Time to Open Up

by

So, I usually don’t get super personal on here, I like to keep it to recipes and sometimes pictures of my dogs. But I’m going to share something kind of personal with ya’ll today. I’ve been struggling with my weight for a while now and I can’t seem to get it under control. My sister and I were doing really well with going to the gym everyday and eating fairly healthy. Then we got lazy for a few days which snowballed and now it’s been a while since we’ve been. I’m really upset about it and then when you add that guilt to my stress about school and money, I’ve been self-medicating with food. But last night when I couldn’t sleep I got on Pinterest. I saw a pin for Taralynn McNitt’s 500 calorie laptop lunches. I was surprised by how much food 500 calories allowed you when you ate the right things. I woke up determined to do better for myself. My health is important to me and I need to make it a priority. I had a nice bowl of oatmeal for breakfast, had a measured serving of Italian Herb and Parmesan Chex Mix for snack, and let me tell you about lunch. I had 2 oz deli turkey meat, 1 oz deli roast beef, 3 oz baby carrots, a small orange, 1 oz medium cheddar cheese, and 5 Ritz crackers. For a grand total of 405 calories. I need to get some more fruit and maybe a few more veggie options to get my calories closer to 500 tomorrow, but it’s an improvement for today. For snack later I’ll probably have some broccoli and cauliflower with a tablespoon of ranch dressing. I don’t know about dinner yet, I’ve had a busy day of cleaning. I’ve been drinking nothing but water and I’ve been tracking it all on SparkPeople. If you are trying to lose weight and want an easy way to track calories, water intake, and so so much more definitely check out SparkPeople, it’s amazing.

I just wanted to get this out and share with you guys that I’m struggling, but I’m going to be proactive about it and make some changes. I need to do this for myself. I will TRY to blog about my progress and how everything’s going. I will also try to share some tips and tricks I learn along the way.

XoXo Kayla

Catching Up

by

Boy, I fail at this blogging deal. Sorry. School has been getting progressively worse with each quarter, and this quarter is no exception. My medical terminology teacher this quarter seems to have forgotten it is only a three credit class. We’re doing more work than in my 5 credit classes put together each week. It’s pretty ridiculous. 

I did take some time out for fun last night. My dad participated in a charity basketball game police officers vs the fire department. It was a lot of fun. I don’t usually like basketball, but I got into the game and it was exciting. I’m hoping he participates again next year, because his team lost (Boooo!) and he needs to redeem himself ;).  Besides going out for that last night, I’ve been pretty much a homebody only leaving to go to school. I’ve been swamped with homework and readings, so I haven’t had much time for anything else. Unfortunately due to the work overload my house has been pretty neglected. So yesterday I woke up in a productive mood and did a ton of cleaning. Got all of our laundry cleaned and dried (including bedding!) so now I have to find time to hang and fold everything. That is my least favorite part of laundry. If I had it my way I would dress out of a giant heaping basket of clean laundry, but my husband doesn’t appreciate that. My friend K wanted to come hang out, so I warned her that she would be watching me clean, but we could watch a movie and talk while I cleaned, so she came over. It was fun, and so nice to see her. We’re both so busy that we haven’t had a chance to catch up in a really long time. We’re planning an epic girls night out soon and I can’t wait. I’m thinking we’ll have to go somewhere with a great bar, but that isn’t solely 21 and over, so my 20 year old sister can come as well. 7 more months sis! 

I’m making a slow cooker ham and potato soup tonight. It’s supposed to be really cold for the next few days, before getting super warm, so I’m taking this opportunity to make soup. I love soup so much. I’ll share the recipe and our review tomorrow. I’m crossing my fingers that it’s a good one. We recently discovered that ham makes my husband physically ill (we finally put two and two together after this happening every time he eats ham…) so, I’ll make him so chicken and something on the side. But my sister and I will be eating the soup, so I’ll share both of our thoughts. See ya tomorrow!

XoXo Kayla

Our Meal Plan for This Week

by

Whew boy, school is kicking my behind. This is our meal plan this week:

Garlic chicken angel hair pasta with roasted vegetables

Crispy cheddar chicken strips, roasted vegetables, and black beans and rice

Breakfast for dinner. Eggs, bacon/sausage, and hashbrowns. Maybe pancakes.

Tacos and refried beans.

Chicken Fried Rice.

I’m Sick Way Too Often

by

Well my meal plan went to crap, because I got sick. Yes, again. I’m feeling a little better, so I’m making the slow cooker chicken and broccoli. I’ll let you know what we thought about it tomorrow, and hopefully I remember to take pictures later. 

I just remembered that I did make the tuna casserole. I forgot to get pictures, but let’s be honest. Tuna casserole looks really gross anyway, so who cares. I’ll share my recipe later this week. 

Meal Plan #1

by

So I’m procrastinating on my homework and I figured I would work on my meal plan instead. So here goes…

I’ve been “pinteresting” a lot lately and I’m really excited to try these recipes. The items with links, I’ve never actually tried, but when I do make them I will take pictures and share our thoughts on it. I’ll share my recipes for the other items when I make them! I’m hoping next week to make slow cooker Honey Sriracha Chicken, Pork Shoulder and Black Beans, and a few other delicious things! Anyway, hope this helps to give you some ideas if you feel like you’re in a rut. 

XoXo Kayla

 

Just Checking In

by

Things have been pretty routine around here lately. The hubby goes off to work, I’m either at school or doing homework, and the dogs are always around- sleeping the day away. I’m taking one class at the school with 3 online classes.The 3 online classes are keeping me extremely busy, but I’m really liking being able to work on things at my own pace. The one thing I don’t like: two of my three online teachers grade things almost immediately so I know what my current grade is, which is awesome. However, my third teacher is 3 weeks behind grading things, so I have no clue where I stand, and it drives me crazy. I’m a little bit obsessive compulsive about things like this so I really can’t handle not knowing what I got a test 3 weeks ago. 

One of the diamonds in my wedding ring is loose, so I can’t wear the ring until it gets fixed. My grandma let me borrow a ring set for the meantime, but it turned out to be too big. I didn’t want to lose her rings, so I bought a pretty, but totally fake set online. They came today and I’m pretty happy with it. The funny thing is, my husband has been working out a lot lately, and he went outside in the dark to find our dog Lucy, because she wasn’t coming when he called her. At some point he flung his hand and his ring went flying off. We grabbed a couple of flashlights and luckily it only took like two minutes to find it! I’m glad we don’t have to pay to repair my ring AND replace his! 

I just wanted to say a quick hello, since I haven’t even started my meal plan for the week yet. I’m hoping to get that done tonight or tomorrow. I promise it will come soon. 

XoXo Kayla

Well Hello There!

by

Wow. So I kind of just disappeared for a very long time. I’m really very sorry about that. School and work consumed my life. But the good news is, I’m not working anymore. Yeah, that lasted long. I quit, I needed to focus on school. More good news, I’m taking on face to face class (that means we meet in person, btw) and THREE online classes. So since I spend the majority of my day life on the internet anyway, I’ll post here more often.

I don’t think I mentioned before that my stepmom changed schools, so while I used to volunteer in her kindergarten class, I am now volunteering for 5th graders. Yikes, now I have to answer hard questions about math and stuff. I’ve been really busy with school so I haven’t made it in much this year, but I am really enjoying the older kids, although I really do miss the little ones.

Okay, so I’ve rambled enough for one post. My thoughts are that for the time being most of my posts will be my menu plan for the week. In those posts I’ll link to the recipes I’ll use if they aren’t one of my own. If they are one of own of course I’ll share it as well. If I’ve never tried a recipe before I’ll take pictures and share any changes I made and our review of the meal. Let me say that I hate when people make huge huge changes to a recipe and then rate it. If you make one small change then alright, but you can’t change half of the recipe and then share your thoughts, it’s no longer the same recipe at that point! It drives me nuts. So I promise I won’t do that.

XoXo Kayla

The One Where I Ramble About Random Shows…

I’m back! Life got crazy there for a while. I’ve been working a lot, and I’ve also been busy with school. I haven’t been cooking much, so I don’t have any recipes to share right now, but I plan on fixing that soon. We’ve also decided where we’re moving when the time comes, I’ll share that news when we’re a little farther along in our plans.  We’re cutting our food budget waayyy back, and we’re selling as many household things as we can that we no longer have use for, we are saving as much money as we can. It’s hard. It’s weird to think about living in a new place. We will have to use our navigation system to get to the store, the bank, and probably back home again. I’ve lived in my city for pretty much my entire life. I can get pretty much anywhere without a second thought.  Where we are going apparently gets a lot of snow in the winter. We get maayybeee an inch in the winter if we get any at all. And, I’m just going to come out and say it: I hate snow. I know, I know. I might as well say I hate chocolate. Oh, wait, I DO hate that, too. Snow sucks. I hate driving in it, walking in it I always feel like I’m going to slip and fall. It’s cold and when you play in it, you get wet and sometimes dirty. It’s gross. But I will get used to it. I’ll have to, but I will not drive in it. I refuse.

What else is going on around here? Well I’m in deep with my Grey’s Anatomy addiction again. I can’t help it. It makes me laugh harder than almost anything else I’ve watched, it also makes me cry harder that almost anything else I’ve watched. For those that watch it and are caught up (don’t worry those who aren’t caught up, no spoilers), I just finished season 6, and I bawled like a baby. I obviously knew the outcome, I can’t avoid ALL spoilers when I’m watching the show what, 4 years after it originally aired, but it was still gut wrenching.

I’ve also been addicted to Hart of Dixie. I am obsessed with small towns and southern living. In fact if I could live anywhere in the world, I would live in Stars Hollow. Yes, I know it’s not a real town, and no, it’s not even in the south. But I love it. Everyone knows everyone else. Everyone watches out for everyone else. They have festivals. You can walk anywhere in town. I. Love. It. My husband? Not so much. He will not live in the south, and he doesn’t much care for small towns. Because everyone knows everyone else. It’s a source of contention in our marriage. Not really. But kind of.  Anyway, back to Hart of Dixie. I am not a fan of the love triangle going on right now. I am not completely caught up, I just finished season 2 on Netflix. I neeeeed to find a way to watch season 3, like now. I’m going to come out and say it. I love George Tucker. Zoe needs to snap out of it and love him too. And he needs to just suck it up, admit he loves her, and they need to get married. I need a life. I recognize this.

School is sucking this quarter. I can’t handle Spanish 2, but I recognized this too late, and now I’m stuck. I hate it. I dread it every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Ugh. You know it’s bad when I prefer math over another class. Yeah. I’m also extra stressing, because I’m working this quarter and it’s hard. So hard.

Pizza Monkey Bread

by

I love pizza. I could eat it 5 nights a week and be happy. Since it’s not very healthy, I try to limit it to once every two weeks or so. It had been a while since we had pizza so I had a major craving, but I wanted something a little different. So I decided to try pizza monkey bread. It was amazing. So delicious.

Image

Please excuse the crappy phone pictures, it’s the best I can do right now!

Ingredients:

2lbs Pizza Dough (I used store bought)

Pepperoni (Or your favorite meat pizza topping)

Mozzarella Cheese cut into cubes

Pizza Sauce for dipping

2 tablespoons melted butter with garlic and Italian Seasoning mixed in

Directions:

Preheat oven to 400 degrees F.

Take a large marble sized piece of dough flatten in between your hands. Layer a piece or two of pepperoni on top, stick in a cube of cheese and pinch shut the dough. Dunk it in the melted butter and drop into bundt pan. Continue until all of the dough is gone. You can wait to preheat your oven until this step and cover the bundt pan for half an hour and then bake. this will give you dough that is a little less puffy. However, I let mine sit for maybe 10 minutes and we like it just fine. Bake for 30 minutes or until the top is very brown, but not burned of course. Serve with pizza sauce for dipping. Enjoy! We usually eat this with a salad on the side.

XoXo Kayla

Working Gal

by

Well guys and gals, I have some news. I got a job! It’s nothing big, just a part time job as a cashier at a grocery store. I’ll still blog, some day it will be on a regular basis, but for now my goal is for at least twice a week. I just haven’t been sitting down long enough to blog. I started my yoga class this week, had orientation and my checker pretest, among other things to do. Because working and trying to find a new house isn’t enough along with full time school, I’m going to be starting a new diet. It’s not really a diet necessarily, but I really hate it when people say “It’s not a diet, it’s a lifestyle change…” Anyway, I’m going to start juicing again. I’m planning on juicing 3 times a day, for breakfast, a mid-morning snack, and lunch. Then I’ll eat a small meal of fish or chicken and some veggies and quinoa or something. In addition to my yoga class, I’ve been trying to get to the gym as often as possible… We’ll see how that goes with work and school. 

I’ve made a few things recently that I’m excited to share with you guys. The first is Pizza Monkey Bread. It was delicious. It was a little time consuming, but let me tell you, it was worth it! I also want to share a different recipe for crock pot roast that we tried the other night. It was so juicy it fell apart when you touched it with a fork and the flavor was delicious. I have a final tonight and I start work tomorrow, so I will try my hardest to share these recipes and pictures either Sunday or Monday. 

I hope life is treating you all well! 

XoXo Kayla