The Reorganizing Weekend!

It was a great weekend (at least for me, can't speak for Brian), we got the cabinet that I have been working on for weeks to redo in the house and spent a good amount of time reorganizing items so that the large storage piece (it was originally a buffet) has a purpose and I can stop having things fall on me while baking or entertaining or well anytime!
Here is the quick version (since the first version I wrote might as well have been a chapter in a novel).  The tv stand from the family room became the tv stand in the living room.  The living room tv stand, otherwise known as Brian's desk he made from the fence the hurricane blew down, went up to the green guest room (otherwise known as our expanded laundry room).  The tv in the family room got moved around, along with the other furniture, and now resides on the cabinet I have spent weeks refinishing.  I got the cabinet from my Grandmother as she was preparing to move, but it wasn't our style but I figured high gloss black paint would make anything look better (I was right).  I then organized all of the overflow of wine glasses, platters, and all the little odds and ends in to the new tv stand (it was originally a buffet).  I straightened up the kitchen, since I removed a few things both to the charity pile and to other places and I made the closet in the kitchen (its really a coat closet but we use it as extra storage) in to cake baking and decorating central. Lastly we put the "extra" tv tower in my office for jewelry display, its been many things but its never actually held any electronics!
Now for the good part, the photos!

The new view of my office! I gained a chair as well because Brian now has a small desk next to the sofa.

The tower all decorated with jewelry, I think it looks great there!

I had to revamp the shelves and move a few mementos over.

Well we didn't get a new dog but she insisted on being in the shot, this is the area in the living room!

View from the eat-in kitchen area in to the family room.

The other side of the family room, its much more open to walk in to.  We haven't moved the pictures yet, but we will sometime this week so they are centered on the wall.

You get the idea!

The cabinet, it was a stained cabinet in a brownish tone with brass hardware.

A closer up look of my fab new handles, they are crystals and sparkly! I took only 3 weeks to pick them out :-P!

This is for a few friends who know how nutso I am about organizing and yet I even put black and white liner down (in the drawers is green!)

this may seem like an odd picture to share, but this is my new cake decorating shelves! The closet also houses are 2 extra chairs and the table leaf (in the monkey thing I sewed for it!).

Well thats all, as you can see we have a few more things until everything is settled but its done!  What did you guys do this weekend?

YA! Success... well the start of it at least...

This morning was the first time in a long time I felt like I finally overcome some of my obstacles in the great weight loss adventure!  I have had tons of struggles with losing due to what I like to call "my stomach issues" which more or less translates to IBS.  During which I will get sick for a day or two or a week and be on the couch or in bed the majority of the time, sick as hell and feeling like crap.
I decided to try and figure out why these days (where I felt like I wasn't eating much) were stalling out my weight loss so badly, beyond the obvious lack of exercise and movement.  So I kept a food diary for a few weeks and found on the days I felt good, or at least not like total crap, I ate well, exercised beyond what I needed and got in all my fruits and veggies, took my multivitamin and drank tons of water and almost no soda.  The days I didn't feel well at all, I would eat only very small portions but VERY often.  Obviously my intake was going to be more than I was expending but I had no idea the proportion.  I was seriously over what I needed even for my workout days.  So I regrouped.
I decided to start doing something that has worked for me in the past, the Body for Life for women eating.  It works for me because I don't have to eat a lot at one meal, I can choose my own foods (within reason) and it forces me to eat every few hours (I have a propensity to forget certain meals).  So far so good, but what about those bad days?  I need to plan basically.  I have been lucky to not have a really bad day in about 2 weeks (SCORE!), but when I do, I have a plan to expend all my energy getting healthy snacks ready so they are as easy to grab as the other ones (or rather they just aren't in the house anymore so they are far more difficult to get).
My success however was not establishing all of this, it was FINALLY seeing the numbers fall on the scale AND feeling energized (not confused as some other times when the scale would drop 10lbs one week and then gain 12 the next)!
How are your goals coming along?

Fixing one of the things that just bugged me...

There is one thing in this house that has simply bugged me since day 1, the border in the kitchen.  Now I have a feeling it bugged me more than anything because I took down a border and wallpaper similar in our last house and then only had a few short months to enjoy it.  Then we buy this house with a border in the kitchen and its not far off, same colors, same type of styling.  I would say if you are looking through a book of borders these were likely to sit right next to each other and would never enter a house if I had my way.  So I got a bee in my bonnet and decided that before we headed to VA last weekend I would go ahead and make sure it was down. the walls fixed and repainted.
So I did, or shall I saw we did.  I would have been happy doing it by myself (B. serious did NOT want to do this project), but I ran in to a few small problems, the first one, I do not have go-go gadget arms and several of the locations (above the fridge corner and the corner of the main cabinets) were just a smidge (or maybe a foot) too far away, so B. had to do them (or I suppose I could have done my precarious perch on a ladder and the cabinet and hope for the best, since he didn't seem to think that was the best of ideas he pitched in).  We got the entire border off in about 2 hours, it was 2 layers but came off more or less seamlessly.  There was one large spot that had to be repaired where I could NOT get the border off without damaging the wall.
Then the unfortunate reality set in about 2 minutes in with this project, they had painted up to the border and farther.  As a matter of fact they had painted after the border was installed (there was a bit of overlap).  I was mad, but mainly only because B. was right.  Luckily for us this paint was flat enamel so it would likely blend well when retouched and they had left us almost 1/2 a gallon of it.  So over the next few days I patched the walls as I had time and then finally on Thursday evening got to sanding and then painting coat 1.  B. helped out with this as well, mainly for his long arms but also because I think he realized it meant not hearing how much I hate the border :-P!
In the end the border is gone, the walls aren't damaged and the color blended nicely.  It looks so much nicer too!  We finished the last coat Friday morning and then hit the gym while the paint dried, came back and cleaned up before birthday and fathers day celebrations in VA with my fam!  It looks SO much better!
Here are a few pictures of our project: (sorry about the bad exposure I just grabbed our point and shoot while I had a free hand...

Before hand:                                                                          

After! (a quick snap right after taking down the tape and heading out the door)

Blogs I love!

Pretty much every day I spend some time reading a few blogs and there are certain ones I am sure many of you follow but that are ones I would love to aspire too.
So here they are:
younghouselove.com- this is a young couple who DIY most of their home projects (they do this for a living now), they share every step of the way and are quite funny in their posts.

thepioneerwoman.com- this is a woman who lives on a ranch and shares everything from what they do everyday to just things she is thinking about to recipes she makes her family. Love her!

catalogliving.net- this is just funny, they take catalog pics and make captions for them!

postsecret.com- love these books and love that I get a new dose of secrets from people each week, I need/want to submit some but am terrified!

I also follow friends and families blogs but these are the ones that stood out to me today! Hope you are having a great day and enjoy some new blogs!

Shopping! ....and budgeting

I love to shop! Well I am female and its something I have always enjoyed doing with my mom and my friends.  Its a great feeling when you find that perfect piece whether its for you, your house or someone else (or their house).  Its fun to imagine what you'd buy if cost weren't an issue. My twice or three times a week at Target wasn't really doing that anymore, granted they put in groceries so most of the time it was to pick those up, but overall I was going way too much!
However recently I have found myself less inclined to shop, Target stock may be decreasing due to my now self imposed 1 trip a week to Target (yes only 1!).  I have never been good at saving or waiting patiently, for anything for that matter, but especially with shopping, so why now?
Well over the past few years while B has been working all around the world on various projects, all of the house bills and budgeting has fallen to me.  Now at first this was cause for many panic attacks and terrifying ideas of how badly this would get screwed up, and yes that was just me, I am sure B had his own attacks but well I didn't ask.  But after a few months I did manage to figure out some system that worked for me and get all the bills paid on time or on direct pay (love this!) and was able to figure out how the budget SHOULD go.  However implementing that budget has been FAR more difficult than its conception.
For a while we had months that we just threw caution to the wind and didn't watch our budget at all, now most of you gasp at this, but these were times where I was stuck in places like Kuwait and China, where either I didn't have the ability to get things back here or wasn't interested in items (or heck they were so cheap its ridiculous) or it was China and everything is REALLY inexpensive and so buying 10 of them is still cheaper than the same thing in the US.  But what it did is help us postpone working the kinks out of our budget.
We are now to the point of settled at our new location and are able to work those kinks out, and its going to be painful!  We are starting with our grocery bill, for 2 people its RIDICULOUS! Now this is mostly my fault since I do 95% of our grocery shopping and I do love really nice cheeses and fillets for dinner.  What I am realizing is that's a really expensive way to live and doesn't leave as much money for other things.  So I am working on getting a good handle on it, hopefully I can finally succeed this month!  The other big thing is our eating out, its crazy, we love to eat sushi and I have found a great place, but even for a lunch its around $60 a time.  Needless to say we are going to do our best to find some local places to try that don't break the budget and stick to sushi as a treat.  We have also re-implemented our "rule" of only 1 lunch out per week and 1 dinner out per weekend.  Hopefully this will allow us to cut back just a bit on our spending.
So I just thought I'd share whats on my mind, do you guys have budgets? If so how do you find you stick to them? Whats your trouble areas?

My Latest Killer Workouts

Lately I have been doing these killer workouts from bodybuilding.com.  They aren't meant to make you huge to be a body builder, just good hard workouts that will kick your butt.  Basically I do 4-6 exercises per day (4x per week) and I do 3 sets of 8-12, I am suppose to keep the weight at a point where that is all I can do, not a rep more.  So far so good, I have done pretty well and paid the price the next day each time with being sore and tired.  I am pretty excited about it overall, but can't help but realize that my numbers are SO much lower than what I did in college.  Now for me, I graduated college 7 years ago, its so insane to think that by the way, because I remember it so clearly.  During college I loved the gym, a lot of my friends came from hanging out the gym and I had a fabulous workout partner that would not allow me to quit, skip or anything else, it was GREAT!  My 1 rep maximum's were fantastic too, my bench was around 180 in my junior year, which was definitely my best year as far as lifting went!  Now I am struggling at around 80 pounds, now granted I am not just doing 1 rep, I am trying to do between 24 and 36 of them but still its quite the jump.  So I have decided one of my goals is to get a 1 rep max of at least 150 back.  I would like to do this by the end of the year, so hopefully these workouts that really push you hard on the weights will help.
If you want to see what I am doing here is the link: http://www.bodybuilding.com/fun/womans_lean_sexy_bible.htm
As of right now I am just eating healthy and not following their nutrition program.  I am also not doing their version of cardio, but mostly because I enjoy classes at my gym and playing volleyball for most of my cardio.
My other "fitness" goals are: to be able to run a half marathon, to lose weight (i'll spare you the number) and of course to get my lifting numbers up!

On a complete side note, yesterday I was lifting (calf raises to be specific) and picked up 40lb dumbbells, and the guy working out near me was like are you sure you can lift those? It's always a nice feeling to show a guy you can lift nice and heavy weights!