McFatty Monday!!

Hi, all! It's McFatty Monday again, and I've maintained my weight of last week. So, no loss, but no gain so I guess that's good. I'm going to really focus in on my eating this week, and am considering a sugar fast. It's no secret that I'm a Christian, and fasting is a part of the Christian faith sometimes. I've decided that anytime I really crave sugar (which is a lot!) that I'll remember God's faithfulness and cling to that. His faithfulness has been there through many of my life's trials, and not having sugar should be the least of these trials.

I'm having to give myself a pep talk this morning as I'm trying to figure out what to wear to the clinic today; my supervisor never tells me when it's a jeans day, so I always wear khakis or a skirt. Today may be a skirt or dress day! Hope everybody has a wonderful Monday!

Much love,
Ashley

Shellac Manicure

Okay, so I've been hearing some good things about the Shellac Manicure. I decided to give it a try, so I went to a salon here in town. It's $23 at my salon, which was the cheapest I found; everyone else ran $25- $30. It claims to last at least two weeks, sometimes three. I'm very very hard on my nails; I cook a lot, and I clean a lot. What I didn't want was acrylic, fiberglass, or gel nails. I have very healthy nails and besides that, I can't have fake nails in my industry. It turns out you can't feel around in someone's mouth very comfortably with fake nails, and it's a health risk. So Shellac, here I come! Here are some pics of my finished product! Please don't mind the pictures, a hand model I am not! My hands are small and short, so I just do the best I can with what I have!

I went with a french manicure; the nail tech said that the french manicure lasts the longest between manicures, which is my goal. 

Close up! 

Please don't mind my lovely stack of stuff to put away that Sarah pulled out of the closet!

And now for some fun stuff! There's snow on the ground right now, but we had a lovely streak of warm (70s) weather and took some fun pictures!

Sarah after eating an ice cream sandwich dessert at a fun kid-themed restaurant in our area!

Sarah and Daddy playing on the teeter-totter

Daddy loves his little girl!

McFatty Monday and the curse/blessing of the stomach flu

So I've been doing McFatty Monday (don't worry about the fact that I'm a day late) from The Heir to Blair and this week I'm happy to say that I'm at 164! Yay!! That's down a few pounds, and it's exciting. It's also a direct result of the stomach flu which hit our house this week. No matter, I'm down some weight so now I have to maintain the loss and lose some more! I think I can do it!

My little girl was hit especially hard, as babies toddlers often are. She was almost hospitalized with dehydration, but after a good few healthy doses of Phenergren, she is all better and never had to be hospitalized. We are so thankful that we have access to good medical care that keeps our family healthy!

McFatty Monday-Valentine's Edition

Well, this McFatty Monday isn't so bad. I'm at 167, which I can't complain about since I'm officially lighter now than two weeks ago. Last Monday I had gained and so this past week I've tried to be pretty diligent. We celebrated Valentine's Day on Saturday night since that's when the in-laws could watch Sarah, and went to Cheddars. It was DELICIOUS and I totally blew my healthy eating. Alfredo sauce and two drinks later, I felt sure I would have gained for this week. But I worked out every day and Sunday ate well, so maybe one bad night won't totally sabotage everything for me.

One thing I've changed during this past week is drinking protein shakes every morning for breakfast. 3-5 days a week I work out in the morning before breakfast, and two days a week I work out at grad school in the awesome new student activity center that just opened. From what I was reading, protein would really help me burn fat and build lean muscle, which my abs definitely need!

Here's how I make it and drink it every morning:

1 Scoop of chocolate muscle milk powder (150 calories)

4 oz of water + 4 oz of milk 

1 TBS peanut butter

I'm considering buying some of the natural peanut butter so that it's lower in sugar and everything, but for now, this is what we have at the house so that's what I'm going to use. We don't have the kind of money to be pitching such a huge thing of peanut butter just because it's not natural, so we'll see how it goes until then! 

The breakfast comes out to about 300 calories and it's filling which is great. I'm also drinking a metric ton of water it seems, and while that keeps me going to the bathroom and I have flashbacks of nursing my daughter while guzzling water, it seems to be helping me lose weight; I cheated and weighed this past Saturday morning before I knew I"d kill my healthy eating and I weighed 165.4! woo hoo!! Talk about motivation!

Not Your Ordinary Mac & Cheese

So this past weekend was my husband's birthday celebration! Happy 29th birthday, Mike! We went to the wonderful J Alexanders for lunch since a certain Ms. Sarah will not tolerate late at night dinners an hour away very well. While there, I had what's called "Not Your Ordinary Mac & Cheese." My husband, being a big fan, went on and on about how we needed to find this recipe. I found a copy cat recipe online and made it. There are changes we need to make, but overall this is a DIVINE mac and cheese!

Here's what you need:
1.5 cups elbow macaroni
3TBS butter, divided (the real stuff, don't go all country crock on me here)
2 TBS flour
2 cups heavy cream (the real stuff here too. No, you cannot use half and half. No, you cannot use whole milk instead. Just use the cream, your life will be better for it.)
1/2 of a minced onion
1 bay leaf
1/4 tsp paprika (but next time I'm bumping it up to 1/2.)
2 1/4 cup gruyere cheese
salt
black pepper
1/2 cup fresh bread crumbs (I cut up an Italian loaf)

Here's how you make it:

Cook 1.5 cups macaroni and set aside.

Next, take 2TBS of butter and 2TBS of flour to make a roux. Cook it for three minutes, stirring constantly. SLOWLY add in the cream. It is very important that you add the cream in a tiny bit at a time at first. The roux is hot and the cream, even if it's room temperature is much colder and you will seize your roux and create clumps. Clumpy cheese sauce = no bueno.

Stir in the onion, bay leaf, and paprika. Simmer, stir often, and let it simmer for 15 minutes. It will thicken. A lot. Don't worry, beautiful things are happening. Remove from heat and get that bay leaf out. Stir in 1.5 cups of cheese and season with salt and pepper. WARNING: you will need a decent amount of salt. Stir in macaroni.

In a separate bowl, melt the remaining 1TBS butter (maybe I used two) and add in the bread crumbs. I also salted the bread crumbs because salt is good, while being bad.

Butter a deep baking dish. The one I used is the round deep dish baker by Pampered Chef (holla!). Pour in half of the mac mixture and layer in half of the remaining cheese. Pour in the rest of the mac, sprinkle the rest of the cheese, and top with the bread crumbs.

Here is an important note: the world is only made better by crunchy topping. I used at least twice as many bread crumbs as this recipe calls for.

Once it's assembled, pop it in a 350 oven for about 20 minutes, then crank up the broiler. Watch it carefully, but buttered bread crumbs and broilers love each other, and make beautiful food happen.

Here's what my finished product looked like:

And here are a few lovely snaps of my adorable little girl!

Sarah loves playing with things mom takes off of the furniture to dust! I also spy a huge black trash bag full of all the clothes she has outgrown that I need to take to storage! *sniff sniff*

ooo alarm clocks and camera battery chargers!

playing on mom and dad's bed!

J Alexander's and the McFatty Monday aftermath

Okay, so it's not J Alexander's fault that they make incredible steaks and Not Your Ordinary mac & cheese.  It is delicious, but I chose to eat it; after all, it was my husband's birthday celebration. It's also not the blizzard's fault that during a blizzard I get all sad and unmotivated and don't work out. So I didn't keep up with the healthy eating and I fell off of the exercise bandwagon this week. Consequently, I gained from last week, up to 168. That's okay, it's one minor setback, one minor week, and in the grand scheme of things, won't matter. I'll still lose this weight. I will finish this weight loss. I owe it to myself, my family, and my health.

Also, my husband found a copy cat recipe for the NYO Mac & Cheese online and we made it last night. Holy heavy cream and gruyere cheese, batman! It was delish, but SO full of fat and calories!

Blizzard 2011!!

Well, in case you hadn't heard, about half the country it seems got a blizzard this week! It hit on February 1st, which is Mike's birthday and the anniversary of bringing Sarah home! Check out the in-laws' house!

We stayed at their house Tuesday night as there was a foot of snow on the ground, and more in some places. We couldn't get out, and my in-laws were kind enough to take us in. Last night, when we got back to our house, Chief needed to go out. Here is the view out my back door:

Chief is a large German Shepherd and had a hard time overcoming that snow drift!

                    

This is the fence to the right of our patio. It is a six-foot tall fence.

In other news, Sarah is just becoming more adorable by the day. I took some adorable pictures of her in her jammies because she's just too snuggly in them!

I told her Chief needed to go out so she grabbed his leash and went walking towards him yelling "dog!", "dog!". Which sounds more like "dot!"

I love ruffle bottoms and ballerina PJ's! 

And for a taste of spring in spite of the blizzard, Sarah sported some bright, fruity jammies last night!

She is holding pink puppy. Pink puppy MUST be in bed with her for her to sleep, but he's her most favorite toy in the world, so he often finds his way downstairs before beditme. 

It is -10 real temperature this morning, so Sarah and I are staying inside and playing this morning! She's still in bed and I'm hoping to get the house picked up so she and I can eat breakfast and watch a Veggie Tales first thing! Have a happy Thursday!