Cholesterol Update and a Skirt!

So, in my previous post, I told you how I had high cholesterol last year... the proof is in the numbers.

On July 14, 2011 my cholesterol was 214. It is desirable for your total cholesterol to be below 200. It was in the "borderline high" range. Additionally, my good cholesterol, HDL needed to be between 40 and 55, and mine was exactly 40. Borderline low. The ideal ratio should be below 4.0 and mine was 5.2. 

Fast forward to October 19, 2012. My total cholesterol is 132! That is a difference of 82 points! Also, my good cholesterol is up to 52! This left my ratio at 2.5! 

I was nervous because my dad and brother both have high cholesterol, so I was a bit worried that mine could be hereditary. That would mean that no amount of diet and exercise would affect it significantly enough to drop me out of the high risk category. PRAISE THE LORD it's not! (P.S. Praise the Lord will now simply be shortened to PTL.)

I am grateful that my numbers are in the healthy range and my goal is to keep them there. 

P.S. My triglycerides needed to be less than 299. Last year they were 153,,,, now... 47! FORTY SEVEN. Not one hundred forty seven... FORTY SEVEN! 



Now, moving on to another 30 before 30 goal met... 30. Sew and make something I can wear in public.

I needed a skirt for Easter and couldn't find anything that I loved... Here is what I made/ended up with:

It is a fabulous print and I added some adorable fabric flowers to the waist band. In the back, there is a simple zipper and a sash tie.

P.S. Isn't my Bailey so adorable! She is going to be such a beautiful bride in just 4 short months!

I added this picture because my husband looks so adorable and my dog is wearing bunny ears... We also just celebrated her 3rd birthday. Happy Birthday Keller!

 I can't imagine what we are going to do to our human children.

Weight Loss Story

Today marks the 1 year anniversary of my weight loss journey. I decided to lose weight for a few reasons...
1. Last September, my work offered a free health screening and they told me that my BMI was too high and I had high cholesterol.
2. I felt bad.
3. Lots of people say that the older you get, the harder it gets to lose weight.
4. I've never been "skinny" and I have never tried to lose weight.
5. My clothes didn't fit.
6. I didn't like they way I looked.
7. I believed I could do it.
8. I read this blog post from kevinandamanda.com and realized that it was possible.

First, I figured out how many calories my body burned just existing. My resting caloric burn was around 1500 calories. So, in order to lose weight, I only took in 1200 calories a day. Some days I fudged a little and would eat more, but I rarely take in more that 1500 calories. I tried to eat 5 smaller meals a day. Being a teacher made it easy because I can eat my cereal on the way to work, have a yogurt at 9:30, eat lunch at 11:15, have a piece of fruit after school at 3:00, then eat dinner at 6 or 7.

I followed Amanda's food plan almost exactly as she described it. 

Breakfast- 200 calories - Cereal and skim milk, or oatmeal. This didn't change, except I started using a measuring cup so I knew exactly how many calories I took in.
Lunch- 300-400 calories - Lean Cuisine. I really like some of the options, so unless I had leftovers from the night before.... frozen lunch it was.
Dinner- 400-600 calories - Dinner was hard because Rowe wasn't dieting with me. He was however super supportive of my trying to lose weight. Sometimes I would look for low calorie meals online, but otherwise, I just swapped a healthier option in my normal recipes. There is a recipe analysis at  CalorieCount.com.  Amanda recommended it on her blog, so I used (still use) it. 
Desserts/Snack- 200 calories: This included the yogurt and fruit I had as my other 2 meals. Sometimes I even had enough left over to have a little snack after dinner.

The first 3 months, I tracked everything I ate on Sparkpeople.com. The offer lots of good options for people trying to count calories. Now, I have a pretty good idea of how many calories are in something, and I can edit throughout the day.

I have also decided that this is my new normal, I have no intentions of going back, so I will eat what I want. If I want an Oreo milkshake after a hard day, I go get one. But the next day, I eat more veggies to counter balance.

I also started running. Any time I ran, those were bonus calories burned. I didn't reward myself and go eat after I ran. I learned that I am not a dog, and my body is not a trash can. Best of all, I feel good.

So far, since October 2, 2011, I have lost 42 pounds. I went from a size 14/16 to an 8/10. 

Here are some pretty telling before pictures:

Family Vacation to Georgia Aquarium 2011

Friends wedding June 2011

My Birthday June 2011

Thanksgiving 2010

And here are the afters!!! YAY!

Venice June 2012

London May 2012

Venice June 2012

Amsterdam June 2012

Little Brother's wedding August 2012

In conclusion... I feel better and I believe that I am taking better care of this, God's temple. Here's to another wonderful year in a much better body.

30 Before 30 Revisited

So, I'm highlighting the things I've knocked off my list in the last 8 months... Lots of wonderful things have happened and I'm thrilled to share them!
Today's highlight is #20. To finish a 5k. 

Well, check. It is finished!!! Actually, I've ran 2 of them.
The first one was back in December, and I ran the Rudolph Run in Huntsville, Alabama with my sweet husband. This run supports the Blount Hospitality House. They function as a home away from home for families with patients in Huntsville area hospitals.


Here is Rowe being super supportive (even though he could have ran this about 15 minutes faster without training at all!)

It was very hard, but it was worth it. This was 2 months into my weight loss journey and it is pretty amazing the difference 10 months makes.





The second 5k was just this past weekend in Birmingham, AL! I, along with some of my super fun friends from church, signed up for "The Color Run.. The Happiest 5K on the Planet!"

It was a hoot! If you haven't heard about the Color Run before, it's pretty simple. You wear a white shirt, and you run. At every kilometer, volunteers cover you in a color... yellow, orange, blue, green, purple. At the end, there is a big color party and you get to throw color all over each other (Your pre-race packet comes with a t-shirt, headband, tattoo and color packet).

 Here is the before picture of the 7 of us before we ran... (Like my tights?) From left to right, these awesome girls are Susan, Shannon, Erin, Alicia, me, Bailey and Pam.

Pam, you should know, is the minister to young and median adults at our church. Never mind that her children are my age, I don't think of her as a mom figure. She is really just my friend. She really does love young adults. I believe God put her here to take care of us young people in North Alabama.

What other minister do you know will run this in a crazy bedazzled dolphin shirt that you bought her without complaining even once. The whole time she kept saying, "Next year, we need to ______. When we do this again, we should________." She really does love us and I feel so blessed to have her as my friend.

Bailey is my sister in law and to be honest, I don't really like the "in-law part" We have decided to drop it. 

Bailey has been training tirelessly for this race... She even had to take 2 weeks off for a medical reason and didn't give up. 
At one point in the race, we lost her. It was easy to do since all 10,000 people were wearing white shirts, shorts and had their hair in some version of wet mattedness. After we finished, we found out that she had beat us to the finish line.

Speaking of the finish line.... This is a Color Run finish line. 
Talk about awesome!
They give you a packet filled with color and you rip it open and throw it in the air. It was pretty wonderful!

I know these pictures are anachronistic, but I wanted you to see the sheer number of people that came out to run in the pouring rain. At the starting line with 10,000 of our closest Color Run friends.

This cool cat came to support me running although he didn't actually run it with me, he still stood in the rain for an hour waiting for me to finish color partying. 
Also, my brother and brand new sister-in-law came to support us. I didn't get a picture of all of us together, but you can see by brother's right leg in this picture.

Here is the Color Run 2012. P.S. Pam's face in this picture makes me laugh! P.S. Thanks to my sister-in-law Shannon and Bailey's boyfriend Adam for the awesome pictures!

The list below is all of the things I've completed in the last 8 months. I'm going to get to go into more detail on each of them in the near future. But for now, here is the finished list:

6. Renovate our master bathroom 


9. Go to Europe.



10. Take a picture of the Ponte de Rialto Bridge from a gondola in Venice, Italy.


20. Finish a 5k. Bonus points for finishing the 100 push up challenge) hundredpushups.com

30. Sew and make something I can wear in public

The two below are either almost complete or we are taking major steps to complete. More news on these to come as well!

11. Get completely out of debt! (Except our mortgage)


21. Coordinate a wedding (Currently in process... Nov. 3, 2012 is the date!)


I have finished 10 out of 30. I'm 1/3 of the way there! Unfortunately I only have 2 and a half more years to finish them!

Bathroom Complete!

Well... I have crossed off another 30 before 30. This week I got go finally cross off number 6. Renovate our master bathroom.  I won't keep you in suspense any longer. The final few steps are complete! 

Day 8 : The tile went in for most of the shower.

Day 9: The rest of the tile went in.

Day 10: My favorite day HARDWOODS!

I was looking for a darker, distressed, not hand-scraped, varied width engineered hardwood. It took a while to get it officially picked out, but overall, I'm VERY pleased. Thank you Shaw Flooring. Thank you for your engineered 5'' and 3'' distressed hardwood. Thank you.

Day 11:Paint. This is the second paint color. The first one was too awful for anyone to see. We also got in new fixtures! They painted the ceiling on a previous day, but that isn't very exciting.

Day 12: Biggest day ever!

Bathroom counters, sinks, fixtures, wainscoting, flooring and TOILET INSTALL!

I am mostly excited to get the toilet out of our garage and back where it belongs. 

Last day: Final reveal

Flooring trim, wainscoting painted and shower walls. (Technically, the shower walls came in about 2 weeks later, but for the sake of the blog reader, we can pretend that they were installed the same day.)

My favorite part: The before and after

Bathroom Renovation Days 1-7

The first week of our remodel went pretty smoothly. Along the way, I got really nervous. I trusted our contractor, Daniel Thompson, and now, I love it all. 


Day one consisted of everything being ripped out and put on the street for trash pickup.

At the end of day one, I had a hole in my ceiling, a whole in my floor, pipes in the middle of the floor and exposed wall studs. I say it is a good day!


Day 2! The pipes are gone, the drain has a pipe and the new valve has been installed for the shower.

Day 3 involved a new concrete floor for the shower!

 Day 4 was a let down because we just had to wait for the concrete to dry. 

Day 5 was fun because it was the day the bathroom turned HOT PINK!

Day 6, we got a new electrical outlet put in, and upgraded the old outlet to be safer in a wet area. They also fixed the light fixture electrical work so that we could have two light fixtures instead of one. Se the sneak peak below for the before and after of the light fixtures!

Day 7 was more demo. We decided that we wanted to tear out the carpet in our bedroom and install hardwoods instead. Day 7 involved ripping out the carpet. 

Day 8 was the start of the tile work! You will have to wait til the next entry to see all the tile work. 

Here is the sneak peek I promised regarding the light fixtures: 

NEW FIXTURES!!! (and new paint)

So fun! Thanks to Lowe's Home Improvement store for having a great selection of fixtures on your shelf. Perfection!

Bathroom Renovation Begins

Our Bathroom Renovation begins: Dustin Thompson Construction was my main guy.

He was great and put up with all my nit-picking. 

Here are some before pictures. The bottom of the blog has a sneak peak of the finished room!

Vanity before (above)

Tub before (below)

Shower before (below)

Perhaps we should start with Day Zero. The weekend before Dustin and his team started, Rowe and I stripped the popcorn off the ceiling.

Phew! Glad that is done. We closed on our house in June of 2009, but we also lived in our apartment for another month while we scraped popcorn ceilings in the dining room, living room, master bedroom and office. We are pretty much professionals now. We hate doing it, but it is way cheaper to just do it ourselves. 

Day one consisted of the contractor ripping out everything that needed to go. The counters, floor, shower and wall were all gone! When I got home from work, everything was on the street. Even the toilet we intended to keep, was on the street for garbage pick-up. I was afraid that the trash guy would come, or someone would see my toilet, like it, and take it. I had to drag it back up towards the house so no one would take it. I'm sure my neighbors loved watching me lug a toilet into my garage! HAHA!

Here is the sneak peak I promised: I'M IN LOVE!

Promised Dino/Dragon hoodie

A few entries ago, I promised a Dinosaur/Dragon hoodie tutorial:
Here's what you need:

~A kid's hoodie. Mine is a 3T. My friend L is a size 2T, so I bought one size bigger to account for the fabric I cut.


~Fabric for the dino/dragon spikes. 3 inches wide by the twice the length of your hoodie, plus 3 inches. Measure from the front of the hood, down the back to the bottom back seam, then double it. You want to make sure to have enough fabric for both sides of the spikes.


~Scissors and Pins


~A sewing machine. Only straight stitch work is needed.




Once you have the materials gathered, fold the entire length of your spike fabric in half and pin it together.

Then, draw your spikes on the wrong side of the fabric.
I started out really large and ended with very small spikes. I drew my spikes with a pencil, but you can use what you have. A marker might bleed through.

The next step is to stitch a straight stitch on top of the lines you drew.
This will sew both sides of the fabric together.
After sewing the spikes, cut away the top, negative space and flip the spikes inside out.
Use a pencil to get the tips of the spikes turned out.
At this point, you need to cut the hoodie into 2 pieces. Start at the center of the front of the hood, and cut down the back. Make sure to keep your cuts straight. (no picture of this step)


Pin the spikes, so that they are in between the two halves of the hoodie. (put the hoodie together again) with the spikes in between.

Finally, stitch along the edge of your spikes, sewing all three pieces together. The final product is pretty amazing!

Give the Dino/dragon hoodie to your favorite 2 year old and enjoy! 

She wore her hoodie with her dino/dragon tail to hand out candy on Halloween! SO FUN!