Black Belt Living

Come Together...

Right now!

Today is my side of the family's first ever family reunion and it's here at my house! Busy day ahead, the crowd is arriving around 2pm. We've got family in from all over, including Dallas, Chicago, Pittsburgh, Charleston South Carolina, and a bunch of other smaller cities here in Ohio. Lots of fun indeed!

I'm hoping to take a bunch of pics today. Some of these folks I haven't seen in years and some that Andy has never met.

Must run, it's six hours until party time and I have things to do! First up, stash the clutter!

Home Improvement

We've got a pretty house, but it's falling apart. It was not built well whatsoever. We've known for a while that we were going to have to bite the bullet one of these years and sink some serious coin into some home maintenance, and it's time. Our house is 20 years old and all of our neighbors have been making similar repairs. Unfortunately, our builder turned out to be one of those that builds homes that are pretty to look at and the poor construction doesn't show up until around years 10-15.

Of course, I'd love a master bath remodel and a kitchen upgrade, but before we do that we are doing the following in the next year or so:

New windows
New roof
New skylights
Fix the chimney that's falling off of the house
New gutters and gutter toppers
French drains in the back yard
Fix grading in the back yard
New wood trim around the front door and up near the roof
Fix some insect damaged areas
Fresh exterior paint.

Bleh! Nothing like spending a fortune on things that people won't even notice! I HATE spending money like this on projects like these! We started getting estimates yesterday and I've been prepared for the worst. The numbers are staggering! ::::::: gasp ::::::::::

...So, it's another busy day today. It's Tuesday, so I don't need to be in the office until 12:30, but I still have a busy morning. First of all, EAT A GOOD BREAKFAST. My tummy still hurts from whatever it was that hit me the last few days, but I'm hungry so I'm going to fix that first thing.

I have to go back to the landscape/garden store for more dirt, gravel, mulch and river rock. I'll do that when the gutter/window cleaning guy comes in today to do his thing, around 8:30. I have to make veggie pasta salad for 80 this morning because it's my day to cook for Tender Mercies. I'll take that down and drop it off at the shelter around 11:45. I have a bunch of phone calls to make, including trying to arrange somebody to clean my house on Friday. I have a few photography projects to get out the door and I had some of my scrapbook work picked up by a magazine and that needs to go out this morning as well. Oh, and I need a shower sometime in there! Tonight when I get home from work, we've got more landscaping work to do as long as it doens't rain (it's supposed to). I think that's about it. I'll be glad when this week is over.

I heard that it's supposed to rain on Saturday. Did I mention that we're having about 40 people over for my family's reunion? NOT GOOD. I do not want it to rain!

That's about it for me today!

Letters from Camp

My father-in-law is celebrating his 75th birthday this week, so all of my husband's relatives are in town to celebrate the occasion. Needless to say, I'm not around my computer much. I do hope to get some pics this afternoon however.

In the meantime, I thought I'd pass along two letters I received from S who is away at camp for two weeks. While she's a chatty thing and has lots to say face-to-face, she's pretty concise when it comes to letter writing.

"Hi Mom and Dad,

I like our cabin. All the girls are nice and fun. It's really hot but I like having a fan. For dinner we had pasta, bread sticks and ice cream. I miss you.

Love S."

+++++++++
First, a little background....Iceman is the horse that she rode at ranch camp last year. She was looking forward to riding him again this year.

"Dear Mom and Dad,

I didn't get Ice Man this year. He is dead. His owner whent on a trip. When she got home he wouldn't eat. After three days he died.

Love S"

Poor thing, she adored her Ice Man! I bet there were lots of tears.

Dragging!

Whew, this week is kicking my tail!

My typical day this week.....

5:30 - out of bed
5:45 - morning coffee/read paper/check email
6:30 - shower, get dressed, and make my bed
7:15 - eat breakfast, pack my lunch, get my shiznit together
7:45 - leave for work
8:00 - start my work day
12:15 - gym workout and lunch
1:30 - back to work
6:20 - leave work
6:35 - get home, check email, play with the dog
7:30 - leave for taekwondo class
9:25 - home from taekwondo, eat a bowl of cereal for dinner, watch tv and chill for an hour
10:30 - night night!

I'm TIRED!

I think I need to eat more. My new job is certainly high energy, and I find myself literally RUNNING around the office at times. Today I hardly sat down, ever. I'm finding that around 4:30, I go totallly brain dead and start to hurt all over. It occured to me that maybe I'm not eating enough. So tonight I checked my "before 4pm calorie intake" and found that I was under 400. No wonder I lost all brain function! Tomorrow I am determined to eat a bit more protein and do better.

Life sure can throw you curve balls, can't it? Six months ago I would have never thought I'd be doing what I'm doing now. It's crazy, it's fun, and hopefully I'll end up smaller and fitter thanks to my new routine!

If you're out there, please check in! Lately I feel like I'm just talking to myself. I hope that's not the case. If you are reading this, thanks and have a great day!

Focus, Focus, Focus!

It's Tuesday! New office hours for us, so while I'm working full time this week, I'm off until noon today ~ yay! It's a good thing too, because I seriously need some groceries. It's rough doing South Beach with no veggies and no lean protein.

Speaking of SBD, I think my "experiment" with not weighing every day is over. My fear with not stepping on the scale every day was that it would cause me to lose focus and I fear that it has.

I weighed this morning and I'm up 3lbs. from my lowest, which was a day or two before I left for Florida on 6/23. Given vacation and business travel, I'm okay with that. But I need to reign things in and get focused again. I don't want to spend the next six months kicking the same five pounds around.

So starting today, I'm going to weigh every other day and I'll be back to planning meals for the week, and writing down everything I eat, regardless of what it is. I actually do it online at www.sparkpeople.com. That works for me. Basically, it forces me to think about SBD a few times/day in a positive way. It reminds me of why I'm doing this in the first place, even if the daily ups and downs make me a little frustrated at times.

I don't want to get complacent, which is always my biggest downfall. I start believing that I look and feel good, and so I settle. The fact is, I still have 30 more pounds to lose and that's a LOT for me. So here we go. Focus, focus, focus!

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Sorry I haven't been around much! I was out of town most of last week and when I got home, we had to get S ready to leave for camp. We also made sure that we did a lot of fun things, like go see Ratatouille (great movie!) and ride roller coasters at Kings' Island. Now she's off to camp and I'm working full time these two weeks while she's gone. It's weird having two childless weeks ~ really weird!

I do have internet access at work, but the biggest challenge is finding the time to use it. With all of the changes, things have been a bit hectic around the office. We're also in the middle of a huge staff turnover, so it seems like everyday somebody leaves and somebody starts new. I guess people really don't like change, especially when it involves their jobs.

Back Home Again!

Whew!

I'm back from Cleveland!

I was kind of dreading that trip, and much to my great surprise, it was GREAT! I had a blast and it went very quickly. I learned a LOT up there, most of my education coming from conversations outside of my classes (which were pretty awful overall).

Needless to say, I'm now QUITE fired up about my new job position and I can't wait to see where our business will be in a year or so from now. I'm so impressed with my boss. I've had a lot of bosses over the years and I can now confidently say that my current one is the best ever. What a great feeling! I love my job so much that I'd almost consider doing it for nothing. Almost ~ ha!

So it's Thursday, and I'm off both today and tomorrow. I don't know what day it is. I don't know what date it is. I need to kick up my TKD practice because I'm testing next week, so that's my latest focus.

On the scrapbooking side of things, I've got a lot of love from some mags this week. That always makes for a good week!

No photos to share today, so I'll put up a few digie layouts that I did during vacation. Digie elements from my friends Anna Aspnes, Danielle Catalano-Titus, Gina Miller, and Jen Caputo.

Happy Thursday, everybody!

Mistake by the Lake?

I'm up here in Cleveland for business with a hotel room overlooking the picturesque Cleveland Municipal Airport and the railroad yards! Oooh, purdy.

I have to say, I've only been away with a bunch of chiropractors for about six hours so far and they're all cracking me right up. These guys are a hoot and if I hurt myself practicing my taekwondo form in my hotel room, I'm in good hands. I might hurt myself laughing....

Home later this week, I don't know if I'll get to update or not. I can see I'll most likely be home with some funny stories to tell! I brought my camera, but no cable to connect to the computer, so you're stuck with a vase full of peonies.

Later!

p.s.....none of you liked my fireworks pics? I'm crushed! I get no love her lately. Waaaah. I might have to post a scrapbooking RAK later to bring you all out of hiding and make you say hello.

Happy Belated Independence Day!

Happy 5th of July!

I've been reminded that I haven't updated in a while. Well the truth is that I've been swamped since we arrived back in Ohio. I jumped right back into big changes at the office and had to deal with everything that had slacked while we were gone. On top of that, I've been given some really nice scrapbooking opportunities in the last two weeks with really tight deadlines, so I've been keeping my head down on those trying to get as much done as possible!

I spent most of the July 4th holiday working on these scrapping projects, but in between thunderstorms yesterday we did get to our friends' house for their annual party, complete with pony rides this year! The rain held off just enough that I was able to take some rockin' fireworks photos. I've put a few of my faves in the slideshow below. If you get an error or it looks empty, try refreshing the page.

I hope you all enjoyed your holiday. One thing I became keenly aware of when I first lived abroad, is how truly fortunate we are to live here in the United States of America. It's not the perfect place, but life here in general is pretty darned sweet.