Wow... Friday already

So today is Friday and Carl is completing his first week back at school. We have really gotten a good routine down. The alarm goes off at 6, he gets ready and I lay in bed trying to wake up, we both go out into the kitchen by 6:20 and I help him put together some breakfast and get out his lunch that we made the night before, and then Carl leaves around 6:40 to catch the train. Now after that, I usually go into our room and read the bible, come into the living room and work out, shower, get ready for the day and then clean, cook, laundry, watch hoarders (or some other show that is really just there for background noise) and before I know it Carl is already home again. It really is a nice way to spend the day.

I am getting used to being home again and am loving all the alone time :) That is something I didn't think I would ever say, let alone be ok with.... but I like my quiet mornings that are very laid back.

Our diet is going well.... hmm, maybe not our "diet" since we aren't trying to lose weight or anything, maybe I'll call it our change in eating habits. Well, whatever you would call it is going well. Lauren came and stayed one night with us and we grilled boca burgers, corn, and ate sweet potato fries. It was really good and Lauren liked it too. She said she couldn't really taste a difference :D I even got Madison to drink chocolate Silk (but maybe since it was so chocolaty she didn't care what kind of milk it was).

We are looking forward to having a bunch of family coming and visiting (and don't worry, we have a whole bucket of meat for all the rest of you to eat when you stay with us) and are excited for the next month, where every weekend has something fun going on.

HOARDING!!!!

Today, while Carl was at school, I did a bunch of stuff! I watched true blood, read the bible, worked out for an hour, did 4 loads of laundry, VACUUMED the couch (which had Jack and Jez hair ALL over it.... see picture on the side... I know it was really gross, but I promise it looks so much better now ), made dinner, and watched 3 episodes of Hoarders on our Netflix.

It is so crazy!!! These people are insane. The first episode has a lady who has 3 rotting pumpkins in her living room along with meat dripping out of her TWO freezers! I just can't imagine saving food that expired 3 YEARS AGO and her reason for saving it is, "it was frozen so it doesn't expire as quickly." YUCK!!!

Since I watched Hoarders, my couches look fantastic, my dishes are done, and all the laundry is folded and put away. When you are not feeling motivated to clean, just watch this show and it will make you glad for what you have and will REALLY make you want to clean up :)

One week down!

It has officially been a week since Carl and I have gone meatless. I made the best dinner tonight... I wish I had taken a picture of it. I cut up a zucchini from our garden and sautéed it with some garlic, added some chopped green chile, some tomato, and topped it with motzo cheese. We ate that with some really yummy 9 grain toast. I must say that I don't really miss eating meat. The only meat that I might really miss is stuff that doesn't really make you think of meat.

I mean, when I think of "meat" I think of a big red meaty steak or a really juicy BBQ rib, a roast, or grilled chicken breast. I think the meat I will miss the most are things like tuna (a tuna sandwich from subway), ham on thanksgiving, or bacon for breakfast. They are things that I had good feelings about when i ate them. We have decided to give up meat for so many different reasons (and if you really want to know and are brave enough to find out, you can click on this link and see 49 good reasons to be a vegetarian http://www.britishmeat.com/49.htm I especially identify with the ethical reasons) so I don't think I will be eating meat anytime soon, even the things I might miss at times.

On another note, Carl starts school tomorrow and I am not really excited. He is ready and I think a bit nervous but I am not ready. That means that I have to go back to work to save up some money and I no longer get my hubby as a day time companion. I have to be alone all day or work. YUCK! Lol.... I know it wont be too bad and honestly, I think we are both ready to get back into a real routine. We decided to make goals for our life before he went back to school, so today we wrote down what we would like to accomplish and I came up with these:

1.Exercise at least 3 days a week

2. Read the bible at least 5 days a week

3. Cook dinner at least 3 days a week

4. Save at least $500 a month (so we can afford to go to Mexico, visit our friend Karoline next year for her wedding, and save some money for having a baby)

5. Get pregnant and have a healthy pregnancy

- do this by being more healthy in general

- eating less sugar and more veggies

- and complete goal number one

6. Do at least one nice thing for Carl everyday

7. Drink at least 48 oz of water everyday (not koolaid or soda or juice)

8. Read for at least 30 min 5 or more days a week

9. Eat out twice a month or less

10. Visit some family at least every 6 months.

I think these are very nice goals to have and hopefully I will be able to do them and keep doing them! Carl made a goal list too (and he has a bunch more goals than I do!) so we decided to tape them up in our bathroom to help keep us motivated and maybe this will help motivate you :)

"Success is the sum of small efforts, repeated day in and day out."

Robert Collier

Yard Sale!

So today Carl and I had a yard sale. We decided to do this on Thursday so we went through all th boxes in the garage and I put together all the stuff I could live without and we tagged it all. We had a desk, 2 rugs, office supplies, a stuffed horse, some toys (from when I babysat), some books I didn't want, an old picture frame, 2 lamps, pillars from our wedding, tons of pillows from my classroom, a mini fridge from college that I used in my classroom, a microwave I used in my classroom, and just random stuff we had in our garage. We sold about half of it and made $150. We didn't put an add in the paper or anything, just woke up at 6, got dressed, put all the stuff in the driveway, and put out boxes. It was really easy and when we were done we just took the boxes down and drove all of our leftovers to the local donation place. We stayed outside from about 6:30-2:30 but I still feel like it was worth it. We got rid of a bunch of stuff., our garage is almost clean, AND we made some money.

Well, I thought I would also update our diet. We are doing well with not eating meat and two days ago Carl made this for breakfast:

Spinach eggs, avocado, and an orange.

Today we didn't eat particularly well, but it was hard to cook while watching garage salers. I did go out with some of our profits and buy lunch- a veggie green chile cheese sandwich for carl and a bean burrito for me :)

lunch

So you might be wondering.... what is it that you would eat that does not include meat? Well, here it is folks! Carl and I bought a rice cooker (and since we won't be eating meat, we figured it was a good investment). Here is our new rice cooker along with our lunch today. I made corn rice seasoned with a bunch of stuff including toasted sesame seeds and steamed carrots. YUM! We both REALLY enjoyed it, only next time I will add some kidney beans for added protein. (today we just had some baked beans on the side along with a handful of cashews).... and here are the pics!

This is my new rice cooker... you might be wondering, "what is that weird silver thing on top of the rice cooker?" well, read on!

YES, my rice cooker comes with a veggie steamer that goes on top and steams veggies while it makes rice!

Here is the finished product!

Carl and I just finished eating it and he said, "It was SO good!" I think that just about sums it up.... anyone hungry? I have leftovers!

cleaning

So Carl and I woke up and we cleaned out the fridge and freezer. We have been meaning to for awhile now, but finally we got around to doing it. We used some plastic containers that I had leftover from my classroom and organized our freezer. This is what we ended up with. You can see now that we are using ALL our freezer space and can now pull out the containers to see what we need. There is the pink dot bucket for fruit, blue for veggies, and the bottom left is meat for family (with our veggie-meat in front), the bottom middle is side items (like tatertots, potatoes, rice, ect) and the bottom right is where we put frozen leftovers. I think we did a good job and now we always know what is in our tiny freezer :)

start of a new diet :)

So... I guess now I am going to start blogging. I thought about doing this since now Carl and I are trying to be vegetarians I thought that blogging about our experiences would be fun.

We have officially not had meat for one day. It would be a few more but our neighbors had a BBQ that we scheduled awhile before we decided to do the meatless thing. So lots of people have asked why we are doing this. I guess it all started with an Oprah show (ok, don't laugh too hard, Oprah is a great show :D). She had a show all about being more aware of what you are eating and where your food comes from. Oprah had a bunch of guests on, including Alicia Silverstone. Well, she featured the new book Alicia had written, called "The Kind Diet" and she showed clips of a documentary showing the living conditions of the animals we eat. Lets just say my eyes were opened to a world I never knew even existed. I guess you could call me naive, but I preferred to call it blissfully unaware, until now. After seeing how horribly animals are treated, I started thinking more about what I would do about it and eventually broached the topic of not eating meat with Carl. We really don't eat too much meat now (although after really thinking about it, we would eat a bunch of meat when we'd eat out) so cutting out meat shouldn't be too bad.

well, it really isn't that bad. Yesterday we ate bocca burgers (a type of veggie burger) and although it didn't taste exactly like meat (neither did ground turkey) it was really good. Today we tried a yummy southwest corn soup and I must say I don't really miss meat :)

I think I'll try to blog every few days and try to keep up with our meatless eating :)