Friday Favorites....

My favorite thing this week is my charm bracelet. I've had this bracelet for probably about 10 years now. I had one before that had MANY charms on it, but unfortunately it got lost in a move. =( The bracelet and all of the charms are from a jewelery store called James Avery, which I absolutely LOVE!! I have a few charms that I still need to get put on it, and there are LOTS more charms that I really want to buy!! Here are the charms that I currently have on the bracelet:
~xxoo
~a jingle bell
~tap shoes
~a cat
~a dragonfly
~ballet slippers
~a camera
~a bumble bee
~'99
~a sneaker
~a heart
~jack o' lantern
~graduation cap
~basketball
~profile of a girl
~flip flop
~Te Amo
~butterfly
~shamrock
~buffalo
~scroll heart
~owl
~Best Mom
~music note inside a heart
~theatre masks
~Middle Sister
~J
~popcorn box

I Guess That I Am A Feminist!!

You Are 79% Feminist

You are certainly a feminist - whether you know it or not. You believe in gender equality, at least most of the time. You also believe there are a few exceptions.

Are You a Feminist?

Make Something New Mondays - Butter Bread

Today I made homemade bread for the first time ever!! Made from scratch and everything. Needless to say, eat wasn't aesthetically pleasing enough to post a picture. But it sure did taste delicious, and the house smelled SO wonderful!! I got the recipe from Bethany's Blog.

Here's the recipe:

1 stick butter
1 cup milk
2 packages yeast
3 tablespoons sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
2 large eggs
6-7 bread flour

Melt the butter and warm the milk. Add yeast and let sit for about 2 minutes, then stir and add sugar, salt, eggs and slowly add flour until it is a firm dough.

Knead for 10 minutes and then let rise for an hour.

Punch down, split in half, and separate each half into 3 sections. Roll sections and braid them.

Let braided loaves rise for 30 minutes, then brush with an egg white glaze.

Place in oven at 375 for the 30-35 minutes.

I'm definitely going to be trying this recipe again. I'd love to get it perfected!
Every Monday I'm going to try to make something that I haven't before. Mainly things from scratch. Next week I think I'll do some kind of dessert!!

Friday Favorites....

Okay, so I know that I'm actually posting this on Monday, but really I took the pictures on Friday and had fully intended to do my post then, but time just got away from me and then on top of that I got sick Friday evening. So here goes.

The above candle and candle holder I got from a garage sale that a friend of mine and her parents were having about 2 years ago. If you know me at all you know that I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE butterflies! And I absolutely loved how this had lots of them and how they were carved into the candle. SO cool! The lady who owned this before me burned the candle maybe one time. I got this whole thing from her for $5!! It's quite tall and I have it displayed in my bathroom. Oh, and I've never burned it, the candle is too pretty!

I Wonder If This Helps...

So, for the last week and a half or so I've been hand washing all of our dishes. Yep, you heard me loud and clear, I have not run the dishwasher in this whole time. My main reason for doing so is a little experiment to see if it cuts down on our electric bill. Before I would run the dishwasher every day or so and I just figured that with all the heating it has to do to dry the dishes and such, it wouldn't hurt to give this a go. Now, there have honestly been days where I haven't kept up very well with the dish washing, but overall it seems to be going good. As for drying I just leave the dishes in the dishwasher with the door cracked open and they actually dry better and faster than with the heated dry. I'm actually also enjoying my time washing dishes. I get to look out my window into the backyard and just get lost in my thoughts for around 15 minutes. Even if the electric bill doesn't go down I'll probably continue to hand wash the dishes. Dishes used to be my most dreaded chore, but dare I say, I'm actually beginning to like it now. Well, maybe not like, but definitely not dread!!

Oh, and I figure that in the future this will be a good chore for Audrey and her future siblings to have. I don't want my children growing up relying on machines to always do basic work for them!

Does anyone else out there wash their dishes by hand?

YUMMY!!!

I just got finished making a batch of Rice Krispy Treats! I love these things. I love the smell of the marshmallows and butter as they melt together.

These will be a wonderful dessert to go along with our dinner this evening.
Here is what we're having:
~Homemade Chicken Fried Steak
~Homemade Mashed Potatoes
~Country Gravy (sometimes I do homemade, but tonight is packaged)
~Green Peas (I'll just heat up some frozen for Audrey and myself)
~Rice Krispy Treats

Sounds like a pretty delish dinner to me!

Daily Musing...

I think I'm going to change the name (yes, again) of this blog. My husband jokes with me that I'm a "Feminist Homemaker". What does he mean by this? Well, obviously I'm a homemaker, but not because I have to be or because that's what my husband wants. You see, although my husband and I are committed Christians we are also what you would call egalitarians. Meaning, we believe that men and women, husbands and wives are equal. There really is no "head of our household". I respect my husband dearly as he does me and we try our hardest to treat each other as such. We make our decisions together and are both free to disagree with the other. I also do not believe that "a woman's place is in the home". If you are married and have children or whatever and you want to have a career outside of the home. Go for it! Don't let anyone hold you back. As long as you can balance work and family, all the more power to you! Yes, I am a homemaker and my husband supports me fully in that, but he would also support me fully if I decided tomorrow that I wanted to go back to work full time. It's my decision. As long as I love what I do and take it seriously, he's happy!! And just so everyone knows, I've been a homemaker ever since we got married almost 4 years ago. We went 2 1/2 years being married before our daughter was born and we decided together from the get go that this is what we both wanted and what we both considered best for our family. I've always wanted to be a wife and a mommy, that has always been my biggest dream. We plan to have a large family and as of right now I plan on homeschooling our children (for many reasons that I will get into in a later post), but as I've gotten older my dreams have also grown to one day owning a business. I'd love to have a coffee shop or a bed & breakfast one day. But that is when my children are older. For now, my passion is my family and my home, so that is my job. But I can rest assured that whatever I decide to do in the future my husband will support me 100%!!

So, as an ode to Bryan, the new name of this blog is going to be "Diary of a Feminist Homemaker"!!

It's a 15 Minute Kind Of Day...

For those of you who are familiar with FlyLady (LOVE her!!) you should know what a 15 minute day is. For those who aren't here it is in a nutshell. One of FlyLady's motto's is "You/I can do anything for 15 minutes", meaning, instead of looking at how overwhelming a job is, just start somewhere and do it for 15 minutes. You'll be amazed at how much actually gets done in that amount of time! One of the tools that FlyLady recommends having is a timer, just set it for 15 minutes and go. After 15 minutes is done either reset it or take a small break. And a 15 minute day is when you have a whole lot to do, but a breaking it up into 15 minute increments. Get it?

Well, anyways, it's been that kind of day for me. The last week or so I've really gotten off of my normal routines, mainly because I need to re-tweak them to include my work and plasma donation schedules. But even worse then that is that seemingly every weekend the house gets in complete disarray. Maybe it's because Bryan's home so I don't do my normal stuff, I don't know. And since I was pretty much gone for 12 hours yesterday, when I woke up this morning there was a nice big mess to greet me! YUCK! So, I'm currently working to get it all back in order. The kitchen is clean, so is the living room, the dining room, Audrey's room, and the bathroom. So there isn't much else to do. That is until I get it all tidied and then have to actually get into the rooms and deep clean!! How fun!! Wish me luck!

Friday Favorites....

I saw this idea on another blog: http://home-place.blogspot.com/
and thought it would be a neat idea to put up here. Every Friday I'm going to try and put up a picture and description of one of my favorite things. I think it'll go to show how the simple things in life can and do bring us so much joy! So here goes...

My first favorite thing is:
HOT CHOCOLATE!!!
Now I know what you're thinking. It's only September for crying out loud and you're drinking hot chocolate?!?! Even though it's in the 90's outside this sounded SO good to me the other night. Maybe it's the fact that all the Fall and even Winter/Christmas stuff is going up in the stores now. Fall going into Winter is my favorite time of year and just thinking about a mug of steaming hot chocolate makes me feel all warm and fuzzy! I also LOVE the mini marshmallows that come with the package! I'll let you in on a little secret, even though the package says make with hot water, I use milk. It makes it so much more creamy and delicious. YUM!
So what is one of your favorite things?

Why is it so hard?

To not drink soda?! I was planning on trying to finish out the month of September with drinking no regular soda. Well, I gave in. I think I've had two or so since my last post. I've found that it's the hardest when I'm out. At home I'm fine. I make a lot of iced tea (unsweetened, so I add sweetener) and I'm perfectly content drinking that. Maybe what I need to start doing is taking my small thermos with me everywhere with tea in it. That might help.

I'm still doing my swimming. I started several weeks back. The first week I did 5 days, the second I did 4 days, and I'm planning on doing 5 days this week. I feel so much better now that I'm doing this. I feel my body shaping up and I have more energy and drive.

I also cut my hair off on Friday. It's a pretty drastic cut. My hair used to be about my mid-back and now it's not even shoulder length. I don't know exactly how much was cut off, but I do know that there was a LOT of hair on the floor when we were done!!!

Let's see, what else is new this week? Bryan started auditing a class at the Austin Graduate School of Theology. He's really into Biblical studies and this opportunity presented itself, so I'm happy that he gets to do something that he enjoys. The class is once a week for 3 hours until the end of the semester, and he'll continue to audit one class each semester for awhile!

Also, we're going to be having an open house/dedication here in less than a month. (If you don't already know, the house we live in is owned by our church). So we're going to be super busy over the next several weeks trying to get everything prepared for it. The biggest job is now about half over though. Our whole house is saltillo tile and the sealant on it has been peeling pretty bad for awhile now. So, for several days this week we've had a guy here scraping up the sealant and now I think he's done with that, so we just have to get someone in here to seal it again, and for that, of course, we'll have to be out of the house. Something that I'm looking forward to doing (and with the open house I have additional incentive to get off my behond and do it) is planting flowers in both the front and back of the house. I think that it will be fun to do it and the house will look that much better on the outside!! I'll have to post pictures when I'm done.

Tonight's dinner is going to be a simple one of hard shelled tacos and corn bread. Yum!

Day 2....

...of my "No More Soda" deal is here. I've found that as long as I have a pitcher of iced tea made I really don't "crave" soda much. It's when I'm out and about that I have a hard time! Well, anyways, I've made it through 1 1/2 days, so only 23 1/2 more left...

Another thing that has happened this week is all of a sudden Audrey is fighting taking her naps. Once she's asleep, she's out for a good 3 hours, but it's the actually getting to sleep that's taking awhile now. She just sits/lays in her crib talking and fussing for awhile (sometimes a long while) before she finally allows herself to doze off. Kids are so funny!

I got most of the cleaning done that I wanted to yesterday. But of course the house looks like a tornado went through it again. It's amazing how fast that happens!

I have to leave here in two hours or so to go back to work (I already worked this morning). It's only for a couple of hours, but I have to leave an hour before my shift starts because of traffic and then it takes 30 minutes to get home...boo! And then after I get home and get Audrey down for the night I'm most likely going to head to the gym and see if I can get a swim in. Last night I did 28 laps. I love swimming! And I love doing it at night! I find that the time feels like my own, do you know what I mean? All I have to worry about is myself. And it's great to do it at the end of the day, I kind of just feel the day slide off of my shoulders. And then I'm able to come home relaxed and refreshed and, of course, tired and ready for a shower and a good nights sleep!

That's all for now...

No More....

....regular soda for me. I've decided that I'm going to try and not drink anymore regular soda for the rest of the month of September. It is definitely one of my biggest weaknesses, pretty much an addiction! And also it's a lot of empty calories that I really don't need to be consuming. So today is Day 1 of the "No Soda Campaign"! We'll see how I do. I'll keep you updated!

I'm Actually Working Out!!!

So, this past week has gone by in a blur. I was so happy and ready to get back to work, but I didn't realize how much of it there was going to be. I figured maybe 3 shifts at the most, but no, I worked 6 shifts (and ones that are longer than I'm used to, at that) in a 4 day period. I was just kind of in a "go" mode for a few days there. My whole routine went bust!! The only things that I managed to stay on top of was my new workout routine and I managed to keep the house looking kinda decent.

This weekend was great though! Bryan has been off since Friday at about 1:00pm. He had yesterday off since it was Labor Day (it was also his birthday!), and he went ahead and took today off too. But sadly he goes back to work tomorrow. =( I've enjoyed having him home, but I know that this is part of the reason it's been hard for me to get back into the swing of things here on the homefront. Does anyone else know what I mean? I'm just not as good about doing things around the house (such as my normal cleaning) when Bryan is home for an extended period. I really need to work on that...

Tomorrow I will get back on track though. With my trusty FlyLady by my side I can do it! If you don't know what FlyLady is you should go to flylady.net and check it out. I swear by this program! Of course I tweak it so it fits me and my lifestyle, but all the basics of this homecare and organizational site are FABULOUS!!!

Last Sunday, August 26th, I started on a new workout routine. Basically all it consists of so far is swimming, swimming and more swimming!! This is what I did for a few months before I got pregnant with Audrey. At the time I was trying to lose the extra weight that I had gained after getting married. And I swear to you more happened in those two or so months than in 6+ months of dieting and other exercise. Swimming is just the golden ticket for getting my body in shape. I've had a gym membership again for the past several months, but I only swam here and there and most of my workouts weren't very hard. But now I have more drive. I've been seriously thinking about baby number 2 for awhile now and the main thing that holding me back is losing the extra mommy padding that I gained with Audrey! While pregnant I gained at least 65lbs. and I want to be down to my pre-preggo size before we try for number 2! I will not continue to gain weight through each pregnancy. I don't want to be one of those women that never loses their "baby" fat and continues to grow and grow with each subsequent pregnancy (sorry if this offends anyone, but it's how I feel). I want to be a HOT MAMA!!! So anyways, my goal is to swim 5 times a week. Last week I did it even with my long days at work, and so far this week I've done it twice. My goal last week was to swim for at least 45 minutes each time (I do stop for short breaks here and there), and this week I've changed my goals to an amount of laps to do every time. My goal this week is to do at least 25 laps each time (down the pool and back is 1 lap) although today I did 30 laps since yesterday was Bryan's birthday and I had a little extra food!! I really feel great so far! And I feel like I can already see a change in my body, even if it's small. Bryan also says he can see a difference and I know that he wouldn't lie to me. So I'm going to see what happens by my birthday (October 9) and take it from there...I think I'm also going to start taking full body pictures of myself every week or so that way I can see the small yet significant changes. Sometimes it's hard to see them or hard to believe them when you're looking in a mirror, but when you have the week by week proof on paper in front of you it's hard to deny!

Anyways, that's all for right now. Wish me luck on my new swimming (and future baby making) venture!!!

Peace!