Garden Update

I looked back at my pictures of the garden and realized how much has changed in the past two months! The flowers have gotten big, vegetables growing, and the trees have even gone through a growth spurt.

Here is a nice head of lettuce! It kind of reminds me of the cabbage patch kids because of the shape.

The corn is up and growing taller everyday!

No ripe tomatoes yet, but there are many green ones!

We have been enjoying artichoke...well....until I tried to harvest some last night and I had to deal with the earwigs that had crawled in it!  I just couldn't do it and am not sure if I have the stomach to eat more of them after seeing how many bugs take residence inside.....

The cilantro did not do well and it is cheaper to buy it, but it sure looks pretty now that it is flowering!

Pretty flowers....

This is actually a green onion that regrew from last year! It camouflaged itself with the daffodils earlier in the spring.  I think the flower for the green onion is really unique!

A baby cucumber is growing!

Carrots nestled between radishes.  The radishes protect the carrot seeds since carrot seeds take 3-4 weeks to germinate.  By the time the radishes are ripe, the carrots are up and ready to stand on their own!

Clean Eating

Melinda asked me recently what I meant by trying to eat better, so I thought I would share on my blog! In my quest to continue to be healthier and to reach a healthy weight I decided to go back to Jillian Michael's book Master Your Metablism. I read her book a few years ago and made some healthy eating changes then. This was a good wake up and reset reminder. I wanted to try some of the recipes I had not in the past and I also purchased a recipe extension book. I am also trying to follow the Mediterranean diet and the part I struggle with the most is the seafood. I am finding that there is actually really good seafood to eat when it is prepared well. I mostly just have a mental issue against it.

 My main goal with the diet is to start making a lifestyle change that will help me be healthier and curb my cravings. I have heard many times how yo-yo dieting is bad and worse than if you just stayed heavy in the first place. I have slowly incorporated aspects of the diet over the last few months that have shown me that it is beneficial to try taking this type of eating more seriously. Take chocolate for example. I can get such huge chocolate cravings that I would often buy a big bag of M&Ms and find that I finish the bag just within a day or two if I let myself. AND in the end, my craving wasn't curbed. I began buying organic chocolate that doesn't have all the chemical and artificial compounds that regular chocolate has. Just a small piece and my craving is fixed. I don't keep wanting more.

Here's an example of how I am modifying the diet to work for me right now:

Breakfast: Greek Yogurt & Organic Nature's Path Strawberry Granola Bar(Best granola bars ever!) Snack: Homemade hummus dipped w/bell pepper & cucumber and Sun Chips
Lunch: Left over chipotle beef sandwich & veggie salad w/Drew's Italian Dressing
Snack: 3 pieces Organic Newman's Own Orange Dark Chocolate
Dinner: (New recipe I tried tonight! See below!)Lemon Garlic Shrimp w/Veggies
Dessert: Yonana! (Frozen banana & berries blended into soft-serve style ice cream)
Total Estimated calories for all that food: 1500

 

Blogger has changed since I last made a post and all my pictures keep going sideways.  Anyone know how to fix that?

Summer-Like Weekend

This last weekend was so nice. It was like Summer! I went on several walks and I even was able to go on a bike ride. This bike ride was way easier than the last time I went for a ride, so it was motivating to see how I have grown stronger. During the weekend Anthony and I made hummus and had a picnic to appreciate the work we did in the garden. Here are some photos:

How does your garden grow?

This last weekend we were able to start are garden! I am excited to see the flowers grow and to have a lot of tasty vegetables to eat this summer and fall. The flowers were planted in containers out front. They are small now, but should fill in the space as they grow. In the side yard the daffodils are pretty much done, but new bulbs have come up. Some wildflowers from last year came up too. I planted more wildflower seeds around the bulbs and hope to turn it into a wildflower garden. We shall see how the seeds do. For vegetables, we have the artichoke coming up and doing better in it's second year. We planted three different types of tomato plants; early girl, cherry, and roma. We also have a basil plant growing. I love fresh basil!

Spring Break

Day 1
The first day of spring break ended up being quite different from my original plan. Originally, the plan was to go to Portland on the way to the beach and see a performance of "Wicked." This ended up being pretty spendy and I was able to the Broadway performance of "Beauty & the Beast" earlier this winter. Instead, Anthony and I were either going to go to the zoo or OMSI. The zoo if it was sunny and OMSI if it was rainy. Well, Anthony just began a new quarter of school and had a lot going on already in the first week, so we changed the plans so he could attend class before leaving. Instead we were going to go hike Fall Creek Falls on the way to Portland. We did this hike several years ago and really liked it. One thing we didn't do was check the weather before leaving. Winter has stayed late in the northwest and snow came late to the mountain, something us folks in the TC didn't need to think about with our nice weather. It ended up that the trail to Fall Creek Falls was not cleared of snow yet, so we were unable to hike. We ate the lunch I packed by the river on the road leading to the trail before heading in Portland. We ended up exploring some of the neighborhoods there instead.


Day 2:
We got up early in the morning and drove the rest of the way to Canon Beach. The weather was interesting! We had some showers in town, hail, and snow in the mountains. We checked into the cabin and headed down to the beach. We just had fun this day exploring and watching the sunset on the beach. No pics from this day.

Day 3:
Today was the day of our big hike! We ended up hiking a trail from Ecola State Park to Indian Beach. It was muddy, but the day was gorgeous! I was brave and went on some cliff faces during the hike. The path was safely wide, but if you know me - I was still nervous! Since we paid for the park we headed back for the evening sunset. It was one of the most beautiful sunsets I have every seen at the beach! I wish I could include all the pictures, but I will try to choose the best ones.


















Day 4:
Today was the nicest day of them all in terms of weather! Anthony and I spent the morning hiking and visiting beaches at Oswald National Park. We then headed back to Canon Beach and found a spot on the beach near Haystack rock to enjoy the warm weather. I even got sun-burnt! By dinner time some clouds had moved in including the neat looking ones behind Haystack in the last picture.




Day 5:
Today we had to come home. It was looking like it would be another nice day at the beach though. We were able to take one last long walk on the beach before packing up and heading home. We were even able to stop at Godfather's pizza outside of Portland and get a Taco pizza for lunch!

Homework Procrasitnation

I don't want to do my homework...nope, nope, nope.....so I am going to catch up on some more posting instead!

One thing that I have been trying to focus on is my health. Every since getting on Zoloft I have not been able to loose the 50 pounds I gained. I loose 10 pounds just to put 10 pounds back on. I have probably lost that 50 pounds several times if you add up each swing of loose 10, gain 10. This last summer I had the best luck with switching to the Mediterranean diet. I was home a lot, had a garden full of vegetables to eat, and was a lot less stressed. This last fall I added a new job in addition to the grad school. My schedule has made it so that I do a lot of driving every day and I take at least 1/2 of my meals on the go. (One reason I am looking forward to grad school being done). I gained 10 of the 20 pounds I lost this summer back. Last Christmas I wanting to do something extreme to get the weight loss going again. Anthony gave me the Insanity exercise program for Christmas. This program is extreme. I have added a lot of muscle and most importantly, made huge gains in cardiovascular health. Despite all of this I have not lost weight, but I have lost a few inches. I am frustrated by the scale being stuck and I have gone to Jillian Michaels for my next phase of trying to be healthy. I am reading her book on fixing your metabolism and re-balancing your hormones, so I am going to try and follow a lot of her eating ideas to see if it will rebalanced my hormones and let my body burn fat again. I am so tempted to do something extreme such as go to a prefed food diet, but I don't think those are healthy. I also think they are quick fixes. I don't want another quick fix that is going to hurt my body in the long run. The pictures below are from January and February. I can see some progress, but my stomach...oh my. The third picture is Kiara. She is having good weight loss success with her new food and extra exercise. She is a little more perky and plays a lot more as a result.










I just ran around after typing the first half of the post and took some pictures. In doing so I dropped my poor camera again! It seems like nothing was damaged though. I took picture of what I look like today at this very moment. I am mostly worried about getting my stomach to shrink because it is so bad to have fat on your stomach. I also took pictures of our first tulip, other garden flowers, a bouquet from Anthony for April Fool's Day(He brought them in and said they were for his sister at first), and Kiara chattering at a bird outside the window.