Wednesday, January 19, 2011
Kids Playing
The kids (16 and 14) are outside playing together (which is amazing in its own right). They are dressed in snow gear, have headlamps, and are digging tunnels in the soft dry snow. They are then coaxing the dog to follow them through their tunnel mazes which are crisscrossing through the back yard.
I forget how nice it is to watch the kids playing. Now that they are older it doesn't happen very often - they are usually off doing their own thing. I'm a proud mom.
Friday, January 7, 2011
Weight Loss, Goal Setting and Stevia

Husband and I have set a goal to lose weight (okay, now who hasn't done that), but our goal does have a plan attached. My plan is to lose 35 pounds by December 1, 2011 and I have carefully set out how I will achieve this loss. I have a written plan, and also a journal in which to make myself track progress and be accountable everyday. Now that I have put that out there publically, I guess I had better achieve this goal!
Do you have any goals with set written plans for 2011? If not, you may want to write them down...
Harvard University conducted a study in the 1950's to see how many students had taken the time to set goals. While virtually all of the them stated they had set goals, when the question was asked how many had written down the goals the percentage dropped significantly. In fact, only 3% of the group surveyed had actually put their goals to paper.
Fast-forward 30 years later...the same group was surveyed. Guess what? The 3% who had written down their goals were worth more (financially) than the other 97% combined.
Husband likes to drink sugar in his coffee and to have it on his cereal. He already cut out drinking the 'evil' sugar laden soda pop and cut down on the sugar in his coffee late last year and managed to drop 12 pounds (Cheers and clapping). I have purchased a natural sugar substitute for him in the form of Stevia to help him along the way and to make his coffee more enjoyable.
Stevia is a plant grown in western North American and into South America, and is related to the sunflower family. The extract is taken from the sweet leaves and is up to 300 times sweeter than sugar. The availability varies from country to country, and I found that my local health food store has carried it for an number of years. In Canada it is considered as a dietary supplement.
The other day I also saw it in my local grocery store with the natural food products. It came in either liquid or powder form. I decided to purchase the powdered form, and did some cost comparison before finally buying stevia in a canister shaker which cost approx $12.00 for 112g. There was also a box of stevia for just under $12.00 which I originally looked at. Upon closer inspection I found it contained small individual packages of stevia and the entire weight was only 28g! Obviously the cost was for the extra packaging and not for the actual stevia itself.
Friday, December 24, 2010
Seasons Greetings
Thursday, December 23, 2010
Last of the Holiday Rush

The last of our holiday rush is over! Gifts have all been purchased. Groceries have been bought and put away. Now all that is left is to give the house a quick clean, then sit back and relax.
Husband's sister and family will be arriving tomorrow around noon. We are really looking forward to spending the holidays with them.
Christmas eve my parents will come and we will all have a fondue dinner, then open gifts from them. We are German so we still celebrate Christmas eve, but have now 'Canadianized' the season as well, and will open the rest of the gifts Christmas morning. A tradition turkey dinner will accompany Christmas day and my parents will return for for the meal as well as a friend who would otherwise be alone for Christmas.
Saturday, December 18, 2010
Simple Things
Wednesday, December 8, 2010
Boots

Trust me, these boots look lovely with evening wear ;)
I finally did a search online for wide calf boots and guess what I found? A company specializing in wide calf boots! http://www.widewidths.com/ has all sorts of boots in wide calf, extra wide calf and super wide calf and I found a pair I thought looked great. I measured as instructed by the website and ordered them. A week and a half later the boots appeared on my doorstep thanks to door-to-door delivery! I was a little nervous at first, but they actually zipped up.... all the way up! [Cue the angels singing and the Hallelujah chorus] This is the boot I purchased. I thought it had a classic look and shouldn't go out of style. It is the Ros Hommerson Ella boot in super wide calf.
Sunday, November 28, 2010
Homemaking Book
My homemaking book is personalized for the things that I want to keep track of. I took an old binder which I recovered with some leftover fabric and sewed a small pocket in the front to hold my fountain pen.
It was very simple to sew the cover:
1. Open the binder and place face up on the wrong side of the fabric
2. Using a pen trace the outline onto the fabric
3. Using a ruler make the outline bigger by 1 cm
4. Cut out the fabric
5. Place the binder face up on a new section of the fabric and trace out the each section of the cover (without the spine) plus an extra 3 cm to use as a hem (must cut 2 fabric flap sections)
6. Using a ruler make the outline bigger by 1 cm (other than the 3cm hem)
7. Cut out the fabric
8. Get out the sewing machine
10. Zigzag stitch the hem portion of the inside flap and zigzag the middle section of the larger fabric cover at the spine
11. Turn over the 3cm hem with wrong sides together and sew
12. **Pin all pieces wrong sides together and sew with a 1 cm seam allowance
13. Turn inside out and iron
14. Place binder inside the cover
** If you want to add a pocket on the front cover you must do it now before sewing all the pieces together.

Here you can see the inside flap and how the binder cover slips in.
Though it seems like a lot, some sections only have one or two pages or combine page. Sections in my book include:
To Do List (now and someday)
Shopping List
Weekly Menu
Diet and Exercise
Housework schedule (still needs to be worked on)
Correspondence
Books to read
List of books read
Movies to see
Beauty and Fashion idea
Vegetable garden journal
Flower garden journal
Party planner