This week has not been cooperative weather wise. It goes from sunny to rainy to hailing to windy and back to sunny again multiple times per day. This is really not conducive to planting my garden. Ya, ya, I know. Whats a little rain to a gardener? Well it wouldn't be so bad if I didn't have to completely dig out the bed. This bed has been completely ignored and allowed to run free. And therefore is full of Goutweed. ARG! So in order to plant my veggies I have to overhaul that bed. And its cold out! 5 degrees today. Somehow I don't think my little sprouts would appreciate that. Though the beans I started are huge and need to be planted asap. Go figure eh? Some are too small and delicate to put outside yet and some are huge and need to be planted now. My hope is that Monday or Tuesday I can dig out that bed and get started! I also have a birdbath half constructed in my living room because I need to finish it outside. I don't want to be outside in this weather. Its yucky. So I have been doing laundry. Oh Joy.
But soon, soon I will have a lovely vegetable garden. The cardinal family will have a bath. And the garden will look much better.
Friday 24 May 2013
Sunday 19 May 2013
Cutting the Pink Ribbon
This marks the inaugural voyage of Making Life Sweet. My clean eating, clean living blog. And I suppose all good blogs, like all good houses, need a good foundation. So lets start at the beginning shall we?
The Beginning ...
Ballet. That sums up the first oh 15 years of my life. I was obsessed, passionate, and driven. I grew up originally in a very old farmhouse surrounded by fields. We grew our own vegetables and were avid outdoorsy people. We later moved to the city and our clean eating fell by the wayside as ease and convenience became more important. Time was taken up with school and dance, so while there was still an emphasis on family meals and vegetables, things like kraft dinner and ramen noodles made their way into the cupboards. I was always dubbed 'the skinny kid.' I come from a family of small but mighty women and followed suit. Dancing so much helped build strong muscles on that skinny frame. Fast forward to the end of high school and we come to the end of my dancing career. Over the next several years amid life's ups and downs I gained roughly 30 lbs. And yes I know that isn't a lot, yes that still makes me a thin person, however; that is a huge difference for a tiny person. A big difference for my once very fit and healthy body. And that brings us to ...
The Present
Or almost the present. Upon moving in with my boyfriend I mostly adopted his gluten free lifestyle. Its a heck of a lot easier to make one gluten free meal than two meals and hope to hell you didn't cross-contaminate and inadvertently poison your significant other. At first this meant simply adopting his way of eating, and that meant big portions heavy on the meat and potatoes. I just wasn't confident enough in the kitchen to experiment. While I have always been health conscious and aware I often chose to ignore what I knew and eat the yummy crap anyway. Well let me tell you, that has changed!
February 1st 2013 marked the first day of 'Race to Abs.' We co-created a challenge to get abs in 4 months as we were all feeling the bulge. Step number one was to clean up the diet! We cut out the junk food and boy was that hard! No more pop and chips and chocolate with our movies? Yikes! Next was cut out the simple carbs. Sorry baby no more white potatoes or rice. That was hard but not anywhere as hard as the pop! As the months have progressed and more research has been done we have made a huge effort to get rid of all artificial sweeteners, preservatives, and chemicals from our diets. We eat plenty of fresh and frozen vegetables, lots of lean protein, complex carbs, and natural sugars. But as anyone trying out a clean lifestyle will know, it is a constant battle. Gone are the days of just picking something up off the grocery store shelf and firing it in the cart. Now every label must be read and re-read. Don't know that ingredient or can't pronounce it? Back on the shelf it goes. Kitchen experimentation has gone up ten-fold. And I love it! Turning regular recipes into gluten free, healthy meals my whole family enjoys makes me happy. I love forcing baked goods on people. Spread the love by spreading the goodies! And if I can sneak good whole nutrients into something so yummy my sugar addicted friends will eat it then I am in heaven. Giddy, slightly maniacal heaven. Now add in the working out and we are making lean, mean, healthy machines.
And thus begins our journey into making a good, clean, simple, sweet life.
The Beginning ...
Ballet. That sums up the first oh 15 years of my life. I was obsessed, passionate, and driven. I grew up originally in a very old farmhouse surrounded by fields. We grew our own vegetables and were avid outdoorsy people. We later moved to the city and our clean eating fell by the wayside as ease and convenience became more important. Time was taken up with school and dance, so while there was still an emphasis on family meals and vegetables, things like kraft dinner and ramen noodles made their way into the cupboards. I was always dubbed 'the skinny kid.' I come from a family of small but mighty women and followed suit. Dancing so much helped build strong muscles on that skinny frame. Fast forward to the end of high school and we come to the end of my dancing career. Over the next several years amid life's ups and downs I gained roughly 30 lbs. And yes I know that isn't a lot, yes that still makes me a thin person, however; that is a huge difference for a tiny person. A big difference for my once very fit and healthy body. And that brings us to ...
The Present
Or almost the present. Upon moving in with my boyfriend I mostly adopted his gluten free lifestyle. Its a heck of a lot easier to make one gluten free meal than two meals and hope to hell you didn't cross-contaminate and inadvertently poison your significant other. At first this meant simply adopting his way of eating, and that meant big portions heavy on the meat and potatoes. I just wasn't confident enough in the kitchen to experiment. While I have always been health conscious and aware I often chose to ignore what I knew and eat the yummy crap anyway. Well let me tell you, that has changed!
February 1st 2013 marked the first day of 'Race to Abs.' We co-created a challenge to get abs in 4 months as we were all feeling the bulge. Step number one was to clean up the diet! We cut out the junk food and boy was that hard! No more pop and chips and chocolate with our movies? Yikes! Next was cut out the simple carbs. Sorry baby no more white potatoes or rice. That was hard but not anywhere as hard as the pop! As the months have progressed and more research has been done we have made a huge effort to get rid of all artificial sweeteners, preservatives, and chemicals from our diets. We eat plenty of fresh and frozen vegetables, lots of lean protein, complex carbs, and natural sugars. But as anyone trying out a clean lifestyle will know, it is a constant battle. Gone are the days of just picking something up off the grocery store shelf and firing it in the cart. Now every label must be read and re-read. Don't know that ingredient or can't pronounce it? Back on the shelf it goes. Kitchen experimentation has gone up ten-fold. And I love it! Turning regular recipes into gluten free, healthy meals my whole family enjoys makes me happy. I love forcing baked goods on people. Spread the love by spreading the goodies! And if I can sneak good whole nutrients into something so yummy my sugar addicted friends will eat it then I am in heaven. Giddy, slightly maniacal heaven. Now add in the working out and we are making lean, mean, healthy machines.
And thus begins our journey into making a good, clean, simple, sweet life.
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