I have some pictures to share of our weekend in Vermont, which I hope to get up tomorrow. We are in busy season now and time gets away from me.
However, it’s Bagel Wednesday
And it’s accountability day. This past week I lost 0.8, bringing me to 8.5 pounds towards my goal of 20 by the beginning of February.
A little surprised with a loss since we did indulge, but then we didn’t go overboard. We did some walking and even a bit of swimming in the hotel pool.
Sharing a few hiking pictures before my check in. Sunday was a really gorgeous fall day and I really wanted to go hiking. We set out for Rush Pond, which is I think 3-4 miles from our house. I bike near the trail head on one of my regular routes.
We did the whole trail, which was 5 miles. There were a fair number of people out, although not as many as we thought there would be. Some of the other trails in the mountains close before hunting season and this was the last weekend they were open, so bonus for us, I guess.
It’s a fairly easy trail with some small inclines. Enough to get a bit sweaty, but just overall a nice hike.
Fall colors are peaking now. So pretty!
Some fun wildlife as well. Along with 1000 chipmunks, there was this garter snake:
Plus this cool dragonfly:
I always see the blue ones, but not this red kind.
We stopped and got a post hike treat when we were finished. I saw frosted sugar cookies and that was it. Decision made.
The spider was plastic, which became a new toy for Pixie – bonus!
On the accountability front, I wasn’t expecting much because I got kind of snacky this week – plus the above cookie 😀 However, I lost 0.4 pounds. Every little loss during this time of year is a plus – or a minus, I guess!
Days like Saturday are why we love living here. It was a beautiful day with sunshine, moderate temps and fall colors!
Even though all the summer flowers are pretty much done, there are still plenty of things blooming.
It’s surprising with the freezing temps we had that this rose still has blooms:
There are some more buds on it, too.
Sedum has turned more rusty colored:
The big hydrangea in the back turned yellow from the cold, which makes it really neat looking:
The leaves are going to fall off pretty soon.
My shade bed with a variety of heuchera:
I love the foliage colors on these.
A few annuals that “weathered” the cold. Salvia and dusty miller:
We biked to the lake on Saturday. With a nice day, the bike path had a lot of people on it. It was almost like tourist time! We think there probably were a lot of leaf peepers in town as Lake George had a lot of people around.
We stopped for lunch at Biscotti Brothers, which is a place we have been meaning to go for a long time, but just now got the chance. I had Eggs Benedict:
One of those times it is hard to figure out points for a meal. I looked up in the app and the eggs Benedict came up as 12 points and then 4 for the potatoes. So 16 points it is. Our 18.5 mile bike ride earned 23 activity points according to the app, which seems a little high, but then hills are still hard for me. We shall see what they scale says next week on all that 😀
After lunch, we walked around away from the lake to a newly landscaped park area:
It’s very pollinator friendly, which made me so happy!
Bees and more bees on asters:
Yes, I am that close. When bees are gathering pollen they don’t care about people.
Here is one closer up:
It should be another nice day on Sunday to spend outside!
Cooler weather sure came in this last week. It’s still hard to grasp that we are a week into October already. And almost to the end of a decade! I kind of forgot that this year is the last “teen” of the 2010s.
People are fall decorating around here.
Us, too:
That bare patch is where I dug up a plant to move to a different location. Hope it lives 😀
Downtown has planted a lot of fall flowers, fun to see on walks:
I finally won football picks for the first time this season, so I got to choose our meal out. I went with Comfort Kitchen, which is almost like a little hole in the wall on the lower level of a building with a bunch of shops, but the food is sooooo good. I got the tortelloni with a butternut squash cream and sage dressing:
This was delicious! A smaller portion, which is a little unusual for them because their mac and cheese (also amazing) is two meals worth. This is one of those dishes that you count points/calories for just doing the best you can.
Back to my regular eating on Monday, which was:
Protein pancake/waffles topped with sauteed peaches:
The waffles are just 1 egg, 1/3 cup rolled oats, 1/3 cup cottage cheese, cinnamon and 1/2 tsp of baking powder blended up into batter. You can do pancakes or waffles. This plate is 5 points – 4 for the waffles and 1 point for the brown sugar added to the peaches.
Quick Monday lunch of an open face egg sandwich with cheese.
Monday was rainy all day, which meant that I did a gym workout post lunch:
I’m still working on getting my strength back to where it was. I feel like I have really plateaued in strength and in my biking after making good progress right after my surgery restrictions were lifted.
My afternoon latte was made with cashew milk just for something different. It’s super foamy!
Topped with chocolate sauce John made. For a nut milk, I like cashew milk the best, but for lattes it really needs to just be regular milk LOL.
A staple for us on Monday nights is soup because that is normally a busy day for us and we just want something quick and simple.
Progresso tomato soup with added ravioli:
This is always warming and filling on a cooler day.
Unpictured nuts and a chocolate for other snacks. I hope to do a weight checkin on Wednesday or Thursday to keep myself accountable.
There was a beautiful sunrise this morning while eating breakfast:
The picture is square because I put it on instagram. The day started pretty, but it was cold and drizzly for a lot of the day. Yuck. It for sure feels like fall now. Breakfast was blintzes with blueberries, which I have a couple times a week (sometimes with peaches)
Points for this breakfast with my cafe au lait is 13 points. Kind of “spendy”, but about 450 calories.
I’ve been into egg salad lately, so that is what I had for lunch:
I do the eggs in the Instant Pot. The IP is great for eggs. I just put them on the rack over the water and cook on low pressure for 10 minutes. Perfect every time no matter how many eggs you put in there.
It was so chilly today. Our house is at 63 degrees, so the furnace is going to come on soon. Warm snack to warm me up of a latte! We drink 2% milk, btw.
This is a new mug I got recently at a craft show. I loves me some pottery! I’m banned from getting more bowls since I have a lot, but other things are fair game 😀
Quick dinners are usually on the menu. Tonight John and I cooked our own because I wanted chicken and he doesn’t eat meat.
On WW, chicken breast is 0 points. The peaches are 0, and the fries are 4 points (3 ounces). We keep frozen peach slices in the fridge. Fresh peaches just never seem very good – at least around here – and they go bad fast, so frozen are perfect.
With the cruddy weather there was no biking, but we went for a 1.5 mile walk to get some kind of exercise. Biking season soon will be over! Wahhh.
Evening snacks include the folowing:
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Thursday night football snacks! My poor Broncos suck this year. I hope they turn it around, but boy howdy they are bad.
Early in the year I had talked about taking care of myself in 2019. There has been a lot done including working on my shoulder, straightening my teeth, all my checkup doctor appointments, eye exam, mammogram, my hysterectomy. Lots going on. I gained some weight in 2018 mostly because of stress eating, so I’ve been kind of picking away at that over the year.
During my 6 weeks of doing *nothing* while recovering from my surgery, I kept feeling flabbier and flabbier even though I wasn’t gaining weight. And now it is taking forever to get my strength back to what I want it to be – not that it isn’t improved greatly, but it’s taking much longer than I expected. I just get tired so easily. It was surprising that I didn’t gain any weight during my recovery as I wasn’t all that careful about what I was eating and there definitely was some pity eating in there LOL. So, time for a change. However, I did something that normally I don’t do – I made a timed weight loss goal.
We booked a trip to New Orleans in early February — YAY!!!!!– and I told myself that I wanted to lose 20 pounds by then (so I can gain them all back eating beignets). This was at the beginning of September and while it seems pretty doable on paper, this is the start of the eating season 😀 It’s going to be a challenge and to help me be accountable, I decided to join WW online. Paying for the online subscription is a way to keep my mind focused since I don’t like to waste money. I had thought about paying for My Fitness Pal premium instead, but that really is still just me without any “outside” help. Early in the year, I did a trial of Noom, and while I think this would be good for a real “beginner” at weight loss, I was finding all the advice and steps where things I already knew about and thus it wasn’t motivating for me. Plus Noom is pretty expensive.
Anyway, I have done WW in the past and while there are things about the program that annoy me, it is doing the job of nudging me with food choices like eating fruit instead of cereal for a snack. I did WW when it was the points/Core system, and it really seems like it hasn’t changed all that much, honestly. There are a lot of new “free” foods like chicken breast and eggs. And while free doesn’t mean calorie free, one isn’t likely to binge on chicken breast. There is a definite push to stay away from sugar and other processed foods as those are a lot higher in points. I get 23 per day, plus 35 to use however I want during the week and exercise points. I generally just eat the daily plus exercise points and sometimes the extras (mostly on weekends). There is definitely less of a focus on weight loss and more about mindset changes, which is a great direction for them to go. On the app, your weight is kind of buried under your profile so you don’t see it when you go into the app each time.
I also have tracked what I eat in My Fitness Pal to compare points to calories and I end up about where I want, which is 1500. I have found my calories cycle a little more than when I do straight calorie counting – and I think that is benefiting me as far as shaking my body up a bit.
So far, so good and I lost 6 pounds in September. I anticipate it will be much slower with the holiday season coming up, but putting some guardrails in place for myself will hopefully help with that.
I’m going to try to be posting more food days, repetitive or not 🙂
Sorry this is a day late. I took pictures yesterday evening and then forgot to do a post! I’ve been doing work moving plants around when I get a chance. The biggest change is moving the 2 peonies at the end of the walkway and replacing them with rose bushes.
The peonies are okay, but they get mildew easily and weren’t blooming very well. John suggested roses in their place and the garden center had a clearance on rose bushes at $10 each, so it was like a sign I needed to do that 😀 I moved the peonies to a different area. I hope that they get enough sun in the new spot. Guess we will find out next year if they survive the move.
Maybe some time in the future I will extend a border from these roses to the house. Who knows – it might even happen next year if I get a bee in my bonnet!
Mums in one of the urns:
I’m really pleased with how these look. I need to figure out something for Christmas, although it is possible they will be covered with snow at that time.
Asters:
These are in a pot. Not sure if I’m going to find a place to stick them in the ground or not. I kind of just got them as an annual decoration, but they are hardy.
Queenie Orange Lime zinnia that looks like it is supposed to:
There are still lots of zinnias. Next year I’m going to do some dwarf ones to edge the front of the beds.
Fall colors are starting to show in foliage now that we have had some really cold nights. This is my Diervilla bush.
It will turn more orange colored. I have 3 of these bushes that are just coming to size now.
Cherokee Sunset rudbeckia:
Some coleus by our water feature.
I struggle with getting things to grow by the water feature. It’s kind of dry, ironically, mostly because it is under the cedar branches. The coleus did okay though:
Rose of Sharon:
Another flush of blooms from Enchanted Evening rose:
I love the late season roses.
Have a great weekend! I’m going to try to post more each week and get back into routine again.
Fall weather is fast approaching. We had some overnight temps in the upper 30s this week. Brrrrr…. Some of the plants couldn’t take it and disappeared. Most of them are fine. They days have been beautiful in the low 70s. We could do with some rain, though.
This morning we got treated to a hot air balloon flying over our house. We almost thought they might land really close by, but hopefully they got to a more open area.
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It balloon festival weekend here. I’m hoping to see one launch. I just hate fighting the crowds. Hopefully the launch we can walk to will occur on Sunday. It should be a beautiful weather weekend for flying.
This is my newest flower added to the garden. Cherokee Sunset Rudbeckia:
So pretty and so fall! It’s getting to the point where I have to squeeze plants in now 😀
Rose of Sharon:
This is getting lots of blooms on it now. It should stay around 4-5 feet tall. It’s about 3 or a bit taller now.
When I mentioned about flowers disappearing, my impatiens just literally melted in the cold temps. There were mounds of pink flowers around these ferns:
Now nothing. They are very tender annuals.
The zinnias still seem pretty happy:
More buds forming, too.
Zinnia buds are just cool. Kind of like Little Shop of Horrors, though.
This is zinnia Mazurkia:
My musician brain wants to keep changing it to mazurka LOL. I hope to harvest seeds from these. I’ve never really collected seeds, so we shall see what happens.
Marigolds:
These look like the marigolds that ate Cleveland, but really they are only 6 inches tall with tiny blooms. Funny what perspective does 😀
Bugbane:
Formal name is cimifuga or something close to that. These are great for shade and bees like them as well. It took a few years for them to bloom, but you can see more buds forming below this one, so a good show coming for later.
Ms. Pixie and I were in the garden this evening. She always walks the perimeter of the garden beds. It’s like routine or something. She did stop and munch on some catmint – which I think other kitties have found because I can’t get them to grow very high. That is just to the right of the sedum.
This weekend there will be a lot of fall chores working on house stuff. Guess we all have to do some adulting at times 😀
This is the time of cleaning up the garden and moving plants around. Things are still blooming, but some plants are done and cutting those back or moving them around is the order of the day.
The zinnias are still going strong. The interesting thing about zinnias is that seeds from the same packet can yield flowers you weren’t expecting. This is supposed to be queenie orange lime (and yeah, it’s not pink like the post title, but whatever 🙂 )
I got a lot of these from this particular packet and this is not a type of seed that I would buy for my garden. Then I found a patch of what I was supposed to get:
It’s a little past prime, but you get the idea. Quite different flowers. I don’t know if that is just seeds getting mixed in or that the seeds didn’t turn out like the parent plant. We shall never know. I’m going to save some seeds from the above flower and see what happens next year.
Now for some pinks! This is penta, which is in a pot with some other flowers and is the only one blooming right now:
Some petunias that are still putting out blooms:
We have had some really cold nights. This morning it was 37 degrees. Some of my plants are toast now, like the impatiens. They just disappear in a cold snap, almost like they melt. I was surprised to see the tropical mandevilla just fine:
It won’t live through the winter, but I am curious if I cover it with a ton of mulch if it will come back. Can’t hurt to try! This bed has been thinned out and I moved a couple plants around.
The mandevilla blooms are just so pretty:
The big white hydrangea is being all pretty now as the blooms turn pink:
It’s like a strawberry sundae!
The autumn joy sedum has turned and the buds opened up:
You can’t really see them too well, but there were at least 10 bees crawling over the flowers.
Bee says “Can’t talk now lady – gathering pollen!”
I’m going to divide that sedum up in the spring into 3 chunks and find new homes for two of the pieces.
You can tell fall is almost here because an email notice came that my tulip bulb order has shipped! It should be here next week. I got tulips and a bunch of allium.
