Do you want to watch the Bachelor with me? Week 2

It's Bachelor time again already?!?!?  I guess that's what I get for doing my post last week four days late!  Ha!!

Teaming up with Aubrey and Ashley.  You know the drill.  Also!  Did you know we were doing a link up?  If you like to blog about the bachelor link your post because the only thing I like more than blogging it, is reading other blogs about it!! 

I was worried that when Kylie and Lauren went home last week that we would be losing the crazy.  Just watching the intro it is clear that other girls were more than willing to step up.

One on one with Clare
Juan Pablo seems to be taking Clare to a Christmas tree farm. I hope they re-enact the opening scene from Christmas Vacation. 

"You taste like snow"  So. . . water? 

Usually the date takes them to a live concert and then a hot tub.  Tonight they went in reverse, which made me feel cold.  I had to get a blanket just to watch it.

One on one with Kat
It's a jet, also known as "The Bachelor Special".

Eeee!!!  Salt Lake City!  Thanksgiving Point is like 10 minutes away from my house.  So, cool.

Running a crazy 5k with glow in the dark clothes would certainly be a memory, but probably not the best get to know you date.

Group Date
What is it about a group date that causes the girls to scream at random every few minutes?

Photo shoot for a good cause?  I've seen this episode before.

Next season I want the blue beard guy to be the bachelor.

Holy dogs!  I hope the girl who is the official "dog lover" made it on to this date.

Someone put makeup on Renee and. . . no.  She's soooo pretty with out it.  I'm not buying it.

I think Andi should just walk away from the photo shoot.  I know I would respect a girl way more for not getting naked.  But then, I am a little bit of a feminist. 

Victoria wants to leave but they wont let her leave with out shoes.  Lucy could have gotten away with it.

Kelly gets the rose and she deserves it for the crazy bald dog costume she had to wear.  I don't think she'll be around for too much longer, but she was a good sport about that paint.

Victoria totally acted mature like someone ready to be a step-mom.  #psych

Cocktail Party
Amy loved the way her name rolled off his lips.  All one syllable of it.

Sharleen says she was ungracious when she was given the rose.  I think she read my blog post on Friday!!

I think the stems on these roses are three feet long. 

Girls keep getting roses and I swear I've never seen them before.

Ladies, Juan Pablo, this is the final rose tonight.  When you're ready.  (I typed this before Harrison even said it, because I like to feel psychic)

Picking my top four was hard.  I mean, he probably couldn't pick his top four this early on!  That being said, I bit the bullet and picked.

My top 4
Andi
Renee
Niki*
Cassandra

*Adam also picked Niki and he prides himself on always picking the winner. **

**I think he picked the winner once.

Link your bachelor post and check out what Aubrey and Ashley have to say!

Bad Days

So over Christmas I had a couple of BAD DAYS.  I don't mean difficult or hard or that I couldn't wait for Adam to get home.  I mean throwing up all night only to have Axel throw up on me when he woke up kind of bad days. 

One day Axel had a really high temp (the highest I recorded was 103) and I wasn't feeling to great either.  I had the flu too but I didn't want to admit it.  That was a hard day.

Axel too sick to move, sleeping on the floor while I made Olivia lunch.

The day after Christmas I started throwing up at 1am.  When Axel woke up to nurse at 6 I fed him and went to lay him back down and he just threw up every where.  When I sat down with him in bed my bed broke. 

I mean these are just the days where you keep everyone alive until bed time and that's all you can ask for. 

But I had a thought.  It's always been a feeling in the back of my mind, but with these few weeks of multiple illnesses in the Thomas home, it became a little more concrete. 

There are a finite number of days in my life.  I don't know the number and hopefully it's a pretty big number, but no one is going to live forever.  Fact.  And so there are also a finite number of bad days in my life.  Almost every day has some good in it, some fun moment.  But there are days when I'm just too sick to care about that, the really bad days.  And so with each bad day that I have survived this winter (please let there be no more, at least not at this level of awful!) I thought "Well, that's another one down." 

Funny how that thought makes it so much more bearable.  I know that I will have more bad days to live through, but this one is over.  This one I will never have to do again. 

Here's to being healthy and conquering the world tomorrow.

Do you want to watch the Bachelor with me? Week 1

 Blogging The Bachelor again with Aubrey and Ashley!!

Five minutes in and I'm already gagging a little.  You see, romance is not my thing.  I watch this show more to mock it than anything. 

Meeting the women
I wrote notes about each woman, but when I went back I couldn't remember what the heck I was talking about with most of them.  I kept a few.

Kristy says she wouldn't be here if it was anyone else.  That is totally FALSE.

Green dress girl, Bringing something for the daughter.  I bet four other girls will do this also.

Nurse Betty, the heart beat thing was pretty original.  Props for that.

Lucy looks like a flower child.  And while she's probably the coolest of all of them, she'll probably go home tonight.  Cool doesn't get you as far as blonde and dumb does on this show.

Chelsie's chemistry joke didn't seem to cross the language barrier.  Juan Pablo looks confused.  Or maybe it was just that dumb of a joke.

Elise: We have so many things in common!!  Like we both breathe air, and we both have eyes!  I could go on and on.

Ashley is a first grade teacher and long time smoker. 

Kylie looks like she took her dress from a Barbie dress up box. 

Sharleen seems very stand off ish.  She's an opera singer.  She's going to sing right now.  Oh good, she's not.

Cocktail Party
Juan Pablo looks like he's going to get trampled by girls fighting over him.

Juan Pablo has a photo booth in the mansion.  Yeah, he set that up.  After showering and putting on that suit he sat and cut out all of those props. 

Lucy: The girls who are going to go home are the girls that don't say "Bam, I'm here, I'm Lucy."
Me: Well considering you're the only Lucy there, they would be lying if they said that was their name.

Lucy said she's just a drifter, and I totally got that from the first time I saw her.

Here goes massage girl.  If she gets sent home, I was right.  She's bad at this.

These girls are straight up freaking out about the first impression rose.  Have they never seen the show before????

Lauren says she deserves the rose because her love life is so horrible.  Maybe she should look up the word "deserve" in the dictionary.

Southern Accent says that it isn't just a rose, it's her future.  That rose is one step closer to finding her husband.  She clearly doesn't follow the past bachelors and their women.

Lauren is making the face that says "I'm going to be the person that makes a scene tonight!  ABC loves me for bringing in the ratings!"

And now she's crying!!  Heck yes!  I love when they cry over a guy they said five words to.  They are so worried about being liked they don't even stop to wonder if they would like him back!  I've never had alcohol before, so someone enlighten me, are they crying so easily because they've been drinking too much?

Sharleen doesn't seem to want the first impression rose!!  I'm impressed that she is actually thinking for herself.  But she's not very gracious about it.

Rose Ceremony
This must be the hardest one for him because I'm sure it's practically impossible to remember names at this point.

Kelly accepts the rose on behalf of her and HER DOG???  "We will"  Oh dear, this is awkward.

Oh my gosh!!  Poor Kylie.  I really want her to go home, but that was just embarrassing. 

I am surprised that Lucy the free spirit got a rose.  I guess there is something to be said for standing out.

Kylie said she could really picture her life with Juan Pablo, and then she could picture it even more AFTER SHE MET HIM.  Never, ever, EVER picture your life with someone you don't actually know (unless it's for fun or something.  A little celebrity crush never hurt anyone.)  That is just a recipe for weirdness.

Lauren, if you don't want people to feel sorry for you, quit crying about your broken engagement to strangers.  Just sayin'.

And well, that wraps it up.  Check out Aubrey and Ashley like I'm about to do also, because I've been avoiding Bachelor posts all week!  Time to indulge.  I promise I'll get funnier.  I'm just off my groove. 

What would you do with. . . a bag of carrots!

You guys, this month was my pick.  I obviously am less good at ideas than Aubrey.  Sorry about that.  Speaking of Aubrey being awesome, she came up with the idea to do a fashion post next month.  What would you do with your favorite Target cardigan?  Join us!!!  If you don't have a cardigan from Target, that's okay.  We're just obsessed.  You can style a cardigan from anywhere!

Soooooo.  I've had my family here and it has been so fun. They are going home a day early, so clearly they don't agree (haha, jk) but it's been so easy to unplug from social media (mostly)  I didn't even have to try, which is a miracle.  It's just that I don't do alone very well, and when I'm home with kids twitter and blogs are my only social outlet!  Well this was a fun tanget.

What I'm trying to say is it's been hard to sit down and blog, so it's late on Tuesday and I just saw Catching Fire and I've got to post about carrots (my bad).  So you see how this seems trivial. 

I thought carrots would be fun because we're all trying to eat healthier because of the new year or because we're just super sick of chocolate (tell me how to accomplish that PLEASE) and we crave good foods for our body.  Plus carrots are great hearty vegetables for the winter. 

Source

I decided to make a carrot soup bisque while my family was here.  They're vegetarian (what?  Have I not mentioned that before?  I kid) and my mom actually point out the recipe to me a couple of months ago.  It was good, but it could have been better.  First of all, I should never make food with cayenne pepper because I'm way to liberal with seasoning and it ended up a little on the hot side.  Secondly I would add way less banana because it turned out tasting a little bit like a smoothie.  I don't get it!  All the reviews were super good on this recipe.  I tried roasting the carrots a bit before making the soup but I didn't get much browning before I started running out of time. 

What I wish I would have done is roast the carrots in olive oil, salt and pepper.  That is one of my favorite ways to eat carrots.  Try it. 

Also, I really want to try using carrot puree as a pasta sauce.  I'm still going to.  Of course I'll post it, you don't even have to ask!  :) 

Now check out what Aubrey did, because this post is a hot mess. 

Coming Soon!!! (And a little bit of bragging)

Do you know what tonight is!?!?!?!  Well, it's the national championship college football game.  At least that is what the birthday boy will be watching at my house tonight.  You don't mess with birthdays.  But it's also the first day of the Bachelor!!!!  Thank goodness for DVR and Hulu.  I bet it has saved a lot of marriages.  JK, if you get divorced over TV there was probably more problems going on. 

BUT anyway, Aubrey and I are back!!!  Blogging the Bach!!!  This time with another one of our blogging friends Ashley from A Cute Angle.

Look, we know you watch it.  We know you don't want us to give you the play by play about what happened.  We're just here to give you the snarky commentary, the things you would gab about with your girl friends if you were all watching it together.  That is pretty much the only reason I would do this again, because it is a HUGE commitment!  You wouldn't think it would be, but it is. 

Because of family in town, Adam's birthday and WWYD post on Wednesday, this weeks commentary will be coming to you on Friday.  So I'm definitely missing the SEO boat on that one I'm sure, but I really do this for fun more than anything :)

Speaking of Adam's birthday, I made his birthday cake for the first time ever (his mom usually buys one and I just don't see the need for multiple birthday cakes.  I'm such a fun suck) yesterday and my grandma took a bite and said "This is not a boxed cake!"  And it WAS.  I made Mix and Match Mama's Mississippi Mud Cake and it went over very well.  I highly recommend it.  And now I want to make them ALL!!!!!  (She has 100 variations of the same cake) 

In fact the leftovers are on the fridge right now. . .  so. . . . see ya later.

Food Friday: Four ways to make healthy food taste amazing

Happy New Year!!  Pretty much everyone that makes resolutions this year will have something about healthy eating or healthy living.  I feel like changing my diet is way more important than working out.  Working out is important for sure, but eating badly and working out a lot, like my sister said "[is like saying you can] put vegetable oil in [your] car and then drive it around a lot." Working out is going to do a lot more for you if you're putting good food in first.  

I know mac and cheese is super yummy and I love BBQ ribs too, but I try to eat healthy most of the time so that I can enjoy the times when I don't.  But I still want to enjoy the times when I do eat healthy!  In fact, when it comes to dinner, I need to enjoy all the food I eat.  For breakfast I can choke down something healthy that I don't love, but not at dinner.  So here are four things I do to make healthy food taste so good.

  
1. Browning.  Browning adds so much good flavor to foods.  Have you ever roasted carrots?  I don't love raw carrots, but roasted?  I cannot get enough of them.  I also have a favorite chicken picatta recipe and so I was excited when I found a similar vegetarian recipe.  It was awful!  But then I realized I hadn't browned any of the veggies.  If I try it again, I'm definitely going to do that first.  If you're browning something in a frying pan use a small amount of olive oil or vegetable spray.  If you have a high quality pan (or even a medium quality pan like I do) don't worry about food sticking.  Just worry about getting your vegetables or lean meats nice and crusty. Later you can add liquid to remove all the brown bits from the bottom of the pan and it will just intensify the flavor. 

2. Vinegar or citrus juice.  Both vinegar and citrus juices (think lemon or lime) are fat free and practically calorie free and bump up the taste.  Whole wheat bread dipped in vinegar and Italian seasoning is so much better than bread and butter (and I don't feel bad about adding a little bit of olive oil)  Beans (like black beans or navy beans) with veggies and vinegar or lemon juice make a delicious salad.

3. Salt.  So often if you think something is missing in your food, you've under salted.  I know salt is bad when used too much, but it is okay and even good when you use a little.  In culinary class I was taught to season as you go, or salt foods at each step.  Generally that works okay unless you're going to add soy sauce or something at a later step.  But a little bit of well placed salt can bring out the best flavors. 

4. Use strong flavored foods and you can use less of them.  When I think of my favorite foods they're always very strong flavors.  Olives, tomatoes, feta cheese, capers, Parmesan, etc.  I love that a few olives chopped up add a lot of flavor with out a lot of fat.  Same goes for feta and parm cheeses.  Capers and sun dried tomatoes aren't bad for you, but adding just a little really boosts flavor (using too much could overwhelm the dish, so use caution even though they're still good for you!)

What do you do to make healthy food taste good?  Don't you just love how good you feel when you know you've been putting good food into your body!?!

New Year's Goals: 4 in '14

So last year I did 12 in '13.  12 goals in the year 2013.  I loved having a different focus each month and I loved that I worked hard on each one, even though I didn't accomplish them all 100%.

But the one thing you notice when you do a challenge like that is that a month isn't very long.  So when I worked out regularly in June (perhaps working out every day was a bit overkill) I was all too happy to drop it like it's hot when July rolled around. 

So my idea for this year is to focus on four goals, three months each.  To help me make my goals I'm going to use Luke 2:52: And Jesus increased in wisdom and in stature and in favor with God and man.  My goals will be intellectual, physical, spiritual and social.

January, February, March
Physical: Lose 24 pounds.  Live the healthiest lifestyle I know how.

I had a hard time deciding if this should be my first or second goal.  Years of New Year's resolutions have made healthy eating and exercise a natural desire in January (I wouldn't be surprised if you were the same way!) and I want to take advantage of that motivation.  But, I'm going to try and wean Axel after his 1st birthday (Jan 22) but I don't know, what if it just takes longer than I thought?  And what if I continue to struggle with my weight due to breastfeeding?  And so I changed the goal from weight loss to living as healthy as I know how, which is basically how I planned on losing weight, but now I can still succeed regardless of how my body reacts. 

So in those months I want to limit my sugar (all junk really, but sugar is my biggest temptation) and work out three times a week.  Oh and continue to eat healthy diet consisting of mostly whole grains and vegetables. So easy to type, so hard to live.

April, May, June
Social: Spend time with a friend once a week.
I am no introvert.  Extro to the max.  But here is the thing.  Getting two kids ready to do anything just wears me out.  So by the time we've done grocery shopping and any other errands I'm like: "Let's just have a home day, okay?"  So is once a week a bit much?  I don't know.  It will be spring time and we'll probably be itching to get out of the house.  Plus, there is a little park right by my house and by then I should know a few neighbors so. . . . yeah I'm keeping it.

July, August, September
Intellectual: Read two books a month
At first my goal was listening to two TED talks a week, but since writing this a bunch of bloggers have posted a list of the books they read in 2014.  I think I read two, Tina Fey's and Mindy Kaling's.  So I want to step it up and read at least two books a month for July, August and September.

October, November, December
Spiritual: Daily gospel study, focusing on a different topic each month.
I chose to do this one last because it seems fitting to focus on spiritual things during Christmastime.  Although, I should have realized that I would already lean that way and choose to beef up my spirituality in other times of the year, but no!  I've already planned out the whole year, no changes now.  I'm not sure what topics I want to study each month, I think I'll choose those when I get closer to the time.

Thanks for sticking around, I know this was long!  Did you post your new year's resolutions?  Leave a link so I can read 'em!