down.

I passed up on some wine last night. I never pass up on wine. ever.ever.ever. Does this mean that I more committed this time?

Let's hope so cause I caught sight of my tummie at Body Pump today and it scared me half to death. It probably scared other people half to death too.

Today was a better workout day. I ran 6.5 miles after BP. It was not as much as I wanted to do, or as fast as I wanted to do it, but I WILL TAKE IT!

hardest part (besides no wine) is that I have to cook Tony dinner, and he likes nice rich food (as do I) and he does not gain an ounce when he eats this. It is hard to make and not eat. But I will do it!!

I will be at work late tonight. LOVE working in Finance and having to close out the month. :( Our reporting tool has been down and the reports that were supposed to be ready at 11 am will now not be ready until after 4. UGH!

Which means I will def miss the Biggest Loser premiere. Yes, I am addicted to that show too (there really isn't a show I am NOT addicted to). But watching these people loose weight makes me realize how powerful the mind is. Whatever you set your mind to , you can do, as long as you are dedicated and committed.

I know I don't have many readers out there - but if anyone reads this - do you know of any good low-carb, low-fat recipe sites? I have a feeling salads are going to get super boring, super fast.

2010: The Resurrection

I have thought many times about resurrecting this blog. For whatever reason, I never found the time or thought that I had anything interesting to say.

With ravelry, I no longer needed it to keep track of my knitting progress, and with facebook I did not need a way to let my friends and family what was going on in my life.

But I think I need a forum to vent, and to release my silly little thoughts and ideas that is more for me than anyone else. I don't think all my facebook friends want to be bombarded by all my silly daily ideas, complaints, or rants. So, I have resurrected this blog as a daily (maybe) diary of my life, my friends, my family. An exercise more for me than for anyone else. Let's see how long it lasts. The plan is to just pop in and out of the blog all day and write things all day long and publish at the end of the day.

One of the main reasons that I decided to re-start my blogging is to make myself more accountable to my body-changing goals. Let's not call it "dieting" goals or "excercising goals". In the past this has been my mistake. I do one or the other, never both, and that is why I do not get anywhere. Every year, at least twice a year I make the same resolution to"loose weight", "get in shape", "look better" (whatever the mantra of the season is), and every time I self-sabotage. It is easy to self-sabotage, isn't it? Either you don't work out as hard as you know you should (we all know when we are half-assing it), or we eat stuff we know is going to de-rail us from our goal.

My main issue has always been the food part. I LOVE food, and let's face it: healthy food does not taste nearly as good as a pizza, or a burger, or sushi, OR a glass of wine. And no matter what the packaging says on a box of "i-swear-it's-good-for-you-food", it is not even going to come close. However, the repercussions are a lot worse.

Feeling blah about myself, or knowing that I can't wear this that or the other because of my butt, or my stomach was not worth the lasagna, or the nachoes (although sometimes it is worth the wine) :)

So, January is here, and along with millions of other people I am starting the new year with new habits and new goals. This time I decided to add a little pressure to myself by joining GYMRATZZ.INC "Big-Squishy-Loser" (BSL)contest. GYMRATZZ is owned by my gym's Body Pump instructor, Erin. Body Pump is a class I fought against going for a long time. First, I thought my running was enough, who needed weight training - pishawwww! and second, I could hear Erin yelling at people through the walls! Believe it or not, those of you that know me, I am a little shy at first, and I was SURE she would call on me, or yell at me, or something... so I resisted. Oh, and the classes are at 5:30 (AM!!!).

Then, my sister-in-law started waking me up by calling me each morning, that, coupled with the fact that my ass looked exactly the same for years, I decided to start going. Erin ended up being not so mean :), and the class has really helped me push myself and do things besides runrunrun all the time.

Besides tracking everything in a journal, I am going to try and track what I am thinking, eating, doing on this blog. Maybe it will make someone laugh, but I at least hope it makes me feel accountable.

Today so far has been ok. Eating eggwhites with salt and pepper for breakfast is new to me. Usually I have a cup of coffee and will grab a piece of bread on my way out. For lunch I mixed a bunch of greens with a can of tuna and mixed it with balsamic vinegar, lemon juice and leeettleee bit of olive oil. I am drinking water (hope to get to 128oz of water a day, so far only 20 oz) and mate. I love me some mate.

Mondays are usually my day off from the gym, but I went in for the first BSL meeting, so I stayed and did 40 minutes on the elliptical. Kinda "meh" but better than nothing.

Oh, so for those of you that read this blog for my knitting - I still knit! I am just not good at taking pictures of my finished projects. And, I have started sewing - so far so good. The dresses that I have made for thanksgiving, christmas and newyears have not left me naked in front of my friends and family, so I consider that a success. (picture is of the dress I made for New Years!). I made some gifts for Ava (happy birthday!!) and will try and take pictures of her to show off.

Glad to be back to this... more later.

Recap (I know - shocker!)

I can't make promises of daily, weekly, or monthly recaps. They are empty promises at this point. So I promise to not forget I have a blog and keep updating it as much as possible.

So, here we go with the recap.

Life is good, wedding planning is (not yet) fun. There are so many details to take care of and of course we want it to be perfect. I think once we have a caterer down then I can start thinking about all the fun details that I want to incorporate. We have decided on a Spanish theme, since we were engaged in Madrid, and our families both come originally from Spain. I feel if we had an Argentinian themed wedding (from my side of the family) or a Guatemalan or Mexican themed wedding (from Tony's side) we would be excluding each other. I have so many ideas, my mind (and binder) are exploding!

I am also trying to loose a little weight. Not a lot, just a little. My workouts have become so monotonous that I have hit a physical plateau. I know I overeat (just ask my friends, I really do) so I have been really trying to watch how much I eat. So far, a little has been lost. I will let you guys know process as it happens (or not).

Now, what you all came for - the knitting.

Do you remember my Avita pattern? You can find it here on ravelry. Well, I cannot tell you how touched and flattered I am that so many people have made my little design. A wonderful knitter (and amazing photographer) even has me thinking about perhaps turning this into a little girl's dress.

Sara was even so kind as to send me pictures of her adorable pink version. Thank you so much Sara, I am so sorry that it has taken me so long to show people your adorable version. If you guys want to see more pictures of Sara's Avita, visit her ravelry site, or her blog. I am trully flattered that ONE person likes this pattern, and as of today 105 people have it in their queue on ravelry.

Speaking of queues, mine is ever growing. And I mean evah-growing. Every day I see more and more patterns that I want to make, and I even managed to get all my stash (well - MOST of it) into ravelry so that I can see if I can use any of it for my queue. As many knitters think, non-stop I am sure, I need to quit my job and learn how to burn calories while knitting so that I can do nothing but knit all day long, and not gain any weight.

I have managed to do some knitting:

Iselita vest

Named after my dear friend Isel because when I saw hers I needed to make this. She told me I could make it as long as hers was still prettier than mine, and I got really close I think, but hers is still cuter.

I actually started it in during our trip to Spain, so every time I wear it I get a flash of memories of knitting on a train on our way to Toledo. Isn't it crazy how certain garments will bring your mind back to a different place and time?

Anyhoo, I was almost to the armhole decreases when I realized that it looked really small. When I re-read the pattern I realized that I had not done the increases after the waist ribbing. oops. So I had to completely restart. It was worth the wait. I get a lot of compliments at work, which is where I usually wear it.

More details on my ravelry page here.

Vest for Papi

For all of those that don't know me, I am a MAJOR daddy's girl (shocker for those of you that do know me - I know) So before I make Tony a garment (it's in the works people) I wanted to make my dad something. I sent him a bunch of patterns and he dismissed each and every one. He explained to me what he wanted and I decided to create my own pattern. He deserves all the math that went into this one for sure.

Yes, he is doing a "body-builder" pose in that picture. He is going to kill me for posting it. :)

I think it turned out pretty good. I need to re-block the armholes so they are a little bit wider. I always have issues binding off loosely for some reason.

You can see more details for this project here.

Rayne

Another Isel copy (whaatt! The girl has good taste!)

Oh.my.gosh. I am so in love with this one. I want the fall to come because I want to wear it all over the place. I made it extra long because I am tall, and because I wanted to be able to wrap it all the way around me.

Love love love. The yarn is super soft (although it does shed, and I rayne dust bunnies still from when I was knitting it). I really want to wear it all the time.

I could not really get an excellent picture depicting how happy I am with this, but not due to lack of trying. I took quite a few. And you can see some of them, and the project details on my ravelry page here.


What I am working on now:

Valpurina

My little spring/summer project. I forgot how much I liked cables!

Ash

Such a flowy number, also perfect for spring. I am THIS close to finishing it!

So there you have it, my recap. There is so much more to come, I promise, but I cannot tell you when. :)

I know, the suspense of when I will come back is almost as strong as the suspense over the Democratic nominee!