Obsessions

Is anyone else an obsessor?  I don't think that's a real thing, but as a great co-worker once told me, you get to make up words once acquiring your Master's degree. So ha, obsessor is a word ;)

I think Josh and Avery can vouch for the fact that I really get into things. FAST.  Latest obsessions: DIY/Money saving ideas, apartment searching, car searching, dog searching, house searching, house remodeling idea searching.

If you followed my last blog, you were witness to my DIY/$ saving phase.  Don't get me wrong, plenty of good comes from my obsessing.  I learned so much in my money saving phase.  Much of it we still practice (although not quite as stringently).  We also found a pretty awesome place to live, got to take Avery home, got a good deal on the Jetta, and have had a successful house search.  Not bad overall.

I think I have an obsessing gene.  My mom, bless her heart, is kind of the same way.  Maybe obsessing is a way to deal with the anxious gene we both VERY MUCH inherited.

However, I realized something the other day.  After having a breakdown (typical) mid-house search, I realized that sometimes you just need to take a step back.  After almost giving up after my breakdown, I took a night off.  I let my parents help search a little, and we found an amazing house!  We are all set to close on February 28th. I will post some more soon.

Homemade Body Wash

Another project I had been putting off for a while was homemade body wash.  A while back, we made homemade laundry soap.  I loved the soap and it worked really well, but grating the soap was a bit of work.  Around the same time, I found a six pack of Olay bar soap on super clearance at Target.  Well, I also found this post.  Problem solved.  Grate-free body wash!

I only used 2 bars of soap and 4 cups of water, and it was  beyond easy to make! All you have to do is boil 2 cups of water per bar of soap.  Once the water has come to a boil, turn the heat down to medium.  In a microwave safe container, heat the bar of soap for about 90 seconds.  Add the hot, melted soap to the hot water.  Only microwave one bar of soap at a time.  Stir the soap and water mixture to make sure that all of the soap is dissolved in the water.  Let the soap mixture cool, and pour it into containers.  I used a few old bodywash containers.

Here they are hanging out of my stove with my new tea kettle!

 I did notice that it started to separate a bit as it cooled, but I just gave it a little shake and it mixed back together.  The two bars of soap and 4 cups of water almost filled both of these containers.

It has been a while now and I have a little feedback.  This was very watery.  I'm not sure if it is from the soap I used or that I used too much water.  If I was making this again with this soap, I would use less water.  It still works and lathers surprisingly well though, and smells delish!  I would recommend trying this project with a small batch first, but it is totally worth it.

Veggie Cleanse Update

We have officially been on the veggie cleanse for 5 days.  As much as I hate to be a quitter, I think we might be done with it.  Honestly, I do not feel good on this diet. I really didn't think it would be that big of a difference since we eat so many vegetables normally, but something is very different.  I will have to do a bit of testing to see what it actually is.

Things that were easy
-Eating veggies
-Not eating as much meat (I thought I would struggle more with only 6 oz. per day)

Things that were challenging
-Giving up carbs (I do not crave sweets, I crave carbs)
-Eating Greek yogurt everyday

It was really hard the first day or to to feel satisfied with our food because we are used to eating food with so much flavor.  Eventually we got a little creative and that made things easier.

Skip ahead  if you don't want WAY TOO MUCH INFORMATION...
This diet made me extremely, uncomfortably gassy.  Last night I took the maximum dose of Gas-X and that didn't even alleviate the problem.  And I'm talk visibly noticeable bloated belly gassy.  Very uncomfortable.  I had been struggling with more minor occurrences of this all week, but nothing as bad as last night.  This was my breaking point.  I think that this is either from the protein powder or the flaxseed, because that is really the only major difference from my normal diet. However, the "situation" never kicks in until evening and I have the smoothie in the morning. Hmmm...

Josh and I talked about it last night, and I think we are going to move on.  But we also did decide that we will be taking some of these lessons forward.  Most specifically the meat portions.

Lesson learned: I am a much better "everything in moderation" person than restrictive diet person.

Our supplies for the week

Sharing Some Good News

My latest obsession is all the "good news" stories on the internet lately.  There are so many bad things happening in the world that we forget about all the kindness and good surrounding us.  Did you hear about the young Dairy Queen manager who was "caught" taking money out of his own pocket to replace the money lost by a blind customer?  It's not the original story, but you can read about it here.  There are many, many good people in the world, we just don't hear quite as much about them.  Luckily, I feel like after this story went viral, news providers made more of an effort to tell stories like this one.  I am loving it! Let's keep showing our support for stories like this so we get to keep hearing them.

After all, with so much in life to be positive about, why focus on the negative?

We are currently on day 1of the veggie cleanse.   So far, so good!

Experimental 2 Week "Cleanse"

This is what happens when I am at home during the day.  As I am lounging around with Avery in tow, I see a commercial.

Dr. Oz's 2 WEEK VEGETABLE CLEANSE DIET!

Oh, side note, General Mills is trying something in Josh's division.  If they eat 5 servings of vegetables for something like 5 weeks straight, they get a credit to their health care account and a free fitbit.  If they have success, they will expand to the whole company and possibly to other companies as well.

Back to the cleanse.  I know that we eat quite a few vegetables, but I was looking for a way to really challenge ourselves with this GM challenge.  So naturally, the vegetable cleanse caught my eye.

Basically, you cut out caffeine, grains, and dairy.  You can drink green tea, eat Greek yogurt, and 1/2 cup of brown rice every day.  Other than that, you can eat as many Low GI veggies as you want.  Read more about it here. So here goes nothing, we are trying it starting Monday (because we only grocery shop on the weekends and already have meals planned for the rest of the week).

Happy New Year

p.s. The whole audience on his show that day had been using this diet for 2 weeks and had lost an average of 9 pounds!  Maybe I should take starting weight and measurements?

p.p.s. This is exactly why I will never be allowed to stay at home, I am one of those people.

Nobody Wants Moldy Caulk!

During my time off over the holidays, I wanted to get some stuff done around the house that I had been putting off.  First thing on the list, cleaning the nasty caulk in our bathroom.  Our house is generally damp, so we really struggle with moisture in the bathroom.  I found this post on Pinterest, and decided to try it.

I didn't want to go out and buy the cotton rope stuff, so I decided to try it with cotton balls.  If you poke your finger in the center of the cotton ball, you can unravel the ball into a rope.  Free (if you have cotton balls) cotton rope!

Yuck!

Double Yuck!

Put bleach into a container and place it in the tub.  You can dunk the rope in the bleach and place it on the nasty stuff.  I used a plastic baggie to cover my hand (so I wouldn't be dunking my hand in pure bleach).  It obviously would have been easier if I had gloves, but the baggie worked.  Make sure to turn the bathroom fan on while you do this so you don't get fumed out.  After you are done, let it sit for a while (the post says overnight, I did a few hours).  I was actually surprised at how well this worked.

Better

Much better!

I also decided to soak our back shower curtain (the landlords decided to keep the wood window frame, so it will rot if the water gets on it) while the caulk soaked.  Awesome!  Now I just have to clean the rest of the bathroom :)

Weekly Cleaning Schedule

You know those people who always have an immaculately clean house?  Well I'm not one of them.  Our house is usually a disaster in one area or another.  However, it is also VERY small, so we can't really have many messes.  Things get dicey quickly.  Around this time last year, I saw a few different ideas about doing a small amount of cleaning each day (Monday through Thursday) then you wouldn't have a huge buildup and could spend your weekend doing fun things.

We started our plan after moving into our new place and have been doing this for a while now, and I absolutely love it.  It's important to understand that things happen, so if you miss a day, make up for it the next day or skip it that week.  Forgive yourself and move on.  It's ok, I promise.  Also, our original plan (see the inspiration here) did not work, so we ended up changing our plan to this:

Monday- Dusting/Pickup
Tuesday- Bathroom
Wednesday- Floors
Thursday- Kitchen
Laundry- 2 or 3 loads/week (throw them in before you do the other task)

Again, our house is really small, but with doing this every day we spend 15-20 minutes instead of all day on Saturday or Sunday.  I printed our schedule and it hangs on our fridge as a reminder to complete the tasks every day.  I also put each day's task on my google calendar, so I get reminders on my phone.

I think trying this would be a fantastic resolution for the new year!