I feel like I’m failing one of my biggest missions; to lose weight. I just don’t understand why I can’t do it. I have a good week and then when I don’t see the results I’m expecting I do what I guess would be described as bingeing. Does this mean I have an eating disorder?

For example, today I had a sneaky weigh in. In hindsight I shouldn’t have, but there you go. Instead of seeing a loss of even 100 grams I find myself looking at a gain of almost 2kg… WTH??? How the hell did that happen? Yes we had Noodle Canteen last night but surely that wouldn’t be the cause would it?

I know we shouldn’t have had Noodle Canteen. We were supposed to have Chicken enchiladas, much healthier but due to my sister, who’s night it was to cook, going out. DH looking after bubs and doing the milk, shower, bed routine and me not getting home from work until 8.15pm it ended up being to late to cook. Or was it? We didn’t end up eating until after 9pm anyway I’m sure I could have made the enchiladas in a similar time frame. Laziness was really the word of the night.

So anyway what do I do today? I make a special trip down the road to get McD’s for lunch. And not just a regular combo, noooo, I get a Mac’n’Cheese – a Big Mac, Medium Fries, Medium Coke, a Cheeseburger AND a Chocolate Sundae. See I told you it was a binge. I feel terrible and what a bad example I am setting for DS, yeah sure he doesn’t understand what happened but I need to stop that from happening before he is at an age to understand that Mummy bought a lot of food for lunch. What a pig.

I’m feeling very down on myself because of the whole ordeal now, so it didn’t make me feel happy did it? Quite the reverse actually!

I don’t want to be a fat mum or a fat wife or the big sister, I’ve said this before. So why can’t I keep it up? Why can’t I stick to a plan?

I haven’t posted in a while, we’ve had a bit of serious thinking to do in the household lately. The topic being money of course and me going back to work. I’ve been in discussions with my boss and he’s waiting for approval from the big boss for me to go back part-time. Problem is I was hoping I could negotiate a better rate but it was a resounding no, all increases are apparently on hold until further notice.

So there has been some major number crunching going on and with the addition of childcare to the budget and more petrol for travelling we come out ahead…slightly.

The whole topic has me feeling down. I don’t want to leave my baby with a stranger, I’m worried I’m going to miss too much. Honestly, I don’t know how DH copes. Is it different for dads? Or do they just get on with it?

Our get out of debt plan is going to take a bit longer.

And in the meantime I”m still looking at all other options.

*sigh*

Well, my big plans for Valentine’s Day have not gone to plan.

Hubby loves chocolate chip cookies, he’s the cookie monster around here that’s for sure. So I decided to put one of my Christmas presents to good use – 101 cookie cutters.

However….chocolate chip cookie dough just isn’t made for shapes I’m afraid :(. I chilled it in the fridge for about 30 mins but it was still to sticky, then I put it in the freezer. Ahem, yep not such a good idea, especially seeing as I got caught up doing something with DS and by the time I remembered to take it out it was almost frozen solid! So I let it rest on the counter for a little bit then tried to knead and roll it once it thawed a little. It wasn’t easy but I managed to cut a few heart shapes out before it became a sticky mess again. In the end I pressed the rest into a slice pan and popped them all in the oven.

Well, let me tell you what came out of the oven was not pretty. The heart shapes didn’t hold and just ended up as big blobs. The slice turned out fine though so I cut that up into squares. In order to try and salvage my Valentine’s Day present for hubby I cut the hearts out of the cooling blobs, some parts were quite crunchy, obviously the thinner parts but I still managed to crunch some shapes out of those parts

Here are the results….

Hubby loved them so I guess that’s all that matters isn’t it

I just came across this fantastic product from The Vinyl Room, I wish I had a big enough wall (and some spare dosh) for it!

www.thevinylroom.co.nz

The calendar comes with blackboard squares, numbers and the inspirational quote shown above it. Just write on appointments with chalk and rub off for next month!

It’s available in 2 sizes 1200 or 1600mm wide.

I also LOVE this, this and especially this one.

See The Vinyl Room for more details and more awesome wall images.

This is going to be a looooooong term goal for us

We’ve been talking more and more about it lately so it’s obviously something we are both keen to work towards. We already have debt coming out our ears so we must first get these out of the way.

Plan of attack

1. Pay off credit card bill (currently sitting at just under $5000!!!)
2. Pay off hubby’s car loan
3. Pay off our personal loan
4. SAVE, SAVE, SAVE!!

I haven’t put save at any earlier stage as everything I’ve read has said to pay off debt before starting to save (apart from putting aside a $1000 emergency fund).

Each time we finish paying one thing off the extra $ we have will be put towards paying off the next item on the list. We are starting with the lowest balance first, then working up to the BIG ONE. Apparently this is called the debt snowball method, it just so happens that the credit card is the highest interest anyway and I will feel much better once I get this waaaay down and then gone altogether of course.

There are no penalties on any of the loans for paying them off early so that’s a bonus.

One of the ways of achieving this debt reduction is looking at me going back to work before my year’s maternity leave is up in May. There are a few things I need to organise before this happens though and that includes childcare options (!). I want to at all costs keep from having to send DS to a daycare, I just don’t like the thought of them no matter what good experiences other people have had/are having. I’ll post more on the options for childcare we are looking at once I have some more information

So, please feel free to share your home buying tips and experiences and ways to cut costs around the home.

Meanwhile I’m off to check out some frugal living blogs.

Take care xx

DS seems to be coming into the separation anxiety phase (!).

Today, not all day but most of it, he has to be in the same room as me or sitting on/next to me or he gets upset. When I handed him over to his uncle he put his hands out to be taken back, which I did at first but then thought better of it and gave him back to his uncle again. This was the right thing to do, right? To not let him get funny around people that aren’t Mum or Dad? Hmm

He wasn’t crying and very upset when he put his arms out to come back to me so I felt fine “taking a stand” in this case but surely it’s not something we should do if he gets very upset? It will be interesting to see how he goes tomorrow if we truly are in this phase, although it will be heart-breaking for me to go to work. He’s looked after by his Nan who seems to get 3rd in line in the popularity stakes.

Guess we will find out in the morning!

Climb the Mountain

I tried to climb the mountain today. As I inched my way up the path, I felt out of breath and had to turn back.
I tried to climb the mountain today. But, It was so hot outside, I thought I had better stay in my nice air-conditioned house and rest up for tomorrow’s attempt.
I tried to climb the mountain today. On my journey, darkness started to fall and I was full of fear, so I had to return to a safe place.
I was ready to climb the mountain today. But I had so may other things to do, so instead of climbing the mountain I took care of the much more important tasks; I washed my car, mowed the grass and watched the big game. Today the mountain will have to wait.
I was going to climb the mountain today. But as I stared at the mountain in all it’s majestic beauty, I knew I had no chance of making it to the top, so I figured why even begin trying.
I had forgotten about climbing the mountain today, until an old friend came by and asked what I was up to lately. I told him about all my plans to climb that mountain someday. I went on and on about how I was going to accomplish the task.
He stopped me and said, “I just got back from climbing that mountain. for the longest time I told myself I was going to try to climb it but never made any progress.”
“I almost let the dream of making it to the top die. I came up with every excuse of why I could not make it up the mountain, but never once did I give myself a reason why I could. One day as I stared at the mountain and pondered, I realized that if I didn’t make an attempt at this dream all my dreams would eventually die.”
” The next morning, I started my climb. It was not easy, and at times I wanted to quit. But no matter what I faced, I placed one foot in front of the other, keeping a steady pace. When the wind tried to blow me over the edge, I kept walking. When the voices inside my head screamed, stop! I focused on my goal, never letting it out of sight. I kept moving forward. I could not quit because I knew I had come too far to stop now. Time and time again, I reassured myself that I was going to finish this journey. I struggled mightily to make it to the top, but I CLIMBED THE MOUNTAIN.”
“I have to be going,” my friend said. “Tomorrow is a new day to accomplish more dreams. By the way what are you going to do tomorrow?”
I looked at him, with intensity and confidence in my eyes, and said, “I HAVE A MOUNTAIN TO CLIMB.”

Author unknown

On Sunday we headed to Pokeno to visit the markets for breakfast. It was bigger than we expected and there was lots of things on offer.

We picked up some bargains; 2 bright orange rugs for $10, a photo frame for DS’s room and fresh fruit & vege that were at prices slightly lower than in shops.

The markets are held every Sunday in the main street of the Pokeno village.

The wares on offer included fresh fruit and veges, jewellery, plants and seedlings, new and secondhand books, toys, bone carving, gifts, free range eggs, flax bags and heaps more. There was also live music which was great to listen to while we ate and DS was bopping away to the beat as well *love*.

For more info see here.

I’ve been reading a lot of awesome party blogs recently and it’s inspired me to post my baby shower.

Usually a baby shower is thrown by someone for you isn’t it? Hmmm yes, well if I wanted one, which I did, I had to organise it myself as my family isn’t the most creative or organised bunch.

I decided that I wanted a Alice in Wonderland/Mad Hatter’s Tea Party and I did tons of research, website after website I browsed and brought it all together. I don’t recommend it though, organising the food and decorations when your emotional and not sleeping properly? Recipe for tears believe me!

Anyway this is how I did it….

• Decorations – Due to running out of time (because I did it all myself) it wasn’t exactly how I had pictured it.
• A marquee was set up in the backyard which was where the food, drink and some chairs were set up. The big table in the middle was for all the food and covered with a blue plastic tablecloth then a lacy type tablecloth over the top. The 2 round end tables were for hot and cold drinks covered with smaller tablecloths.

• I bought a deck of Jumbo playing cards and punched holes in the top and created a couple of strings of cards which were hung up in the marquee. (to represent the cards in the movie)
• I also had bunches of blue & white balloons (Alice’s colours and to represent my baby boy)

• I bought quite a few teacups and saucers from the Sallies shop to create these wonky teacup towers. I used blu-tack to position them all and then added some leftover playing cards. All up the tea-cups and saucers plus a simple white teapot cost around $11 so really cheap for quite effective decorations.
• I also had a couple of fabric sunflowers from an emporium ($3 each) that I glued eyes onto to create faces, unfortunately I didn’t get a photo of these
• For the food I borrowed as many cake and cupcake stands as I could and used other pretty dishes. I especially loved the height that the wooden cake stand in the middle of the table.
• Food – the food was loosely tea party themed with the addition of old favourites – cheerio sausages, small sausage rolls, mini savoury pies, cream cheese & salmon rolls, banana cake, cupcakes with pink & blue icing (I had wanted to ice “Eat Me” onto them but ran out of time), there were jam tart biscuits (for the Queen of Hearts from the nursery rhyme rather than AiW), chocolate balls, pikelets with cream & jam, marshmallows and these:
• Little “mushroom” cookies! To represent when Alice ate part of the mushroom
• On the top shelf of the stand were the jam tartlet biscuits with Shrewsburys! They have cutouts with playing card suits so they had to be included.
• Beverages – there was hot tea of course, the usual black with a selection of herbal teas, coffee, water, orange juice and green and peach iced teas.
• 
• I really wanted some nicer tags to go around the necks of the glass bottles but again time was the factor. If I did something like this before I would make things like that before the day. I loved the effect of having the cold drinks decanted into the glass bottles so there were no plastic branded bottles on the table, a lot classier I think
• What I wore – I didn’t dress in costume although I would have loved to find a mad hatter hat. I wore a black skirt with a red “Mad Hatter” t-shirt from JayJays and these earrings (I know they are pink and gold and don’t match the red )

So that’s it What do you think?

After a mini breakdown because I was doing it all myself and my sister was sitting on the couch it was a great afternoon and I got very spoilt with lots of gorgeous things for DS.