Our Tuesday Chat

Time for our weekly chat.
The Questions for today

1. Have you ever been on a boat? (Motor boat, sail boat, cruise ship, ark, or Good Ship Lollipop)
2. Do you need an alarm to wake up in the morning, or do you wake up naturally? If you have an alarm, tell us what type.
3. Have you ever had a yard sale?
4. Do you like kitchen gadgets? What are some of your favorite?
5. Do you read labels at the grocery store? 

Answers:
     1.  Sure!  We had a cabin cruiser and a small fishing boat when I was growing up.  Went out on the Lake of the Ozarks with friends a few times in years past.  No cruises or sailboats.  I actually get motion sickness, so not too big on water sports.
     2.  No, I don't usually use an alarm.  I wake up about the same time every morning.  If I do have occasion to need one, I use my cell phone's alarm.
     3.  Yes, I've had lots of yard sales over the years.  They were much more successful in the 90's for some reason.  Still do one occasionally.
     4.  I like good, sharp knives, in part because my husband has a knife fetish.  He does not like to be in a kitchen without high-quality kitchen knives.  I guess that's not really a gadget though.  I would have to say that my rubber gripper that helps me open jars is my favorite gadget.  Can't live without it.
     5.  I read labels at the store if it's something I have never bought before.  I mostly shop in the produce section, so not many labels to read there.

You can head on over to Everyday Ruralty and link up and/or check out what others are saying today.

  
 
 

Juicing

I think this will be my last post about juicing.  After 10 days of mostly juicing I lost 8 lbs and feel tons better and Terry lost a total of 16 lbs.  We have adopted a mostly vegetable based diet and it is going real well for us.  Our health is better over-all and it's just been a really good change for the better.  It's a very personal choice for us and we're glad we made it. Enough said.

Cheers!

FNSI

I forgot to even blog about the Friday Night Sew In.  I did work on these hexagons.  Maybe someday I will have enough done to actually complete a table runner. I have 20 of those flowers done, so think I'll do a total of 24 and call it good for now so I can say I completed a project.  Since they are all stitched by hand, it takes me a while.

Another Chat

Questions this week:

1. Do you eat eggs? What is your favorite way to serve them?
2. Do you have a favorite item that you really like having around? (a pillow, a chair, a sweater, a teddy bear, etc.)
3. Is most of the furniture in your home dark wood, light wood, painted, lacquered, or distressed?
4. Please fill in the rest of this sentence. "I could write a book about____________."
5. If money and calendar/family obligations weren't an issue, would you prefer to spend next weekend at a Bed and Breakfast, a posh hotel, a cabin in the woods, or on a sailboat on a calm body of water? 

 Answers:

1. I love eggs, especially fresh from the chicken coop.  I prefer over medium, but like them scrambled and boiled and made into egg salad.  If I have to buy them at the store I like to get organically grown, which are so pricey :p
2. Really don't think I have a favorite item.  I certainly can't think of anything, so I guess not.  Just my husband who is kinda cuddly.
3. Most of our furniture is a medium to dark oak.  I do have some painted and distressed though.  A mixture of both on some pieces.
4. "I could write a book about my life."  Not that anyone would want to read it.  I used to keep journals and have scads of them, so I could easily pull information from them.  Probably not going to happen though.
5. A posh hotel, all-inclusive at the beach.  That's something I always want to do this time of year, every year.  It just doesn't happen, with the exception of one trip to Mexico a few years back, and some time in Hawaii many years ago.  If I could go every winter, I would do it for sure.  Even for just one weekend.

Juicing

A full week into the juicing and I can no longer call it a real juice fast.  We had two invitations to dinner, so we blew it.  Well, not completely. We had lots of salad, veggies and fish on Saturday.  Sunday we ate what our hostess served, but much less than normal, having only seconds on salad.  Neither of us gained any weight back, so we aren't feeling too guilty. 
We do have some favorite juice recipes, but many of them I make up as I go along.  We seem to prefer the ones that have less carrot and more beets in them.  We have discovered that neither one of us is crazy about mango's, so I haven't used any more after the first couple of days.  And it's a huge pain to remove the seeds in them.  We need to try adding pomegranate seeds sometime.

The Mean Green Juice

6 Kale Leaves

4 Stalks Celery

1 Cucumber

2 Green Apples

1/2 Lemon, peeled

Ginger (1-inch)

Berry Carrot Juice

3.5 Carrots

1 Apple

1 Pear

1/2 Cup Strawberries

1/2 Cup Blueberries

Some favorite variations of these are:

This is the recipe to the left using beets instead of spinach

Few kale leaves
4 stalks celery
1 cucumber
1 green apple
1 Fuji apple
Couple handfuls of spinach
1/2 lemon, peeled
1 in. ginger

Another one would be all the ingredients above, except exchange the spinach for a beet (including the beet greens), as pictured here.

A mostly fruity one:

1 green apple
1 red apple
1 pear
2 stalks celery
2 carrots
A handful of any kind of berries
1/2 can chunk pineapple, crushed pineapple, in own juice OR
      1/2 cup fresh pineapple

I thoroughly wash all vegetables and fruits in my big tub sink--just water and a cup or so of white vinegar.  I have a fruit/veggie scrubber that I use on them too.  Remove seeds or root ends on some products as needed.  Don't need to remove peelings on most things, unless you are adding lemon/lime (the zest is too strong for us), or if you add a banana, you would want to remove the peelings.  I have found that my juicer does not like banana's too well.  Doesn't make but a few drops of juice, so most of it goes to waste.  Banana's work better in smoothies using your blender.  I double all of these recipes for the two of us, which is probably a given, but Terry drinks a couple ounces more than I do each time because he's a bigger person and I figure he probably needs it more. LOL
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Juice Fasting

Have any of you out there done a juice fast?  Some people fast to do a cleansing of the body, some to lose weight.  Some because they are vegan or vegetarian anyway, and some for a combination of reasons.  After watching a few videos and studying up on the whole thing, I decided it would be a good idea to at least drink some homemade vegetable juice once a day.  I talked to my spouse about it and he decided that if he's going to drink it, he wanted to do the real deal.  Juice fast for at least 10 days.  And, of course, he didn't want to do this by himself.  He wanted me to fast with him.  So....we are into day 4 and I have to share a few things.

1.  Buy a really good juicer.  The best one you can afford.  I chose Breville after researching products.  I'm not advertising for them or anything, but I really like mine a lot.
Read about their products here, but they are less expensive through other sources.

http://www.brevilleusa.com/beverages/juicers.html

2.  Prepare yourself mentally and physically before you start.  We eased into it a bit by eating very healthy mostly vegie-based meals for a few days before we started the juice fast.  I had to wrap my head around the whole idea.

 3. If you don't have a producing garden (which is a little difficult in most areas in the winter right now) be prepared to spend quite a lot on all the vegetables and fruits you will have to buy.  You definitely have to be able to afford the stuff that is off-season.  It's not cheap.  When things are in season, this will be lots more affordable.  Organically grown vegetables and fruits are even better (my opinion), but they will usually cost even more.

4.  Stock up on extra toilet paper because 'it' may hit you on the second day.  Really cleans out the system, but not to the point of awful.  It was tolerable for us.

 This is how it's playing out so far.  My husband is dropping the pounds like crazy and I've lost a little too.  We both have tons more energy and feel better all the way around.  My skin and hair are so much smoother!  I just noticed this today.  Quite a nice surprise, especially since we are in the middle of winter and my skin and hair are usually dry, and my hair fly-away and out of control :p
We have enough energy to keep doing some of this:

But we haven't been as diligent as we should be.  Have to get back to the gym on a regular basis again.  I try to do a daily workout, but it's not as intense as it should be. It's a no-brainer that we will have to continue a regular exercise routine in order to keep the pounds off.  That coupled with eating a fat-free diet will do wonders, I am sure.
I will report on any other significant benefits as they arise.  I would think it's helping Terry's blood sugar and blood pressure levels too, but they were not out of control before.  Heart disease and Diabetes runs in his family though, so really have to watch that.
Anyone else up for a juice fast?  

Chats from the Farmhouse Porch

It's time for some question and answer fun.  You can join along and find out more information here:

1.  What was your favorite game as a child?
2. Have you ever had your own business? (home business, a shop, Etsy, lemon-aid stand, etc)
3. How's your spelling?
4. How are you about going to the dentist?
5. Do you enjoy board games?

 Answers:
   
     1.  My favorite game was hop-scotch.  I also enjoyed playing jacks and marbles on occasion.  Oh my goodness, this ages me!  No video games when I was a kid!
     2. I currently am President of a business, so yes.  It's a pallet manufacturing company.  And, yes, we do get people coming to our business who pick up pallets they can use for some of those creative re-purposing projects out there.  Mostly we sell large quantities to factories though :)
     3. My spelling?  Well, I hope it's close to perfect, since I often use spell-check.
     4. I was talking to my secretary about this very thing just today!  I used to go twice a year, but now it's every other year.  I went more often back when I wore Invisalign to straighten my teeth.  You just have to go more often when you wear braces and stuff, so my dentist says.
     5. I'm not a big fan of board games, but my husband and most of my kids love them.  Sometimes I join in, but I really have to be in the mood.  Oh!  But I do enjoy playing Scrabble on occasion.  I enjoy time in my sewing room more.

Hope you are having a wonderful week!

Bathroom Scales Re-do

I was getting sick and tired of looking at these bathroom scales.  Really didn't want to go out and buy a new one because it works fine.
Before and After:

I am going to paint the walls in this bathroom gray.  So, when it's all done I will post some pictures.  I like teal and gray, so that's the direction I think I'll go.

The re-do was super easy.  I removed the (sort of) glued-on vinyl/paper:

 

Cleaned the surface by scraping away most of the glue with a butter knife.  I'm sure you could use a razor blade or something similar. Finished cleaning with a damp cloth and a drop of dish soap.  Wiped dry. Carefully removed the little plastic shield.  It came off easily with the end of that butter knife.

I traced around the old blue piece of whatever it is, adding a couple of inches all around.  Could just leave an opening for the plastic shield thing, but that was an after thought for me, so mine still shows the name brand at the top of the scales.  Totally not necessary, so could cover that right up.
Also cut two thin pieces of quilt batting the same size as that blue thing.  Spray glued the surface (covering up the hole first because I sprayed it with the plastic shield removed), then I placed the batting on top, the fabric over that, then folded and tucked (and a touch of spray glue) around the edges.  Popped the plastic shield back in. Finished in 30 minutes or so.  Sure beats buying a new one.

Now I really need to go buy that paint because I'm tired of looking at plain white walls :)

Getting to Know Each Other

I decided to start following:


It just seems like a fun thing to do...'chat on the farmhouse porch', that is.  Each Tuesday Patrice asks a few questions to help everyone get to know each other better, and anyone can join along and answer on their own blogs.  Here are this weeks' questions and answers:

1. What's your favorite thing to have in hot cocoa/ hot chocolate?
2. Did you have a white Christmas? Have you had snow since then?
3. Have you been looking over seed catalogs? If this doesn't apply, what kind of catalogs do you like to leaf through?
4. Gas stove or electric?
5. What's new or interesting?

 My answers:
 
     1.  A little piece of solid chocolate...to add more chocolaty goodness, of course.  I love the way it melts in there and just makes it even richer.
     2.  Yes, we did.  And yes we have.
     3.  No I have not been looking over seed catalogs this year, but for many years I did just that.  I do like checking out some fashion catalogs that come along in the mail, to check out bargains and to see what the latest fashions are.
     4.  I have both...main kitchen and basement kitchen.
     5.  I am in the process of becoming a nationally certified woman-owned business owner.  Hmmm.  That sounds more important than it probably is.

Hope you are having a wonderful week!

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year to everyone!  2013 is going to be an exciting one for our family. We are expecting three new grand babies!  I am starting to put together some ideas for baby gifts to make, along with a few new quilts. More on that later.

Goals for 2013:

-Stay in shape by continuing to exercise 5 days/week
-Eat healthier
-Make baby quilts :)
-Sell a rental house/buy a new one
-Finish our basement

Trying to keep it real.  I prefer realistic goals to the traditional New Year's resolutions.