So I’m on vacation, and I had all intentions of writing a few posts while I’m out, but I’m having so much fun, I’ll just have to tell you about it when I get back… stay tuned.
Here’s a hint:
Fall Flowers
October 24, 2013 By Leave a Comment
We did a little fall planting this past weekend! My side patio has largely sat unchanged since I took this depressing picture and posted about my flower killing summer:
Flower killer extraordinaire! Well it finally progressed into fall planting time, so I decided to spruce up some of those dead planters. This is such a quick and easy change, I don’t know why I put it off so long. I had about an hour and a half of free time, so I headed over to pick up some flowers, came home and within the hour here’s what the patio looked like:
The flowers on the bottom shelf I kept as they were because one of them are mums which should grow back a bit, and I can’t bear to unplant flowering pots no matter how pathetic they look, so I left the geraniums. On the shelf above the top shelf are pansies, second shelf is ornamental cabbage and more pansies, and then the bottom shelf is a dying geranium and yellow mums. The rack hanging on the fence has some pretty pink and white flowers that I have already forgotten the names of… oops!
This rack has more cabbage, pansies, and the middle rack has a pretty ornamental purple pepper.
And just because I love flowers, here’s a few more closeups:
These are the flowers I can’t name… Anyone out there who knows what they are?
I’m so happy to have some fall color outside my window!
I had a few plants that I bought and didn’t know where I would put them, but I found a corner of my front flower beds that was looking a little bare, so I planted 2 dusty millers (the whiteish ones) and a purple mum, and I can’t believe how much of a difference it makes for the front of my house!
And I put a few by the front door to welcome my Halloween guests! (the one on the left is a croton and the one on the right
I bought that web at Pier 1 a few years ago and normally I hang it at the front of the alcove, but the husband nicely offered to hang it this year and put it immediately in front of the door. I think it looks fine there, but it scares me to death (not literally) every time I walk out the door and think something is falling down on me.
And just for one more Halloween sneak peak… I freehanded a chalkboard drawing I found on Pinterest onto the chalkboard that hangs in my hallway (leading into the kitchen):
I’m almost ready for my Halloween party and things are starting to look pretty spooktacular!
The End of the Whole 30
September 23, 2013 By Leave a Comment
So today should be my Whole 3 Week 3 recap of how I successfully made it into the best part of the Whole 30 and felt FANTASTIC and like I could do this forever.
Except I didn’t.
I purposefully started my whole 30 when I new I would be home for two weeks and could get the hang of cooking/eating clean. I travel about 7-8 days a month for work in two 3-4 day stints. I knew that this month these travel times would be in back to back weeks and that it was going to be TOUGH to travel and eat the Whole 30. So I planned it so that I would be moving into the ‘feel good’ time of tons of energy and loving the way I feel to be while I was travelling… I figured that would give me the best leg up on actually completing this thing.
I had it all planned out how I would navigate it, and did a lot of online research on how to travel and eat clean. I packed a cooler full of food, planned trips to the grocery store and figured out where I would be able to cook. But here’s the thing about the Whole 30… it takes TIME. Time to shop for food, prep the dinners and lunches and time to wake up and scramble eggs for breakfast. During one of my travel weeks it is a super high stress time at work. I work for a construction company and that is the one week every month that we bid on work. We have a lot of work that has to be done in a short amount of time. It just so happened that this month we had some extremely large projects and it was going to be even longer days and more stressful. My coworkers (one of which is my mom) were super supportive of my attempt to pull this off and even went to salad bars two days in a row to accommodate me. But by dinner time of our 3rd 16 hour+ day I had a meltdown and gave in to ordering pizza.
I’d love to say that I had tons of energy and loved the Whole 30, but I didn’t. IT WAS HARD.
There are things that I LOVED about it:
- I didn’t feel gross/bloated after eating
- I lost 10 lbs
- most of the food is actually pretty delicious
- I loved having a meal plan and grocery shopping at the beginning of each week.
When I did give into non-whole 30 compliant foods I did it because I was having a hard time focusing on work and functioning for 16 hour days on just the Whole 30 foods I had prepared for the day. I know that this is mostly because I didn’t adequately plan for such long days, but I’m not sure on my driving schedule/travel schedule it would be very possible without Herculean self control (which lets be honest… I CLEARLY don’t have). I also looked at my schedule for the next few weeks and realized that I had several activities and another 3 days of travel that I didn’t want to have to focus on clean eating during. So I decided to quit. Although really I don’t think of it as quitting because I made it about 15 days longer than I thought I would.
I’m definitely going to be incorporating some of the things I learned into my everyday eating habits, but the Paleo life just isn’t for me. However I definitely have a HUGE new found respect for the people who keep it up day after day.
Hi, I'm MJ! I'm a DIY kind of girl and this is where I share my projects. I'm taking you along for the ride as I learn how to do woodworking, sew, bake, and renovate! 
