such a tease

I might have actually have it...for the first time in 2011.  I have spring fever.  And it's bad!  Too bad it's still January.

All I want is some warm weather and sunshine.  Oh heck.  Who am I kidding?  I want sand, water, a slight breeze, suntan lotion, flip-flops, sunglasses, palm trees, swimming pool, a good book, my iPod, and some good seafood. 

SUMMER, WHERE ARE YOU?

I must brag for a minute though.  I have 2 relatives that are living at the beach, and I can go there any time that I want.  There are talks of a spring trip to stay with Sis in her condo on the beach.  (Did you hear me?  ON THE BEACH!  eek!) 

In the meantime, I guess I could start back up my workout regime.  I need to trim up the flab since I am suppose to be trying to lose more weight any way.  What fun is that though?

I guess I really enjoy this weekend with the temps getting in the 60s since I won't be getting what I want for another 2+ months.  This weather can be such a tease.

goodbye, friend

On December 20th, I had to bid farewell to an excellent friend.  It was one of the hardest things that I have done in my recent years.  We had been through a lot together.  Let me recap in no particular order: 
-getting my first job
-traveling to Jacksonville, FL all by myself for a friend's wedding
-carrying around my firstborn (Jackson)
-making the long trips to Alabaster from Chalkville to spend time with my boyfriend turn fiance turn husband
-oodles of beach trips
-getting loaded up to move into our own house
-almost getting sucked up in a tornado the night of purchasing my baby girl (Barkley)

Even now I still get choked up thinking about our last drive.  She was an excellent care and honestly hated to see her go.  I have some great final shots and love to remember her like this forever.

The times I shared with her have been some of the best years of my life.  Good-bye 'Tima.  I will miss you.

2 weeks in...

We are 2 weeks into 2011 and have I kept my resolutions thus far?  Sure have!

My stress level has decreased significantly since January 1.  I am not saying that it has been easy in the least.  It is hard to change what I have always been.  It is for the best though.  I attribute this horrible acid reflux to my 26 years of worrying over pointless things.  There's really no need to worry about things that I have no control over anyway.  It doesn't help solve the problem and instead it creates a new (health-related) one.  Lesson is slowly getting learned:  no more worries/stressing out, Leslie.

2 grocery trips down in oh-11.  One trip was slightly over the $50 budget and the other was slightly under.  Combined we spent $94.15, which is $5.85 under budget for the year!  YAY!  You can't tell me that you aren't impressed with my budgeting skills.  To go a step further, we saved close to 55% with both trips.  Now that is impressive too.  Not only are we keeping to the budget, but we are saving more than we spend.  I hope to increase our savings even more throughout the year.  Can it be done?  Sure can.  How much time will I have to spend in order to get there?  oh gosh...who knows.

Honestly, I haven't been keeping as close watch with my weight as I have with my grocery shopping.  I was paid a compliment today by my co-worker asking me what I have been doing to lose weight.  And my response is nothing.  I have been keeping a watchful eye on my weight by using the scales at work (which I LOVE!)  My wii scales always say I weigh about 4 to 6 pounds more than the scales at work.  weird.  When I weighed myself today at work, it read that I am exactly 10 pounds lighter this time this year than I was back in oh-10.  Huge success!  It's not over yet.  The year is just beginning and swimsuit season is closer than it has ever been. 

time for new resolutions

Happy New Year!  It's hard to believe the holidays have come and gone again.  It didn't feel like Christmas one bit either probably because I was consumed with work that I couldn't think about anything else.  Not good...

So that brings me to my first resolution for 2011:  do NOT stress over things that aren't in your control and understand that there are more important things to worry about besides my own petty worries.  This resolution alone will be a HUGE task.  I have always been a "worry wart" ever since I was in elementary school.  I was the nerd who did both even and odd numbers of the Math assignment...not becase I wasn't sure if it was one or the other, but I trust the teacher to stick to her own assignment.  Maybe that is why I love Math so much these days...because I always did double the homework.

...which brings me to my next resoltuion for 2011:  document total savings throughout the year with my grocery shopping.  Dorky?  yes.  A waste of time?  I don't think so.  This will be a great way to see how much we are spending per week.  I started a goal back in October-ish to keep the grocery bill under $50.  We were able to keep it around the $50 mark if I can remember my averages correctly.  And soemthing else super-dorky of me is that I found (via internet..you are wonderful) a spreadsheet already in the savings format!  I don't even have to create one myself.  I am super excited about it!  I will actually begin tomorrow with our first grocery trip of 2011.

and with food comes my final resolution:  slim and tone up.  Not really that shocking of a resolution because that is the #1 resolution on 99.9% of people's lists.  I know it is lame to say it, but for me if I don't vocalize it to the blog world then I will never do it.  Please keep me accountable in this department.

As far as last year's resolution went, I think it was pretty successful.  We have slacked BIG time as the year progressed from eating healthy to eating junk.  I blame the holidays and being busy for that.  My underlying 2010 resolution was to lose 10 pounds before the end of May.  I didn't quite lose that much, but as I recall I lost about 4-6 pounds before then.  Then I gained some more weight due to my promotion and now I am back down again.  After my severe acid reflux attack, I am now down about 8 pounds from last January 1.  YAY!  That is a great victory for me.  I hope that the 8 pound drop will be motivation to get back down to my wedding weight, which means losing another 6-8 pounds. 

I wish everyone a very happy new year and stick to those resolutions no matter how challenging it may become.  As always I will keep you posted on my progress.

a collectible figurine

I thought when I hit my quarter of a century in age that I would be just as healthy as I was in year 24 and before.  If you remember my 2009 recap, I explained my old person experiences.  I truly thought that I was healed from all things "over the hill". 

Not so fast...

I don't remember the exact date, but I believe it was sometime in August.  My baby cousin, Andrew, (well, not so baby because he is 22) had emergency heart surgery.  After a going to see a doctor about why he hadn't been sleeping well at night, an aneurysm the size of a grapefruit was removed from his young body.  Now I might ever-so-slightly be a hypochondriac, but I thought I had one too. 

My chest would burn in the middle of the night and I would have uncomfortable bloating all day and night.  After learning Andrew's story, I panicked and went to the doctor.  Come to find out I have acid reflux/heartburn.indigestion/etc.  Oh great....something else to go wrong.

After being prescribed Nexium, I felt like I was well on my way to preventing this terrible feeling from happening again. 

Not so fast...take two...

December has been the most stressful month for me as far as work goes.  There are other ones that have come really close, but this December was unexpected.  I wasn't used to working 9 to 10 hour days for 5 days in a row...to only accomplish nothing.  The piles were getting bigger and multiplying with every day that I went to work. 

Not only was work stressful, but try squeezing in 4 different family holiday functions.  I love being about to spend time with family, but I love being at home that much too.  Sometimes I put it in overdrive and I run out of steam...fast!  On December 26th (a few short days ago), my body told me to slow down...WAY down!

I woke up in the 26th with aches and pains and feeling like crap.  I thought I had the flu, but I never had a fever.  I slept somewhere from 29-33 hours straight trying to rest my tired body.  I woke up the  next day aches-free, but still like crap.  It was my stomach mostly, but it ranged from my throat all the way past my bellybutton.  I could eat or drink without feeling like I had to vomit.  This trend continued up until yesterday.  The good thing is that I dropped about 2 to 3 pounds.  Granted that is definitely not my preferred way, but whatever.

I made my visit to the doctor again to see what was happening this time since the pain was completely unbearable and my Nexium was NOT working AT ALL.  I was tested for bugs (literally) living in my stomach:  negative and my blood count was good.  So what was it?  SEVERE heartburn/acid reflux/indigestion.  UGH.  never again!  I have never felt so close to death before. 

(Well, maybe that one time when I was slung out of the boat doing down the Ocoee River the summer after high school graudation.  I just knew that I was going to drown and never step foot on the Auburn University campus as a student.  But after a handful of football-sized bruises later, I was vowing to NEVER white water raft again.)

Anyway...

I am not as tough as I thought I should be after what 2009 brought my way.  I guess God designed me to be more of a collectible figurine meant to be displayed in an antique cabinet rather than a durable dog's toy.  So here's to 2011...what else could go wrong...the infamous last words...

from us, to you

Wishing you and your family a Merry Christmas and a blessed New Year.

Love, The Todds

Daniel, Leslie, Jackson, Tyson, and Barkley

retreat from a hard day's work

The first weekend in November I was reminded of just how much I hate painting.  In fact, a nightmare-ish flashback to the first weekend of owning our first home came back to me all over again (when we painted every room except the laundry room).  Seriously without Daniel's dad and my dad that weekend, we might still be painting.  I can say that we learned a lot about painting that weekend so I am thankful for all of the love and support.  I think it made this go around a little easier.

Back to the re-do now.

It is not a surprise that my bright mustard room just wasn't doing it for me...at all.  I mean it was a great vision in my head, but it didn't really work when it was put to life.  ah, memories of sleeping on the sun...

I have been thinking about a "master bedroom makeover" for a few months now.  I knew that it wouldn't be cheap or fast (that's what she said.) in transforming.  Nonetheless, I was determined to make it as painless to our bank account as possible. 

I knew that I wanted the theme to be calming and peaceful.  I was leaning more towards an ivory or light blue paint color.  Basically it depended on the comforter color(s).  My vision jumped from ivory walls with a blue comforter to blue walls with an ivory comforter.  I felt like the light blue was the way to go even though having an ivory comforter with 3 dogs is risky. 

After finding the soul inspriation for the room (3 Euro shams from Restoration Hardware), I knew that I had to go with the light blue walls and ivory comforter.  The Euro shams were marked WAY down to $30 each, which is still extremely high for my "cheap" makeover.  I figured we could splurge a little on the shams and still be fine.  I eventually found an ivory comforter set (comforter and 2 King shams) at Walmart for less than $60.  You can't go wrong there.  And if it gets messed up, go back and get another.  I purchased the tan bedskirt for $20 from Target.  Same deal with that...if it gets messed, then no problem.  I originally thought about making the bedskirt from an old sheet, but I became too lazy.  It might have been more trouble than it was worth anyway.

There's no hiding from the expenses of painting though.  Oh boy...those can easily run in the $200 or $300 range.  Yikes!  I will say that tinted primer saved us when painting over the mustard color.  It took us 3 coats of primer and 2 coats of paint.  Bye bye, mustard and hellooooo, beach house blue!

The biggest decision we faced (other than the paint color) was deciding what to do about a headboard.  One day I want brand new bedroom furniture with a sleigh bed.  Our bedroom is too small to hold brand new everything so that will have to wait until we move into a bigger house.  So what to do now?  Purchase a cheap headboard?  Or is there another option?

There's always another option.  We were out looking for a headboard one Saturday afternoon, and we stumbled across a wooden door at a local cosignment shop.  And BINGO!  Instant headboard slash wall art.  And DONE!  So for $40 we picked up our faux headboard.  I count that as money saved. 

Trying to be thrifty, creative, and unique all at once, I personally made the curtains.  I wanted something with a design and not the typical (and sometimes boring) curtains.  I found some really nice...almost too nice...fabric at Hobby Lobby.  It was regularly $15 a yard, but 30% off.  I went ahead and got the lady to cut me 3 sections of 3 yards each to avoid my miscalculation with measuring.  I wanted ceiling to floor curtains.  That must be the new thing since I see them in every home decorating magazine I own.  So final cost $100 for custom-made curtains.  And I must say I am becoming quite the little sew-er on my sewing machine.  I have come a long way from not knowing that the presser foot needs to be down when sewing because it makes life so much easier.

My last item of decorating consisted of new lamps.  Oh geeze....our pathetic little lamps we had in there weren't cutting it decorative-wise.  They were way too small next to our king-size bed.  After looking at several stores (and again not wanting to spend an arm and leg), we found some beautiful lamps at Lowe's.  Of all places!  I think we spent around $100 for both lamps.  Yes, that is pricey, but I was able to cut corners elsewhere.  Plus I really loved those lamps compared to less expensive ones.

My last mention of the decorating process is the blue dresser we found at the same cosignment shop we bought the wooden door.  We really needed more storage so this dresser makes all the difference in the world.  We paid $140 for it, but we still need to purchase some knobs.  Honestly, I am in no hurry to buy these even though I probably should be.

I think for $850ish that our room has been transformed into a nice and relaxing retreat from a hard days work.  It feels completely different.  I am not exaggerating when I say this either:  I have actually been sleeping so much better.  I think it was sleeping on the surface of the sun that stressed me out.