Wonderful Wednesday - Go Fetch

I pretty much have the coolest cat ever!  Okay I know it sounds like I'm turning into one of those crazy cat ladies......well maybe I am!  Ha ha forgive me, most people have children and normal things to post about on their blogs...well I have a cat, deal with it!  So he has found a new love for a balloon he found!  Only this one balloon will he play with!  He has been doing this for days and will do it all night long, it's hilarious and I don't know where he learned it!  Basically our cat is a dog!  It's great, it's like having the best of both worlds!  Enjoy!

 

 

Terrific Tuesday - Temple Blessings

Today I have definitely felt the blessings of going to the temple!  It's amazing how much one small change or act can affect your life.  We had felt like we were in limbo for a long time and would complain about not knowing what to do or where to go.  But we never really sat back and analyzed our life of what we were missing and we were not really do our part in order to move forward!  I have seen such a change even in the last week as we have committed more and more to be continually reading our scriptures and saying our prayers!  The same goes for going to the temple!  Our biggest worries lately have been where to live, jobs, car situation, and finances.  We had decided we needed to move so that we could keep Rango, but we just were not finding any place that made sense, felt right, or that we could afford.  The more and more we tried to find something or make it work, we just felt worse about it!  So over the weekend we had a strong feeling that we need to stay where we are.  It really does make so much sense and we will have such a great opportunity to save and get ahead if we stay at the apartments we currently are in.  So we felt good about that, and so happy that we had made a decision on at least one of the things plaguing us lately....but this decision brought up a hard issue I didn't want to face...getting rid of Rango.  I know it sounds so silly because he is just a cat, but I have grown quite attached and he is basically our child at this point in our lives!  We spent all night researching places and families he could go live with and I ended up in tears after every one!  I just couldn't believe he would be gone!  When we woke up in the morning I got ready for work and Eric just said he had a strong feeling that he should try and talk to the head of the housing and be honest.  Psh honestly ha ha who woulda thunk it! I admire him for being such a communicator that day and stepping up and going.  He simply had a meeting with her and explained our situation, then asked if she could make an exception on pets just this once, and you know what she said?  YES!  Can you believe it?  I was shocked!  How could things be working out for us like this? Wow what a blessing!  It's such a relief to know that we don't have to stress about packing and moving, or having to bust our budget to get some dodgy apartment.  Now we can stay where we have already been settled, AND we don't have to stress about Rango being there!  We can live in so much more peace knowing we were honest and he has permission to stay there! YAH! 

 

After that it was like everything else fell into place.  Our truck finally kicked the bucket, and though we were hoping for more time we had been saving and planning for several months for this occasions.  This was the first time we had car troubles that I felt calm and not "holy crap what are we going to do."  We made a spontaneous trip tot he Mazda dealership to do a test drive to make sure the car we had been researching for the last 8 months really was the car.  Our plan was to solidify our decision and come back in a month or so when we had finished saving the down payment.  Well.....like I said everything fell into place and we ended up leaving in a car!  We were getting a steal with the interest rate plus all the discounts on the car.  Plus we were working with an awesome sells guys that got us to exactly the payment we wanted and waiting the extra month for a bigger down payment really wouldn't have made a difference.  This way we don't have to stress for the next little while of how I will get to work! 

 

 So here is the beauty

 

It's a Mazda cx5 and I love it, plus it's the perfect color!  I still am working on a name for her, any suggestions?

Finally we both have  figured out a direction for school are are set to be going in the fall, AND Eric finally got all the info to Chevron and they are officially ready for him to start working on June 3rd! Yah I'm so excited to feel some version of settled and be able to sit back and enjoy life a bit more and let go of my anxiety!  I can't wait to see what else life has in store for us in the next few months as we try to continue to improve ourselves and reach our goals.

 

Motivational Monday - Recipes and New Menu

I think I did pretty well on last weeks goal of hitting the gym and pushing my cardio!  I made it to the gym everyday and did 60 minutes of cardio almost everyday!  I wasn't the best at getting up in the mornings so the whole two a day gym time didn't happen, but I made sure to make time after cardio for some abs or some weights!  Over all I felt really good about the gym and really good about the meals last week.

 

So Monday Eric wanted to cook and did these cilantro lime steak fajitas!  They were super tasty (though the picture doesn't look that great.)  I put mine on some artisan high fiber, carb balance tortillas.  I don't normally do red meat, but he picked a healthier steak and I tried to make other choices to pair with dinner that kept it on the healthier side.  Way to go Eric on the awesome dinner!

 

Tuesday was Grilled Salmon with zucchini, onions and mushrooms.  I found a low carb, low sodium terriyaki sauce that I used a little bit of to flavor the salmon! mh mh delicious!  I like to make extra of dinner and be able to take them for lunch the next day!

 

 

Wednesday was suppose to be spaghetti squash, but Eric didn't wait out for me to come home from the gym and he had already ordered pizza!! What a little butt head!  I did cave to temptation and had some pizza with a salad hoping to balance it out.  The next day I had GAINED 2 POUNDS!  Yikes teaches me to try to stay stronger against Eric's temptations.

 

Thursday was spaghetti squash with turkey meatballs and mushrooms!  I love the Jenny O pre made turkey meatballs because they are so much faster and easier than making my own, plus I can already know the nutritional value. I use an organic sugar free tomato sauce, and sprinkle a little bit of low moisture skim mozzarella cheese on top!  TIP do not over cook your squash. It will be mushy and make everything watery.  Under cook it and it will keep cooking plus with the sauce on top it will end up at just the right consistency and crunch!

 

Friday and Saturday we were out of town.  I'll be honest, I made some awesome choices, and I made some not so awesome choices!  Oh well everyday is a new day to wake up and try again!

 

Then Sunday we had some friends come over.  I forgot to take pictures, but I made Bruschetta Chicken with salad and onion roasted red  potatoes!  I also made this red velvet poke cake!  I did not have any seeing as it's not so diet friendly, but I did make it with sugar free pudding, and fat free whip cream to make it alittle bit healthier, and I hear it tasted pretty good!

 

So I know last week I said I had an awesome menu planned for this week, but I'm afraid I fibbed and that menu is going to be pushed one more week!  We have a short week plus we are going out of town, so I'm needing to use up the groceries we have in the house before they go bad.  So this is another wing it menu and nothing that spectacular.  This is what I have planned for this weeks menu (really exciting I know...ha ha NOT)
 

Tuesday
Italian Baked chicken, Steamed Asparagus and Twice Baked Cauliflower
 

Wednesday
Taco Stack
 

Thursday
Oven Roasted Chicken, Yellow Squash and Tomato Bake and Side Salad
 

Friday
out of town
 

Saturday
out of town
 

Sunday

 Grilled Chicken Salad.  Mainly just to use up all the left over chicken from Thursday and all the veggies we have left in the fridge before I go grocery shopping again.

 

As far as this weeks goals go, I'm just trying to maintain the gym!  I'm getting a late start and since Monday was a holiday I got busy and didn't go to the gym!  So I'm going to make sure I'm sticking with the at least 60 minutes of cardio and then some abs or weights!  Then I'm just focusing on lean proteins and lots of veggies and water!  I'm gearing up for the weekend of traveling.  We are heading to Austin for a wedding, so hopefully I can do really well this week so I can allow one cheat this weekend, but for the most part I'm hoping to keep some self control so this weekend can be more successful than the last!

Sacred Sunday - Summer, Sandals, and Pedis!

So Summer doesn't officially start until June 21st, but it is in full swing here. You would think I'd be happy right?? Well actually it's kind of depressing!  The winter time its easy to not miss Utah, who wants to scrap their car every morning or deal with snow in April, but the summer time?  I miss Utah every day!  Here it is starting to get bloody hot and we are barely at the beginning!  I miss having green grass and a canyon to go to!  I miss going to the lake, or even just enjoying walking around the block. It gets so hot and miserable here, it gets hard to even want to walk outside!  Oh well we have a lot of great things here that Utah doesn't have so that's what I'm going to focus on! One thing great about summer no matter where your are, is getting to wear sandals and getting pedicures!  That is one summer staple I have already started! So on that note and to celebrate summer in other ways I'm going through all my shoes and clothes and cleaning out the closet.  I'm pretty good about getting rid of clothes but not shoes, I hold on to them forever.  So I purged myself of almost 7 pairs and restocked with sandals, sandals and more sandals!  I'm pretty happy about it ha ha and it's one thing I can look forward to about the heat!

 

Sensational Saturday - Help!

I find myself yet again coming here to find help and inspiration for this poor head of mine!  The time has come for yet another cut and color....well it really should have come about 3 or 4 months ago, but I'm a procrastinator, what can I say!

 

I have a few dilemmas this time around that are preventing me from being able to make a decision.  So I have been trying to grow my hair out and this is probably the longest it has been since Jr. High, but it is still not long at all.  My problem I find now though is that my hair is just too thin and too fine to be long.  How ironic is it that PCOS causes you to have unwanted facial hair or other things because of the excess testosterone, but yet it causes male patterned baldness? How sucky is that!?!?! I have noticed my hair thinning rapidly in the last year and am trying to decided what to do. 



SO I need your votes, should I just cut my losses and go short and realize it's my destiny to have short hair?  Or is it worth it to spend the money and get extensions to help thicken up my hair so I can experience that long hair I am always shooting for?


this is kind of the idea of what it could be like with extensions.

Thoughts, comments, stories from you own experience?  I would appreciate any help or advice you can give me!

 

The main reason why I was shooting to have long hair is because I have always wanted a pixie cut. It is on my bucket list and has been for a long time, but I'm waiting till I'm thin to do it, because being fat and having my round face just doesn't work with a pixie cut.  So I'm hoping that some time next year when I'm down some poundage I'll finally  be able to do my pixie cut, which means if I want long hair, now is the time to do it. This is the pixie cut I have decided on! 

Crazy I know, but I fell in love with it.

 

 

Maybe that's why I can't decide what I want to do.  It's because I already have a cut I love and whatever I do now feels more like a median or limbo phase just to get me to that next step.  Okay so where I am at is thinking to do like a long bob if I go shorter or do extensions to keep it thicker.  What y'all think?  Here are some cuts that I like

Eric loves this one and actually really likes the color too!  So I'm keeping this as a color option!

not sure if this is too short for my chubby face!

LOVE this one and the color as well!

 

 

and here are some colors that I really like. 

I love the caramely colored highlights in this one!

 

 

 

Okay people now is the time for your input.  What should I do?

Funday Friday - Lubbock Adventures

I am a few days behind on my goal, but hoping to get caught up today, so please forgive me for the overload of updates on my oh so very boring life!

 

This weekend we were able to get out of Midland for a little bit and have a wonderful time!  Friday was one of my best friends birthday.  We met up with her and her family for some dinner, and FINALLY got to officially meet her husband.  We ate at this awesome place called Zookinis.  I had never heard of it, but they had an awesome salad bar I hit up, and they even offer gluten free and whole wheat pasta, and do chicken or turkey burgers.  They have a bunch or really cool healthier options, so I'm sure Eric and I will be hitting it up again.

 

After dinner we were FINALLY able to go to the Lubbock temple  We had been there to do baptisms with the youth and a few other things, but had never done a session, so I was super excited.  Taylor's (Kim's husband) parents are temple workers and that night he as doing sealings.  So we were able to do some sealings before the session and that was so awesome!  It's so nice to have a reminder of all the promises Eric and I made when we got married!  After the session it was fun to run into so many people who knew my parents and they all had such wonderful and fun things to say about them!

 

After that Kim and Taylor had to head back home because Taylor worked in the morning!  Eric and I decided we weren't quite ready to go back to Midland, so we got a hotel and stayed the night!  It was nice to have such a chill evening and day with nothing to worry about. We slept in and lounged around for a bit.  Then we headed out to get some SUSHI! Yum.  I used my cheat day for the sushi, but after the fact found out they led you do brown rice and a few other substitutions if you want!  Darn!  If I had done that, I wouldn't have had to use my cheat day, but oh well it was still tasty, and now next time we are there if I want sushi I know how to get it and have a much healthier version,.

we are super classy!

 

After that we went shopping to a bunch of local stores and the mall!  After that we headed back home and had a wonderful evening together playing some video games and watching some wonderful movies!  We even had a huge rainstorm that night that called for flash flooding!  Eric and I did some dancing in the rain which was just what the doctor ordered!

Throw Back Thursday - Cirque De La Symphonie

Last Saturday Eric and I got to go to a really cool concert thanks to my Grandma.  She got us tickets to see Cirque De La Symphonie!  We got to see the amazing symphony my Grandma always talks about, plus see some awesome circus performers. 

the orchestra

 

ah a little dark

 

lets try some flash! AH BRIGHT!

They of course had a classic clown that did some awesome juggling and brought a lot of comedy to the show. 

 

 

Then they had a guy who did a cool twirling act with a box.  They had a gymnast/contortionist that was AWESOME!  They brought out two tall stools and had  them close together and she did all these crazy bends and movements on them. SWEET!  But my favorite was the rope performance and then the silk performances!  They had a guy and a girl to a duet performance on the silks which was awesome! 

 

 

 

I decided that's what I want to be when I grow up.....MOM I'm running away to the circus!  All I have to do first is lose like a million pounds, get super fit and join circus college! It could happen, right?

 

Wonderful Wednesday - Bedroom Inspiration

Once upon a time there was a 14 year old girl still sleeping on the bunk bed her and her sister grew up on.  One day her parents were buying a new  bed so their old one got passed down to her.   Wow a queen size bed, boy did this girl feel special!  Many long years this mattress cradled the young girl to sleep.  Then one day this girl grew up and met her prince charming.  The mattress still being sturdy and faithful traveled with her into her new life......okay cheesy enough for you?  What I'm getting at is Eric and I have been sleeping on a mattress that is VERY old and still using the cheapo metal frame I had when I was 14 years old.  Now don't get me wrong, it's been a great bed and has worked very well for us, but we decided it was time to grow up and upgrade!  The mattress is seeing it's final days, and I'm not going to lie, I'm READY for a real bed frame!  Well it's final days with us.  It will now be shuffled to our guest bed frame.  That mattress we have on there is even OLDER and not so nice.  We bought a memory foam pad for it when Eric's parents came that helped it, but it's still no bueno.  So now this mattress plus that pad will be even better for our guest bedroom!  So with it moving on to bigger and brighter things and it being memorial weekend and there being lots of sales going on we decided to go shopping!  We finally buckled down and got us a brand new mattress and what was even better you might ask?  Well we got the bed frame FREE because of a deal going on!  SAWHEET DEAL!

 

 

Eric and I had a struggle over which bed to get.  We did fall in love with a beautiful wood one that had a canopy and everything!  Now that would certainly be my dream bed, but was a little out of our price range.  So we had to look at the beds that were included in the deal.  I have always wanted an upholstered bed and they had one available.  This is the one we chose.

 

Eric still wasn't sold on it at first because it is so low to the ground, but I think it will be a nice change and I have always wanted a bed like this!  I told him this way we can use this bed for several years, and then when we move into a house this one can transfer to a guest bedroom and then we can finally get the whole bedroom set he wants.  I just really didn't want to even think about lugging that big wood canopy bed around when I know we have several more moves ahead of us!  So I think this bed will be great while we are in smaller spaces and moving around!

 

Now my quest is to decide the theme of the bedroom!  We have had red and black ever since we got married, which I like, but I'm ready for a change.  A few months ago we bought a new bedspread because ours had ripped and we needed a new fitted sheet and bed skirt.  Well this entire bed in a bag was cheaper than buying just the new sheets so we said what the hey! 

 

This is the original room we had in Provo

 

 

This is what we first set up in Midland

 

now with the newer temporary bedding which I actually really like.  So I will probably keep it and use it somewhere else.  Or maybe I should stick with a theme were I can incorporate this bedding we already have.

 

Now I need help deciding where to go from here!  I think I really like the idea of navy, coral and grey together.  I even thought about doing navy, coral, aqua and grey!  Lets just throw all my favorite colors in there!  I was worried Eric wouldn't like the coral idea with it being kind of pink, but one of his favorite colors in orange and he sees it as more orange than pink and really likes it.  Here are some pictures of where my inspiration is coming from.

 

this is the color scheme I'm leaning towards, but the coral will be a little more orange than the pink here.

I haven't found a bedspread I love yet, but I love the navy and aqua together!  I think I want to go more neutral on the bedding though.

Maybe since Eric loves the canopy idea I can make my own like this!  Anybody who knows me should know I love canopies and have been making fake ones on my beds my whole life!

I really like the clean and simple feel of this room. I'm wondering if I should go in a more neutral direction like this?  I don't know though I think I might need more color!

Love having fun crazy pillows like this!

Out of all the pictures I showed Eric, this was his favorite!  It shocked me that he liked this bedding, but he said he loved it!

This is one of my FAVORITE rooms I have seen so far!  I would not do it exactly like this, seeing as Im' pulling inspiration and elements from several different areas, but this picture is one of my favorite executions.  I love the white bedding with decorative pillows and a quilt, or down comforter at the bottom!  I love the pattern on the bedding, I love the plates above the bed, oh man I just love it!  I think I'm definitely leaning toward the bedding looking like this, with a neutral for the main bed and then doing decorative pillows and a quilt in the color.

This is another example of going more neutral and not so many colors.

I love the aqua and grey walls!  This is exactly what I want when I am somewhere I can paint.  I want grey walls and then one accent color wall!  I love the Ottoman at the end of the bed as well and LOVE the rug!

I would love to have an ottoman like this or some sort of bench at the end of t he bed

I love this bedding as well.

 

I love how just the aqua looks with the neutrals as well.

 

Well what do y'all think?? Do you like this color combo? Do you have any different ideas or suggestions? Let me know! I would love all the help I can get!