The Real Deal

I received an email this morning about signing up for a health challenge through my employer's health program. It requires daily weigh-ins, exercise 30 minutes daily, limit alcohol consumption, eating a healthy breakfast and limiting sweets. I already do most of this anyway as part of my Weight Watchers program, except that I only weigh in weekly. I discovered a long time ago that daily weigh-ins were fruitless for someone whose weight fluctuates so much, but to get my points required for our medical insurance discount I'll humor them anyway for this month and a half challenge.

While perusing all the healthy articles on that web site I came across a couple that seemed interesting. One was about food density bases the article on choosemyplate.gov which I'd highly recommend. Remember when our plate consisted of a 6 oz beef steak, huge baked potato slathered in butter and sour cream and a small serving of green beans? (Common, you ALL know what I'm talking about!) well it would look a lot different today if you're following the new guidelines! I won't go in to all that because you can read all about it yourself.

Moving on..... The other article is about the real deal on superfruits. Did you know that the term "superfruits" wasn't even started until 2005? Yeah, me neither! I mean who had even heard of Acai berries or Goji berries back then? Well, unless you were really in to alternative medicine you probably hadn't heard of them. They both make lots of claims about weight loss and fountain of youth, but none that have been substantiated according to this NIH article. Seems that the humble apple will do just fine, thank you very much!

The picture for today's NaBloPoMo post #7 is of my two monitors at work, the two articles mentioned above and my Wichita State University Shocker Tervis cup with some blue fizzy water in it. I usually drink plain water, but my new silicone ice cube tray is creating ice that leaves a white scum floating in my water and that grossed me out, so I threw in an expired blueberry fizzy tablet that's been in my desk a few years.

Toodles!

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My grandson voted before he was born!

Well not really, but he was in his mommy's tummy when SHE voted today, so does that count?

See that sticker on her tummy? Yeah, that's OLIVER!!! I am so incredibly proud of my daughter and son-in-law for making sure that he got to experience voting first-hand even before he could see the ballot. They will make such awesome parents!!! My daughter is sooooo organized these days (perhaps it's her nesting instinct?) that she actually studied the ballot ahead of time and zipped right through that electronic voting machine faster than I could say VOTE! I'm sure she said a few words to Oliver while she was touching the screen like how to recognize a good candidate and which party is truly FOR the PEOPLE (starts with a D folks!)

Is anyone else truly looking forward to being able to turn on the television without having to flip through channels adnauseum to avoid political advertisements and then end up switching to Netflix or Hulu anyway? The NaBloPoMo prompt for today was to say what our first act would be if we were elected president. How about banning all those ads? Better yet, prohibit filling those pockets so deep that they have millions of dollars to spend on all those ads, junk mail and phone calls! I think we could heat a house for the winter with just ONE candidate's junk mail alone! Ok, enough of that. Let's just say that I'll be glad when January gets here and we can move on...

Toodles!

Monday,Monday, so good to me

Silly song just keeps floating around in my head with pictures of those four singers, especially Mama Cass in that short dress! Today is Monday, Day 5 of the NaBloPoMo challenge to write a blog post every day during the month of November. The blog prompt for today's post is: "What are your thoughts about tomorrow's election in the United States?" Well to be quite honest I hope whoever wins does what is right for our country, because no matter what they say during all those millions of dollars worth of ads we've all be nauseated by over the past few months, if they are controlled simply by what the deep pockets and party lines tell them to do, we're in trouble. 

Believe it or not I used to really get involved in politics, or at least in radical advocacy work on my own time while trying to play the good state government employee serving as a Legislative Liaison who wasn't allowed to lobby or say anything contrary to the current administration. Talk about migraines! Yeah, after I figured out that it wasn't just the aspartame  MSG and chocolate that brought them on and finally gave in to the fact that my job and the internal conflicts it was causing might actually be a big contributing factor I gave up all the nasties and have rarely experienced one since. Well admittedly I haven't completely given up chocolate, but have learned that, unlike the stressful job, consuming it in small increments is ok.

So what does all that have to do with my thoughts about tomorrow's election? Quite honestly, even though I still vote and I know that only one vote really CAN make a difference, I just can't get overly excited or worried about who wins or loses because you know what? Life will go on!

Bottom line with me is that I'm more concerned about the upcoming baby shower I'm throwing for my daughter on Saturday than I am about the election. There you have it! Here she is with our empathetic Border Collie, Katie. Our Golden Retriever has also gotten in to the habit of patting Emily's belly. Guess they're making sure Oliver is okay. I love it!

Family visits

Here it is Day 4 of NaBloPoMo and I still haven't committed that acronym to my ever-shrinking memory. Seems the second letter should be an "o" because I want the "N" to stand for November. Anyone else having this problem?

We went to visit my parents yesterday at their assisted living apartment and had a lovely visit with my dad. Mom had gotten whisked away by my niece for her very first mani-pedi. We got to exchange hugs on our way out of the building just before the nurse rushed her down the hall for her insulin shot before supper. She looked beautiful and happy, but I didn't get to take a picture. Here's a great shot of DH sitting in front of the 35th anniversary quilt my sister made.

 

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Day 3 NaBloPoMo Grandbabymoon

Last weekend we were in charge of the "livestock" while our daughter and son-in-law went out of town for their Babymoon. It was their last trip as a couple before their baby is born (due Dec 27). So this weekend DH and I travelled out of town to visit family. I took some pics that represent our night and morning routines. Don't laugh when you see that snore relief box below, but there's something about the air in this house that really stuffs us up, so I thought we'd try those nose strips and throat coating strips. According to DH they didn't work! Any suggestions?

My iPad lap tray with earbuds allowed me to watch another episode of McLeod's Daughters on Netflix while DH fell asleep. Sure glad MIL got a wireless router!

Pretty little painting on the dresser.

This light above the kitchen table gives me a headache. Wonder why?

Guess where we are?

That's all for today folks! Time to get caught up with family and do some shopping in the big city!

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Baby Oliver's Heartbeat!

Here I am for day two of the NaBloPoMo and as promised have a short clip of my grandson's heartbeat. Btw, I finally gave up trying to find an iPad app for video editing, uploaded to YouTube and used their editor. It let me put a word bubble over my daughter's stomach, so other than the preview that I can see below, you can't totally see her stomach. I shortened the video so no faces or other revealing images appear.

Just what is this NaBloPoMo anyway?

I've been noticeably absent on and off for quite some time and would like to get back to blogging again. I must apologize ahead of time to a blogger, Erin, who gave me this idea because I have copied some of the text from her post at Erin Cooks because it's the fastest and easiest way I know how to get the information here. Hey, why recreate the wheel, right? Besides that, she's got an awesome blog that I hope you'll ALLLL hop over to so you can appreciate her talent!

I’m going to give the November NaBloPoMo thing a go. If you aren’t familiar with this particular acronym it stands for National Blog Posting Month. That’s right. If you’d like more info about NaBloPoMo I’d recommend checking out BlogHer’s details and also signing up for Shareaholic’s newsletter. They’ll both be offering prizes and great tips for getting us through this daily posting marathon.

Anyway, I'm trying to learn how to use this Blogsy app on my new iPad and not too sure about it, so will post this now and edit from home later. Today after work I get to hear my grandson's heartbeat during their appt, so hope to share that exciting experience with you!

Ok, I'm back and have managed to put the links where they belong in this post. I really hope that I can at least post a picture, sound, thought or combination of all three each day this month. It's going to be a busy one for sure with all the holidays, baby showers, trips to visit relatives and continued baby preparation, so there should be plenty to blog about! I know, I know, this is supposed to be a blog about my craft room transformation and trust me friends, there will be some of that here too as soon as I can find a spot in my new, much smaller space. My thoughts are moving more towards sewing things for little Oliver and also making use of all that miscellaneous cotton fabric I've been hoarding collecting. Maybe it's high time I drug out some of those gazillion quilting books I've been slobbering over for years and actually DO something with them!

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