Outlander: New Series

New Blog - Check it out NOW!

Hello There!

One of my closest friends and I have decided we're going to do weekly food challenges to keep our meals interesting.

Please check out the new blog we created just for this and if you feel up to the challenge, we encourage you to participate with us.

NEW BLOG! 

A Cuisine Adventure

Walking through an Ice Castle

January 25th is a significant day. This is the day Rob asked me to be his girlfriend. He went old school when he asked too. He held my hand and looked me straight in the eyes. "Will you be my girlfriend?"

I said yes. 

I think the reason he did it this way is because we both talked about how much dating sucks. That people are always wearing their "personality condoms," as my mother called it. It's true too. People always put on a show. But when you really get to know them, the condom comes off and you can really see who they are. 

We just decided to be real from the get go. No games, no pretending; just the truth of who we are. And for this, I think that is why we lasted. It wasn't always easy. But at least we knew who we were "in bed with." 

To celebrate the achievement of lasting 6 years without killing each other, or better yet, just breaking up, we kept it simple. We relaxed all day and then went to dinner. We tried out this new burrito restaurant that was good but a little too pricey (I.M.O.) for a burrito. 

After we were stuffed, we drove to Midway to see the Ice Castle. 

A Fire Dancer Before Going Inside Blowing Fire From Their Mouth

Two Fire Dancers Blowing Fire From Their Mouths

The Ice Carver

The Ice Castle

Inside the Ice Castle

Top of the Ice Castle

Me

Rob

For $10 a person, I can't say it was worth that much. I was expecting more, or for it to be bigger. It was neat though and I'm glad we went. We both said that if we were to go again, we'd go during the day to see more. It was very crowded, making it hard to take pictures. 

And about us, 6 years later our relationship is easy now. We get along very well and even though we're married now, I know this is gonna work because we are a team. As the theme song on Married With Children goes...."You can't have one without the other...." That's us for sure. 

What's Crack-A-Lackin' for January

Happy January! 

HAHA! Okay, I'm a nerd. I'm okay with that, really. 

I just want to give you a quick round up for the month. Other than cooking great meals, I've been extremely busy with school and work. I have also managed to fight off a horrendous cold that lasted 3 weeks. Yes, I did say 3 weeks. 

Other than dealing with a cold, going to work, and doing school stuff, January has been good. We have started a fitness challenge at work, which I'm in charge of. Somehow I'm usually in charge of these types of things. 

This months challenge is the Stair Climbing Challenge. For every flight/floor of stairs you take, you get a point. For every floor on the elevator, you subtract a point. 

For the first week, I was at 117 flights of stairs. I thought for sure I was winning, but when my boss gave me his, I was in shock. He had 140 flights. He smoked all of us. 

It's a good thing we are doing the challenges as teams of 3 and daily averages. This way people will have a chance to win. 

I'm most looking forward to getting back in shape. I've gained a little weight in the last few months and I'm not thrilled about it. I have narrowed down some of the reasons: portion sizes are big enough for a 200 pound man, eating too many snacks throughout the day, and not exercising. I want to feel more athletic again.

STOP RIGHT THERE! 

I don't want to hear your opinion about my weight gain, so don't even try. You don't have to look at the naked me every day and you don't have the same body image issues that I do. 

So don't even go there. Worry about your own before commenting on mine. 

I just needed to add that because for whatever reason people think that telling me to stop saying certain things about myself helps my feelings. Their response to my feelings does not help at all and rather make me annoyed with the person saying them. I want encouragement, not your opinion on this particular topic.

Anyway...

This fitness challenge was imagined with the intent to encourage each other to have better health and to make better decisions throughout the day. So far 10 of us are all doing well and are still excited about this challenge. There are only 2 who probably don't want to participate but I didn't really give them a choice. Shame on me, I think I'm a dictator at heart.

Next month's challenge will start on February 1st. The challenge is to consume the amount of water that is right for your body per day. This is a lot harder than you would think. The points have not been decided yet how we will keep track of this. Suggestions? 

Moving on...

Rob and I will be going to the Ice Castles in Midway and I plan to post about this adventure as soon as I can. 

http://valorphotography.blogspot.com/2011/01/midway-ice-castles.html

Have a good day!

New Recipes to Try!

Hey everyone! So glad you could stop by.

I am posting some more recipes that I have enjoyed. 

I have really found my place in the kitchen I think. I'm starting to understand more terms, styles, foods, substitutions and I love it. Cooking really is therapeutic for me. I just wish I had time to cook every single day. 

Healthy French Toast

In-a-Hurry Chicken Curry

Spicy Sausage Pasta and Greens

Broccoli-Potato Soup with Greens

Minestrone

Outlander First Look Trailer

Speak Outlander Lesson 1: Sassenach

Speak Outlander Lesson 2: Craigh na Dun

Speak Outlander Lesson 3: Mo Nighean Donn (+playlist)

First week of school down

Well, this week started rough and ended rough. There was no smoothing things out. Let me explain. I started getting sick last week. I tried to not push myself to much so I could recover from the cold quickly.

This crap going around is relentless. I slept a lot last Sunday. When I woke Monday and Tuesday, it felt like I had a sinus infection. By Wednesday, I had a very phlegm type cough. Thursday I had class in the evening, so I felt obligated to tough it out even though my energy levels had been drained to a dangerous low point.

And now it is Friday.

Fridays are wonderful. Today though, well, today I didn't want to get out of bed. But I rolled out and got dressed. I barely combed my hair and went to work. I felt like I had to go. By 11 though, I couldn't take anymore. I called Rob to pick me up.

After I got home, I laid in bed. I've been in bed all day. And honestly, I don't feel better. In fact, this cough of mine is worse, it hurts, and my voice is very raspy.

I had to cancel my bunco plans tonight which doesn't make me happy. I couldn't deal with the idea of getting those ladies sick with whatever this gumbo is. And this gumbo....it doesn't feel like it's going anywhere for awhile. UGH!

But beyond being sick, I started my classes. I feel quite overwhelmed with my theory class. That class requires tons and tons of reading. I love to read...but when some of the material is dry, it's hard to keep my eyes open. I will get through this.

I have another statistics class this semester too. I was not looking forward to this class. I don't like statistics. Instead of feeling negative, I went to class feeling neutral. I'm glad I did. My teacher is very entertaining and seems to know how to put things into words that make sense. So maybe I'll excel in this class. Let's hope so.

With these weekly events, I didn't cook much. I did make a minestrone soup that was more like minestrone pasta. And I made a lasagna that was wonderful. Before I post the recipes though, I want to make the soup again and try to change it a little so that it's actually soup like.

Stand by mates...

New recipes added - CHECK THEM OUT!

Hello Blogging Friends, 

I have just added new recipe pages. I recommend you take a peak and maybe try one. 

Zucchini and Ground Beef

Simple Scones

Power Kale Salad

Pavlova

Sweet and Spicy Italian Sausage and Sweet Potato Stew with Coconut Milk

Spicy Tuna Salad

If I can get my friends (YOU, READER, I'M TALKING TO YOU) on board with doing weekly cooking challenges, I am so down to try it.

What I mean: 

Each week, pick a new type of recipe to try. This can be ethnic or dietary, but just something out of our normal recipe box, but we all have to cook a recipe from the same genre for that week.

Then share our results and give feedback. 

Benefits:

Trying new stuff 

Expanding our kitchen skills 

Having good conversations

So many benefits, do I have to list them all? 

Happy New Year

Truthfully, there was a time in my life where I did not believe that earth ... humans to be specific, would be alive past the early 2000's. I'm not sure if it was the private school that I attended that influenced this thought or if I just couldn't visualize life existing past a certain point. As a young person, it was weird to think this way, but that's how I am.

Regardless of that negative thought, I'm very happy that we are still strollin' along on this beautiful planet and it doesn't seem like we're going to kill off anytime soon.
THANK GOODNESS! 

There is so much I want to do and see before I go to my next life (wherever that may be) and I feel like every new year is my chance to make small changes and goals that will put me one step closer to accomplishing my bigger dreams. 

I do think most people feel this way, and yet we all struggle with sticking to our plan that we were so ambitious about to begin with.

Last year I failed to do my vision board which was quite disappointing. Every day I would look at my vision board from the prior year and feel annoyed with myself. Why had I not made the time to do that very important thing that encourages me every day?

Sample Vision Board from Google Images

Truth be told, when 2013 rolled in, I was feeling frustrated, depressed, and probably a whole lot of angry at everything.

Back story:

Christmas 2011 was amazing but I felt something was missing. I had gone to the doctor in December (2011), whom was pressuring me about children because of my age. Okay, that sounds weird, but it's typical of older women, specifically in Utah. I went home with her words and really thought about what she had been saying.

When Christmas came, that was when I knew I wanted children. Christmas wasn't fun for me anymore. I have everything I want or need, I wanted to celebrate the holidays with kids, make it about them and shower them with love. I talked to Rob about this epiphany, then he said he was waiting on me and he didn't want to push it. What a relief.

One of My Main Goals for 2012 was to Conceive

I created my vision board for 2012 for all the things I wanted to accomplish or receive for the year, one of them being to get pregnant.

I think it's safe to say that I accomplished at least 50 percent of the things on my vision board for that year and usually every year that I do it I accomplish at least that much; which is why I love doing it.

But as the year was coming to end, I found myself having more and more hormonal problems. It was so upsetting to see all of my friends get pregnant with ease and I just continued to bleed. I know that is T.M.I., but for you to understand how painful this was for me you have to know the details.

I've always known that I had a hormonal imbalance. When I was 13, I was put on birth control because my periods were lasting 2 weeks at a time and were quite painful. Birth control seemed to help just fine and for the majority of my "period life," I have been on birth control to manage the problems. 

In 2007, I found myself at the doctors office with a lot of issues. They thought I had an ectopic pregnancy and did an ultrasound. They found a gigantic cyst on my ovary and told me that I had to be on the pill to help manage this. NEVER did a doctor tell me why I was getting these cysts. So I just went about my business; after all, I was in no hurry to have a kid.

But here was 2012, Rob and I just got married, we were trying to have a baby, and there were a lot of changes in our lives. I thought some of the issues with my hormonal problems were stress related. I'm sure stress makes the symptoms worse, but that wasn't my problem. 

When the 2013 new year came up, I was depressed. I was bleeding 14-19 days at a time, only to stop for a few days, and then start it all over again. I was emotional and frustrated. 

I would cry alone every time a friend would tell me her exciting news (that they were expecting) or they knew someone that was. And believe it or not, this was quite often. I knew a lot of people who got pregnant that year.

A friend recommended acupuncture. I went but my hormonal issues weren't going away. I will say though, acupuncture is very relaxing. Every time I left the office, I felt so centered and at ease with things. Maybe I didn't go long enough, but that's a different story.

Needless to say, I didn't want to do the vision board. I was angry and hurt.

I was diagnosed with PCOS, polycystic ovarian syndrome, early in 2013, when I had more than one ultrasound and my hormones tested which showed that they were really backwards from where they should be. 

The Difference Between Normal Ovaries and Polycystic Ovaries

It crushed me to find out that I wasn't ovulating and if you don't ovulate, well you can't get pregnant. PERIOD. No chance of having a baby on my own. 

The doctor said I would have to try Clomid to get pregnant and if that didn't work, then we would have to go to a fertility specialist.

I remember sitting in her office bawling my eyes out, not knowing what to say, just that I needed to talk to Rob and decide what is best for us right now. She teared up too and told me about her past issues with trying to get pregnant. What a great physician, so willing to be personable and try to make things seem better.

The next day I called her office and asked to be put back on birth control.

That was a really low point for me.

I tried several different types before I found one that I felt alright with, but I've been battling an acne war ever since. I HATE my hormones.

Rob Totally NEEDS This Shirt! He's Been Very Supportive.

I won't say that 2013 was a bad year. It wasn't. 

I work at a place I'm really happy at. We went on many trips. I graduated from the community college and started school at the university. I received a promotion at work. 

It was a good year. 

But the hormonal issues have been a heavy cloud following me around. 

Even if you can't see it, it's there. 

It hurts when I hear that someone is pregnant, but I'm slowly starting to feel like waiting is the right thing for us and it's easier for me to not feel those feelings of being lost and jealous. 

***Don't misunderstand me, I'm happy for my friends when I hear their news; I'm angry at my body for not knowing what to do with itself.

What a mistake it was though to not do the vision board for 2013. Throughout the year, I regretted not doing it. If I had made more goals to focus on for 2013, then maybe the news of PCOS would have been easier to deal with. 

So this year I put my big girl panties on and just did it. 

My vision board is simple this year, which is good. I included things about gardening, organizing, cooking, healthy skin, transformation, thankfulness, and being more creative with my writing and photography.

I feel really good about the small goals I did for myself and feel like I can accomplish them. I plan to post about these goals and find encouragement from my friends and readers here. 

This year WILL BE different. 

I turn 30 this year and feel it's really important to stick to my goals on a daily basis. I'm counting on you guys to be my accountabilibuddies to keep me in line and I will do the same for you.

2014 GOALS:

• Follow a healthy diet, eating vegetables daily and eating real food (less processed junk)
• Cook daily and get more creative with it, start coming up with my own recipes
• Clean daily 
• Organize my home, de-clutter the junk
• Clear up my acne (hopefully through natural ways)
• Do more gardening - more specifically, plant some veggies and landscape gardening
• Get more creative with my writing and photography, let my true artist out
• Get A's in school
• Transform my brain, pushing myself to the limits at keeping my brain fine tuned
• Be thankful
• Making wrongs right
• Plan a trip

These goals honestly seem more enjoyable and up my alley of hobbies than real challenges. Well...except for transforming my brain and making wrongs right; those seem challenging. But the rest I feel I can do.

To my readers:

• Have you thought about doing a vision board? 
• Have you set your goals for the year? 
• How do you plan to follow through on your resolutions? 

For me, I plan to follow through by being aware, looking at my board daily, and changing my habits now.

The Sky is the Limit