To Live is to Learn

I'm slowly making a list between scrapbooking, crocheting, cross stitching and sewing projects that I would like to do. I was blessed abundantly with gift cards to the awesome Hobby Lobby and will be able to get started on all these projects, but for now here is a pic of the crossstitch I'm currently working on, can you tell what it is? That's it for now, until next time ; p.

Three more weeks, am I ready? Well, I can tell you, I could run the half tomorrow but I would be really slow and my time would be pitiful. Running this week went well, again 5 mile runs in the week and 8 miles long run. Being that our long runs were on Christmas this year, I with a bad attitude and all, plopped on the treadmill, hubby on the other one and we both did our long runs inside on Christmas night. I never thought the day would come where I could say I ran for one and one half hours on the treadmill but I did. Interestingly enough, I ran 8 miles and wasn't even winded. How in the world does that work? Anyway, truth be told, running 5 days a week is beginning to feel more like a chore and less enjoyable, though I am enjoying seeing my progress. I am determined to finish strong. Three more weeks!  Until next time, Merry Christmas everyone!

For the few of you who read this blog, I haven't done a homemaking project in a LONG time, but I'm giving myself grace and will restart them in the new year...stay tuned  :)

Running this week was planned to have my Tues, Thurs runs be 5 miles and my long run to be 8 miles. The midweek runs went well. I'm exceedingly grateful that my hip injury seems to be behaving itself even with my mileage increasing. Big downfall this week was my long run, I pushed myself way to hard and crapped out at 6.75 miles. I stressed my body too much and it resulted in side stitch that ended my long run prematurely. Oh well, I learned a lesson about pacing and prayerfully won't make that mistake again. That's it for now, 1 month until the half, eek! Until next time.

Hey everybody, So today, me and the hubby went and got our tree. I know not really a big deal but last year was our first married Christmas and my hubby was working crazy hours so we did without a tree, so to have one this year is very exciting! Warm fuzzy's filled my heart as we put up the lights and decorated the tree. This will be the first of many more years to come. What fun it will be to start traditions with our own kids someday. Until next time. ; p

Wow, past the half way mark with my training. This week was good. I had two rest days instead of just one because of a 12K I ran at the end of the week. Had to run 4.5 miles Tue and Thur and 3 miles crosstraining Wednesday and Sunday. The runs went well, nothing to complain about and no impending injuries creeping up so I'm grateful for that. For the 12K, I had a goal for myself of doing it with an 11:30 mile, I came crazy close, ran 11:35 mile, but still I finished strong and felt pretty good afterward, what more can you ask, right? Anywho, that's it for this week. The pic below was taken by my mom who surprised us and wished us well right before the race. Until next time all.

Hey Everybody, About a week ago, I was perusing around Hobby Lobby and I found myself making a mental note of all the crafts and DIY stuff I wanted to learn how to do. Among one of those crafts was amigurumi. Pronounced ah-mee-gu-ru-me. Amigurumi is making little stuffed animals out of crochet. I've known how to crochet since I was a young girl and thought to myself, I could do this! After cleaning yesterday, I decided to give it a try. I present you to my amigurumi! This little pink elephant is my first creation. I hope my accuracy with how to place body parts comes with time. She has a little down syndrome ear but still I think it's cute and it was fun and simple to make. Well there you have it folks, that is amigurumi, until next time  ; p.

Alrighty Guys, well running this week went well. I love when you get on the treadmill and just run and when you look at the time you've already gone your whole distance plus half a mile more  :) Okay, but really, my focus with my short runs during the week to increase my speed. My long run for the week, I'm slowly learning to pace myself. This week's long run was 6 miles. oi vey! I was scared about this one let me tell you. I had nothing to be afraid of. All this training really is doing something useful. 3 miles in and 3 miles back doesn't seem so bad. I even feel like I'm getting the hang of pacing myself. I am however, decently sore, my legs are wondering what I just did to them. :) Also, thank you Lord, I haven't struggled with a side stitch in 3 weeks! Next week is week 6, almost half way, can you believe it? Hope everyone had a blessed and wonderful Thanksgiving, until next time ; p.

Well, this entry is two fold. Something you need to know about me before you read it, if you don't already know, is that I am a perfectionist. I'm not your typical perfectionist though. I'm only a perfectionist with myself. My performance in life that is. Within the last couple years, I've gotten a small grasp on God's love and grace for me and my life. Well anyway, even though my head has knowledge of God's grace, my heart only remembers occasionally. Well, I feel like God spoke to me through this apron you are about to see. On a practical note, an apron is considered an easy sewing project and since I'm trying to learn basic sewing, I went out and bought material and a pattern this week. Funny however, I opened up the pattern and my head began to spin. So I called my mom for some instruction, unfortunately, without being able to see it she couldn't help me. I thought, well gosh, I won't get to see my mom for help for another week. So, I decided t...

Hey guys, So only difference to my running this week was my mileage was increased. 3.5 miles Tuesday and Thursday and 5 miles for my long run. I am truly amazed at how I feel during the 5 miler. I kept thinking I'd have to walk some portion but nope! So far I'm really impressed with my training. This was the second time I have ran 5 miles and at the end I'm feeling great, like I could do more, which I figure is a good thing since the half is 13.1 miles. Only downfall about the 5 miler is I felt like I was running faster and I wasn't. Did 5 miles in 58 minutes which was like an 11:32 mile. Bummer. Oh well, I'll keep striving to get faster with my short runs and pray it pays off with my long run, until next time.  : p.

So, the hubby and I got back from running with our church group yesterday and I was absolutely craving cinnamon rolls, therefore, drum roll if you please...that is my hpow this week, homemade cinnamon rolls. They were so much easier than I thought. Two thoughts on them though, they tasted good, however; next time I would cook them less and I would try to cook them in a round cake pan. I only had a pie pan, just to see if it would be different. Pictures... Dough Filling Dough after kneading All rolled out Filling added Missed the pic, rolled into log, cut into 8 equal pieces placed in pie plate Almost finished, just add frosting :)

Hey All, Running was interesting this past week. Plan was as follows: Monday stretch and strengthen, Tuesday 3.5 miles, Wednesday 2 miles, Thursday 3.5 miles, Friday rest, Saturday 40 minutes cross training and Sunday long 5 mile run.  Well, this past week I was in vacation with my wonderful in laws and my schedule didn't exactly go like this. Did stretch and strengthen Tuesday, counted walking around San Diego zoo all day as 40 minutes cross, ran 4 miles one day and 2 the other. We came home Friday so I ended up using that as a rest day. Ran 3.5 Saturday. Then, drum roll if you please....I ran 5 miles tonight! I know it's no big deal when I'm training to run 13 but still. I secretly believe that if I can run the half it will be a miracle, however; that miracle is getting closer and closer to reality. I even felt good enough at the end to keep going but decided not to push myself, it would be a huge bummer to get injured this stage in the game. Okay well, that's all ...

Okay, well for those of you who have been paying attention, I haven't kept up with blogging about running. Let's start with a clean slate okay? Okay, last week was the official first week of 1/2 training. Both me and the hubby are on training plans. This week went well. Couple rough spots but I think that is expected. Although I don't feel I'm improving tons, I can tell you that when I first started this shenanigans, I could barely and breathlessly run 1 mile. Now 3 seems less and less challenging every time I do it. In fact Tim and I ran with our church group this Saturday. I battled a side stitch the whole way but the four miles seemed fairly short. Hopefully, my training will get me somewhere. Since I'm officially training, I'd like to let you all know, my personal goal is to run the 1/2 in less than two and one half hours, I know it's a tall order, but training 6 days a week, I'm really hoping I can. Okay well that's it for running this week, u...

 The above picture is my unfortunately failed chipotle burger. Why failed? Many reasons, among them, I put too much dough in the buns and my husband called them very dense and like a brick...Not what you're looking for in a hamburger bun. I'll use less dough next time and we'll see if it makes a difference. Looking at the glass half full, the recipe was really easy, I just didn't execute the result very well, oh well, I have to learn to laugh at myself because as much as my perfectionistic little self hates to admit it, I'm still a very new homemaker and I'm never going to be perfect...can you tell that is one of my weaknesses?  :) Anyway, I used a different recipe for homemade french fries and they didn't turn out well. Here are my thoughts, I know I made the buns too dense. I don't think the fries turned out very well because I was using the toaster oven. If I give this recipe another shot, I'll do it in the oven. I may not do this again simply b...

Hey All, So for those that follow my running, my schedule goes like this...Monday stretch and strengthen, Tuesday run 3 miles, Wednesday run 2 miles or cross train, Thursday run 3 miles, Friday rest  :), Saturday 3 miles or 30 minutes cross training, and finally Sunday run 4 miles. Runs went fine until Sunday, being the dummy I can be, I attempted to run 4 miles outside in 86 degree weather, whoops, won't do that twice, still too hot, needless to say the run didn't go well, this is my first week doing my Hal Higdon training plan, I would redo this week since my run Sunday didn't go so well, except next week is basically identical. That's it for now, until next week. ; p.

 Since my love is working tonight, I'm going to my parents dinner, with that in mind, I figured they need some fresh dessert as well. Just so happens that I bought fresh berries this weekend and needed to use them up. I present you with mixed berry pie  :) Freshly washed blueberries, strawberries and raspberries. Add in sugar, flour and cinnamon LOVE homemade pie crust, mix butter in dry ingredients All ingredients added, letting dough rest Ready for rollin Roll out into flat round-ish size Roll dough up with rolling pin Place over pie pan, press in to mold, cut of excess Added fruit, then my first attempt at lattice It turned out pretty well  :) Finished product, YUM! This pie was tested by both my parents and my hubby, they all really liked it, I'll hold onto this recipe, very good! What a fun way to spend my Saturday!

Okay all, so I got home from work last night and was craving a yummy taco salad and I didn't feel like going to taco bell so I decided to look up the recipe for homemade taco salad shells. To my surprise it's a really easy quite quick recipe. 1/4 cup water, 1/2 tsp EVOO in large bowl, I had 10 in tortillas so I used a large tupperware. Roll tortilla in above mixture, let excess liquid drip off, place small bowl( I used a ramekin) in bottom of baking dish, cover with foil then mold tortilla over ramekin. Remove from oven when tortilla begins to brown and get crispy on outside. Flip molded tortilla over and place back in over for 3-5 minutes until inside is no longer moist. Finished Tortilla  : ) Fill with favorite ingredients, top with sour cream and salsa, YUM!  Just as I was getting mine out of the oven my hubby walked in and said he wanted one too, so I made the second in the toaster oven and it worked well. Hubby said to make this more often he loved th...

So this Saturday, I let myself sleep in, relaxed a little then got to working on my HPOW's. I told you at the beginning of the week, I would be doing three to make up for the last two weeks. The two today are, homemade tortilla chips and chicken broth. I did the chicken broth in the crock pot so it was a throw in it in in the AM and let it cook all day kind of thing. I've always used broth cubes or powder, but recently thought, if I could do it homemade it wouldn't have any salt and given that my sweet hubby is only 31 and already getting pre-hypertensive I'm trying to monitor how much salt I give him. I followed the recipe from the year of slow cooking website and I cheated, I bought a rotisserie chicken...here are some pics. All veggies chopped, chicken placed, water added along with seasoning, ready for slow cooking allll day  :) 10 hours Gotta wash los manos and dig in to get all the chicken bones out. Okay, so oddly enough, there aren't a...

Hey All, So here is the situation, I'm finding that writing 6 days a week for every different day I run or train is getting tedious and repetitive, therefore, from now on, I'll post one day per week for the whole week, ready? Here we go. This week, I started out the training schedule, then the hubby said, why are you training now, the program is 12 weeks and you have 14. I thought, hmm, you are right. So I did the program M-W and decided to cool it a little. I've been having some issues sleeping and feeling a little tired so I decided to go easy this week, only 3 days. One day I ran outside, it was nice, oh so nice to get off of the treadmill, I'm hoping with the training schedule to run 3 out of my 6 days outside since the weather is getting better and I'll be running on days off from work. Okay all, that is it for running this week, until next week.  ; p

Well, anyone who regularly reads my blog has probably wondered what happened to me. Here is the thing, as far as my running goes, I had a running plan that was 16 weeks, but after a long discussion with my hubby, he suggested that I look up Hal Higdon's beginner 1/2 marathon plan and do that instead. The old running plan I had just had me running 3 times per week with nothing in addition. I began to get concerned that I only had 14 weeks to get up to 13.1 miles for the 1/2. Well, my awesome husband explained to me that training is much more that running 3 times per week. So, I decided to go with Hal Higdon's more detailed plan for the 1/2. It is 12 weeks, running 5 days per week with one day for strength and stretching and another for rest. So basically the week ending September 24th, I decided to go forth with Hal's plan. Well Monday comes and goes and I'm finding myself confused and not well prepared for his plan. Long story short, I only ran once last week and I ...

Ran yesterday, plan this week is to run 3 miles first two runs then 3.5 last run of the week. Nothing too interesting, ran 3 miles, went slowly at 5.6, went hiking with the hubby on Saturday with some decent pain in my knees and wanted to take it slow in case I was sore or something. Had pain all down my right side towards the end and after, not sure what to think of that. I have a known hip injury that flares up sometimes on my right side, we'll have to wait and see what happens. Plan for dinner tonight was spinach and chicken calzone. In and effort to be more healthy, I made the calzone crust with whole wheat. Easy recipe from eatingwell.com, whole wheat flour, yeast, H2O, honey and salt. Quickly threw this together then let it rise twice, very simple. For the filling the original recipe calls for cooking the chicken in the frying pain with a little EVOO. I changed it up a little, I slowly boiled the chicken then shredded the chicken with two forks, cooked onion and garlic...

Well my homemaking project this week is cake from scratch. I've never made it before, I've made many Pillsbury box cakes but never from scratch, here goes nothing. I've done a good amount of research about this, word is homemade cakes are very hard to make moist so I searched everywhere on the net for a moist recipe. I came across a recipe on a cake blog and figured I'd try it out. The Ingredients Dry ingredients first HA! I got so carried away I forgot to take a pic of wet ingredients going in, oh well. You mix all wet ingredients in excepts the eggs, beat for 2 minutes, then add 2 large eggs and beat another 2 minutes, pour into pan and bake 25-35 minutes. Here are a couple of pictures of the finished product, the first picture is the cake sans icing the second, I couldn't decide if I liked the icing so I cut a piece and had the hubby try it before I iced the whole thing. I made homemade strawberry icing to go on top, surprisingly, I thought the icing ...