weight watchers

Looking Back on 2013

In just a few short days we will be embracing a brand new year! It seems like it was just January 2013 a few moments ago.  It is amazing how the years are just flying past, one moment you feel like you have months ahead of you and then you realize it is just days before 2014 shows up! I wanted to take some time out to reflect back on 2013 since it has just flown by and talk a bit about what I hope for 2014.

I will start with what I hope will be a bigger success in 2014 an update out on my Weight Watchers journey; 2013 didn’t go as planned for me at all.  I hoped I would be about 70 pounds down by time we got to the 31st of December but instead I am only down 29.5 pounds.  It was 30 but I gained weight a few weeks ago and I am slowly taking it off again.  Which really has been the typical story of this journey.  I spent a lot of the year doing this roller coaster of gain a pound, lose a pound, gain a pound, lose one, so on and so on.  It was/is very frustrating.  I would be doing everything right but still stay on that coaster which then after so many weeks of that it lead me to fall back into old habits.  I started ordering a lot of meals that start with a number, eating unhealthy snacks or not eating regularly at all. I also did the whole I still have X amount of months/weeks/days left of the year to get back on track.  Then bam it was the end of the year and here I am 40 pounds away from the goal. I am trying to not be too hard on myself about it, I mean we are all human and this wasn’t going to happen over night by any means and 30 pounds is still a nice chunk of weight to be gone.  I know that the journey wasn’t going to be easy no matter how much I wished it was which does make it easier for me to hopefully get back on track.  Even though it is not officially 2014 I have already started to get myself back on track, stocked up my fridge and pantry with all my favorite things.  Like Belvita breakfast biscuits in cinnamon brown sugar (tastes like graham crackers) and blueberry (tastes like a blueberry muffin in cookie form); the whole packet is 6 points which is great for a quick breakfast or hearty snack.  I have also been buying whole pineapples and cutting them up to fulfill that something sweet craving, keeping lemons & limes in my fruit basket at home to add to water so I avoid soda and actually getting at least 30 mins of exercise in a min of 3 times a week.  I hope to increase the workout time back to an hour a day but right now I am going into my busy season at work so I am starting small so hopefully I wont stop once work gets crazy.

I jumped back into this blog in 2013 officially and while many moons have passed I am still working out the kinks on making time for the blog and what content to put on it.  So I hope in this coming year I will become more regular at posting and get things more organized.  I really do enjoy blogging and sharing my life, crafts & food with everyone and want to make this a more regular thing.  I think I am my own worse enemy when it comes to it, because I have grand ideas and then I talk myself out of them and I need to learn that blogging is about being bold and I should really starting going with my gut no matter what!

In 2013 I took up screen printing and have really enjoyed it.  I don’t get to be too creative at work dealing with taxes and bookkeeping all day so it is nice to have an art hobby to do on the weekends.  I have been wanting to sell some of my screen printing items under the Blurred Lines name on Etsy, but for some reason I have been holding back and finding reasons to wait.  Here I am again being my own worst enemy.  I need to stop holding myself back, so hopefully in 2014 you will see some of the fun geeky items I have planned for purchase! Doctor Who fans need to defiantly watch out because they are going to love my Moleskine notebooks & t-shirts!

My next big crazy plan is to get my cupcake business up and running officially by the end of next year.  In 2013 Clark County finally adopted Cottage Law which allows people to make and sale items from their home.  Before this was illegal and everything had to be done in a commercial kitchen.  Which of course has always held me back, I don’t have enough clientele to warrant paying for space in a commercial kitchen. I am hoping that I can get things in order so that I can schedule a meeting and get my official license after this coming tax season so that I have the spring/summer time to get the marketing up and running officially.  This is something I want to do on the side and do not plan for it to be full time work, at least not right now. Who knows what will happen in the future.

2013 was also the year of change for me, I let some friendships go officially; which was a hard thing for me to come to terms with and I even struggle with it today.  Which is funny considering I know it was the right decision to walk away but at the same time it is never easy to lose someone you care about.  I can say that luckily while I was struggling with the loss of one friend an old friend who I had lost touch with came out of the woodwork which I am grateful for because she was a good friend and it great to see that we can overcome the past and reconnect.  So here’s to 2014 bringing in new friendships, fostering old friendships, and maybe a boyfriend or two.  😉

No matter how much change went on in 2013 the year itself was pretty good; I got to go to Cozumel Mexico for the first time, saw my first whole dinosaur skeleton, saw a space shuttle up close (it’s smaller than I thought), and even managed to move a step up within my job.  So it certainly was a good year for me but I am very ready for the New Year!  Leave me a comment below telling me about your 2013 and what do you have planned for 2014? Or tell me what did you plan to do in 2013 that you just didn’t get finished, that now you are determined to do in 2014?  I can’t wait to hear from you! Happy New Year everyone!!

What Day Is It?

Things have just been insane at work lately, I know I shouldn’t be surprised I run a CPA office and it is tax time. This is nothing new I have been doing this for over seven years, but really I told someone today on the phone that it was Friday. I guess that was wishful thinking that the week is over because that means there is only one more day of the craziness.

The downside to my work life being so crazy is I slack off on all the other things in my world. I am just so tired and lazy by time I walk through my door at night that the last thing on my mind is taking care of myself. Because of this lack of motivation my diet has slacked a bit over the last few weeks and I have hovered in this gain a pound loose a pound roller coaster for about 3 to 4 weeks already. While at work I am making good choices; luckily for me our office is part of a fruit of the month club so there is fresh fruits around and I have a drawer of yummy health bars to snack on.  I even make a few bad choices like indulging in a fun size candy bar here and there but nothing that is a diet killer.  It is the after work decisions that I am not doing so well on I know I am not making smart choices.  I own up to the fact that I would rather hit the drive thru than go home and cook something.  It is almost like I do not have an appetite for anything but junk food.  I do wish my days had been a couple hours shorter so I could have used my crock pot more, but that thing cooks on the high end to begin with so a 12 hr day my food is going to be a rock by time I get there.  So I am really looking forward for this tax season being over so that I can get back on track.  I am even too lazy to work out after work; first off because I don’t have any energy and the other is after a work out I get a burst of energy which makes it hard to get to bed.  So when you are coming in your door at 8:30 pm you only have so many hours before you need to get in bed to start the cycle over.  Which means if I work out all that new energy makes me stay up late which makes my next day at work horrible because I am tired.  It is a viscous circle, especially since I can’t bring myself to get out of bed earlier in the morning to work out before work because I like my sleep.  Maybe one day I will get that motivation but it just hasn’t hit me yet I really prefer to sleep.  I just haven’t broken up the love affair with my bed.

I have set some personal goals that have had to be altered due to my laziness over the last few months but I do want to be 30 lbs down by the middle of the July, which will hopefully keep me on my goal to start 2014 by being down a total of 90 – 100 lbs, that is one full year of weight watchers.  So I really hope that after the 15th I can make some changes and form a routine so that when the next deadline in September rolls around I don’t let the laziness hit me and I slack off again!

The one positive thing I have been doing to combat the laziness is doing at least one house upgrade or change a weekend, I do it on the weekend so I am not trying to accomplish things after a long work day.  It seems to be helping a bit, like this past weekend I managed to clean my patio furniture and get it ready to be transported to my parent’s house this coming weekend hopefully.  Doesn’t seem like much, but really, if you live in a desert you know how dusty life is.  There was a nice layer of dirt on everything so it was nice to finally clean things up.  By doing these things to my house it is helping me feel less lazy and like I am doing more than just taxes.  It also leads me into doing other things as well because I start to get in a groove, I then managed to sweep up the patio get it all cleaned up, then I gathered up all my clothing donations that have been sitting in a huge pile in the corner of my room making my room feel disorganized and got them dropped off a the donation center and last but not least finally took all the empty shoe boxes out of my closet and put in the recycle bin.  So it was one big project followed by three little ones and it really helped put me in a better mood.  I finally felt like my world wasn’t all about taxes.  Hopefully I can keep this up through out the rest of the year, because I notice focusing on my house helps me focus on me just a little bit more.  Now if I could just not love cheeseburgers so much I would be in a better place I am sure!