Home sweet home!

We are finally home! I had a great time in Florida... but happy to be back in Tennessee!! It was SO hot in Florida! August in Florida is always the worst month weather-wise! It was TOUGH getting back into work, though! I had pretty much NO motivation! I wanted to be hanging with my little girl all day long. I got used to being with her all day long this past week :( You can bet I was bolting out the door to go pick her up when work was over!

It was definitely a week of mixed emotions... Happy for my brother who is now a married man - still can't believe it! Sad for JR's family with Granny's passing and trying to adjust to a "new life".

Thank you all for your thoughts and prayers for JR's family!

We drove last Wednesday down to Florida and made it in great time, thankfully! Maddie survived the car trip up and down. I was really afraid that she would go nuts in the car for 11 hours straight... but thankfully we kept Taylor Swift playing on the IPod and plenty of books and My Little Ponies to keep her happy :)

I had almost a full afternoon with one of my closest friends... we have been friends since middle school! Her daughter is only a DAY younger than Maddie. Crazy, huh? She is one of those friends that no matter how long it's been since we've talked or seen each other, we pick right up where we left off... she's amazing! Our girls had lots of time to play this trip!

My eating was not great, though. I normally can balance vacation eating pretty well... but not this time around. Along with my "monthly friend" showing up TWO weeks EARLY (what the heck is up with that mother nature?!?) and a little bit of family stress over the trip... my eating was pretty off for me. TONS of sugar - I mean tons, tons, tons! I normally splurge on a trip... this was kind of beyond. And since we were on the go from the moment we got up until we went to sleep each night (we drive an hour each way between visiting our families... sometimes two or three times a day!), I had no time to fit in a work out! I thought I would jump right back into healthy eating today... but I think my body got so used to gorging on sugar, that it was craving it BIG time! I'm thinking I may need to go cold turkey or close to it to ween myself off of it!

But enough of that... Here are a few pictures of my brother, Justin's wedding...

Justin and our Dad....

Maddie was the flower girl :)
Justin and I

First kiss as a married couple!
My baby sister Ashley and her boyfriend George (I have the most gorgeous sisters!)

JR & I
All four of us kiddos....I swear I'm the oldest! They all outgrew me =P

And this was TOO cute...Justin and his wives daughter, Katelyn... who is now 7 months old... was so worn out from the wedding, she crashed and they put her out on these pillows... adorable!

As for food today - it was not the best! I have a pretty empty fridge due to being gone for a week! Dinner tonight was pull out whatever is in the freezer! I had some frozen leftover grilled chicken breast, some Arnold's Thins in the freezer... pulled those out... then grilled up slices of pineapple, swiss cheese, Annie's smokey maple bbq sauce... loved it :) Crispy fries on the side...
totally veggie-less :( Oh well... I'll do better tomorrow on that one. We got our CSA delivery tonight!

We got 1 yellow squash, some grape tomatoes, a patty pan squash, 2 corn on the cobs.1 green bell pepper and a cantaloupe (all for JR... not a big cantaloupe fan here!)...

Any ideas on what to do with our produce?

Make Up Monday... and a confession....

Happy Monday everyone :) I hope it was a good start to the week for ya!

Make Up Monday will be short and sweet :)

First... here are a few fun pics that my sister, Brittney sent me! She's great with playing with bright colors!! I so wish I could do that!

Thanks Britt! :)

I thought instead of posting my mug all over the page , I thought I would share with you one of my can't-live-without products!

My favorite mascara - L'Oreal Voluminous!

I have tried many expensive and inexpensive mascaras and ALWAYS go back to this! In my opinion, mascara is one of those things you can save your money on when buying make up. I think there are some that really stand up and even pass the quality of the high end make up lines!

Why this mascara ROCKS:

• It's cheap! It's around $7... I can usually find coupons for any L'Oreal eye products, too... and if you watch Walgreens or CVS, they have lots of buy one, get one free sales. When I find this, I buy one, get one for free and use my coupon... and usually end up only paying $3 for two tubes! Bonus!
• The volume and thickening is amazing! I only need a couple coats... makes my lashes feel so luscious!
• I put it on in the morning and no need to worry about touching it up throughout the day! It has great staying power!

I absolutely recommend this mascara!!

One great tip that every lady should follow before you put on your mascara is to curl your lashes! It will make your eyes look ten times bigger!

What about you? What is your favorite mascara? Please share! :)

Confession time....

I have mentioned before in the past few posts that my eating hasn't been so great as of lately. I don't know what has kicked me off my normal healthy routine! I am not going to go into how badly my eating has been... but will say that it's consisted mainly of sweets (big cookies, ice cream) at least twice a day, and not a ton of veggies or fruits at all... lots of junk food that I don't normally eat or want! And lots of it!

That being said... I was already up about 7 pounds from my "happy weight" that I had been at for over a year... and now just from the past two weeks, I'm up 13 pounds.

I even had to go out and buy new jeans and a couple of new shirts! I don't have the money to be doing that right now!

Ugh...

I wasn't having an issue with my workouts... until Brittney came.. .then our schedule was CRAZY! We were out of town and I was up much later every night than I normally am and it threw me way out of whack. I didn't work out for about two weeks! I finally started up again on Saturday... thank goodness!

It's been a constant hate battle with my self confidence. I have been avoiding mirrors and tight clothes at all cost because I'm so mad at myself! I've kept off over 100 pounds for almost 10 years now... and at my "happy weight" for quite some time after having Maddie (and in better shape than I was BEFORE having Maddie) and that weight seemed to come naturally and I had no issues feeling satisfied with food! But now that I've gained so much weight and so quickly... I am ashamed to let family, friends, co-workers see me! Most people who know me as "the weight loss girl"... the girl they come to for some advice when trying to lose weight... I feel like such a failure right now!

I'm trying to take a step back... and look at things in the long run - I haven't gained back all of my weight - just 13 pounds. Yes, it's a good amount... but not 100 pounds!

I need to stop yelling at myself! The guilt does NOT help!

I can either choose to continue to eat this way and make things worse... or I can keep my eats simple for now to help me "detox" a bit and get back on track...

This is all about my health... not JUST losing weight!

Now, I don't have a HUGE plan to change things...but wanted to be open and talk about all of this here... since I wanted to be honest and share what's REALLY going on with me!

I will talk more tomorrow about my small "plan"... it's nothing outrageous or a crazy, intelligent plan... but what I think will work for me!

I'm sorry for all of that... but thank you to whoever listened!!

The batteries in our camera are dead.... and we are out of batteries! I keep forgetting to snap pics of my food today because I'm not used to using my cell phone for it!!

So for breakfast, just imagine a whole wheat bagel, with cheese, eggs and a slice of turkey bacon...

For a snack, a banana/pb sandwich... half with PB&Co's Might Maple PB and the other with PB&Co's Bee's Knee's PB :)

Lunch was leftovers of my pizza from Saturday night... and a big side salad with four small strawberries, onion, tomato, carrots, and a sprinkle of feta cheese... I got some pics with my cell phone of this...

Afternoon snack was a big ol juicy braeburn apple... YUMMM... and a small serving of Trader Joe's Trail Mix... good stuff!

For dinner, I just threw together a bunch of things that needed to be used up.... I sauteed some onions, peppers, mushrooms, tomatoes and asparagus.... threw them in with some quinoa and some leftover chicken sprinkled with some parmesan cheese... simple but yummy!This morning, JR and I got up and did our Day 3 of Level 1 of Jillian's 30 Day Shred... then we added on 20 extra minutes of cardio... I burned a total of 446 calories!

Now I am off to do some more work... and then going to bed. I have a horrible headache!!

How did your Monday shape up? I hope it went by quickly!