Reorganizing my life

I'm not sure what it is about this time of year but it just feels so fresh and a time for changing things up. I'm still very pleased with the new look of my blog. It feels more like where I'm at now I suppose. Every time I looked at it lately before the change it just kept reminding me of where I was. I was in a great place then of course but it was a constant reminder to me that I'm not still there with my weight and health in general. I will get back there but in the mean time I don't wanna bring myself down thinking about where I could be by now if I hadn't stopped in the middle to have Bethany. I don't regret that or anything, its just... well hard to explain... but for a person who already has body issues - sharing your body with someone else is really hard. I mean, I'm sure its hard for even the most confident woman. I just think its a different kind of hard for those of us who already got problems. lol. With my first pregnancy I was a smoker before I found out and then took the next day after finding out to pretty much make myself quit and then all throughout my pregnancy I would get these random cravings for a cigarette. My nerves were on edge enough just being a single mother to be, but then when any other kind of emotions crept up on me I'd be a wreck and would be pretty upset with having to share my body. Of course in the end it was all worth it. That wonderful little joy is well over 4 years old by now. This last pregnancy it was more about 'omg you just spent a year working your ass off literally and now you gotta up your calorie intake to care for this new little parasite invading your personal space'. But life is full of little surprises and you can't prepare for everything. If I knew I was going to have a baby in the next year I probably wouldnt have even tried to lose all that so its good we don't know everything. I'm a firm believer in 'everything happens for a reason'. :)

Anyways, I've gotten way off topic. lol. I decided that I need to reorganize things in my life too, not just my blog. Today's goal was to tackle Jett's play room. I moved literally every single thing in that room. I rearranged almost all of his stuff except there is no other place his bed will fit so I left it in the same spot but I did move it out of the way to find all the toys that fell behind it. I picked up every single toy from the tiniest little lego piece to the biggest train table. I threw away anything that was broken. Bagged up everything that needed to be donated and then boxed up anything that he had outgrown but was still something I wanted his sister to have someday. He has so much more space in his toy box now and everything fits in a spot! Yay! Took me literally all day though. I'm glad its finally done. I also talked to him when he got home from school about where I moved everything and that if he made sure to pick up his toys and put everything back before bedtime every night then he would get a 2nd sticker on his reward chart each day. He gets the first sticker for if he was good at school. He had a rough start this school year but after trying several things we finally found that the sticker reward chart worked best. If he got all 5 stickers for the week then we would take him to do something special on the weekend like the park or mcdonalds playplace and sometimes six flags or the zoo. This past weekend he got all 4 (no school monday) stickers and was able to go bowling with my parents on Saturday evening.

Here I am getting sidetracked again though. lol. I loved that fish I had earlier this week so much that I had it again on Saturday. This time I ate parmesan garlic roasted asparagus and garlic butter steamed red potatoes with it. Yummo!

Then last night I made everyone some turkey burgers. I thought they were really thin so I doubled up. I had one slice of cheese and ate it on a whole grain sandwich thin with mustard, pickles, and tomatoes. This was 445 calories. Mmmm...

Tonight I did the great value brand of shake and bake on some frozen boneless skinless chicken breast. I really like the flavor of the great value brand better than the name brand stuff. I had some more of that delicious uncle ben's long grain and wild ready rice and some cut green beans with it. This totaled 340 calories. It was sooo tasty!

And here is a new motivational picture I came across the other day. To me it makes me think that there is always a way if you choose to find it. Nothing is impossible. :)

Total Revamp!

Just overhauled my blog between last night and this morning. I needed a fresh new look to go with my fresh new start. I went ahead and updated all my pages, too. I even added some new pages. I'm loving it all and its really getting me back in the mindset of where I need to be right now.

Staying busy

I've been meaning to come update you guys here but I seem to keep staying busy this week. I've continued to keep track of my eating habits and am still exercising but there were a couple days when I only exercised for about 5 minutes because my day was just so full of other things. I didn't actually start doing any workout dvds until yesterday. I was planning to pop in an easy Crunch series workout but ended up opting for something I hadn't tried in a long time. I did a TurboJam Ab routine. It was fun and nice to start working on other areas of my body again. Today so far all I have done is some exercise ball moves. I did about 15 minutes of random ab work and also used my 3lb hand weights to include my arms and shoulders, triceps and biceps. I do intend on getting some more workouts in later this evening.

 As far as the foods I'm eating go, I have been trying a few new ideas lately to try and keep my mouth and tummy as excited as my brain is about getting back to healthy again. lol. Here is some lemon pepper fish we had on Wednesday night.

I baked it in a glass pan covered with foil and soaking in lemon juice with some lemon pepper seasonings sprinkled on top. I also made some Uncle Ben's Long Grain and Wild ready rice to eat with it and some golden sweet corn. It was absolutely delicious and I for sure will be trying this again. If I knew ahead of time how little the amount of calories in it was then I would have had a second helping of fish. I ended up way below my calorie count for the day and had to go eat something else to get where I needed to be.

Last night I wasn't quite as fortunate with my dinner. I ended up making kabobs and roasted asparagus sprinkled with garlic and parmesan. They looked great when I was making them.

I used beef stew meat that I had soaking in a marinade of orange pineapple juice, soy sauce,  extra light olive oil, and a few random steak seasonings along with some medium sized shrimp that was already peeled and deveined and I removed the tails from. I added pineapples and a cherry tomato to each skewer. After these were all prepared I stuck them in the oven to broil while I started prepping the next batch. My father and I enjoy all of these ingredients, however my fiance does not like pineapple and my mother doesn't like shrimp so I did each of theirs without those respective foods. Well, as I was making theirs I didn't watch ours as closely near the end of the broiling time and so when I did pull them out of the oven they were a bit blackened to say the least.

I thought they might be okay, but as they sat out in the air for a little bit they dried up pretty fast. The shrimp was shriveled and almost nonexistent anymore. The beef was hard as a rock in most spots. The pineapple and tomato were both still very juicy and tasty though. I had never had grilled/roasted tomato before and it was an interesting taste. I think I enjoy them more fresh but I would eat them again this way. The beef and shrimp would have probably been better if I had dipped them in bbq or ranch or something to distract from the burnt, lol, but I wasn't about to add any more calories so I just ate them as is. My mother's and my fiance's batch turned out better but were still a little bit dry in the meat department. Maybe next time I should either use a different style of beef or marinate it longer or both. Possibly just do chicken instead. 

Oh well, I lived and I learned here. I'm still proud of myself for trying new things. I'm really looking forward to all the new recipes I get to try this year. Do any of you have any particular suggestions for me? Maybe something with chicken or pork?