Food, DIY, Chicago Mom Blogger
I recently had the pleasure of designing a web site for Laura of Laura’s Hair & Nail Studio. Laura was wonderful to work with, and she’s thrilled to be able to expand her business with a web site for her salon. Please take a moment and visit her new web site.
And if you are local, you can visit Laura’s Facebook page (which I also designed) and “Like” it to get her latest updates. Laura is an amazing person and a fantastic hair and nail stylist.
It was a pleasure working with you, Laura.
Last week ended up being a pretty good week as far as weight loss went. I started the week at 219.5 lbs., and I weighed in today at 217.5 lbs. That’s a 2 lb. weight loss!
I also mentioned last week that I’m working on cutting my coffee consumption down to 1 cup per day and working on reducing my sugar intake.
Well, I had success with both of those goals. I only had two cups of coffee one day last week, and I have been consuming less sugar. Cutting down to one cup of coffee per day, alone, reduces my sugar intake quite a bit, because I like my coffee kinda sweet.
This week I’m going to focus on starting a strength training routine. I need to work out my arms, so I’m going to pull out my exercise band and make it happen. I’m shooting for two days of strength training this week and three days on the treadmill for at least 30 minutes each time.
A big positive this week is that I will be six-weeks postpartum on Wednesday, and I’m only 4 lbs. from my pre-pregnancy weight! I’ve very thankful for this. π
Here’s this week’s wrap up:
Current Weight:Β 217.5 lbs.
Goal Weight:Β 170 lbs.
# of total pounds I want to lose in 2012:Β 50lbs.
# of pounds to go until I reach my goal:Β 47.5 lbs.
Are you on a mission to lose weight this year? I’d love to hear how it’s going!
Last week, I’m reluctant to say, wasn’t the most productive week as far as my goals went.
The reason?
I still haven’t established “Office Hours” for when I need to get work done, both for my design clients and for my blog. So I ended up waking up pretty much whenever in the morning, and got work done during the day. This means that it sometimes took twice as long to get things done because of all the interruptions.
But now that the baby will be 6-weeks-old in a couple of days, one of my goals this week is going to be to earnestly work on making it a habit to get up before the kids and work during my Office Hours of 6am-8am & 9:30pm-10:30pm. I’ll let you know next week just how this works out.
Here’s how I did with last week’s goals…
Family/Mothering Goals:
1. Come up with a family activity for us to do for our Family Day on Friday. Done. We ended up keeping family time super simple last week. It consisted of donuts and Wheel of Fortune. π In the last two-months, Breanna discovered Wheel of Fortune and fell in love with the show. She makes sure to watch it each day at 6:30pm. We decided to watch it as a family last Friday and had fun trying to figure out the puzzles before the contestants on T.V.
2. Cook with Breanna for our “cooking day” together. I didn’t get to this, but we’ll do it this week.
Personal Goals:
3. Walk for 30 minutes 4 days this week for exercise. I ended up walking for 3 days and didn’t make my goal of 4 days for 30 minutes.
4. Read Chapters 10-13 inΒ WordPress Web Design for DummiesΒ by Lisa Sabin-Wilson. This is such a great book. I’m really expanding my knowledge of WordPress. But I didn’t finish all the chapters I wanted to read. I read chapters 10, 17, 18, and about half of chapter 11. I decided to start skipping around, because I needed a break from chapter 11. It has a lot more code references than the other chapters.
5. Wake up by 7:30am every morning. I wish! Elisabeth, our baby girl, is in a routine of going to bed around 11-11:30pm, which means I didn’t go to bed until around midnight or later. Not good. I got up by 7:30am, maybe one day last week.
Home Management Goals:
6. De-clutter the kids’ desk. Their desk is a clutter-magnet. Done. Something I actually did get to.
7. Sew hole in Breanna’s pants since I didn’t get to this last week. I didn’t get this done….two weeks in a row now.
Business Goals:
8. Write 1 Blog Post per day starting on Tuesday. Laugh. But I promise to get more posting done this week. I’ve already written out a schedule of posts that I want to write this week; I just need to carve out that time to write them.
9. Send emails to those on my to-do list. I got most done, but not all.
10. Create graphic I have in mind to use in future weekly posts. I didn’t get this done, either.
And now for this week’s goals….
Family/Mothering Goals:
1. Come up with a family activity for us to do for our Family Day on Friday.
2. Cook with Breanna and Isaac for our “cooking days” together.
Personal Goals:
3. Walk for 30 minutes 3 days this week and do strength training 2 days with my exercise band.
4. Finish readingΒ WordPress Web Design for DummiesΒ by Lisa Sabin-Wilson.
5. Wake up by 5:30am every morning.
Home Management Goals:
6. Help Nathan and Breanna sort through their clothes and remove what doesn’t fit and can be donated. I’m also going to try to make up a couple of boxes for ThreadUp.
7. Sew hole in Breanna’s pants since I didn’t get to this last week or the week before.
Business Goals:
8. Post one blog post each day.
9. Implement regular Office Hours for both my business and blog time, and send emails I didn’t get to last week.
10. Create graphic I have in mind to use in future weekly posts.
It’s time to do this thing. For week 1 of my Losing the Baby Fat weight loss challenge, I’m sharing my “Before Picture” or….what I look like right now.
Here it is…
Current Weight: 219.5 lbs.
Goal Weight: 170 lbs.
# of total pounds I want to lose in 2012: 50lbs.
# of pounds to go until I reach my goal: 49.5 lbs.
So far so good with my eating this week. I’m trying to cut down on the amount of sugar I consume (so making cookies twice in the last week probably wasn’t the best idea), even though it’s almost always organic sugar. It’s still sugar.
I’m also trying to cut down the coffee I’m drinking to one cup per day. I had been at one cup per day while pregnant.
(Okay, I occasionally had two cups…but it was organic, so that doesn’t make it bad. Right? :-))
Anyway, definitely after coming home from the hospital, I started drinking two cups per day….with sugar, chocolate sauce, caramel sauce, vanilla (should I stop?), and whipped cream. I enjoy making homemade lattes, and I’m not ready to go “cold turkey” with the coffee drinking, so I think cutting back to one cup per day is the answer. For now.
Someday, I’d like to end my relationship with coffee altogether.
Now is not that time. No, not while homeschooling, going to school myself, trying to running a business, and parenting five children. No, now it not that time.
I will enjoy coffee for a while longer. Just less of it.
Now back to the point of this post, weight loss.
Do you have a goal to lose weight this year? What are the small steps you’re taking to get the weight off?
I’d love to hear about it! π
