A Little Catch Up

Only 9 days to Christmas!  So much to do and so little time.  So much has been going on so I am going to do an update in a list form:

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  This is my last week of work before Christmas.  I am off all next week and will be doing LOTS of traveling!  I will be visiting my grandparents, my parents, Jeff's parents and some family in Alabama.
  
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  Holidays are hard when your family is so far away.  My parents are 6 hours from where we live and the husband's parents are 3 hours.  The only positive note is that his parents is the half way point to mine so it makes it slightly easier but for a lot of miles on the car!
  
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  I recently won a giveaway from Pepperoni.  I'm so excited!  It is the first giveaway that I have ever won.  I am thinking about doing one in the future but I need to figure out what to give away first.
  
  
  
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  I am done school for the semester!  I finished last Thursday and now just waiting for my grade to be finalized.  I only have 2 more classes left and then I will be an MBA!
  
  
  
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  I am almost done with Christmas shopping.  Just a few presents left.  I still am not sure what else to buy the husband.  I had plenty of ideas but my mom took one and my mother-in-law took some of the others.  So back to square one!  That is what I get for sharing my ideas. 
  
  
  
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  My kittens have found the Christmas tree.  The new thing for Ollie to do is see how far he can climb up the tree!  I also have some wrapping to fix thanks to some nosy creatures!
  
  
  
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  The holidays and yummy food are not friendly to my figure.  This week we have went to dinner with friends, I had a Christmas party for work today, another party tomorrow and then I will be traveling and eating out a lot for the next week!  Not helping with the weight loss!
  
  
  
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  Minus all the traveling involved I am excited for Christmas.  I will get to see lots of family and old friends.  I will be in my home town for 3 days before Christmas and 1 day after and I am booked every day.  I think I will need a vacation when this is all over!
  
  
  
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  My house chores and laundry have taken a back seat to our busy schedule.  My husband attempted to do laundry this weekend and I came home to 6 loads of laundry dumped on our spare bed.  I hope he likes to iron or likes wrinkled clothes!
  
  
  
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  Jeff and I went on a date night a few weeks ago and saw the Blind Side.  I highly recommend the movie.  I think Jeff was a little embarrassed as I was crying at the beginning.  But it is a great movie
  
  
  

Well I have so much to do before I leave to go on all my traveling.  I have so many posts I need to do to catch up including a tour of my Christmas decorations.  I promise to get to it soon!  Have a good one!

Weight Loss

So before the husband and I went on our cruise in September we decided that we wanted to do some kind of workout program.  So after some research of local facilities we decided to go to a place called the HIT Center.  HIT stands for Huntington Intensive Training.  We both wanted to loss weight and get into better shape.  So at the end of September we began our venture at the HIT Center

We did some testing which showed your BMI (WOW-not a number I wanted to see), your daily calorie burn and your heart rate range.  The heart rate test gives you the range that your heart rate should be when your body is putting forth effort (the low number) and the maximum rate where you are to the point you need to stop (high number).  The husband and I share a trainer.  We started with 15 sessions and we are about 1 session away from being done.  The trainer works you so hard that you are about ready to DIE at the end. 

We do cardio, weights, legs and abs in every session.  While a lot of people are fine going to the gym on their own and knowing what to do-this method of working out works best for us.  I would say eventually we will go on our own but the trainers REALLY push you.  And since I know I am paying for it and have an appointment for every session I know that I have to go and can't go home and put my sweats on like I would like to do!

So with that said I am happy with the results.  Of course along with the workout we are trying to stay under so many calories per day.  I am not religious with my calorie counting but I do try.  I have cut out some of my previous bad habits (like my daily sweet tea every morning) and snacking a lot during work.  While I know I could do better you got to do it in baby steps-right?

So this morning when I got on the scale I was surprised at my weight number.  We didn't work out at all last week because I wasn't feeling very good.  But my number this morning was the lowest I have probably been since my 2nd year or so in college.  My original goal was to loose 20 pounds at first.  Of course I would like more, but 20 pounds sounded like a resonable starting goal and would put me back to where I was probably before college and have me feeling better about  my self.  Since the end of September I have lost 11 pounds.  I know that is not a whole lot, especially in 2 months, but for me who hasn't lost weight in years it is.

 I have a ways to go and I plan to work hard at it.  We are going to continue with the sessions and I hope to add a few boot camps in to for good measure.  Some of my pants are getting too big and I feel better.  The hubby has also done pretty good himself.  It does help that we are doing it together and motivate each other.  So may the weight loss continue!

It's Friday!!!

It's finally weekend time and I can't wait!  Tonight the husband and I don't have any specific plans yet.  We might go see a movie or rent one.  I am sure that we will go out to dinner if we decide to go see a movie.  It is nice not to have any exact plans and we can do whatever and just spend the evening together.

Tomorrow I have to be up bright and early.  I am going with a few other people on a day trip to Dresden, Ohio to the home of Longaberger baskets.  I have a few of them and like to find ones that can be useful around the home.  I have one that serves as a tray on an ottoman and one that holds mail.  There is nothing that I am looking for in particular.  I just heard that it is really pretty at Christmas time and I have been wanting to go.  I also hope to make my own basket and maybe get a few liners for a few baskets that I have that don't have one.

So Saturday should be fun but tiring, so on Sunday I am sleeping in!  Nothing else really on the agenda.  I do hope to do some school work and the gazillion loads of laundry that are waiting for me!  Hopefully I can curl up on the couch and watch some Christmas movies!

Hope you have a great weekend!

Tis the Holiday Season

Oh how I LOVE Christmas music. I could listen to it forever. I love shopping and hearing the Christmas music in the background. Or traveling and listening to a station that only plays Christmas music and hearing all types of Christmas songs.

Growing up I have fond memories of singing Christmas hymns in church. I sang Do You Hear What I Hear for several years as a solo. To this day it is still one of my favorite songs. I love all types-anything from Silent Night to Jingle Bells to Santa Baby!

I also LOVE Christmas movies. I blow up my DVR this time of the year. I still have movies on there from last year. My favorite thing to do is to curl up on the couch and watch several Christmas movies in a row. Lifetime and Hallmark have them ongoing this time of the year. This year one channel (I can’t remember which one) even did a count down to the 25 days of Christmas so they were showing the movies before Thanksgiving!

Last years I watched the movie, Christmas Shoes, on Lifetime. It is a great movie and if you get a chance to see it, grab the tissues! I have several movies on my list for this year including Four Christmases which I hear is funny.

What are your favorite Christmas songs and movies?

December?

I am having a hard time believing it is December!  It seems like I was just opening presents from last year.  This is going to be a busy month-both at work and traveling.  As much as I LOVE fall, I also love the Christmas season-the smells, the food, the decorations and spending time with friends and family.

Luckly I have gotten most of my Christmas shopping done this year.  And most of it is also wrapped!!  I still have some decorations to finish up with and we still haven't put lights up outside and I would love to get to that tonight.

So as 5:00 is now here, I think it is time for a bowl of hot chicken noodle, some Christmas decorating and watching the Biggest Loser with the husband!

Happy Thanksgiving!

I can not believe it is Thanksgiving already!  The husband and I will be leaving early this evening to begin our Thanksgibing traveling.  First we will be driving about 4 and a half hours to my Granddad's.  We will have Thanksgiving tomorrow with him and my parents and then make the 3 hour drive the husband's family to have Thanksgiving dinner with them.  The rest of the weekend should be pretty relaxing.  The husband is going to hunt and I plan to do some reading and diubg some shopping with my mother-in-law.

I have so much to be Thankful for:  A wonderful husband, a great family and extended family, my health and the health of my family, a home, a job, 2 precious kittens who have become our children, great friends and so much more.

I hope everyone has a great Thanksgiving, eats way too much and endulges in that extra piece of pumpkin pie!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Yummy Food!

So many weeks ago I said I would post on the ship side of the cruise.  I am now getting ready to do just that.

The food was so yummy!

As I posted before, they had a Johnny Rockets on board!

We also ate at the fine Italian restaruant, Portofino,onabord and it was AMAZING!

My pasta course between the many other courses

The hubby's pasta course

The main course

Dessert

Cruises are also famous for thier buffets.  We had a night time buffet one night and they displayed some of their food sculptures.

We can't wait to go on our next one!

Being Productive

First, I hope if you had the day off yesterday you had a great one!  I ended up being pretty productive.  I did not leave the house all day long and actually stayed in my lounge clothes all day.  But I was productive!  I ended up doing 6 loads of laundry and putting it away, cleaning the kitchen including the inside of the microwave, cleaning the bathrooms, straightening up the whole house, doing some organizing and of course some relaxation and catching up on the DVR. 

Since yesterday was my scheduled day off I also have today off since it was a holiday!  Yay for sleeping in 2 days in a row!  Today I hope to again be productive and get a bunch done for school.  I am thinking about heading to the library this afternoon so I don't get distracted.

We are actually staying home this weekend!  The West Virginia Mountaineers play on Friday night so we will be staying in to watch the game.  Let's hope they pull out a win against Cincinnati!  Saturday I have to work at an outreach event all day and have to leave the house by 6:45am.  But I am excited because it is my favorite type of event.  I am also expecting I will have lots of downtime so I plan to work on my upcoming presentation.  If I get back at a decent hour the hubby and I would like to do a date night.  We haven't been eating out (or limiting it as much as possible) so it would be nice to treat ourselves to a dinner out and maybe a movie.  We have been wanting to see Couple's Retreat.  Anyone else see it?  No plans for Sunday and that's the way we like it!

Well off to start being productive!

Veteran's Day

I wanted to say thank you to all the current active military and veterans out there.  Thank you for putting yourself in harms way for this country.  You are all heros!

In my job I get to work for our veterans.  My favorite part of my job is going on outreach events where I can talk to the women and men of our armed forces.  I have learned so much from them and love to do anything I can to help. 

Thank you again for your service.

Weekend Recap

First, I have been a bad blogger again. I promise to try harder! Second, where did the weekend go? It just flew by. On Friday the hubby and I went to help a friend put together a bunch of Ikea furniture. She has been remodeling a house she bought in the spring and is almost ready to move in. We did three dressers and a bed which took over four hours of steady work. But we had a good time and everything is functionable!

Saturday the hubby at inventory at work and we left around 11:30 to make the three hour drive to his home town. His parents own a small business and I am doing a project on it for my capstone paper. I actually got a lot of it done this weekend and his mom was a great help. It feels great to have the majority of it completed and I don't present until the end of next week. Last night my mother-in-law made a great dinner and we just had a relaxing evening.

Today we went to his parent's business for a little bit and then made the three hour drive home. Tonight I made potato soup for dinner using a recipe I got off a friend awhile back. It is so easy and pretty good.

Easy Potato Soup
1 can condensed potato soup
1 cup milk
1 cup frozen hash browns (the potato chunk kind not the shredded)

Cook on the stove at medium heat for approximately 10-15 minutes or until potatoes are cooked. Remove from heat and let stand for about 5 minutes. Top with cheese and bacon if you would like.

I am going to spend the rest of the weekend relaxing and possible a quick grocery store run, but that may wait till tomorrow.

Hope you had a great weekend!

Clipping Those Coupons!

One of my newest goals is to see how much money I can save and how I can best spend our money. The hubby and I are pretty good with money and also savings. However, we do not have a budget per say and I think we can spend too much on things like groceries and eating out. I am trying to be better with our money and also doing whatever I can do to help reduce costs so we can put more into savings each month and also paying off things like our vehicle and student loan.

I have cut coupons for awhile but a lot of times I forget I have them or we are out and decide to go to the grocery store and I don’t have my coupons. Well I have found that couponing can save you a TON of money, especially if you match your coupons to store sales. This has been my recent quest.

Over the weekend I was visiting my cousin and his wife started putting her coupons into a 3 ring binder. I have seen this before and remember thinking to myself that those people were real serious couponers. I got behind one in line about a month ago when Kmart was having their double coupon weeks. The lady ended up spending right over a hundred dollars when her original bill totaled to around $270.00 (I can’t remember the exact costs). I was in coupon envy! That’s a lot of money!

So I decided that I was going to make a coupon notebook. You use:

· 1-3 ring binder
· plastic baseball card protector sheets (as many as you think you will need; each sheet has 9 slots
· dividers

(note:  my notebook looks like this but this is not mine-it is a picture I found on google to give you a visual!)

I divided all my coupons out into categories and then started filling my protector sheets. Each slot got one coupon. If I had multiple coupons I would use the same slot. I then put dividers between each section (heath/beauty products, cleaning supplies, frozen foods, baking, etc). It is a nice visual of the coupons you have and it makes it so easy when trying to look through ads and seeing what is on sale and matching it to your coupon.

I happened to have everything on hand so I didn’t spend any money out of pocket!

I am also considering doing the envelope system where you put a certain amount of money in an envelope for things like eating out, groceries and gas and you only spend what is in that envelope.

Any other money saving ideas?
November is a new month and I am going to see how much extra I can save!

MIA

So life has just been crazy and I have been a bad blogger recently.  It has been between 8-9pm before we have had a chance to eat dinner all this week.  I also think when it gets dark earlier it makes the day seem so much shorter!

Not much is going on here.  We are traveling this weekend to vivist my cousins and Aunt and Uncle in Cincinnati, OH.  My cousins have 3 children so it is always busy and fast pace in their household.  I think my husband and cousin are going to take the 2 older children to a hockey game while his wife and I take the youngest and go shopping!

Well off to get some homework done before my lunch break is over.  I have class tonight but am having Mexican first with one of my best friends-YUM!

Vacation Cont.

So onto Day 5 of our cruising adventure.  We had a 8:00am arrival in Antigua.  The hubby and I slept in just a little and when we got off we decided to take a tour around the island.  A cheaper way to do this is with a local taxi driver.  I think we got a 3 hour tour for like $15 a person.  We went with about 6 other people in a 15 passenger van.  We got to see some of the sites and then he stopped at a beach and the hubby and I took a jet ski out (however, I have no pictures of this).  I have been several times before but Jeff had never been.  I drove and I don't think he was a huge fan!

A view from the side of the road

A resort along the beach-do we say PARADISE!

Me and the hubby on the beach

And at 5:00 we were setting off to our next adventure-St. Maarten!

When you arive at St. Maarten you have to take a water taxi in order to reach most of the action.  The first thing we did was find a place that was renting segways.  And man were they fun.  They take a little getting use to but we did a tour along the boardwalk and had SO MUCH fun!

Don't be jealous of our yellow hats!

Segway + Beautiful Background = FUN

No hands!

Like my outfit?

After the segways we did some shopping and had lunch.  If you are looking for some jewelry it is a great place.  There had to have been over 75 jewelry stores on one street!  It was a laid back day but lots of fun!

The last port of call was St. Croix, US Virgin Island.

In St. Croix we took a taxi to the beach and did some walking around the pier.  Again, another kind of relaxing but nice day.

The water is SO clear.  You can be in the water up to your shoulders and still see your feet at the bottom!

Hubby enjoying a cold drink

Me and the ship

Pretty beach

After we left St. Croix we headed back to San Juan for departure. 

Cruise life has 2 sides-the port side and the ship side.  I have showed you some of our adventures in each port, my next post will include a few pictures of our ship life!

Vacation-Next Stop

Our next port was Castries, St. Lucia.  We LOVED St. Lucia.  So pretty!  I had booked a tour prior to leaving for our trip.  I was a little nervous about it because it wasn't through the cruise line, I had just found it online but the reviews were good.  I was not disappointed because it was one of the best tours I have ever been on.  We did and saw lots of neat things including stopping at a banana plantation, going to a local waterfall, driving and stopping at a drive in volcano, eating some of the local food and going to a small beach for people who wanted some time in the beautiful waters.

Here are some pictures of this beautiful island!

Tasting a local grown banana

A banana tree.  They bag the banana bunches to keep them from getting bugs.

Walk in volcano

Pretty beaches

Next stops Antigua, St. Maarten and St. Croix.

Vacation

So I am FINALLY getting a chance to recap on our cruise last month.  My husband, Jeff, and I left out of Puerto Rico for a 7 day Southern Caribbean cruise aboard the Adventure of the Seas.

We had a tiny little room with a balcony on the ninth floor.

Bad picure but you get the gist.  The opened door on the left is the tiny bathroom.

Bed.  Door to the balcony is on the other side of the curtain.

We spent the first full day of the cruise at sea.  After a day of traveling and very little sleep we spent a lot of the day relaxing.  We did attend a cooking demonstration.  It is amazing what they can make out of a watermelon.

Carving away!

A bunny!

Along with a buffet style dinning room on board, Windjammer Cafe', and the main dinning room, the ship also had 2 other dinning efforts to include a fine Italian dinning option, Portofino, and an American favorite, Johnny Rockets. We tried them both out throughout the week. On the first day we went to Johnny Rockets. We had a great server and the good was great!

Big burgers!

An even bigger burger

The first night ended with formal night so we got all dressed up!

Me and the hubby

When we got back to our room we had a towel bat waiting.

It was a great first day. 

Next stop is a 8:00am arrival in Bridgetown, Barbados. We spent the morning in Barbados by taking a taxi downtown and looking at some of the shops.  During the afternoon we took a tour to a local beer distillery rum distillery.  The tour included samples at each location including the local favorite, Rum Punch.

First stop was to Banks Beer.

Second stop was Mount Gay Rum. 

Overall Barbados was not our favorite place.  Maybe it would have been a little better if we got to go more into the island but sadly the negative thing about a cruise is you only have a limited time at each port and by 5:00pm we were sailing to St. Lucia.

More to come on our vacation soon!