Friday, December 30th, 2011

Hi Everyone, I'm still here and I'm still on the BFC.  Hoping to get back to blogging now that the holidays have almost ended.  I'm sure with the slow months of January and February I'll find lots more time.  I've just started reading over the past blogs and I will get caught up!  I'm sorry I haven't been on to comment and support you the last week or so.  It was such a hectic couple of weeks.  Christmas was very nice.  My friend and her kids came and stayed with us a couple days right before Christmas and then my parents came for a day and then we had to go to some relatives houses and then all of a sudden Christmas came!  That's it in a nutshell!   My husband took off the week between Christmas and New Years (sort of) and we decided to take advantage of the time and take a little trip down to Charlottesville, VA., which is a little over three hours south west of us.  My three youngest sons went with us.  I am also looking around for places we might like to retire to one day and have been scoping out areas whenever we take a little trip.  We had a nice time while we were there and visited Thomas Jefferson's home, Monticello.  It is gorgeous!  If I could retire at Monticello I would be a happy camper, lol!  For me, the rest of Charlottesville is not what I am looking for.  Nice for a visit, but I don't want to live there I don't think.   We got back this morning.

I actually think I have been doing pretty well on the BFC over the holidays.  I baked about 12 dozen Christmas cookies and didn't eat a single one!  And no cookie dough either!  The holiday dinners were not too bad with salads, ham, deviled eggs, and brussell sprouts. My brother-in-laws house was a bit harder because he made BBQ ribs, spinach salad (loaded with a sugar dressing) and cookies!  That's it!!  No veggies except that sugar loaded salad.  Luckily he dry rubbed the ribs so my husband and I ate those and water.  I was pretty hungry when we got home that night and had to much on some almonds and tea to get me through until the next morning.  On our trip to Charlottesville  I did succumb to a piece of regular pizza because we were shopping in an open aired market place that had either really expensive cafes or pizza joints.  I wasn't taking all five of us to a really expensive cafe for lunch so we went into the pizza place and got a extra large pizza to split.  I had ONE piece!  It's the first piece of "real" pizza I've had since last April and I'll tell you I ate it really slow and savored each bite.  Honestly though I don't think I went too far over my carbs with one piece but the sauce probably had sugar.  I weighed myself before our trip and I was still at 167lbs. I haven't weighed myself on the trip or since I've been back.  I might sneak in a weigh in before my official next Wednesday or I might wait.    

My usual New Year's resolution is to lose weight.  I've been saying that every New Years since I started having kids!  This year my resolution is to keep going!  I want to keep losing weight, and keep getting healthier!  I hope to be at my goal weight of 150lbs at least close to my year anniversary in April!  Anyway I just wanted to check in with everyone and now I'm going to try to catch up on some blogs.  I wish to all of you a wonderful 2012 full of health and happiness!!

Monday -December 19th

Here is the 9 ft. tree in our family room

My oldest suprised me with this little tree in our front room!

Merry Christmas Everyone!   After Christmas I will be much better about blogging, but right now my life is crazy!!  I'm sure it's the same with all of you too.   I'm pretty happy right now because I got on the scale this week and I am officially down a pound - 167lbs!  In fact my scale went back and forth between 166 to 167 for awhile before it settled on 167.  So I am happy, even for that small loss!!  I have been pretty good about keeping to the BFC so far this month.  I had the one cheat I told you about last blog and then the other night we went to Chili's and I had Salsa and Chips.  But other than that, no cheats!  To not feel deprived at the holiday time I made myself a bunch of the Mexican coffees that Dawn talked about on her blog one time.  I love it with some cinnamon and cayenne in it and then topped with Reddi Whip. Yum!  I also made a few "treats" that I could have instead of the traditional Christmas cookies.  I always make rum cakes at Christmas and thought maybe I could re-invent that into a BFC rum cake.  I took Jeri's orange pound cake recipe and changed it up by adding 3 tsps. of rum extract to it and after it was finished I made a glaze with 1/4 of butter, a few tsps. of Truvia and a glug or two of rum that you heat up and spoon of top of the finished "cake".  I think it came out pretty good! Here is the recipe if you want it.

Rum Cake-
350 degrees- 30 min. baking time in muffin tins
Mix in bowl-until well blended:
5 eggs
1/2 stick melted butter
1 C almond milk
2/3 C water
3 t rum extract
9 pkg. Stevia
1 T apple cider vinegar
1/4 cup chopped pecans for bottom of pan
In separate bowl sift:
1 C coconut flour
2 t baking powder
1/4 t salt
Mix well - wet/dry ingredients together.  Line loaf pan with parchment paper and sprinkle bottom of pan with 1/4 cup chopped pecans. Pour in batter. Cook at 350' for about 45-60 minutes,cool and flip out upside down onto plate so nuts are on top.


 Glaze:  In saucepan melt 1/4 cup butter, 3pkts truvia  after melted and hot add 1/4 cup rum.  It will steam!  Stir constantly for a couple minutes and then spoon over rum cake.

My other treat was something I found on Pinterest:  Almond flour Gingerbread Cookies!  These came out really cute.  The recipe makes twelve gingerbread men.  I don't decorate them or anything but they taste very similar to real gingerbread men and it's fun to have one when everyone else is eating cookies!   You can find the recipe for these here:http://mariahealth.blogspot.com/2010/12/gingerbread-cookies.html

The rest of this week is going to be extremely hectic!  I just found out yesterday that my girlfriend from Richmond, VA is going to come up this week with her two young kids to visit her mother.  She asked me yesterday if she could come here on either Wed. or Thursday and stay over.  Yikes!  Plus my parents emailed me over the weekend and asked if they could come for dinner on Friday after they visit with my brother, so that we can exchange presents.  They are going to my other brother's house for Christmas and he never invites ANYONE over.  On Christmas Eve we are going to my brother-in-laws house by orders from my mother-in-law.  He lives about an hour and half away from us in Virginia but we HAVE to go.  Christmas Day we just be my family for most of the day and then after dinner we will go to my brother's house for desert.  His wife prefers everyone to come AFTER dinner for cookies and punch.  (I'll bring my treat). I also have to move my son out of his college dorm on Tuesday and bring him home, so that leaves just today to get everything done!  I must mail my Christmas cards, wrap all the presents, and bake some regular Christmas cookies for guests, plus shop for Christmas dinner, and my parents dinner, and my girlfriends dinner!  I thought I had all week!!  You can be so organized and then things like this happen.  It is the norm for my life! In the end, it will all be OK and fun!(I hope)
I probably won't be back on the blogs this week until things go back to normal.  I wanted to wish all of you a very Merry Christmas or Happy Hanukkah, or both!!  My gift to myself this year has been getting myself healthy and my gift from all you all has been the support you've given me all this year!! Thank you!

Happy Holidays from my family to yours!!

Monday December 13

Good morning everyone!  Once again I have to catch up on the blogs since I have been away a couple days.  We went up to Lancaster, PA this weekend so I could find my Christmas spirit!  It sometimes seems we have so many tasks to do that we don't take time to just have some fun and that is what I wanted to do.  My husband and three of our boys went with me and we just walked around the little Amish towns, went into craft shops and stopped at a couple Christmas train layouts!  While we were there we went and saw the movie Hugo.  It was just so nice to slow down and have a little fun.   On the way home we stopped at the Christmas tree farm and met my oldest son and his girlfriend there to finally pick out our tree.  We ended up getting this HUGE 9' Fraser Fir.  When we came home we found that my oldest son and his girlfriend had made us dinner and a ton of Christmas cookies.  Christmas spirit found!  I'll post some Christmas tree pictures next post.

Ok, so probably because we did so much walking up in Lancaster I was down a pound when we got back.  I am sure by my actual weigh in day this Wednesday I'll be back up to my usual 168lbs.   For the first time since being on the BFC way of eating, I am having a bit of a hard time resisting... -  it's the darn Christmas cookies!  Ok so I admit to my first major cheat ever - I had one Christmas cookie when we got back and then the next day I broke off a small piece of  Peppermint bark.  So you may be thinking that it isn't that bad of a cheat, but it worries me because I started having thoughts like, "It's Christmas, am I never supposed to enjoy myself again?" "I can't go never having a Christmas cookie again" and things like that.  Luckily I brewed up some peppermint chocolate tea and added some Reddi Whip to it and it seemed to quell my cookie cravings and wild thoughts - thank goodness.   I'm probably going to drink two hundred cups of tea from now until Christmas, lol!  I can try whipping up a batch of coconut or almond flour something  to have also, but honestly, as good as that usually is, it really is not in the running with the regular Christmas cookies.   So hopefully I can keep resisting the good stuff and keep my long term weight goals in my head at all times.  We'll see.   Hope all of you are doing well!

Wednesday Dec. 8th! BFC week 34

Hi Everybody!  I can not believe an entire week has gone by since my last post! December is just such a busy month as I'm sure you all know, there are not enough hours in the day!  I weighed in today at my same 168 lbs.., bummer!  I mean I'm glad I'm not going up in weight but it sure would be nice to start losing a few again.  Earlier this week I got on the scale and it said 167lbs and I got a little excited that maybe I was starting to go down again, but alas, it was not the case on actual weigh in day.  To be honest with you I'm really not going to worry about it too much for the rest of December.  I know I'm eating exactly what I should be eating.  I don't cheat.  I even gave up snacks between meals this week.  I'm just going to keep going this way until after the holidays.  In January I may need to shake things up a bit, we'll see.  I might even get a hormone panel done to see if I'm out of whack there.
So other than the diet my holiday preparations are well underway.  Got my shopping almost finished thank goodness.  We do not buy for extended family except our parents.  It makes things so much easier and keeps the holiday in perspective I think.  We were not able to get our tree early last week like I had hoped because we had to go see my husbands parents over the weekend.  It was is mom's birthday and she has congestive heart failure and lately has been so tired and under the weather.  I thought it might cheer her up if my husband, and all the boys went down and took her out to lunch.  We did that and I think it did her some good to get out of the house, but it cost us almost the whole day, and left no time for tree cutting. This weekend we are doing a little overnight getaway to Lancaster again.  Three of my boys are coming with us and on the way home we will stop at the farm, meet up with my other son, and get the tree.
My dog, that has congestive heart failure, got put on a new medicine this week called Vetmedin.  It was a bit of a risk because I didn't have the very expensive echo-cardiogram done to be certain of what was causing his enlarged heart.  But I think we guessed correctly because he seems to be feeling better.  Yesterday he stole a newspaper and ran around the house with it, and then later stole an empty Doritos bag out of my son's trash can and tore it up.  We were all like, "Buddy, you're being bad, you must be feeling better!"  So today it's all about finding appointments for wisdom teeth removals, and finding a better deal for our self-employment health insurance which is apparently going way up come January, visiting my Aunt in assisted living, balancing the November work books, and getting the last of my online shopping done.
I hope to catch up on the blogs sometime today or tonight and truly hope all of you are doing great!!

December 1st! BFC Week 33

Hello Everybody, I have no idea what happened to my week.  One minute it's just the end of Thanksgiving and the next minute it is a week later!  Good grief!  

Anyway, yesterday was Wednesday and that is weigh in day for me.  I lost the pound I  supposedly gained over Thanksgiving and am back to 168lbs.  Will I ever be off of 168lbs, that is the question!  I only have 18 lbs left to get to my goal of 150lbs. Maybe these last 18 are the harder pounds to lose.  I don't know.  I know I still have belly fat to lose. That is the area on me where the fat collects the most.  I know I have lost all over, but why is it that your trouble areas are always the last to go?!   I started thinking about how I can tweak this diet a little to start losing again.  I really don't cheat when it comes to eating sugars or the wrong carbs.  I started thinking that maybe what I'm doing wrong is eating between meals.  Yes, I will have a handful of nuts, or a coconut flour cookie or muffin in between breakfast and lunch or between lunch and dinner, so maybe that is where my problem lies.   I am going to try to eat a bigger breakfast and a bigger lunch to see if I can stop myself from additional eating between meals.  That's the plan anyway - hopefully I can stick to it.

Today I put away ALL my pumpkins, turkeys, and Fall foilage and got out my Christmas decorations.  My husband and sons had already put up our outside lights last weekend since the weather was mild then and it was easier to do.  I like to wait until December 1st to put up the inside stuff just 'cause I'm weird like that.  More likely it is because that is what my mother did and so now that is what I do.  I told everyone at dinner that I think we should go get our tree this weekend.  Gasp!   We usually go cut down a tree two weeks before Christmas and this weekend would be three weeks before Christmas!  What am I thinking, they all wanted to know, did I think I could keep the tree alive for that extra week??  I  assured them I was up for the challenge and if I couldn't well I had certainly hauled trees out the door before that had only a few needles left on them and I could do it again if I had to.  So hopefully we will get the tree up this Sunday, and my house will smell like pine again.  I love that smell! 

You may have noticed that while I was decorating for Christmas I tried to decorate my blog a little bit too.  If I knew what I was doing when it came to blog designs I'd be dangerous!  Just for the little change you see here, there are three hours of my life that I will never see again!  Since Pattie asked us to add some pictures of our decorating I thought I'd show you this little Snowman I put up every year.  It came to me from my Grandmother after she died.  Every year she put him up in her kitchen window. When I was young my mother kept up the tradition with her own snowman that she put up every year in the kitchen just like grandma, she would say.  So when I got this guy I put him out the very first year in my kitchen to remind me of my grandmother.  He is old, and used to have a broom that got lost so I gave him a wreath to hold.  It's one of my boys favorite decorations because of the story behind it and hopefully one of them will put him in their kitchen one day.

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 That's it for me today.  I usually do the blogs in the morning but here it is 11:00pm.  I'm off to bed!