FLY LADY - The Office!

That header so describes the week ahead!
Bob left this morning and I have a plan.

I've discovered I'm going about this office organization all wrong! Let me explain.

I've been trying to work around everything in here. To put something away, I have to relocate something else. Then something else has to be moved to put that 'something' away. A vicious circle to be sure.

What I need to do is clear EVERYTHING that needs put away OUT OF THE ROOM. Then I can do a deep clean before bringing items back in and putting them in their proper places.

As I said, Bob leaves this morning, then the whole living room/ dining room can be as cluttered as I need them to be until the task is finished (and before Bob comes back home in three weeks!) Talk about a deadline!!

In full disclosure, here are the pictures of the four main points of the office before I began moving everything out:

In front of the adhesives cabinet

In front of the altar

The scrap rack corner

sofa wall

Everything has a place, I just need to move everything out then start again from the beginning. 

So that's my plan for this week (and possibly next) - all while doing the daily office stuff and getting caught up on a course I'm taking.

I'm determined to whip this office into shape!

What is on your cleaning agenda this week? Any tips you'd care to share - tips that don't include a massive trash bag ;-)

Enjoy the Journey

WEIGH IN 2-24-2020

162/ 173/135

Good morning, everyone!

I'm attributing my gain to the low country boil I made for supper on Saturday (I write this post on Sundays). Was tasty and not something I do very often but this was our nod to Mardi Gras.

I got the idea when our local brew pub, Wages Brewing Co, had a crawfish boil on their calendar. Bob doesn't like crawfish so I decided to do my own version here at home. Tasted awesome but the scales showed the error of my ways. LOL That said, everyone needs to treat themselves now and then and this was my last hurrah before Bob goes back on the boat tomorrow. 

While we were in West Plains last week for eye appointments Bob spotted the beet concentrates at Walmart. He had seen the commercials and decided to give it a try.

The stuff tastes nasty! I don't care what you mix it with. One youtuber describes the flavor akin to pulling a beet right out of the ground. 

After further reading this morning I've also discovered (much to my pleasure) that as a diabetic this is not something I need to add to my regimen. I can't speak for other brands but this one in particular containes MALTODEXTRIN. The maltodextrin gives you a sweet aftertaste. However, that biproduct can also cause spikes in bloood sugar. yay! Finally, something that should be good for you, I need to avoid. 

I'll be doing further research to determine if this is a factor with natural beets. I love them, especially pickled. so will continue to research and keep you posted.

In the mean time, tell me if you've tried this and your opinon of the product.

Enjoy the Journey!

~Kelly

FLYLADY - Bedroom & Bathroom

Man.. I do love naps. Why is it we hated them as children now crave them as adults?

This week is supposed to be all about deep-cleaning the bedroom but just not going to happen. I've run the robot over the floor and put fresh, line-dried sheets on the bed. Pretty much the extent when that room falls on Bob's time home. I would like to make time to deep-declutter my night stand.

We've talked about getting matching night stands but not sure how that is going to happen at the moment. I guess I"ll know when I find the perfect set. For now, just cleaning mine off would be a huge imporvement. How can an item I use so little bcome such a dumping ground for partially read books and cat toys?!

I think this week I will be doing more napping than cleaning.

Next week I'm off to the office. That room is still a work in progress.

What's your detail clean for this week?

Enjoy the Journey - and a nap!
~Kelly

WEIGH IN 2-17-2020

162/ 171/135

In spite of spending three days in the city and eating copius amounts of crab legs, I managed to drop 2 pounds!

I will admit to being a pig when it comes to crab legs. I LOVE them. Crab legs are probably  my #1 go to food... lobster and shrimp follow closs in line. 

Whenever we take the opportunity to go to the city, we try to arrange to be overnight on a Thursday so we can go to Hemmingways.

Hemmingways Blue Water Cafe is on the 4th floor of Bass Pro in Springfield, MO. They have a really good buffet dinner during the week, lunch/ dinner on the weekends and a great  menu to order from as well. My night is Thursdays. For about $15 above the price of the buffet (so about $38) you get a bottomless bucket of crab legs. If you have a really good waitress, she'll put a refill in order about the time you're pulling the last leg rack from your bucket and the fresh legs arrive in quick minutes. The shells are not soft. They crack easily and removing full lengths of meat from the shell is an easy task... especially if you go prepared as I do. 

Those crab crackers they provide are useless, in my opinion. I take a cloth pencil case that holds a pair of kitchen sheers (that have claw crackers in the handle) and a seafood fork (4-pack @ $Tree)

We won't discuss how many I ate, but let's just say I didn't eat anything off the regular buffet. Serious? I can eat that stuff any time but crab legs only come around on Thursdays!

My question for this week... 

When it comes to food, what is your guilty pleasure?

Enjoy the Journey

~Kelly

CROCKPOT NIGHT!

I'm changing up our menu planning this year. We are going to eat out less and plan meals around some of our favorite (or at least when we bought them) appliances. 

This week, I thought I'd walk you through a semi-failed recipe from :

AMAZON

I've bookmarked several recipes I want to try. One was for Saucy Sweet Chicken Wings.

The recipe called for 12 chicken wings, 3 C. BBQ sauce, 1/4 c. maple syrup, 1/4 C ketchup and 1 T. sugar.

I left out the maple syrup. In place of the other ingredients I used my low-carb bbq sauce and ketchup. I used brown sugar in place of the white sugar.

Cook:

High - 6-8 hours

Low - 3-4 hours

I cooked mine on low and they were falling off the bone at the 3 hour mark. 

This is what they looked like when I fished them out:

I removed the swimming wings from the crock pot. For being in almost 3 cups of BBQ sauce/ ketchup blend, they were very bland-looking

This is the juice I poured out of the crock pot (please excuse the blurry photo)

All of the BBQ sauce went down the drain! Wasted!

I placed them on a cookie sheet, drizzled with NON low-carb bbq sauce and popped them into a 4508 oven for 10  minutes.

This was a much more appetizing batch of wings for the big game:

This recipe says 12 servings!  Ummm I don't know about you but I don't know of ANYWHERE they serve you only ONE wing! LOL  

In my defense, I did break this up into 4 servings but I had 16 wings. That gave me 4 servings of 4. A nice snack.

Not sure what's on tap for Next week. We'll see.  I will also be back soon with Air Fryer Friday, though that may join the ranks of  'appliances' and be feature don occasion.

Until then...

Enjoy the Journey!

~Kelly

WEIGN IN 2-10-20

162/ 173/ 135

No change from last week. I'm surprised considering we ate out on Friday. We found a great Italian place in Poplar Bluff. Think I can remember the name? LOL I'll get back to you on that. We each had an appetizer plus our meal and we both brought home half of our entrees. We had have of our entrees last night for supper, along with leftover garlic rolls. Bob said he'll have his for lunch today. I put mine in the freezer for a meal while he's gone. We spent right at $60 and will have eaten three meals each for that, plus the lovely evening out.  

This week will be crazy. We're going to celebrate Valentine's Day. Hopefully, that will be our only big meal out. Here's hoping. 

Oh, Bob won the weight challenge. As of weigh-in I was down two pounds but he was down four!

I know that eating out, regardless of where, always affects the scale reading so I'm striving for us to do that less, and strictly on a cash basis.

He's home three weeks. We'll do one 'nice' dinner, one Pizza Hut lunch buffet and one general meal such as Chinese buffet, KFC, something along those lines. We'll spend less and eat at home more. 

I've also bee on a new challenge with Moms and Money on YouTube.  For the month of January Jia challenged us to spend only $100 per person per month on our groceries. I've modified that a bit in that I do not include laundry/ paper products. I get all of my laundry supplies at Menards when they have the 11% rebate and my paper products at $ Genersal when I have a $5 off $25 coupon about every other Saturday. I use one per month. 

Jia has a lot of great tips and advice. She also offers budgeting and money management courses through Teachable. 

While I've always been good at managing our finances, learning little tips like realizing you don't need to spend as much at the grocery store as you think you do are nice surprises. We don't know everything. LOL

What is your biggest challenge when it comes to finances? Do you live paycheck to paycheck? Do you find yourself wondering where that paycheck went? Do you have a savings plan?  Please let me know in the comments. Let's give each other a lift.

Enjoy the Journey!

BURGER KING - The Impossible Whopper

I've tried the Impossible Whopper and didn't notice any different in taste. What did bother me was how they could get a 'medium rare' burger from a plant base. As the CNET reporter noted, she hadn't eaten real meat for some time and the more she ate of the Impossible Whopper, the taste/ texture was so similar that she couldn't finish the burger! I admit to having the same issue.

As you'll see from THIS LINK of the Nutritional info from the Burger King website, the Impossible Whopper is not even listed.

I was able to find the following information from CNET

Their article tells us:
The Impossible Whopper is a plant-based protein version of Burger King's famous Whopper sandwich, made with an Impossible Foods burger patty. It looks exactly the same and, according to CNET editor Brian Cooley, tastes just the same too. 

Here is the one line that disturbs me:
Despite the fact that this lab-grown burger ...

Lab grown?

But I kept reading and here's what I learned.

The 'burger' is a blend of soy and potato proteins a change they made from 1.0 which used wheat protein. 2.0 is now gluten free. The burger's fat source comes from coconut and sesame oil.

I couldn't share the video from CNET but if you follow THIS LINK and scroll down, you'll find a 4 minute video that walks you through the process.  However, they do have a video on YouTube.

Have you tried the Impossible Whopper? If so, let us know what you thought.  If not, treat yourself to lunch then come back and tell us your opinon.

Eat Happy! Enjoy the Journey!

~Kelly

FLY LADY - Laundry room/ Kitchen/ Christmas

Yes, you read that correctly. I said CHRISTMAS!

No.. I'm not behind LOL.. okay, maybe on one thing. The make-shift tree is still in the living room but for good reason. I'll get to that in a moment.

While most of the Christmas decor comes down around Epiphany my bathroom/ laundry room/ kitchen always stay up until Feb. 1. Why? Because I like the decor. Okay, so sometimes the laundry room/ kitchen comes down with everything else but the bathroom stays up. The decor is all about winter/ snowmen and that encompasses January. Well, if you look at the forecast for Wedneday (never mind we were 75* for Super Bowl Sunday!), winter is still here but come down they must. I need to get this house back in order.

I spent all day yesterday washing curtains, dusting decorations and packing everything away in the new Holiday Decorations storage unit we bought last fall. I wasn't ready to give up my Christmas pretties but time to move foreward.. in spite of our ground hog. Grrr.

The Christmas tree has stayed up way longer because we hadn't done anything more than put lights on and I had not had one single evening to sit and ENJOY my tree lights and a Hallmark moive. Every movie I recorded, save the one I watched Saturday night, is still on the DVR. But the tree must get put away and our living room back into shape.

I do like the idea of getting back into my clenaing routine. I've been so focused on trying to get the studio in shape that the rest of the house has been sorely neglected. As of this writing, Bob will be home tomorrow. Time I made the house look more like home.

While I won't be doing any deep detailing this month, I'm going to be thrilled to just do a basic clean.

What will you be focusing on this week? Share in the comments and let me know. I'd also love to hear if you have any challenges. Let's work together to make our homes at least presentable. ;-)

Happy Cleaing!

WEIGH IN 2-3-20

162/173/135

Good  morning!

Did the ground hog see his shadow where you live? Sadly, while Puxataney Phil predicted an early spring for the east coast, I'm pretty sure our ground hog saw his. We had a gorgeous day, reaching 75*. I could live on that weather 363 days of the year. I need snow for Christmas Eve/ Day. Some periodic rain for the garden would also be nice.

Next on the list was the big game in Miami between the SanFranciso 49s and the Kansas City Chiefs. 31-20 KC.  I've never been anything but a Bronco fan but I gotta say that young Mahomes is growing on me. He reminds me a lot of John Elway. He motivates his team and has one hell of an arm. The fact that they won their first Super Bowl in 50 years - on the 100th anniversary of the NFL is just cool. Coach Reid has worked hard for that win yesterday... his first SuperBowl of his long career. His team admire him.

Congratulations to Coach Reid and the entire Kansas City Chiefs franchise.

That half-time show was something else! While admire the talents of both Shakira and Jennifer Lopez, as well as the Latin theme of the show (was in Miami after all), I really don't think the performance was appropriate for a day that often encompasses young men and women viewrs. Way too suggestive in both costume and  movement. While I'm not a prude, I just kept thinking, if JLo were an everyday wife/ mother, would she want her children watching the show?

That said, I remember when I could shimmy like Shakira. A friend of mine owned a bar where I played pool. If he got backed up on drinks, he would shove me quarters for the jukebox so that I could play WipeOut and dance, distracting the customers for a bit while he got caught up.
I don't shimmy any more... I should. I'd love to get back to that point.

As you can see, the weight is up. I'm contributing the number to a few factors.
1) I had a horrible choking incident on Saturday resulting in me not taking my supplements, including my sugar blockers. I didn't take them yesterday either.
2) BBQ sauce that was not my low-carb/ low-sugar. I'll be sharing the recipe with you on Wednesday 2-12 (truly) I'm scheduling the post this morning. I had used my low carb/ low sugar but by the time all was said and done, there wasn't any sauce on the wings. You'll understand more when that post goes live.
3) Chocolate/ Caramel Brownie in a Cup.
By the end of the game I'd eaten a portion of almost every protein I'd prepared for the day. I craved chocolate... a chocolate caramel brownie. Well, none to be had in the house was probably a good thing. But there was Cake in A Cup. I had one with about a tablespoon of milk chocolate frosting and a glass of milk... at bedtime when I should have been eating more protein.

Some days you just have to give in to the cravings!

On the up side, I didn't have the Peach Belini made with Clear American Peach soda water I had planned on. The peach schnapps was not going to be a good idea.

If you're not a fan of sparkling waters, I encourge you to give these a try. Unlike most brands where you have an 'artificial' flavoring, Clear American waters taste like the real deal. You can taste actual JUICE in these waters. A couple other people have tried them on my recommendation and love them.

So on to another week. I'm back in sync with my inner 1950s housewife this week as well as back to a full work week - just in time for Bob to come home on Wednesday. Thus the reason I'm getting all the posts scheduled this morning.

How was your first month of 2020? Are you still on track? Today begins a new week and a new month. We've got this!

Enjoy the Journey!
~Kelly