We are back from vacation. It was wonderful. My brother is now married. We partied hard with my side of the family. And then we drove from southern Oregon up to Portland, which is right on the border with Washington state. We saw a bit more family, as my aunt is in Vancouver, WA, but mostly, the rest of the trip was our own little family vacation. James and I both got to do our own geeky things – his were comic book shops and beer — LOTS OF BEER. Mine was bead & craft & fabric stores — LOTS OF BEADS AND FABRIC. It’s a good thing we don’t live there or Fabric Depot, The Bead Source, and Umawajirasanakanukiwa alone would bankrupt us.

I REALLY didn’t worry about food while we were there. And so it was no surprise when I was up 5 pounds at weight watchers today. But one thing vacation has done for me, is it has given me lots of MOTIVATION! I am buckling down for an awesome week to get back to where I was. I usually buy breakfast AND lunch, mostly because of lack of preparation, so this week I am going to try to get everything ready to go before hand.

I also am feeling all gung-ho about getting this house clean and decluttered! Our problem is when we clean up we shuttle crap from one surface to another, and so it gets messy again easily. Time to get RID of all the crap, find permanent homes for everything we own, and keep it clean! This will be a long-term project, but as I said, GUNG-HO!

I’ve also kind of been hunting for a new purse for the last few months. I even bought one at JC Penney’s and tried it out at home before I decided it really just wasn’t me. So after buying a big pile of gorgeous fabric in Portland (Fabric Depot is awesome) I think I need to clear off my sewing table in the next month or so and make me a new purse.

I took some rings with me on vacation, but didn’t really do much with them. It was a nice jewelry vacation, really. And I bought a lot of beads while I was there. I tried to envision what I would do with each bead before I bought them, so I am now FULL of ideas.

One reason why I gravitate to chain maille is that there is a pattern to follow and even with no modifications at all, it looks incredible. Sometimes I sit with beads and get the beader’s equivalent of writer’s block. So many different combinations possible! Too stiffling! What if I get it wrong! So being full of ideas is a lovely feeling. On the flip side though, doing ONLY chain maille is stifling too. Some pieces are VERY time consuming, and also it puts all the pieces (except earrings!) in my shop at a fairly high price point.

I want to jump-start all these visions and quell the beader’s block before it begins, so I thought I would do a little challenge for myself. A piece of jewelry a day for a week. This will also help me build up some inventory, which I need, and help build in a better variety of price points on pieces in my shop. I have lots of ideas for earrings, which will make it a fun and easy challenge, not to mention if it will probably get me to actually FINISH a few of the things that are 3/4 of the way to complete! If any jewelry designers out there want to join me, please comment, I’d be just tickled!

I’m also working on another challenge, though this one is not self imposed. I am a member of a wire wrapping group on yahoo, and right now there is a “Big & Gaudy” Earring challenge. The only criteria is that they should be at LEAST 2 inches long. I am having a blast sketching out different possibilities, but the deadline has started to loom, so it’s time to stop sketching and start MAKING! I’ll show those off when the deadline comes as well.

I’m telling you, all this motivation feels AWESOME!

That’s it for now — so nice to be home — so nice to be filled with ENERGY! Hopefully it’ll last!

-amy wonders where the hell ‘gung-ho’ came from. let’s blame canada.

I have like, 3-4 big blog posts boiling around in my head, but some are interlinked, and some are not and I’ve been putting them off all week so rather than continue to put them off because they seem “too big” to tackle, I’m just going to do them all super quick and get them out there.

1. James and I have been married for 10 years TODAY. We went to lunch, since we suck and have no sitter for tonight or this weekend. We came to the agreement that we will go for another 10 years. I tried to change the terms of our marriage (I want him to “obey” but he wasn’t going for it) but in the end, we figured we can give it another 10 years.

2. The above conversation was actually like 30 seconds. Just so you know. We’re not actually that callous. We’re just very amusing to ourselves. The rest of lunch, we talked about house remodeling. Because we’re just that romantic and dreamy!

3. I have dislocated my toe. “How!?” you cry! Well, it was nothing dramatic. I wore heels for several days in a row a few weeks ago, and did more than moderate walking around errand running on the last day and my feet hurt. Really bad. Usually I wear heels, my feet hurt, and in a day or so, they’re fine again.

Well, they weren’t fine, and when I hit the 2 weeks with my right foot really kind of killing me, I decided to go see a podiatrist. He suspected a fracture, x-ray-ed, and lucky me, no fracture —- my 2nd toe is just DISLOCATED. He prescribed me a anti-inflammatory cream to use 2x a day, a pad to stick on the ball of my foot to take the pressure off the joints, light wrapping to compress the area and anti-inflammatory pills to take orally. I go back next week. The toe should want to move back into place when the swelling goes down, if not, I may need physical therapy.

So, in a word, my foot hurts, and when it gets later in the day, I start to hobble rather than walk. Don’t worry, I make sure to give James frequent updates on the status of the foot pain. “it HURTS OH GOD IT REALLY HURTS!” Definitely every hour. Usually every 15 minutes. He shows his appreciation of my helpfulness by attempting to smother me with a pillow. Because of the love.

4. I am re-starting up Project Skinny. I actually started it up officially on SUNDAY! I went to a Weight Watcher’s meeting and let me tell you, that starting weight is a little scary. I knew my weight was creeping up this year, but I wanted fries from 5 Guys more than I wanted a skinny ass, so it was easy to stick my head in the sand and ignore the obvious. I don’t want to make excuses, but the stress with the stuff going on with Ethan definitely was a factor. The last straw though, honestly, was the foot/toe thing that really did it.

After my foot was STILL hurting me (this was before I got myself to a doctor) after over a week, it dawned on me that perhaps my foot has suffered a more serious injury FROM WEARING HEELS… that PERHAPS… MAYBE JUST PERHAPS… I WAS TOO GODDAMN FAT. A person should be able to walk around Target and Petsmart and do errands in heels WITHOUT DOING SERIOUS INJURY TO HER FEET. Obviously, the feet aren’t meant to carry around the amount of weight mine have been carrying around! That was it. It was the last straw, and it was time to do something about it. (Please someone bottle this feeling for the future.)

So I really got my resolve together Saturday. I was going to go back to Weight Watcher’s, and I was going to start Jillian Michael’s 30 Day Shred. I’ve heard about it on Twitter and a few friends have commented on it and it looked good to me (helloooo! only 20 minutes!) so I had bought it. Well, now was the time, baby! I didn’t start it Saturday as I had intended, but I did Sunday and I was doing pretty well on it until I think I aggravated my toe a bit more — Day 4 I pushed myself pretty hard, and it is also the day my foot was killing me and I called the doctor! And now I am putting the Shred on hold.

It kind of sucks because the motivation for me to GET UP EARLY (ie: move heaven and earth) and DO AN EXERCISE VIDEO (ie: shoot myself in the foot) is… well…. DIFFICULT. But I had it! I had the motivation! I did FOUR WHOLE DAYS, PEOPLE! That is huge. And now I have to put it on hold until my foot is better. I can only hope I can muster the motivation back up when that day comes. Sigh.

And I was really actually enjoying tolerating liking how i felt afterwards. I was sore, but a good sore. I was tired, but also more energetic. And with each day I was a bit less sore than the one before and I could push myself a bit more than before.

So anyway, yeah. I am trying not to look at a big goal right now, but am focusing on the wedding we are going to in mid July. It would be nice to get a good solid loss in before then, and I have enough time to do it. I’ll be tracking my progress here.

5. FIRE! Soon, I am going to PLAY WITH FIRE. I have been wanting to take a metal smithing class since the beginning of the year but have purposefully put it off. But now the time is almost upon me. I am taking a beginning soldering class next Sunday, ALL DAY, AND I CAN’T WAIT!

Me. Melting metal. Maximum Awesome.

That is all!

For NOW. CARRY ON!

-amy, who’s foot hurts. Really bad. I’ll call you in 15 minutes with another update.

In my efforts to not let my blog just COMPLETELY wither away and die, here is a forced update!

Do you totally hate me? The christmas shopping is done.

I totally got up and did Black Friday this year. It was actually pretty awesome to get most everything out of the way. I researched, made a list of things to get and went to 3 stores: target, toys r us, and kmart. I made a spreadsheet for the family of who’s getting what and after a few more stops that weekend, I’m happy to say, the christmas shopping is DONE. Yesterday, I got a tree with the kids. James and I put it up when he got home after his class/test, and today the kids and I will get going on decorating. I’m going multicolored this year with the 5 boxes of “icy twinkle lights” I got on sale after christmas last year.

For some reason I thought that they were ceramic. Kind of glad now to find they are not.

An early christmas present to me was a new mixer. My old mixer is a knock off of the Bosch Universal, a mixer my mother has had since before I was born (I may be exagerating, but as long as I can remember!).

Bosch Universal

6-8 years ago when I wanted a mixer, I wanted one like hers, but got convinced that this lookalike, Dimension 2000, was a better choice. And it works fine, just loverly, still does, except I broke both the sets of wire whips (regular and cookie dough) and the company is now out of business. Not so loverly.

Dimension 2000

So I’ve been out of a mixer since the summer, and with Christmas here, cookie making season is upon us. I like to make cookies and send them out to all our family (because I’m cheap that way) And you know what? Mixing double batches of cookie dough with a hand mixer? IS NOT FUN.

Linen N Things is going out of business, and so I’ve been eyeing the Cuisinart 5.5 quart model, regularly $300. It’s very similar to the KitchenAid mixer, same similar attachments available (even a food processor!) but in my mind, a little slicker looking and with a TIMER feature! How cool is that! I was a little nervous I was making the same mistake I made with the Universal — buying a different version of the more known brand, but I don’t think Cuisinart is going to be going anyway!

Cuisinart 5.5 qt Stand Mixer

When I first saw it, it was down 20% to $240, and James agreed that a mixer is something I kind of use a lot and actually “need” (thanks again honey) (he could have been a real pain because I have this “anything bought for yourself or others after Thanksgiving MUST BE WRAPPED AND PUT UNDER THE TREE” rule that he REALLY doesn’t like, so he could have turned that one against me and not let me HAVE the mixer until Christmas). When I went to get it, it was down again to 30%, so at $210, the was mixer purchased, and has already been put to use.

It’s a little kooky to get used to this style — the Bosch/Dimension probably seems like the kooky one to other people, what with the actual bowl being more of a doughnut shape instead of a normal bowl, but it’s what I’ve been used to my whole life, even growing up! Getting in and scraping down the edges has been tricky, and the dough does like to ride up a bit, up above the beat/whip, but so far, I like it 🙂 The timer feature is especially nice. So far I have only done cookie doughs, but I can’t wait to try some bread doughs and whip cream and egg whites (not all for the same thing, obviously!)

So even though the shopping is done, there’s still a lot of baking to do, and I want to make some easy mass-assembly line type craft to include with the cookies, but am at a loss of exactly what. Last year I did marble magnets for everyone, using my masses of extra altoids tins as a container. Stretchy cheap-beaded bracelets for nieces would be nice, and are super easy. Maybe stretchy bracelet with their name on it for the boys, but some of my nephews are older and I could see totally sticking up their nose at them. Adults, really not sure. Necklaces for adult female relatives would be nice, but might be too expensive (good beads ain’t cheap people!). And let’s face it, I’m running out of time for intricate work here. We might just be looking at stretchy bracelets for the little girls, and cookies for everyone else.

OK, this wraps up our holiday christmas presents edition post!

-amy twinkles but she does not glow. NO GLOWING.

Not a quilt for a baby, but a quilt made out of baby clothes.

Although actually, it’s more like made out of toddler clothes.

Except no, it’s not just clothes, it’s her adorable DRESSES!

I should really call it Jocelyn’s Toddler Dress Quilt.

So, just to warn you guys, this is a sewing post. But there are also pictures, so you can just glaze over the SEWING words and look at the pictures – sure, they’re of quilts, but there’s also a blurry one of Jocelyn wielding a naked barbie doll, so don’t skip!

I’ve been stockpiling the sweet little summer sundresses as she grows out of them with the intention of making a quilt out of them for her some day. I first discussed this here. Now, we’re talking about a myriad of patterns and colors and even fabric weight (though I’m trying to keep it to just wovens, no knits) so when I do make this quilt it will be quite a task to meld it all together.

So, a few items have caught my fancy in the last month or so, and I wanted to make a note of them so that when that Quilt-Making Day DOES arrive, I’ll have some ideas to draw on.

This Denyse Schmidt “Single Girl” quilt looks adorable, but I don’t think it would showcase each fabric enough. I want to be able to look at each fabric and remember my little girl WEARING it.

If I was making the quilt today, I would have to go with a coin quilt. Here’s Hillary’s blogiversary quilt from Wee Wonderfuls that jump-started that idea. The white base color frames each fabric beautifully.

I wonder if I have enough dress fabric for this yet? I think I definitely will once she outgrows this summer’s clothes.

Which will be in about TWO MINUTES!

(All they can talk about every time I drop her off in her new classroom is, “She’s HOW old? Wow, she is TALL. Look how TALL. She looks like she’s FIVE, because she’s SO TALL, TALL, THE TALLNESS, I MUST COMMENT ONCE MORE ON THE TAAAAAALLL.” — I get it. She’s tall. We have spawned a tall amazonian girl-child. Shuddup already.)

I am all itchy to sew something. I sewed a sweet little sundress for Jocelyn which she has not allowed me to take a picture of (here’s one I got where she is RUNNING AWAY IN PROTEST, wielding a naked Barbie doll. “Don’t take my picture! I have a naked Barbie, and I’m NOT AFRAID TO USE IT!)

I SHIRRED! It was lovely fun, the shirring! When I finally got it to work! If you don’t know what shirring is, it’s sewing with elastic thread in the bobbin which makes the material get all stretchy and lovely – the top half of that dress = shirred. I got the motivation and know-how for it over at Portabello Pixie (the Shir Madness! Tutorial is down the side of her sidebar).

But that was months ago, and I want to sew something NEW! Something FOR ME!!

Look! It even says it’s FOR ME!!

I bought Alicia Paulson’s Tanglewood Bag pattern the instant she put it up for sale in her shop, but not the fabric kit, and have been hung up on fabric.

For ease of use, I thought, “I don’t HAVE to cut 48 2″ squares… I could just make the pattern with a solid fabric and not do the patchwork thing…” Which, let’s face it, is an EXCELLENT idea because I’m bound to mess something up and messing up on a 48 pieced 2″ squares will definitely make me cry, and so I could make the solid purse kind of my trial run before a “final” version, and also? I still have PLENTY of material left over from the blurry shirred dress up there — but even that sort of lazy talk didn’t motivate me into actually sitting down and doing it. I may pitch in the fickle towel and just MAKE IT ALREADY.

So this bag is my goal for the next week. Sewing. WOOOO!

-amy. lazy, fickle AMY.

I lost 3.5 lbs in February.

Yay me!

While I did not make my goal of 5 lbs a month, I am happy to say the crack down in the last week made this month at least respectable and not abysmal.

This makes a grand total of 18.5 lbs. I’ve also updated my project skinny chart (link on the side).

Now to keep up the momentum into March 🙂

I’m having computer issues that are really truly going to drive me around the bend.

At work, firefox has decided to freeze up whenever I try to load up a page on my localhost (basically, a webserver on my computer).

This means that I have to use IE to work on anything.

I HATE IE.

At home, my internal wireless card in my laptop is not working properly. It will be connected to our wireless network and then disconnect for no reason, and not be able to reconnect. I click “repair” and wait for it to do it’s thing and cross my fingers that it will be able to reconnect. It does this about 15 times in the span of a half hour.

I AM SO FRUSTRATED I WANT TO SCREAM.

IN OTHER NEWS:

So, February has not been a good month for Project Skinny. I have only lost 1 pound so far. Is it silly to try to go for a 4 lb loss in the last week of February so that I can keep my 5 lbs a month goal?

I don’t think it is, especially considering a few things:

I have a lot of weight to lose, which makes big numbers a big easier than for someone who only has 10-15 lbs to lose,

The first week of a weight loss program can often throw up big numbers. (for me in fact, it was over 6 lbs, back in November.)

I think with me hovering up and down half a pound most of the month, if I really get back to basics, quit dinking around and GET ON IT! a 4 pound loss is feasible.

So I’m aiming for that. Wish me luck!

That’s right, today is my birthday. And I’m having a dilemma.

I haven’t lost much this month, but today I am finally lower.

But it’s my birthday! I wanted to go to a japanese steakhouse tonight, but you know those places are pretty bad on the healthy food scale.

The real sticker is I have an appt with my doctor to check up on the whole weight loss thing one week from today.

ARGH.

We will probably still go to the steakhouse. I just need to eat LESS of it!

Now… I’m off to make myself a cake 🙂 Carrot, with cream cheese frosting.

(scary ice today has caused the kids’ school to close so i’m home with them today.)

(i really hope to get back to posting soon, and ahem, i’ve totally fallen off the photo a day wagon and am still debating whether to try to get a bunch of photos up or just can the whole thing. I guess we’ll see.)

Now, I realize that money is one of those things that you are not supposed to talk about, along with religion and politics (and I’ve been pretty good on all those subjects on this here blog so far). I really debated about posting this, as it crosses a line about how much information I want about me and my family out there for all to see. But I feel like there are probably a lot of normal people out there plodding along like we have, who don’t like their situation and who might benefit from hearing some of this.

Without going into too much detail, I’ve been crushing on all the personal finance blogginess and podcasts out there in the inkernet. One of my new years resolutions was to get a better handle on our finances. More than just making sure the bills were paid on time and then spending on whatever until the rest was gone. Probably not a good plan, right? Right! We’ve let some debt accumulate and so it was time to pull my head out of the sand and get moving on it.

(I have even started a super secret money blog in order to keep me motivated. Hello, I am fickle. I need things to keep my attention from wandering when something shiny walks past. And no, I’m not telling you the url. Some dirty laundry should only be read by STRANGERS! See above re: how much information i want about me and my family out there.) (If you’re a stranger, maybe I’ll tell you.)

Obviously, the first order of business was to start spending less, which James is already good at, and me, not so good at. I stopped eating out at work (except for group lunches) and more importantly, on the WAY to work. While this is a good first step, I still needed to know where our money was going and get it to go where I wanted it to go.

Now, I handle the finances in our household, a role that James is fine with. Discussing money and budgeting in our household has not been without stress, conflict, and outright tension. OK, I admit it, when he sometimes (rightfully so) criticizes the state of our finances, I would usually throw up my hands and say, “Let’s see YOU pay all the bills then!” and it would stop about right there.

So the very big important second step was getting the budget in order. I know how to budget – a handy spreadsheet will suffice for most everything, really, but I ran across some budgeting software purely by chance (linked off of one of the personal finance blogs I’m crushing on). It’s called, “You Need A Budget.” Catchy, huh! I’m a quicken user, and I have tried using the budgeting part of quicken, but have found it lacking. Usually I just ignore it, and assign things to categories as the transactions occure. Which, yes, shows you WHERE the money went, after you spent it, but doesn’t not help you put it where you want it to go! And yes, assigning a $200 Target bill to just “household: groceries” is me lying to myself, don’t you think? 🙂

So enter You Need A Budget – this program is really cool. It’s not produced by a company, just a guy who decided to put his own budgeting system into software form (it was originally an excel spreadsheet, which you can also purchase) and there you go.

Now this is the part where I should just point you to the software and let you look further if you’re interested, but I can’t. I love it so much, I’m going to get into it right here. I don’t blame you if you skip the rest, but there’s some touchy feely crap at the bottom, if you want to just skip to there.

The software has 2 main screens – the register, and the budget. The budget screen has the month at the top, with a big number, which is your available money. Then there are all the categories. To start, you switch over to the register, make an income entry which is whatever your checking account balance is, and then when you go back to the budgeting side, voila, that number is there as “available” to budget with.

So then, you think about what you’ve got coming up, (the phone bill, the gas bill, the kids’ piano tuition, groceries, etc.) and in each category, you assign what you think you’ll spend. As you enter numbers for each category, the available amount decreases. You keep on doing this, until you get that available number to 0. Now all your money is ASSIGNED. It all has a JOB to do. You can make or change categories to fit your needs.

Now, as you go through the month, you enter your purchases in the register, and it will show up as “spent” in the budgeting screen. You can see with a quick glance that you’ve spent $79 of your $400 grocery budget, and it will even show you the available balance left.

It used to be that as the month went on and our checking account balance dwindled, I would grow worried & concerned $600 left in the checking account used to be, “what is going to happen? will that stretch far enough?” Now, in my budgeting screen, if I’ve assigned amounts to all the categories I can think of (including some categories for yearly expenses, like car tax and tuition) and see that I still have $600 “available” – it’s like I “found” money to put into savings or towards debt!

There’s a whole other side to the software too, which is the methodology, called the “Rules” which I also adore. I am not going to get into them much though – if you want to read more, it’s on the website.

I could go on, and I WILL go on, if you really want me to. But I won’t go on any more right here. If you’re looking to get your finances in order, this is a great piece of budgeting software.

TOUCHY FEELY CRAP

Let me just say this – the best part about this software? James and I are on the same page. He still doesn’t really look at the budget, I’m pretty much handling all the money… But no one feels like they’re being told what to do, we’re in this together and there are no more arguments, we both know where the money is going, and we are both on the same page. We have made some very specific goals and our budget reflects that. You HAVE heard that money is the #1 cause of divorce, right? (OK, I just made that up, but it MIGHT be true!) While we still have work to do in front of us, it is nice to have a plan, and nice to know we’re pointed in the right direction.

Also – It really makes me think twice about buying stuff. It’s very freeing. I don’t feel the need to buy useless crap anymore. Crap that only clutters my home and we don’t really need. I know this feeling won’t last, and there’ll be times when I just want the INSTANT GRATIFICATION of a new whateverwhatsits..

But you know what else? If I do? There’s money in the “Amy’s fun money” budget category for whatever the hell I want.

-amy

OK, first off, since I haven’t been going to the actual meetings, just zipping in to the WW office, weighing in, and then zipping out, I have switched back to online only, which is only $40/3 months, instead of $40/month. If I start to get all slacky slacky again, then I’ll know it’s time to cough up the dough and head back to meetings. I feel pretty good with how I’m going though.

That means I’ll be weighing myself on my own scale and not the super picky down to 1/10 of a pound WW scale. My scale is not-so-picky rounds to the 1/2 pound scale. So being the anal retentive weirdo that I am, I’ve gone back and rounded all my past weights to the half pound as well.

And in so doing, I realized that I screwed up the January numbers in the last post. So just for full disclosure, 7.8 was *not* an accurate number, I screwed up the math – it should have been 6.8, not 7.8. And ALSO, I went by the total from last week’s weigh in instead of waiting until today’s weigh in. Since technically, today’s weigh in is weight I lost in January, I should include that. I think I was leaving it off to give me some padding for February, but tsk tsk to me. Just incase you don’t realize, I AM still weighing in every week, but I am only reporting monthly numbers to the blog

So, including THIS week’s weigh in, and switching all the numbers to rounded .5 numbers, the new total for January is 9.5 pounds, for a total of 15 pounds.

So yeah! Once again, huzzah to me!

A couple of other things that I meant to write yesterday but didn’t really have the time. (I’m home today, with a sick Ethan. thus all the typey typey!)

When I went to the doctor for my brick of snot sinus infection, she was (as she always is) concerned about my weight. It makes me feel so bad, because EVERY time I go in for something, she talks me up on the whole weight loss, and it seems like EVERY TIME I’m always, “Yes, well, I’m working on it, it’s been hard, I can’t seem to stick with it,” etc etc. This time, I felt kind of bad, because I had had a gain over the holidays, but still semi decent because my overall weight loss since november was still a loss, not much, but still a LOSS! Still though, in the past, I get around the 10-15 lb mark and then lose steam. I start making excuses, I start eating too much on one day and then trying to “make it up” the rest of the week and then the whole house of cards falls apart. I just can’t stick with it. I was feeling somewhat good to report a loss, but it was very apprehensive, and I told her so.

Two years ago, when she gave me the talking to, and I was on weight watchers, she gave me an appetite suppresant to help me out. I think it worked physically, but the mental game was too much, I petered out and I basically went back to eating too much.

Well, she gave me a prescription for it again. The first week was tough, because it basically beats up your heart and makes you feel like you’ve had too much caffeine. The first couple nights, I couldn’t fall asleep until 1 or 2 in the morning. It got better after the first week, and now I don’t feel jittery, pretty normal actually. I think it’s working pretty well.

Again, every time she’s given me the talking-to, she has wanted to see me back in her office in 6 weeks to check up on the weight loss. I never usually make check-up appointments when I’m there in the office, I wait until it’s closer and make them, so I would head home, the weight loss and my will power would peter out, and I would just never make the check up appointment.

Well people, my check appointment is made (MARCH 3RD!) and I am not going to peter out! I keep thinking to myself, “If I can lose 5 lbs each month (which should be EASY, that’s not even 2 lbs a week!) I will have lost 60 lbs by the end of the year. You can do this.”

I hate to be so happy go lucky optimistic, because I just know the shoe is going to drop and I will throw in the towel and start swimming around in doughnuts and ice cream with no will power whatsoever… But then at the same time I really do feel like I’m doing good. I have stopped going to mcdonald’s every morning, I’m bringing my (healthy) lunch in every day and thus am not tempted by eating at the cafe (omg, their chicken marsala is so good) – these little things means I have got a good leg up on sticking with this.

I must say, I feel pretty good. You now how I said up there that 10-15 lbs has been my petering out point? I’m at 15 lbs total. And no petering going on!

Tentatively… Apprehensively… I feel good 🙂 I can do this.

(Now I need to come back and read this post every week!)

-amy

It is the last day of the month! And you know what that means! OK, maybe you don’t, but I do, it means I am 1/12 of the way done with one of my 2008 Resolutions. I resolved to lose 5 pounds each month.

And for the month of January, I have lost 7.8 pounds. YA-HOO!

I am totally digging this ‘update once a month’ thing instead of every week. It takes off the pressure, and makes me feel like I have really accomplished something.

-amy