bring joy

sprouted pumpkin seed salad with curry balsamic dressing + hemp-y “orange julius”

{This post is part of a new series, Fit Fridays, where I share my journey in shedding the 50 pounds extra weight I gained from my last pregnancy.}

I haven’t exercised much this week.

It was partly due to a car accident on Wednesday, nothing major (just got rear ended–so dealing with a little whiplash) & it’s just been an overall busy week for both me & Joseph.

Despite only exercising a few times this past week, I still lost 2.8 pounds.

Which further underscores the fact that weight loss is so much more about what you eat, than how much you exercise. Don’t get me wrong, exercise is important for so many reasons, but it’s not the number one factor for weight loss.

I’ve lost 6 inches at the waist, and 2 at the hips & thighs.

I’ve said this before, but I’m sheepish about posting...

low-cal sriracha peanut sesame noodles

popular recipes, slim + slender, weight loss

I woke up this morning at three to feed Tyndale.

After nursing, burping, changing, nursing, then burping him again (all the while watching The Tonight Show–thank goodness for Jimmy Fallon) and rocking him back to sleep, I couldn’t go back to sleep. Annoying.

But fortunately, there’s no shortage of things to do around here, so I folded several loads of laundry while listening to old podcast espisodes of This American Life. (This one and this one are particularly good.) And thought about how nice it is to be up, awake, in a quiet, quiet house. To be sure, it’s a good time to think.

Yesterday, Amalia came home with a letter from her school saying she tested into the G.T. (gifted & talented) program. Of course I was ecstatic–there’s no doubt she’s a smarty-pants–but sad because one of...

Frugal Tuesdays: What to do about kid’s lessons/sports/piano when getting out of debt

debt-free, frugal life

So, it’s been awhile since I’ve talked about our debt.

We’ve had some set backs, which is an inevitable part of the getting out of debt process.

Our latest two: our W2 had to be corrected, so instead of getting a rather substantial return last month, it will have to wait until the end of this month. The second issue is the Air Force is supposed to pay a large chunk towards our student loans every year. We submitted the paperwork for it SIX months ago. It has still not gone through, which means until that happens we have to continue to make our own payments, which we hadn’t anticipated because we thought it would all go through much sooner than it has. It’s a bummer, but not the end of the world, of course.

Word to the wise: the government isn’t quite what you would say customer service...