We’ve had a nice and quiet weekend.  Yesterday was spent cleaning up the house and (FINALLY) getting the Christmas decorations down.  We also did laundry-doesn’t that sound fun? It was actually, just the sort of weekend I needed.

We DID take Lu to the park yesterday:

Today, Shaun let me sleep in until 10!  It was AWESOME.  I did some grocery shopping and then we took Lu to get her first haircut!

Shaun brought up that Lucy’s hair was getting pretty long and scraggly and that she should get a haircut.  At first I was resistant to the idea, but then I did have to admit that her hair was a bit uneven.

Look at those chops!

So we found a kids haircutting place in Burlingame and took her in.

She wasn’t really sure about it but overall, she was a good girl and came out looking a little less messy.

The “stylist” was concerned that she would look like a boy if we cut it any shorter.  I think it’s just right

I’ll be back later with an update on the 20 + 10 challenge.

See ya then!

My friend childhood friend, Natalie, is a photographer and she came and took pictures of us last month.  You’ve seen some of her images from our holiday card but I have a CD with over 300 photos that I FINALLY got downloaded onto my computer.  Natalie gives you the rights to all your images, so you pay for the session and the processing of the pictures and then she burns you a CD that is 100% yours.  She caught some AMAZING images of our family.

Has anyone heard the new Train song?  It makes me really happy.  I’ve had an extremely hard morning and that song came on and cheered me up.

Don’t get me wrong, everything is FINE, but I’ve had one of those mornings that you just want to crawl back into bed and start over after you’ve slept for a looooong time.  My sweet husband actually suggested that I turn right around and do just that. But! I’ve made the executive decision to put on my big girl pants and deal with my life.  It is a pretty damn good life.

I caught some pretty awesome father/daughter images this morning.

Yes, my Christmas decorations are still up.  They’re coming down tomorrow.

Daddy was brushing her hair.  

So, many of the issues from this morning have to do with my IBS. Last time it was this bad, I followed a very strict IBS diet and then did acupuncture to be able to add more food to my diet.  The IBS diet, in a word, is HARD. 

The basic principle are that I should avoid:

-Red Meat
-Poultry
-All dairy products
-Eggs
-Fried Foods
-Anything high in fat

So basically, a vegan diet with some fish and not much fat.  I did this for about a year in 2005 and it was the only thing that helped.  In fact, other than pregnancy, that was the only time that I didn’t have IBS issues.  Maybe I should just get pregnant again? LOL!

The good news? I know I CAN do it.  The bad news? It’s going to make cooking dinner more time consuming and interesting.  Well I guess the interesting part is a good thing 🙂

That’s how I woke up this morning when my alarm went off at 5:30.  I had accidently set the alarm to “beep” and not “radio” and I seriously thought something was majorly wrong. Thankfully, the only thing wrong was that I had to get up that early. I so didn’t want to. But, thankfully, I did!  Boot Camp was so much better this morning and I’m very glad I went. 

There was one problem with Boot Camp-the upper part of the teacher’s (extremely well defined) butt was showing almost the entire class.  She had rolled her pants down a little too far (well a lot too far actually).   All the guys in the class were drooling which made me feel like I should have said something.  I wanted to say something for her sake (and mine), but I also didn’t want to embarrass her.  I didn’t say anything. Should I have?  Would you have?

I have to say-it was an impressive butt.

Sadly, coffee was needed again this morning.

That’s my “tall” soy latte filled to the top of my 16 oz cup.

Besides going to the gym, I also fulfilled another 20+10 goal.  My gas gauge said this:

And so I went and filled up:

Shaun will be so proud. And? It only took me 3 minutes.

I’m really struggling in 3 areas of the 20+10 challenge:

1. Cutting out dairy.

2. Losing pounds/inches

3. Talking nice to myself

1 and 2 are completely related and came to a head yesterday.  I know that I’m not going to lose pounds/inches in a few days but I also know that I have to make good food choices in order to lose the pounds/inches.  I was doing really well until yesterday.  Yesterday was a big FAIL in the food and dairy department.  I ate a cookie and a brownie. *sigh* Today will be better-it has to be better-my tummy is really mad at me.

As for number 3, I’m having a hard time with this and, to be quite frank, it’s the one I care the most about.  If I talk down to myself, then I will, inevitably, pass that on to Lucy.  That’s my worst fear in the world.  I said something on Tuesday and Shaun got really mad at me.  He told me that I wasn’t following my challenge.  I said “Well, I don’t have to be 100% perfect, right out the gate-it’s a process.”

He agreed with me except for that one point.  He insisted that I be 100% perfect about talking nice to myself starting now. He told me, “No one is allowed to talk about my wife like that. No one.”

It is getting better though.  I thought something pretty mean this morning and immediately thought “Well, you’re doing something about it-focus on that.”  Let’s hope I can keep it up.

Lastly, I am so excited.  At lunch I’m sending ALL OF THIS STUFF out!

Well, except the cuties 😉 I LOVE giving gifts and today I get to give many. YIPPEE.

I hope you all have a BEAUTIFUL day!

Every entry had a 1 in 10 chance of winning!

I cracked up when John came up-he’s a great friend from DC that always makes me smile.  He was one of the few people that saw us get married in Jamaica!

Amy, John, Tasha, Laura, and Mel send me your address and I’ll get your booty mailed out!

…but I am having some tea this morning.  Today is a rest day and I slept in until 6:45-it was glorious!  Although Lu learned how to make one of her musical animals work.  She thought 6:15 was a good time for music.  Silly girl!

I made some juice this morning, using, what I thought, was a very strange ingredient 🙂

Baby bell peppers!  According to this those puppies have 4 times as much vitamin C as an orange! I also found that they are the base for paprika-who knew!

I did cut the tops off, but look at what a pretty glass it made:

I couldn’t taste the peppers at all.  Since drinking it, I have had some pepper aftertaste in my mouth though.

Random Blog Stuff

I made some updates to the blog yesterday by myself! Shaun was so proud! 

-I added a tagline that Mel came up with-“Live. Laugh. Love. Eat. Just Be.” Isn’t it perfect?!?!?!  Thank you Mel! Shaun will have to help me get it into the header, so stay tuned. I actually had him change the code when I set the blog up so that there wouldn’t be a tagline since I couldn’t think of one. Mel to the rescue!

-I added a “Subscribe” button.  I know many of you asked for this and so there it is on the sidebar.

-I added “Subscribe to Comments” ability on posts.  So if you are interested in the comments on a particular post you can get emails.  There are some interesting comments!  I even posted my schedule in the comments yesterday 🙂

-Lastly, the one I’m most excited about is that I made it so that the title of my post is in the URL.  Shaun thought that that was a hard thing to do but it turns out that it’s just a setting in WordPress.  I did the research and figured it out.  This is big, I usually let Shaun deal with the techy stuff.

-Have you seen the giveaway?  There’s still time to enter!

Beautiful Blogger Award

Both Amber and Tasha awarded me the Beautiful Blogger Award.  They said some of the nicest things about me too-both of them made me well up a little bit.  Thank you girls so much.

Amber and I met at the KERF meet-up in November and I’m so glad we did.  She is such a sweet soul and has some of the most amazing style EVER. Seriously. 

I found Tasha’s blog one day by putting in “Clean Eating, Gum” into Bing (Yes, Chelsea really does Bing!). She had a post about what she considers clean and I was hooked!  It turns out that her little boy, J, is just about a month younger than Lucy-so we have a lot in common!

So, here’s how it works: I have to tell you 7 random things about me, and then I choose 7 of YOU to do the same.

Random Things-these were hard!:

1. I like my shoelaces to be the exact same length and will re-lace my shoes if they are not.

2. I had severe dyslexia as a child-I still technically do.  With the help of the Irlen Clinic and colored lens therapy, I went from not being able to see vowels to a voracious reader and excellent student.  This meant that I had bright purple lenses in my glasses as a child-talk about mortifying.

3. I like to fall asleep with the light on.  This one actually has to do with the dyslexia.  I have scotopic sensitivity which means that lights actually make you sleepy.  A sure fire way for me to fall asleep is to turn a light on.  Weird.  Too bad someone else is in the room with me!

4. I’ve wanted to be a mom for as long as I can remember.  When I was 18 my uterus would ache when I saw babies.  That aching didn’t go away until I got my own.

5. I loved being pregnant.  It was AMAZING.  Even though I felt like total crap for the first 13 weeks and was on bedrest at the end, the fact that I was growing a life and that she was with me at all times was indescribable.

6. I can’t to time math.  I have to count it out on my fingers.  I probably could do it, but I still count out time on my fingers.  For example, if I fall asleep at 10 and wake up at 5:30 (oof!) I have to count that out on my fingers to figure out it’s 7.5 hours of sleep. Even though it’s insanely easy math.

7. My hair is naturally curly.

But turned straight when I was pregnant.

And went back to curly when Lucy was about 8 months old.  I use a straightening iron every day.

Wasn’t that fun?

Now onto the 7 lovely ladies! Please don’t feel like you need to pass it on-No pressure-just fun! I wish I could pick ALL of you!

1. Mel-she is an amazing Mommy who is also incredibly talented.  She makes the most beautiful bows and other baby things.  She’s also one of the funniest people I know.

2. Ashley-another amazing Mommy who has some pretty lofty goals for 2010.  I still can’t get over number 1!

3. Amanda-again, a mommy (to beautiful Ava)! She’s doing a 365 project with photos-she’s truly an awesome photographer.

4. RhodeyGirl–Sabrina who WILL be a wonderful mommy someday 😉 We met at Calorie King and she inspires me all.the.time with all her hostessing abilities-she’s amazing.  Whenever I have people coming over, I always think, “What would Sabrina do?”

5. Monica-another fabulous mommy-I’m seeing a trend here!  We actually met on the interwebs a loooong time ago on Calorie King.  She’s been out to California numerous times and we always have fun together.

6. Lauren-A Louisiana girl who always makes me smile.  I couldn’t believe that she just turned 20! Happy birthday!

7. Tania-I miss you!  I hope all is well and maybe this will bring you out of your break.  Tania is a total foodie who is on a quest to lose weight the RIGHT WAY.  She makes the most delicious and beautiful food.  Her honesty is so inspiring.

Okay, work cropped up in the middle of that (WORK!) and that took way longer than expected.  Till later!

I had plans to make pesto tonight with the basil off my plant.  I went out to harvest it and my plant was DEAD!  I totally had to improvise and what I came up with was a winner!

Ingredients:

-3 cups spinach
-3 sprigs rosemary de-stemmed (about a TBSP)
-1/4 cup pine nuts 
-2 tsp olive oil
-6 garlic cloves
-1/2 cup chicken broth (vegetable broth would work too)
-1/4 cup wine
-Juice of 1 lemon
-S+P to taste

Instructions:

-Throw the spinach, rosemary, pine nuts, olive oil, and garlic into a food processor. Process until smooth.

-While that’s doing it’s thing, reduce the wine and broth together.  (I actually cooked the chicken in the wine and broth and when I tasted the pesto the garlic was too strong and needed to be cooked down a bit-that’s why I mixed the two)

-Add the pesto to the wine/broth mixture. Add lemon and S+P.

-Toss with pasta and top with whatever protein you desire.

Here’s Shaun’s:

Mine (there is pasta underneath and that’s vegan parm):

And Lucy’s:

I originally didn’t give her much sauce but she ended up LOVING the sauce, so she got much more.

(Caption: “Mommy don’t bother me, I’m EATING!”)

Shaun and I both gave this a 3 out of 5.  Not bad!  Actually, quite delish!

To refresh your memory, in this household our rankings:

-1 = bad-don’t ever make it again
-2 =okay, tweak it and try again
-3 = good, put this on the monthly menu!
-4 = very good, put this on the monthly menu in heavy rotation
-5 = FANTASTIC (this is reserved for really amazingly outstanding meals)

Shaun is a tough judge and a 3 from him is a great rating!

Lucy gave it a 5!

Did you see my giveaway? I can’t believe I’m parting with 5 jars of TJ’s pumpkin butter.

ANYWAY.

It was so hard to wake up this morning.  I desperately need to get to bed before 10:30!  To add injury to insult Boot Camp sucked a big one this morning.  The class was too full and the teacher (who’s normally AWESOME) kinda sucked today :(.  Oh well, I did it!

When I got home, I had this:

2 carrots, 1/2 of an apple, 4 leaves of kale, and a meyer lemon. It was tasty.

I promise I won’t post pictures of my juice every day but it’s just so FUN and novel right now.

Plus, I’ve been reading up on juicing and wanted to share the guidelines I’m following with you.  Since I’m trying to lose weight, I want to be smart about this and I think these will help.

1. Only drink 8 ounces of juice a day.

2. Only mix in 1/2 apple or lemon juice with my veggies.

3. Eat all my other fruits.

4. Only juice one root vegetable a day (they are more caloric).

5. Juice something green everyday.

6. Try to be as varied as possible (this one is hard since there are only so many veggies that will fit in my fridge!)

7. Only juice with organic produce and wash it well.

Today’s was so pretty in an unconventional way:

I followed that up with another latte from Starbucks.  I WILL NOT be getting a latte tomorrow.  My goal is to get enough sleep tonight that I don’t need caffeine.  Good thing Wednesday is my “sleep in” day. 

Starbuck tip! I’ve been using my insulated cup that I showed you yesterday. And no matter what size you order, they fill it to the top!  Yesterday I ordered a grande and it was full.  Today I ordered a tall and it was full-it’s a 16 ounce cup! I just need to remember that I got 16 ounces of a latte and not 12 ounces.

Last Night

Last night I made “burritos” for dinner.  When I made the meat for the lasagna on Sunday night, I browned double the amount and then saved it for last nights tacos.  When I got home, I reheated it in a pan and added taco spices.  In addition to the meat, I heated up a can of refried beans, grated some cheese (for Lu and Shaun), cut up veggies, had salsa, yogurt (for me), and sour cream (for Shaun), some Casa Sanchez (a local company) organic corn chips and OF COURSE Tapatio!  All three of us had a very different but delicious dinner.

Mine:

Lu’s-she ate almost all of this and a half a cucumber:

(love that plate-thanks Jocelyn!) She used her chips as a spoon-it was so cute.

And, Shaun’s:

(his is the ugliest!)

It was delish!

I finished off the night with my newest obsession.  I’ve heard about this a million times but have never tried it.  I was reading Gena’s blog and she actually had pictures that convinced me to give it a whirl (ah the power of pictures!). All you do is freeze a ripe banana and then throw it in the food processor for about 5 minutes.

At first it makes my Cuisinart almost jump off the counter and it’s LOUD but it is SO worth it.  Thank goodness for a baby that sleeps well!  It tastes better than any soy ice cream I have ever tried and it’s only banana. No sugar, no artificial stuff-just banana!

Gena recommends topping it with a chocolate sauce made of 1 part cocoa powder to 2 parts agave.  I tried that the first night and found that I much preferred the plain banana.

I wonder how long until I burn out on this one? Any guesses?

I bought 12, yes 12, jars of TJ’s pumpkin butter last year-I must’ve been nesting!  I’ve got five left (I like my pumpkin butter, as does Lucy!) and I want to share.  These puppies will be good for at least another year, BUT, I’ve got a freezer full of my own YUMMY pumpkin butter. So you get to enjoy the bounty!

If you’ve never had TJ’s Pumpkin Butter then you are really missing out.  It is A.MAZE.ING.

I’m so excited to get to share with you.  I love giving gifts and I noticed that after the holidays most of the giveaways disappeared.

There are 5 ways to enter!

1. Comment on this post.

2. Mention this on YOUR blog.

3. Tweet about this giveaway or Facebook it!

4. Add me to your blogroll.

5. Follow me on Twitter.

If you do 2-5, just leave a separate comment for each.

I’ll use a random integer generator to decide on the 5 winners! The giveaway is open until Wednesday, January 6th at 6 PM. NOW CLOSED I’ll announce the winner tomorrow night and I’ll be shipping everything on Thursday.

YAY Pumpkin butter!

Now you may look at that and say “Hey, there’s meat in the sauce!” Why yes, there is meat in the sauce but that’s only so Shaun would eat it.  Everything else is meat, dairy, and egg free. No meat needed and STILL packed with protein! The meat added nothing to this dish other than Shaun eatability.

Ingredients:

-1/2 package whole wheat, no egg, lasagna noodles
-~20 ounces of marinara sauce
-1 bunch of parsley, de-stemmed
-3 cups baby spinach
-14 ounces of firm tofu
-1/4 cup vegetable broth
-2 tsp dried oregano
-2 tsp garlic powder
-1 medium eggplant, sliced thinly, salted and squeezed
-4 medium portabella mushrooms, sliced thinly
-S+P

Instructions:

-Preheat oven to 375*.

-Cook noodles according to package, after drained, let soak in cold water.

-Add the parsley and spinach to a food processor and chop finely.  Add the tofu, broth, oregano, and garlic powder to the greens and process until smooth.  Add S+P to taste. Mix well to incorporate S+P.

-Spray a casserole pan with nonstick spray (including edges) and cover bottom with your favorite marinara.

-Lay down one layer of the eggplant.

-Lay down one layer of mushrooms.

-Spread half of the tofu mixture on top of the mushrooms.

-Lay down one layer of noodles. (I almost forgot to take a picture before spreading the second layer of marinara.)

-Repeat the layering, with marinara, eggplant, mushrooms, remaining tofu mixture, and another layer of noodles.

-Cover noodles with remaining marinara.

-Cover with foil and bake for 1 hour. 

-After an hour, take the lasagna out of the oven and let it sit for at least 15 minutes, uncovered.

-Enjoy!

Shaun had 3 servings of this but commented that it shouldn’t be called lasagna.  He said that when he thinks of lasagna, he thinks of “cheesy, gooey, goodness” and “more meat”.  I suggested “Vegetable Bake” and he thought that described it better.  He rated it a 2.5 and said it would be a 3 if I added “much more meat.” I give it 4 stars and will definitely be making this again.  I can’t wait to have it for lunch this week.