Happy November!  October was kind of a crazy month, but then you always start a month and never know what will happen.

We are back into some relatively warmer weather around here, so we are still able to get the bikes out for riding!

I have the fleece tights to wear under my bike knickers and they keep my legs nice and warm:

There will be temps in the 60s this week – can you believe that?  So, November riding will be happening. Yippee!!

We had a fairly quiet Halloween. We had maybe 15 or 20 kids tops. Mostly young ones, too. You would think we would have a lot as we are only a couple blocks from a school, but you just never know. We had more than last year, though.

Progress on the utility sink area is moving along.  John has done so much work with the framing and the drywall while I have been busy with other stuff.  This is where the tub used to be inside the small bathroom, which is now on the outside 😀

Now it’s my turn doing the taping and mudding, then painting the walls. We can start installing the flooring while the mud dries (it will take several days to do all the coats). The sink is here, so I am hoping by next weekend this part of the project will be done.  Then to start on the bathroom portion, although there is no hurry on that.

Sunday I went to the Larac art show. They moved the venue to downtown, so I could walk there, which was nice. I bought some Christmas gifts and then some pictures for myself. I was chatting with the photographer about cameras and such and I bought the 2 smaller bird pictures below.  His pictures are amazing.

After I paid, he asked me if there were any other pictures I liked and I pointed out the squirrel one.  Well – he gave me the picture! I didn’t want to take it, but he insisted.  That was so nice. Maybe he was flirting with me? I don’t know.

Anyway, I had made some goals for October. I was a bit middling with getting them done.

1. No scale. No problem there, although I gained 2 pounds in the month of October. I don’t know what that means as we had company for the first week of October and with eating out, I could have easily gained more and lost some of that. Again, I don’t have a reason for not weighing.
2. Pink pictures.  Done. I did pink links on most of my pictures this month. Thank you all for clicking through to fund mammograms.
3. Work on the headboard.  Close to finishing, but still stuck where I was with needing to do the glaze.  I ended up having a lot to do this month with starting the soap biz and working on the bathroom.  
4. Strength training.  Complete fail on this one. Not sure why, but I just didn’t get to it. I did a lot of excercising, though with walking (new treadmill), biking and renovations.

So, a couple unfinished goals there.  I will get that headboard finished this month, though LOL!

Okay, I know it isn’t techinically the last day of July, but Fridays are What’s Blooming 😀 , so you get the wrap up today.

Halfway done with summer now – or more than halfway, I guess.  We had the hottest weather of the summer so far this week. Phew! I certainly don’t want to complain about the heat given the wretched winter we had, but this girl cannot take the humidity.  This is why I could never seriously think about living in the South – as much as I love New Orleans. Snow birding, maybe, but not year round.

Anyway, here are the results for July.

1.  Making some needed doctor appointments.  I am so lame. I didn’t do any of these. My PCP left the practice, so I need to find a whole new one. Probably in the same system, but in an office closer to our new place.

—————————————————————

2. Read more.  I read a couple books. 

The Emperor’s Edge by  Lindsay Buroker

My Amazon link. The Kindle version is free, so give it a whirl!  This is sort of in the steam punk genre and the first book in a series of a former female law enforcer and a male assassin that team up to save the emperor.  I found it to be an interesting book, although it had some problems with the narrative at times skipping over stuff.  I might look at reading some of the others as well.

Four: The Transfer by Veronica Roth

I read the Divergent series and other than the dippy teen romance angst, they were fun books to read and a good dystopian story. I actually thought this was a book told from Four’s point of view, and it was, but it was only a portion of his story. Apparently there is a collection of short novellas detailing his back story. I was surprised when I got to the end of this after only a short read and I knew there was a lot more to go LOL! That happens on the Kindle because you can’t really see how long a book is.

Prince Lestat: The Vampire Chronicles by Anne Rice.

Okay, I hated this book. Hated it. I am not even linking to it since it was so bad. In fact, I couldn’t finish it. Now, I love the earlier series of the Chronicles, so I was pretty excited to read this. They were fun and pretty well written for this type of story. Now it seems that when Anne Rice came back to this series after a hiatus she lost all the voices. The cast becomes a parody of itself from earlier novels and then too many new characters with no point. Certainly not anywhere close to her earlier writing. I had even figured out the ending within the first few chapters. I had to peek at the end before I quit on the book to make sure I was correct in my guess (I was). Thank goodness this was just on loan from the library.

——————————————————————-

3. Scope out a volunteer position.  I have been looking at some possibilities here. The Red Cross is always a good one and since I don’t donate anymore because of my scarred veins, I was thinking about volunteering for the blood drives.  I also have been looking at Habitat for Humanity, but I don’t know quite what involvement that requires for my local chapter. The one in Albany is very busy, but that is too far for me to go to on a regular basis. So, I am still looking.

——————————————————————

4. Try some new vegetable dishes.  I don’t know as I would call them dishes, but I certainly have been eating more veggies other than broccoli!  Go me!  Like the squash:

And I have been eating more salads because it is hot.  I consider any veggie eating other than broccoli to be a victory for me.

All in all, a decent month. Room for improvement, as always.

Bike mileage update:  As of this morning, 1359 miles.

Tomorrow the blooming post 😀

July begins.  There is just so much stuff to do around here event wise.  June is busy, but then everything starts getting crammed into July and August, probably because graduation was last week and now kids are out of school.  If the rain stops tonight, we hope to get to a Zydeco concert at the lake tonight.

Anyway, these are the things I want to work on this month:

1.  Making some needed doctor appointments.  Time to catch up on all the appointments that I have been putting off, particularly the dentist.

2. Read more.  I have a pile of books on my Kindle, and a couple hardcover, that I need to read. I tend to play a game on my Kindle to put me to sleep, but I really need to quit that and read more.

3. Scope out a volunteer position.  Now that things are more settled around here, I need to find a place to volunteer. That was one of my 2015 yearly goals. 

4. Try some new vegetable dishes.  I am almost embarrassed posting food pictures with so much broccoli. I do use my spiralizer for zucchini and potatoes and need to use it more, among other recipes.

Okay, that sounds good enough.  My standing goal for eating for weight loss is still in place since March, so no need to list that.

Monday was the closing on the old house.  Do you know that we put in an offer on Radiance Manor the day after Thanksgiving in 2013? Then there was the whole closing fiasco with that and then the long winter where nobody was looking at our house. In our area, the real estate season seems really short and we got the offer right when the market heated up again.  We only had 4 showings on our house believe it or not.  Anyway it has been a year and a half for this whole process to finish. 540 days, give or take. 540 days.

What a relief.  Those of you that have held 2 properties at the same time know what I am talking about. Double everything. Double mortgage, double utlities, double taxes, double property maintenance. Then there is the worry of owning a vacant house and hoping nothing happens to it while it is empty.  It just gives you a level of stress that is constant and, frankly, quite wearing.

I think it still hasn’t quite sunk in yet.

We went to dinner to celebrate this whole shebang being done.  We decided to go to Bistro Leroux, which is where we like to do special dinners.  They do the half portions, which not only is easier on the wallet, but the waistline! And it allows us to try an appetizer as well.  We started with a goat cheese en croute that had a dried cherry and vanilla sauce drizzled with honey.

I don’t like cherries, so John ate those 😀  This is very tasty.

John’s entree was the Eggplant parmesan risotto, which had a little parmesan crisp on it with a tomato herb cream sauce.

My entree was the Buttered Lobster Risotto with a corn salsa, potato crisps and topped with a fried lotus root chip.

The lotus root tasted pretty much like a root vegetable potato chip. Really good.

Anyway, it has been a few months since I did goals – and part of that was because it just felt like we were spinning our wheels in a lot of ways. A lot of the major landscape heavy work is done, which took up the majority of project time. Now that has slowed up some, I can concentrate on a few more goals for June other than just trying to not go crazy from waiting.

1. Trying new recipescipes.  I have been pinning some new recipes and darn it – I am going to make them!

2. Finish my trunk. I need to get this one done and up for sale since I have a couple others waiting in the wings. Need to just carve out some time and get the last bits done on it.  I might move it out to the back patio to work on since I don’t like being indoors when the weather is nice.

3. Get away weekend. I have not even had a weekend trip in an entire year – not even an overnight anywhere.  That changes this month.

4. Ride 47 miles for my 47th birthday.  I’ll be doing that hopefully on Friday 😀

Welcome June!

Happy Halloween!  This was the last pumpkin to carve. It was getting mushy on the top and I waited until last night to do it.

This pattern was kind of hard to do. It’s funny that they look like a jumble when carving them and then when the light is in then you see it.

Sometimes it seems like  a month will go by fast, but for some reason October seemed really long. We both commented on that today.

Anyway, I did make a few goals for October and this is the result:

1. Move.  Done and never again. Ever.  Still have a lot of boxes to unpack and rooms to finish, but the worst is over.  Now if only the old house would sell.

2. Get back to the gym. I just got back this week, nothing like cutting it close 😀 , although I still need to get some kind of schedule going with it. It felt good to be lifting again and I wasn’t even sore the next day, which I think is because of all the physical work that we did on this house using all my muscles.

3. Get my eating back into some semblance of normal.  This is a work in progress. We are definitely cooking more, but I still have been snacking too much.

4. Finish the dining room. Done!  Other than hanging pictures.

Next up is the living room LOL!  I promise on Sunday I will do the before and after of the kitchen, too.

Have a great weekend and safe Halloween!

Well, this was a crazy month, wasn’t it?  You just never know what will happen.  From the job getting all whacky to the craziness of the tutoring situation and finishing my settee!  Life is never boring around here, I tell you.

So, Here were my July goals:

1. 400 bike miles this month. Done!  I actually got somewhere around 430.  The weather was a big help in this since pretty much every weekend had one or both days for big mileage.  Now I need to rebalance my exercise.

2.  Declutter and reorganize these 2 bookshelves.  I only got to one of them.  Before:

After:

I even tried my hand at purposeful styling!   I do like how that one book is kind of falling out of the side there.  This is not the best design for a bookcase 😀

3.  Eat more veggies.  I did a little better with this.  I am at least back eating the broccoli again.  I even ate some tomatoes and cauliflower this month. Go me! LOL

4.  Deep clean rooms. Yeah, that didn’t happen so much on my end.  All the extra work I have been doing (without extra pay…grrrr…)  took its toll on some stuff and cleaning got moved to the rank bottom.  John, however, made himself a little chart of cleaning projects.  

So yeah, this month had some stumbling blocks, but I am trying to stay upbeat.  We are really, really hoping we might get an actual closing date on the house soon.  There should be some news with the next extension we sign for August.  Keep your fingers crossed.

We finally broke out the downstairs window AC unit today.  We have had the unit in the upstairs bedroom window for a while now, but the downstairs usually doesn’t get too bad, especially since we got the new windows with the E glass a few years ago.  Anyway, it was 80 degrees in the living room by late morning and we decided it was time to put it in knowing it would only get worse.

That makes it officially feel like summer.

July Goals:

1. 400 bike miles this month. A biking goal! This averages out to be 13 miles a day or so, but obviously it doesn’t work like that. The majority of the miles will come on weekends, but this means dedicating myself to early morning exercise when it is cool.

2.  Declutter and reorganize these 2 bookshelves.  They are just a mess and a catch-all for stuff.

3.  Eat more veggies.  I have been pretty slack about the veggies lately. Even my beloved broccoli!

4.  Deep clean rooms. This is another one I am moving from the June list. It’s gotta get done.

I think I will stop at 4 because I really want to do a better job on acheiving these than I did with June goals. Not to mention finishing up my settee. I hope to be done with that this weekend. Yay!

Ahhhhh!!!! The end of June!  It seems every month I keep saying how fast the time goes.  I need something new to say.  We started off the month with the little weekend getaway to Portsmouth and here it is just about July!

Let’s move on to the goals, shall we?

1.  Continue the last stage of Female Body Breakthrough.  Done. I am ready to move on to something else now. I definitely am stronger, but I didn’t lose any inches after 4 months. 

2.  Be more disciplined with eating. Ehhh… some days okay, some days not. Stress eating really is getting the better of me lately.

3.Deep cleaning in rooms of the house. I did a little bit of this, but got waylaid by other things.

4. Keep doing my projects. Working on currently with my little settee find!

5. Try to write a couple garden how-to posts. I did not do this. I kept thinking about it, though.

Hoo boy, this was a strange month for the goals. Swing and a miss on most of them! But that’s what the next month is for, right? It’s just that feeling of spinning my wheels and getting nowhere in several aspects of my life currently, some my own fault, some caused by forces I cannot control. I love progress and it gets frustrating when I stagnate.

Anyway, here is some settee progress.  I had to paint it. After patching the wood, it just wasn’t going to take the stain and look good at all, so I went ahead and spray painted it (and my feet).

Now it is ready for spring tying and fabric! And welcome to my garage in all it’s glory.  😳

This is the fabric I got, which I have to say I love.

It has music, birds and flowers – 3 of my favorite things! I really hope I don’t mess it up LOL.  I also have to find our iron, which I think we still have.

Tomorrow is July and a fresh set of goals, thank goodness!