Being Healthy

Part of my dinner tonight

     For a while during my pregnancy Adam and I worked very hard to eat healthy and we have sort of fallen out of that with grad school, work, and a little one getting bigger and more active every day.  So, with some inspiration from others and the very firm belief that we want Aiden to eat healthy from the start and not pick up bad habits, we've begun to eat healthy ourselves and that does not mean we skip out on the really awesome but bad stuff completely, but we are going to try to keep meat or fish to once a week and cut back on sweets (I tend to bake a cake a week, this is going to reduce).

I think the obstacle with healthy eating is the false notion that it does not taste good and it really does taste good if you know what to make and take the time to get the right stuff.  It is actually slightly more affordable too...

We bought meat for a month and froze it, allowing for once or twice a week of fish or even red meat if it is lean and beyond that because we bought only vegetables and stayed away from all the stuff in the middle isles that will get you in trouble... canned stuff, etc.... we spent less at the grocery store than we usually do and we got more food.  I am excited about this, I want to be more healthy and I want Aiden to be healthy and on the weekends we are going to add in walking (it is just too hectic during the week)

So after buying things like kale, avacado, green beans, broccoli, brussel sprouts, grains, yogurt, and other healthy items... 

I did a kale salad tonight with hot peppers, goat cheese, and a little greek dressing

I roasted some potato slices with olive oil, sea salt, pepper, and garlic

and for dessert I sliced some bananas, sprinkled a little raw sugar over them and put them under the broiler for about 6 minutes.

Roasted Potatoes

broiled bananas

Pretty happy with the outcome of the dinner and I am hoping that we can continue these eating habits.  I want to be able to spend time with my son, be active, and enjoy life and I think that eating healthy is a part of that, and it will also make me feel better about myself and what I put in my body.  

After trying some of the really delicious food that my mother in law and father in law had over the weekend (they have started doing a plant based diet), I think that the key is making good food from the wide variety of foods available.  

Atlanta Vacation!

Having a great time.

Blerg!!!!!

It has been a busy and hectic week with baby shots and resulting fevers amidst the insanity that is the end of a semester....
While I finish this book I read, I worry about a very sweet and awesome friend of mine who had a crappy day and wish them the best.

Birchbox

Finally got in the birchbox assortment. For April they included two full sized items and three samples with some coupons. I will review items when I have Internet.



Update: 4/22/13 -- The full sized Simple eye serum and the sample of the hair repair by Nexxus will be fun to try.
Simple Eye Roll ON 12.99 at Ulta
Here is the Nexxus Hair Repair 17.99 at Ulta
Wonderfully smelling perfume, very expensive 98.00 from birchbox
Gentle Face Wash 48.00 from birchbox
The Lip Stain is amazing.. 26.55 from birchbox

Now just with the full sized samples, this box was worth 40.00 which makes paying 10.00 a month for birchbox a pretty good deal... the problem, is that its invite only so you do a request and you are kind of at their whim to when they invite you.

Included in the box was also some coupons and a free (no strings attached) year subscription to Women's Health magazine!

So even though Birchbox made me angry initially, I will have to say it is a good product.  Now the trick is testing consistency.... I will keep all 3 subscriptions for another month and then decide which one I like the best.

 

Example of Polish

As I'm attending my father's retirement lunch tomorrow, I tested the nail polish. I like the results and again, 3 bottles for basically 20 dollars after shipping is a decent price.

Update on Ipsy Box

One of the Items I received in my Ipsy box

Found this image on the web to represent the color I received

This nail polish is great, so I visited the site.

Here is the site

They have a ton of different colors and at only 5 dollars a bottle, great deal...now you have to buy 3 bottles to process, but hey... the quality is great and they have tons of colors.

I love this color, its very light and neutral.  

Ipsy beauty bag

The Ipsy bag was my 2nd try for the beauty subscription service, also 10 dollars monthly it came with 4 samples, a floral bag and a nice coupon for the site. I haven't tried the products yet but they look neat.

Beauty Box Subscriptions

SO a new trend out there is Beauty Sample box subscriptions.... they go for around 10 dollars a month to up to 50 dollars a month.

I have decided to test them out and see which ones are best.


This month I've subscribed to Ipsy and Beauty Army.

Ipsy is not here yet as of April 13th, but the site said mid-month so I am not judging.

Beauty Army Arrived early in the month and so I am going to give a review.

Two pretty large sized samples and 4 smaller ones with a cool box for 10 dollars a month

I was pretty impressed with the Beauty Army box that came wrapped in Pink and Black tissue paper and with some really nice samples.  I've tried the lotion and its great and the mascara is nice.  I haven't tried everything yet and while pink is not usually my color, the texture of the combo eyeshadow, blusher, and lipgloss is nice.


Worth the money I think.  I saved the tissue paper for later, never know when you need to give gifts lol.


Whenever my Ipsy box arrives, I will review it as well.

A few more weeks of school... then A break. YES

Please Help My Sister

My Sister Jackie is a 3rd Grade Teacher in a high poverty school here in Middle Georgia and she usually deals with students who are very behind.  She is trying to raise money for her classroom to get 3 tablets for her students!

Please donate, she is a wonderful person and a very caring teacher!!

Here is a link to her project. Please donate and share!

My sister is a wonderful teacher, any help would be appreciated!!!

IF YOU ENTER THE CODE  INSPIRE  during checkout, the organization will MATCH the donation, so if you donate 20 dollars, she gets 40 dollars!!

Again, any help would be appreciated!

School stuff

You know, when we think of problems with corporations... I think modernity and would have never...until now, thought about the 19th century and the West as a place where corporate corruption and manipulation was rampant, problematic, and the reason for a lot of violence.

I suppose this is what all this learning does lol...

Last week, I had to read a book called Wyoming Range War which in essence discussed the fight for grass grazing rights between small claim independent farmers and big cattle corporations.  By the time I was finished with the book, the corruption was so high that the then acting governor of Wyoming attempted to convince president Harrison to order martial law on Johnson County, Wyoming to stop an "insurrection" when in reality a plan that he was privy to (actually helped plan) where men who worked for Big Cattle went to Texas, hired some guns, came back with lots of ammunition, weapons, and even two reporters and a surgeon... tried to sneak into Johnson County to execute 70 people on a hit list (they claimed the people they were after were cattle thieves and corrupt politicians...they succeeded in killing 2 people before everything fell apart for the vigilantes) which included the local newspaper editor (who had written editorials against Big Cattle) and all the county commissioners...  
The martial law did not happen, the men were caught before they could enter the town of Buffalo, Wyoming and kill the people on their hit list and only two people were killed...
BUT this involved two senators, the governor, and various other state and local officials who brazenly took money from big cattle corporations to demonize a town full of small independent farmers who refused to leave their legally purchased land....  That was ONE event in 1892.

Also though, once the railroads began to stretch across the west and building towns to accommodate all the people coming West became important, the Railroad corporations set up dummy companies to create towns near their railroads and would intentionally not let lines go through smaller and independently incorporated towns, causing many of these smaller towns to fail...  William Cody attempted to set up more than one town during his life, because of some of the things he experienced as a child... and he came up against the corporations learning if you didn't have the money like they did, you had no shot at establishing towns like his father had only a few decades earlier... 

crazy stuff. 

Things I will NOT do as a Mom

Make light of my child's dreams... whatever they are because my child's happiness is not about me, its about them and sometimes people need to do what they want instead of what we want.

I imagine that is going to be hard to uphold, but I am going to try.