Morning walk

If only juniper berries were blueberries... Mmmm.




Two days in a row! Three times in less than a week. Brinkley is loving the walks so we'll see what kind of a streak we can keep!

Crockpot Pork and sweet potato stew

Stew is never visually appealing but trust me, this was delicious!!!

3 sweet potatoes cut into 1 inch(ish) cubes


1.5 lbs pork stew meat (only $1.50 on sale)


Diced onions (probably the equivalent of one medium)


One can of white kidney beans (could probably do 2)


One can of chicken broth
1/2 cup of orange juice
Kosher salt - I just sprinkled it on, maybe a teaspoon

Crockpot on low for 8 hours

Now for the secret ingredient - ground cinnamon!!! With a few hours to go, I sprinkled on some cinnamon and stirred. And sprinkled on some more.

I thickened it a little with corn starch at the end.

IT IS AMAZING!! This may be one of my favorite recipes that I’ve concocted.

I’m just sad my husband isn’t here to enjoy it with it me.

Long ride day

As with running, cycle training includes a long distance day to build endurance. Most of my rides over the past week were 40 minutes. So I bumped it up to an hour today.


Distance was kind of low - had to start out slow because my rear soreness played with my head.


I was rewarded with my post-ride chain tattoo. Every single time and yet I never feel my leg touch the chain. Life's mystery, I guess.


I had leftover chicken and veggie stir fry for dinner. Going on about 36 hours of healthy eating ...


I'm off to run errands. Actually, I'm going to drive not run. Mostly because my mom always tells me running errands will make me tired. ;-)

Going to do my best to get out with the dog each morning, work day or not.

1.25 miles

Now to put together a pork and sweet potato stew in the crock pot! And then I have a day of undecorating ahead of me.

Happy New Year (A few days early)!

Hello 2014!

It's resolution time.  Ok, I know it's a little early but I have the time now so I'm knocking this off the list while I have the chance!

I've decided to really challenge myself with resolutions this year.  Rather than just doing one resolution, I'm going to do 14.  14 in '14.  FOURTEEN!  Not all our ongoing, habit changing, all improving resolutions.  Some are more goals than resolutions.  But setting a time frame within which to accomplish the goals will hopefully help me complete some goals I've had on my list for a while.

1.  Read 14 books.  I've been spending more time reading lately.  I've noticed it keeps me off the internet and it is helping me sleep more.  With a goal of reading fourteen books, it should keep me reading all year long!

2.  Pay off my student loans.  This is the one last financial goal from my single days.  I need to focus on this goal the same way I focused on paying off my second mortgage a few years ago.  Totally doable.

3.  Exercise for a total of 2014 miles.  I honestly have no clue if this is even feasible.  But I'm going to try.  Whether this is walking the dog, running, swimming, or cycling... I want to do a better of job of tracking my distances.  I did a pretty good job at the start of last year but kind of stop tracking my runs in about July.  This averages out to 5.5 miles of moving per day.

4.  Do Project Life for the entire year.  Rather than daily or weekly spreads, I'm going to do monthly.  It will be a first calendar year of living in our house and being married.  With any luck, it will come easily enough that I will not fall so terribly behind in scrapbooking current events.

5.  Complete the blue room transformation to guest room!!  This will require coming to terms with more and more junk.  And it will require painting. And I'm not yet sure I'm over all of the condo painting from this past summer.

6.  Rebuild my mountain bike.  I've decided that rather than sell it for $20, I'm going to do my best to rebuild it.  This may be a monumental failure or it may not.  I think it's a good opportunity to tinker with a bike without fear of screwing it up as it's already in poor shape.

7.  Give up coffee shop lattes.  This is a frequent challenge of mine.  I've gone months without them but I always end up going back.  I'm going to start the streak all over again to try and reign in the extra calories and the extra spending.  This may be a little easier to accomplish if we buy a small latte maker with one of our many gift cards from the wedding.  Limiting caffeine all together would be a good thing too.  Maybe tea after noon would be a good distraction.

8.  Go fresh/whole.  I had a nice streak early last year of eating just fresh food or natural food.  I tried to stay away from prepackaged and processed foods and it made a big difference in how I felt.  I had more energy and felt leaner and stronger.  I want to try doing this again and get it to stick.  Lots of vegetables and lean meats!!

9.  Stay hydrated.  I do an incredibly poor job at staying hydrating.  So poor.  I'm going to try and down four Nalgene bottles a day.  This will be a huge improvement from one that I may get down during the day now.

10.  Turn my thumb greener.  Last year we had so much going on that the only thing I managed to do was mow the yard, rip out some bushes, and plant some bulbs.  I really want to work on growing some food.  We have a huge backyard, there is no reason why it can't be used to grow us some food.

11. Bulletjournaling.  Video is here.  I usually have about five hundred lists going in five hundred different places and a dozen different formats.  I'm going to try one and only one location/format for the entire year...with some modifications along the way probably.  And I'm going to use a cute plaid journal Santa brought me in my stocking.  This should also help with #3 and #4.  Completed workouts with distances will be tracked with one color.  And events/notes to remember for Project Life will be tracked with a highlighter.

12.  Make my office functional.  My office/scrap room is a complete disaster when it comes being functional.  The floor is one big shelf with piles all over it.  My desktop is barely visible.  My scrap stuff is all over making searching for what I'm looking for the thing I do most.  Papers will be files.  Books will be organized.  Junk will be removed.  Walls will be decorated.  I will not longer have to move something to find something.

13.  Support the Post Office.  I always say I need to do better about sending birthday cards, anniversary cards, holiday cards, etc.  We receive a lot of cards from Brent's side of the family and it's about time we returned the favor.

14.  Clean more.  This seems like a resolution to be avoided but it's a necessary one.  Our house is huge.  And there are way too many days where I do absolutely nothing around to maintain it's cleanliness.  So I'm going to aim for doing at least one thing a day to keep a clean.  Whether it's wiping down a window, vacuuming one room, wiping down a sink, or scrubbing a floor, I'm hoping one thing a day will help prevent those times where an entire three day weekend is spent cleaning in heated frustration.

So there you have it.  A very lengthy of list of things for me to work.  I guess one thing is for certain, I should never be bored this year!  Ah, but where to begin first...

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!

Brinkley, Brent, and I wish everyone a Merry Christmas!!  We're looking forward to a day filled with family fun tomorrow!!

Christmas Tags

I didn't have any Christmas tags and I didn't want to run to a store for such a simple thing.

So I moved a pile of stuff from my scrapbooking table (the table is actually my mom's) and set out to make some easy Cricut tags.

I cut out some trees ...




And then spruced them up just a bit with some colored markers...




And then taped them on the box. Done! It probably would have saved time and effort to just go to the store, but that would have required showering and dressing. I made these while still in workout clothes!

Winding Down

The craziness of the year is winding down.  Most of my presents are purchased and wrapped.  I have one more shopping trip to do tomorrow and I'll be all done!  Two Christmas parties down and two to go.


I finished up my New Years Resolution yesterday!!  I ran a race in each month of the year.  Fifteen races total!!  It was a great challenge and I'm glad it kept me running all year through!  I'm pretty sure I'll do some races next year but definitely not one every month.  For one, I have more than enough running shirts to last me for a few years.  For two, I think I'll take those entry fees and spend them elsewhere for a while.

It was great fun going to all the different races.  I have photos from each and will possibly (I make no promises these days) make a post listing them all.

Brinkley had surgery last week to remove some lumps.  Thankfully, all came back benign!  He's been a real trooper taking his meds and not scratching like crazy at his four different incisions.  Not that he's ever lacking in attention but I think he's enjoyed the extra attention.





I'm looking forward to the next few weeks.  I get some extra days off, will close on my condo, and get to spend time with my family!!  And then begins another New Year with plenty of New Years Resolutions I'm already dreaming up.

Finding Motivation

I'm still not quite recovered from the whole bronchitis thing.  My throat still hurts.  Maybe a few more days and I'll be somewhat normal again.  I can hope!!  After all, I have lots to do!!

I started Christmas decorating last night.  It was nice to pull out so many things that have been packed away for years and know that I would be able to find a space for them at the new house.  It was like Christmas morning opening up some of the boxes!  I need to slow down though and actually finish packing up fall stuff.  It looks like there's an identity crisis going on around here!

I got official word today that I was accepted to the Police Unity Tour in the spring.  This couldn't come at a better time.  I've been feeling like the biggest slug known to man over the past three weeks and I needed some motivation to get back on track.  Not sure exactly how to approach this.  Maybe just a walk on the treadmill to start with.  Ha!  My poor lungs.

Well, I'm off to eat some leftover chili and decorate some more.  Or maybe undecorate and then decorate.

My Boy

He loves all the attention he can get!

Preparing for December

Mid-November.

Hmmm.

Wasn't expecting that too come along so quickly.

The last week has been exhausting.  While I've loved the chance to stay home for a week, I have not enjoyed being at home SICK for a week.  A pretty persistent strain of bronchitis found me as a welcome host and refused to go away.

In between naps and medicating myself I have worked on christmas shopping online and researching family history.  I have a good start on all of the Christmas shopping.  A jump start is always good.  Now if I could just finish it off before the start of December, I'd be set.

Not much else is really go on around here.  Brinkley has enjoyed the extra company.  Milo is indifferent, as always.  I slowly have undecorated for Halloween.  I have ideas for decorating for Christmas but I have no energy at the moment to make it happen.  

I have managed to catch up on a whole lot of television that I'd fallen behind in watching.  And admittedly, I had to restart many episodes after falling asleep in the middle of them.  I've also been watching Gilmore Girls.  I seem to be missing Season Three.  I don't know if I ever owned it or not but it's missing from the shelf.  My guess is I never owned it.

And now I'm off to get some more tea.

Tuesday Tidbits

• I got up early today so that I could meet with someone who is interested in buying my blue cruiser bike.  It was a rough morning.  I didn't sleep well last night so I've been dragging all day.  She was going to think about it.  I'm crossing my fingers it sells.  I don't use it and we could use more elbow room in the garage.  

• I found someone to buy my recurve bow.  So there's that.  Slowly weeding my way through all of the stuff that I no longer use and don't much care to keep around.  I also have a buyer for my hunk of junk mountain bike.

• I've filled another two tubs worth of garage sale stuff.  And have a whole car load of stuff to take to recycling.  Bags of shredded paper, office paper, and boxes.  Progress!

• The blue room is slowly getting emptied.  I'm also trying to organize my office so stuff from the blue room that will eventually get filed in the office can fit in the office until I get furniture.  I pretty much know what I want at this point so I just have to wait a while.

• I set out more mouse traps today.  Eight more.  Ten total.  I'll make the rounds in the morning and see how I faired.  I don't know exactly where they making camp around here so I'm winging it until I start catching some.  I haven't seen any since my baby mouse incident a week ago.  But I know they are still around.  It's too darn cold out for them to just disappear.

• I thought our new leaf blower/vacuum was broken.  Before I set out to return it to Home Depot, I tried it with a different extension cord on a different plug.  Wouldn't you know, it worked!!  So now I'm perplexed as to why it wouldn't work for me the other day.  Maybe it was the universe's way of telling me to do more squats.  My hamstrings are still killing me from all the squatting to get handfuls of leaves.  Three hours of raking and bagging.  And you'd never know it by looking at the back yard.  And the front yard too.  It's a nice problem to have.

• I spent most of the day cleaning - this house is huge.  And I only got part of what needed to get done.  The tub and my bathroom sink are clean!  And I did a whole lot of vacuuming.  

Since getting off work on Saturday, I have swam a half mile, biked approximately 7 miles, played three volleyball games, and ran three miles.







My heel pain hasn't been nearly as bad or as present. It's far from normal but I'm doing less hobbling so that's a start.

Thank you cards are done. A small fraction of the leaves have been cleaned up. The back porch has been cleaned up. And I made a small mess in the blue room, a MUCH bigger mess! I've got a lot of recycling and shredding to do.

I got Halloween decorations up and candy purchased. And I got a lot of plans for Christmas figured out.

First snow

Thankfully this didn't stick around very long...







Brinkley raced the setting sun for a speed walk after I got home from work.

I'm ready for my weekend. Always ready.

I've been busy...

It's a photography filled day around here.  Kind of.  I'm working on some pictures from a shoot I did last weekend.  I wish this was a full time job. 

Brinkley and I took a break and went to Petsmart to get his nails trimmed.  He seems to be a little happier now.  I was going to take him on a few more errands but it was too hot outside and I didn't want to leave him in the car.  At least, it felt too hot.

I also have to work on thank you cards for the wedding.  I'm thinking I should just break them into smaller junks then the project will not get terribly overwhelming.  So many to write!!

• I saw the first snow of the year yesterday morning.  Some flakeage action was happening when I let Brink out.  Luckily it wasn't sticking and stopped within a couple of hours.

• Scandal premiered last night.  Excellent show!!  Within the first few minutes, I was giddy.  It so great to see my people and be sucked back into the story line.  It was definitely the start of another rollercoaster ride.  Olitz is still end game.  That's all that matters.

• The government shutdown has me highly entertained.  It's always entertaining to me when something that happened on The West Wing happens in real life.  Of course, I wish people in real life had as much moral direction and bravado as those on The West Wing.  Bartlett for President.  Always.

• I'm back to swimming again.  Three times in the last week!  Woohoo!!  I'm trying to get a routine down so that I can stick with it through fall and winter.  I have a long way to go before I'm able to swim non-stop for a half mile or more.  My ultimate goal is the Tri for the Cure next August which is a half-mile open water swim, a 12 mile bike ride, and a 5k run.

• I've got another 5k this weekend.  The Hot Chocolate 5k complete with hoodie and hot cocoa as race schwag.  And then my girls and I are trying on our hands at painting!!  Yup, painting!

I love our house! And I love that Brent had a fire going when I woke up!


I've decided I need to stop ignoring my plantar fasciitis that's been bugging me for the past six months. So I put some shoes on first thing this morning so I'm not walking in hardwood floors and tile barefoot as much.


After watching the Castle premiere, I went for a run with Mr. Miles. We did an easy two miles. I may try to do 2 more in the morning.


I then went to Target. While there I scored a free Dunkin' Donuts coffee mug because I bought two bags of the new flavors!!




I got a burst of motivation when I got home and decided to dig up some bushes!! It was nearly as difficult as it could have been.



And I finally made my little Indian corn decor thingy. Not bad for a first attempt, I thought.

And then while Brent worked on some BBQ chicken, I made some pumpkin donut muffins! Bother turned out fantastic!!




We spent the rest of the night watching NCIS premieres by the fire.



Yup, that fire never gets old!

It's back to work tomorrow. I think I'm ready.

Christmas Prep

Brent and I are one step closer to being ready for Christmas. We put together our new gigantic tree to check if the lights worked.


Brinkley was rather intrigued by it until we moved it over into his corner.


It drew blood.


And then I unpacked a Fall decor box and this scared the bejesus out of me. Don't worry, they are fake. Still made me scream like a scared little girl.


Isn't it pretty!?!? I still have some more work to do on the mantel. And then I want to tackle the outside and the hutch.


One last day of vacation ...

Pre-wedding farming

We take our veggie picking pretty seriously...