Progress

My weekend has given me a bunch to blog about but I am going to try and spread it out through out the week so I don't go overboard in one post. Today seems like a good day to post about progress since it is weigh in day and all. I lost one more pound. I have become happy enough with that through out the day. This morning I was a little disappointed because I wanted to see more of a loss. But I am happy that I lost a pound. It is progress in the right direction. Also, I think that this week will be a good week. I think that the slowness over the last few weeks is due to teetering on the edge of dropping a point for my daily point values. Today's pound has dropped me down a point. If I get to where I feel stuck again I may go ahead and drop a point before it actually shows I have to on Weight Watchers online. I remember this tip from my days of attending the meetings.

The other progress I wanted to share was the progress on the deck. Ryan is doing such a good job. It is looking great. He was a little frustrated that the beautiful day we had Saturday (72 and sunny) was half spent on buying a loading up the supplies and bringing them home and unloading. He actually spent ALL day (I mean ALL day Sunday from 8:30am til 7pm only breaking for lunch I made for him) working on the deck. It was so cold (only 41) and WINDY Sunday. So here is the progress so far. I won't post again on the deck until it is finished so that I have a good before and after picture.

My favorite part of the new deck is that I get to go shopping for new deck furniture and planters. :)

Yummy recipe

Despite a migraine yesterday. We hosted a dinner "party". It was my husband's uncle's bday and we had them over for dinner last night. The menu was grilled steak (not for me YUCK! I am not a huge meat eater and I don't like steak at all. I have been called crazy.), salad, rolls, mashed potato bake, and for dessert earthquake cake. Now you are probably thinking the yummy recipe that I am going to share with you is the earthquake cake, but it's not, its the mashed potato bake. It is the first time I made it and it was out of this world. My mother in law and Ryan's aunt both want the recipe. Here is the recipe courtesy of Paula Deen's cookbook The Lady and Sons Too:
5 cups water
4 cups frozen hash brown potatoes (not the shredded kind)
One 7.6 ounce package of Betty Crocker Butter and Herb Mashed potatoes mix
1 stick butter
4 ounces of cream cheese
1 cup cheddar cheese
1/2 cup sour cream
1/2 teaspoon garlic salt
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon pepper
french-fried onions
Preheat the oven to 350. Bring the water to a boil, add the hash browns, and cook for 5 min; drain. Prepare the mashed potato mix according to package directions. Soften the butter the cream cheese together in the microwave. In a large bowl, mix together the hash browns, mashed potatoes, butter and cream cheese, cheddar cheese, sour cream, garlic salt, salt, pepper. Place in a greased 2 quart casserole. Bake for 25-35 min or until golden on top. Sprinkle the onion over the top and bake for about 5 to 8 mins or until onions are golden brown.

Makes 8 servings.

I typed it into weight watchers online and it is 6 points per serving. So YUMMY.

My sister is coming up tomorrow with two of her students to go shopping up here. I am excited to see my sister (I always am) but the most exciting part is that while she takes her two students shopping I get to watch my niece. It is the first time that Aunt Lissa and Kaylee bug have ever gotten to spend time just the two of us. I am so excited and have so much fun planned for us!

My first Award!

Lisa from Another Day Today bestowed this award on me. She is so sweet and totally made my day! I really enjoy reading her blog and seeing projects she completes. My favorite so far is the makeover her and her hubby did on their door. It was amazing! Thanks so much Lisa.
Along with this award I am supposed to list 10 things I love and then present the award to a few other bloggers.
10 things I love:
1. My husband. Plain and simple, I love that man.
2. My family.
3. Scrapbooking and card making. It is such a fun way to preserve my most favorite pictures and memories.
4. Adding little decorative touches to my home.
5. Reading a good book in the sunshine on our deck.
6. The beach.
7. Riding our motorcycle on a warm sunny day.
8. Football
9. achieving goals I have set for myself.
10. Traveling.

I would like to give this award to Kellie. She was the first blog I ever read. I love reading about what she does on the weekend. Her and her husband always have so much fun.

I would also like to give this award to Megan. She has a great blog and a great Esty store. I love seeing the sweet things she makes. I bought my first Esty purchase at her store.

And finally I would to give this award to Kristen. She has great blog and makes the prettiest picture frames. I am sure that she will be my next Esty purchase.

New Project

We have begun our "big" project of the year. I say we but really it is just my hubby that has begun the project right now. I will be helping once the wood is purchased this week or whenever Ryan is ready for me to help. I tend to stay out of his way when he does a project, a lesson learned many years ago :). I think our deck will look amazing when we are done. It should be done by the end of April. We have had to special order some of the wood and the new posts.

When we moved into our house the only deck we had was this part. This part will soon be changed. We are removing most of the front of it and opening it completely up and adding stairs into that lead into the backyard.

Ryan added the part of the deck on the right within the first month that we lived in the house.

Here is the work he did late Sunday afternoon. Basically, he broke ground. He is ordering the wood today. It has to be specially ordered because the places we have checked don't carry 20 foot boards.

Also, we are removing all the wooden pickets and replacing them with these:

photo taken from here.

You will have to excuse the current deck. It looks so much prettier when I have my flowers out and it has been used. Right now it is still in it's bare winter phase. If warm spring weather would ever come and STAY I could plant some stuff but as you can see the grass hasn't even started to green yet.

Weekend recap and weigh in day

First...today is weigh in day and my tightening of the reins paid off and I lost 3 pounds!!! 4 pounds away from 10% (earlier I posted I was close but I had the wrong weight in my head of what I needed to be at for 10%). So, a loss of 3 has put a nice smile on my face today. :)

I did enjoy my time off work. It was such a needed break but I picked the crappiest of spring days to take off. It rained both Thursday and Friday then it snowed...that's right SNOWED...Saturday. YUCK!!! I want and need warm weather now!!! I did get out a little on Friday during the break in the rain and took some pictures at a tiny park in Cave Springs.

As I wrote on my last entry my bro-in-law and 5 of his friends were supposed to come up to stay the night Friday and skydive Saturday. 5 actually turned into 12! They were a great group of people though. All of them were very nice. Well, since it snowed Saturday, skydiving was canceled and they decided to stay another night and try skydiving on Sunday. Sunday turned out perfect (cold but sunny) for them and they were able to jump Sunday. This is a pic of some of the group:

Here is my bro in law, Cole, suited up:

Here is a shot of him floating back to safety:

Here are him and his trainer after the jump:

And here are him and his friend that jumped with him post jump (Cole is on the right):

They said it was totally amazing. Everyone had a blast. Although when Cole landed he was ghost white and looked like he could either pass out or throw up.

a break and a great website discovery

I am taking a much needed break from work. I took off work today and tomorrow. I was all looking forward to just relaxing and hanging out this weekend but within an hour it has turned out that I will have a crazy weekend. Today, I plan to SCRUB the house from top to bottom; sometimes I just get in the mood to do this and I am going to do it right after I type this. Tomorrow if it is nice (which it appears to be a slim chance of that) I am going to go to a local public garden to take pictures and browse our downtown square at some new shops down there. Here is where it turns crazy; my husband informed me yesterday that my father in law is staying with us Friday night. Then within an hour of that my little bro in law calls and ask if him and some of his buddy's can stay with us Friday night and Saturday night. They are driving up here to go skydiving...SKYDIVING!!! Sounds fun but waaaay to scary for me! So Saturday we are going to watch them jump (oh, and my sis in law is jumping with them too). It will be nice seeing all of them and hanging out. I am sure I will be posting pictures of the brave skydivers Sunday. I just pray all goes well for them!

I bought a cake and cupcake recipe book at the store the other day and they had these cute cupcake cups and I was like where did they get these and then on one of the pages in the tips section it gave the website. There are a TON of things on this website for baking and decorating. Here are just a few pictures I copied from their website to show some of the stuff they have. Too cute!

These are cupcake holders that look like Easter baskets:

This is another example of a cupcake holder:These are an example of cookie stencils:There is so much more that you just need to check out for yourself. Check out their website by clicking here.

Weekend recap

I had a great, great, great weekend this past weekend. My mom and dad came up on Saturday and stayed the night. :) :) :) I think I needed a mom and dad fix!! My mom and I went to SSD and I treated her to a card making class. The cards were designed by Bettie and she also taught the class. Here are a lot of pictures of the different cards we made:

This first card is made to look like a purse. How cute:

This second card was called the diamond card:The third card was the masculine card of the group:

I loved all the embellishments on this card:

I added a little personal touch on this birthday card with extra pink pearls I had in my set:

This library card was very cute too:

We also went shopping and my mom got me a few scrapbook supplies and some candles. While we went out my dad and Ryan hung out and played pool.