Flylady - The Dungeon

I'm not sure if Flylady still writes about the "dungeon" in your home.

Basically we all usually have a place that we try to avoid as much as possible because it's such a pit. For me, it's usually my storage room. It's not horrible, but it's not a fun place to hang out. Recently though, it's been my stamping/scrapping room. My kids have been playing in there and they have been making cards for people. It was awful.  I would shut the door so I wouldn't have to see the mess.

Last week I set the timer for 5 minutes to clear out my dungeon AKA stamping room.

UNREAL. It's clean now. 5 minutes!!!

It's truly amazing what you can do in 5 minutes if you focus on something.

What's your dungeon room?

Spend 5 minutes a day in there - it WILL make a difference!

Back to the dungeon AKA storage room now!

This post has been linked to:
11th Heaven's Homemaking Haven

Primal Spaghetti

To make a grain free/pasta free Spaghetti dinner do the following:

1. Make your spaghetti sauce as normal.
2. Add cooked ground beef.
3. Serve over breakfast sausage links that you've baked and frozen for breakfast.
4. Serve with a salad.

Note: Some people shred zucchini and saute it in place of the pasta. Some people serve it over spaghetti squash.

My husband loves spaghetti this way, my kids - not so much, but they will get used to it some day. Their other option is to order pasta when we go out to eat. I'm not telling them that they can't have it, I'm telling them that I'm not buying it anymore (now that my husband is on board - when he wasn't on board with this way of eating I always made pasta for them).

Frugal, easy, healthy...what more could you want???

This recipe has been linked to:
Grocery Cart Challenge

Primal Eating / Primal Diet

One of the very best books I've read about changing your diet:

Protein Power 

I don't agree with everything in the book, but it was an easy read and made sense to me. My husband read and mostly enjoyed:

Why We Get Fat: and What to Do About It 

I didn't like that book at all, but many people love it.

So back on May 10th I wrote that my husband didn't eat primal foods. Then on June 13th I wrote that he was going to try eating the way that I do in order to decrease inflammation in his body. Here is a conversation I had with my husband a few days ago - a man of very few words....

Me: So you have 9 more days on this "diet" - what are you going to do after you are done? (he did a 30 day challenge of very few carbs/grains/sugar/very little dairy)

Him: Basically the same thing with a few changes

Me:  If it hasn't helped with inflammation, why eat primal foods?

Him: How do you know the inflammation hasn't gone down?

Me: Ummmm because you never said anything. Has it gone down?

Him: Yes

Me: How do you know?

Him: Because it doesn't hurt as much when I run.

Read more success stories over at Mark's Daily Apple.

Menu and Grocery Shopping

Items bought:  red peppers, cucumbers, mushrooms, garlic, onion, kiwi, bananas, apples, lettuce, carrots, kerrygold butter, ham, avocados, cream, cherry tomatoes and a dozen roses from my husband for our 19th wedding anniversary.

We got back from our vacation at midnight on Saturday. It was a fun trip, but now I need a vacation from our vacation! I'm sure my sister and her family feel the same way as we ran ran ran. I always forget how expensive vacations are - $50 for one meal with water to drink?

On Monday I stopped at the store to pick up a few items - $50 later....a few items - YIKES!

Lack of planning is NOT a good thing!

I've only got $30 left to last me until Sunday so I think I need to manage my money a bit better.

On hand we have shrimp, 1 pack of german sausages, steak, burger and roast. Lots of frozen vegies and a few fresh ones left. I don't think we're going to starve.

• Wednesday: Some sort of spicy shrimp sauce with burger and sausages.  
• Thursday: Beef with Broccoli
• Friday: "Spaghetti" (will be posting a recipe soon for grain free spaghetti ideas)
• Saturday: Not sure yet - Burgers?
• Sunday: Husband Cooks!

I have been better about asking the kids what they want for dinner. It's amazing how often they want tacos. One compromise I've made for the kids is using corn taco shells that I have found where the ingredients are corn, palm oil and lime. My husband and I make salads out of the meat or we eat something else depending on baseball/softball schedules.

Before we left on vacation I bought and cooked sausage for breakfast that we can re-heat. I also bought 4 dozen eggs.

This post has been linked to:
Grocery Cart Challenge
Money Saving Mom

Marriage Tip

I love this!!!

The Generous Wife

We're just getting home from vacation. Oh how I love coming home.

Home making: Taking care of Yourself

"Self"ish priorities:

1. 15 minutes lifting weights.
2. 15 minutes in the sun getting Vitamin D naturally.
3. 15 minutes in my zone.
4. 15 minutes reading my Bible/prayer time.

What "self"ish priorities do you have today?

These are not selfish in a bad way....selfish as in take care of yourself so you can take care of others.

Menu Plan

My husband has decided that he is going to try low carb for a while to see if it helps with inflammation. He's a marathon runner, but has been injured the last few years due to inflammation. The surgeon that he works with was doing the Atkins diet, but is now eating primally. He said that when he was at Disney World he ate a lot of grains and noticed a huge difference with the inflammation in his body compared to eating an Atkins/Primal diet.

I'm curious to see how this affects him. There was such a huge change in my life, I wonder if he'll notice an improvement.

Of course, it's changing the way that I cook. I haven't quite figured out how to do this yet for me, let alone for him so I'm floundering a bit. The budget is still $400 a month, but what I'm buying is different. He's having carbs before/after he runs, but other than that he's eating a lot more meat and vegies.

When I get back from vacation I plan to follow the 6 week Cure, not to lose weight, but to try to heal my body. It'll definitely be a challenge, but I'm looking forward to it. It'll make camping and the 4th of July interesting!

Organic Vegetables
Thought this comment was interesting regarding organic vegetables:

Dr. Art Ayers said...


John,

I recommend eating lots of veggies, but at least some of them raw to provide a source of gut bacteria.

I don't think that environmental contaminants are as big a deal as diet-based chronic inflammation and simplified gut flora. I think that in the absence of inflammation, the toxic stuff in our environment, as well as most genetic predispositions to disease would not result in disease.

I don't have access to a lot of reasonably priced organic vegetables, so that gave me peace of mind.

BPA
Sara - this article about BPA is for you, but I can't find your blog Raspberry Musings anymore!

Dr. Art Ayers made this comment in another post:

Andy,


I think that the body has a series of layers of protection against toxic compounds in the environment, but most of those defenses can also be compromised by poor diet. This means that an occasional assault of pesticides, preservatives, etc. is no big deal. Plants produce equally toxic compounds that we eat daily. That does mean, however, that the typical modern diet high in carbs/starch/sugars and vegetable oils will compromise the detox system and the immune system and leave people vulnerable to environmental toxins.


So, I don't worry about bacon, but I don't eat processed cold cuts. I grilled some wonderful, thick-cut, rib-eye steaks (grass-fed) last night and drizzled them with butter seasoned with rosemary and garlic. I had bacon and eggs for breakfast (no toast!), and I will have cream in my coffee.


I don't worry about BPA in my water bottle, but I avoid cash register receipts from thermal printers, that provide at least a million fold high level of BPA contamination. A healthy body tolerates a lot, but the stupidity of the health/nutrition/ag/business system is life threatening.
So, I would recommend that you avoid cheap packaged sandwich meats and get used to cooking your own food from real meat.

Thanks for the question.
August 30, 2010 11:44 AM

Of course things could have changed since August, but it's food for thought anyway.

Breakfast is sausage and eggs
Dinner is some sort of baked or BBQ'd meat, salad/fresh veggies and frozen veggie.

I don't have to have many snacks on hand anymore. My kids will make popcorn occasionally and my husband will eat either sardines, yogurt or hard boiled eggs.

Home making - The Husband

The other day my husband and I had a bad morning because he was so cranky. I'm sure it must have been him, couldn't possibly have been me. Well, maybe I was a tiny itty bitty bit cranky, but he started it.

Regardless, he left the house and the "I love you's" were said, but they weren't said with a lot of feeling - you know what I mean? After he left I realized that even though he was cranky (remember it was all his fault) he still deserves my love and respect.

So I took my handy dandy tracfone out and sent him a text. He sent a text back and my day went sooooo much better.



If you are able to email/call/text your husband during the day, try to do something for him every week just to let him know that you are thinking about it.

P.S. Okay, I admit it, it could possibly have been my fault too, but after you've been married for 19 years, I would still rather blame him. Holy cow! 19 years! I cannot even believe that. I  remember hitting the 10 year mark and I thought that was a LONG LONG time.

Recipe - Twice Baked Taco Potatoes



Seriously, isn't that the CUTEST guy? Photo Credit.

I had to give a shout out to Lynn's blog, LynnsKitchenAdventures for her twice baked potato recipe. 
I don't plan to ever make this recipe again, but my kids LOVED it! I've made twice baked potatoes twice in my lifetime and each time I say I'll never do that again because it seems like such a tedious process.

I will however make taco fixins' and put them over potatoes.

Do you make twice baked potatoes? Maybe I just need a little bit of help to make it easier.

This post has been linked to:
GroceryCartChallenge

Parenting



My husband in a road race.

 Do you want your kids to act the way you do?

You know the saying:

Do as I say, not as I do?



It doesn't work so well. My daughter is 14 and started driving. Guess what? She drives like I do! Yikes, that is scary. Kids watch and learn from you. 

• If you are constantly eating junk, they will probably eat junk.
• If you are driving poorly, they will probably drive poorly.
• If you make your life so busy so you are stressed out all of the time, they will probably do the same.
• If you sit around and watch t.v. all of the time, they will probably sit around and watch t.v. all the time.

On the flip side:





My son has decided that he likes to run too.


• If you exercise, they will probably exercise.
• If you take time to stop and smell the lilac bushes (okay, I know it's roses, but lilacs are blooming now and smell soooooo good), they will probably do the same.
• If you treat your spouse with respect, they will probably do the same.
• If you read, they will probably read (not the case with my son!)

Think about it:

What do you need to change about yourself so that your kids will grow up and be the person you want them to be?

I hope that question made sense - what do I want for my kids? I need to stop and think about this too. I haven't thought about it that way before. One thing I do know is this: I want them to enjoy life. I want them to know that you do NOT have to be busy 24 X 7  - I want them to take time to play. I took my son to the park the other day. We played baseball (poor kid - no wonder he struggles with baseball considering I made him swing at any ball that I threw to him...) and we threw rocks in the creek. When my daughter called for a ride home, he was so disappointed that we had to leave.

Do you know how many things I could have done at home? A bazillion.

His comment as we were walking back to the car was this "I had the best time, I sure hope we can do that again soon." He's 12 years old and he enjoyed hanging out with this mom throwing rocks. Hmmmm...

This post has been linked to:
11th Heaven Homemaking Haven

Hmmmm....

I really thought that I'd have a lot of time to write a post today....yeah, not so much.

For your reading pleasure:

Tips and Tricks by Dr. Eades

Flylady



Picture Credit

I mentioned before that even when I am really busy, the inside of the toilets need to be clean. Strange, I know. The main reason I love Flylady's cleaning style is because I don't get overwhelmed by my house anymore.

When I use her system, my house is decent. Not perfect, not sparkling clean, but good enough. Good enough to have people over, good enough so I can enjoy spending time with the kids, good enough...

Good Enough

But in order for her system to work, you have to apply the principles. Routines are what makes her system work. Now that the kids are out of school it seems like I'm running around more than ever. Therefore, I need to have a new routine. Not sure yet what that will be, but what I'm doing now is not working.

I'd love to tell you my grand plan, unfortunately I haven't figured it out yet. Right now, when I'm home, I am asking myself what is my biggest priority. Yesterday it was getting the clutter put away so my husband didn't have to see the mess when he got home from work. This morning it was returning some things to Walmart and trying to find some pure aloe vera gel for my very sunburned daughter.

I really need to plant a few things in my garden as well. However first things first....must have coffee and some Bible time, maybe then I'll figure it out!