Time For Me Thursday

Thursdays are the days that Katie had deemed as a day to blog about some time that we spend on ourselves. As a parent, a spouse, an employee or whatever, it's hard to find time to really do something for yourself. You spend so much time focusing on your kids, your mate, or your job, that you don't often stop and take time just for yourself. Katie's designation of Thursday to blog about this is also my reminder of my need to take this time for myself.

I consider blogging to be something that I do for myself. It's my time to get my thoughts out of my head and into written form. It's also a place to share the things that I am working on around the house or with the kids or whatever, that the people in my regular, everyday life are really not interested in hearing about. And who knows? Maybe you all don't really want to read about it either, but it's still there. :)

I have not had much chance to knit recently, so I am contemplating that as an option of something to do today. Maybe a little bit of knitting and some Grey's Anatomy on the agenda for tonight. Sounds like a date with myself to me! :) That is my plan for this evening. Knitting and Grey's, pure bliss!

Workin' Out Wednesday

I have joined a friend on their weight loss blog and I have been working out quite a bit and trying to watch/limit my calorie intake and so far in the last three days that I have been really working on it, I have done really well. I joined a site called "Lose It" and I have been using it to really monitor my calorie intake and my exercise. It's been a real eye-opener, let me tell you! Oh and if you are also working to lose weight or exercise more or whatever, and decide to join (it is free, by the way!) leave me a comment and we can be friends on there and encourage each other!

So, today I want to share about my work out summary and goals for the coming week:

Monday, I had planned to do my Jillian Michael "30 Day Shred" dvd, but every time I moved my right shoulder and elbow or my left knee, it was just bone on bone grinding, which neither sounds nor feels good. So instead, I did some vigorous housecleaning and weight lifting.

Tuesday, I did some weights again and also did the exercise bike at the inlaw's house.

Then today, I did some sit ups. My stomach muscles are definitely not what they used to be! Oh wow! But it still felt good to do that.

After reading some information, it says that you need to give your muscles a day off between working out, so if I want to work out every day, I need to make sure that I'm working different muscle groups. So I think I will do arms one day, legs another day and abs a third day. That way each muscle set will have two days off between workouts. I think that is a good plan.

Quiet Corner

 

Hmmm, my own corner...well, that used to be in our bedroom. We have an old brown recliner in our room that came from Hubby's paternal grandparents (I feel the need to distinguish this because there is a pink recliner in our living room that came from Hubby's  maternal grandparents) where I often would spend time on my laptop or reading or just relaxing.

I have not been able to do this much recently because our room has been undergoing some major changes (new drapes, planning on a new bedroom furniture set sometime soon, hopefully) and well, my corner is currently buried under boxes that need to be gone through and sorted and well, honestly, I don't have time for that at this point. Also, I need to do a number of other tasks before I can deal with that one.

So, I decided to do my second corner, which includes the pink chair in the living room. It is my second choice for reading, writing, relaxing and reclining. I tidied this area up, vacuumed, cleared off the table, brought up a small pillow I like to tuck in behind my lower back and even sprayed the chair with some fabric refresher just because I like the scent. So nice and comfy and pretty looking (and smelling!) now.

There was also a secondary assignment to enjoy the space for 10 minutes, which I definitely did. I sat down and relaxed and read blogs and typed up this post and did some hunting online for exercise bikes. I'm sure I spent way more than 10 minutes on this assignment. But um, I just wanted to make sure that I had a chance to enjoy the corner before the kids got to it again! LOL!

Points for today: 40 points!

Bonus points for today: 20 points!

Points for February: 290 points!

Wordless Wednesday

I snapped this picture of Miss PunkyPie yesterday afternoon. She had been playing around putting sunglasses on her stuffed animals and on our family dog, Freddy. Then she asked me to take a picture of her and her little brother's stuffed puppy. I complied because, honestly, who could say no to this face:

Back Door

 

Yesterday I posted about our launch and landing pads and today's assignment from Rachel Anne is to clean up the area near our back door. Well, this is really easy. We actually have two back doors. One we refer to as the back door, which is directly opposite the front door and goes out to the yard behind our house. The other back door opens to one side of our house and we refer to that one as the side door. But that door often gets mistaken as our front door because we live on a corner lot and our address is on that street, while our front door is actually facing the other street. It confuses delivery people to no end!

So, for this task, I actually did the area near our side door. The reason that I said that this was really easy is because during the winter, we keep this door closed and locked and don't use it at all if possible. The main reason is because it's a sliding door that opens directly onto carpet and I don't want the salt and mud and wet coming in onto the carpet.

However, there was some tidying up to do down there. And I also needed to get things ready for later this month when we will be changing out the window coverings. We live in a rental and it has vertical blinds covering this door. We want to put up some energy conserving drapes. They have a thermal back and they also block out light. I don't know if I want to get rid of the blinds completely, but I do want the drapes up over them at the very least.

So I prepared the area for that and overall did a quick tidy of the area. It looks so  much better now! And I didn't even think it looked bad to start!

Points for today: 40 points!

Points for February: 230 points!

Tossed It Tuesday

This week, we tossed out a bunch of stuff. I cleared off our entertainment center and got it all nice and neat. I also did the same thing to our bookshelf and our desk area in our kitchen. There was plenty of items from those two places alone that got tossed out.

We also have a number of boxes and bags of clothing for donation/consignment that are ready to go. As I am working my way through our laundry and our stored clothing, I have been weeding out as much as I can right now. It is a process that I am sure I will be working on for months to come. So don't be surprised if you often see clothing on my "Tossed It" list.

We also sorted through the kids' toys and eliminated the ones that were broken, missing pieces or just not  played with.

Still have a long way to go but I like where it is heading,

Shameless Brag

This is my NattyNu. He's ten years old and in fourth grade. He is great at math, okay in reading and a terrible speller. He loves to be active and he plays hard. He can be a tremendous help around the house. He is also an emotional kid, who feels things very deeply.

Today, he went to a friend's house to play after school. JoNo went to another friend's house to play as well. Hubby told them both to be back at 5:00 but then our plans changed and so Hubby picked Natty up from the friend's house on his way home today. JoNo had already come home on his own.

Anyhow, when Hubby went to pick up Natty, the friend's parents commented to Hubby how happy they are to have Natty there and how wonderfully behaved he is. They said that they were grateful to Natty for being patient with their son, who is extremely shy and has a hard  time and major fear of making new friends. They said that Natty is a joy to have over at their house and that he is more than welcome over there anytime.

Those words made this mama's heart swell with love and pride. I am so proud of my Natty for being patient with his friend. I am happy that the two of them have become friends. Natty has a hard time making friends sometimes too. He tends to think that people are his friends when really they aren't. He doesn't understand all the fine nuances of relationships and communication. But he is learning. And he has found a new friend in this other child as well. I am so happy for both of them.

It was also nice to hear those words because kids often behave differently at other people's houses and in different social situations. Well, really, that is true for most human beings, not just kids. But I don't always know how his behavior is when he's away from me and sometimes I'm concerned that the behavior is not as good as it could be. But this report, well, it warms my heart.

Thanks Natty for being such a good friend. And thanks for being so well-behaved and showing good choices when you are away from home. I love you Buddy!