New Year, New Me

Have you heard of the Seven Challenge?  Have you taken it? How are you doing?

For those who may not know the challenge is to do one of the workouts for 7 minutes just once a day.  In all there are several different challenges.  The app is free and it comes with one challenge.  Every other month another challenge opens up for free or you can buy them for $1.99.

So the idea is to move just 7 minutes every day.  If you do more, great!  If you do a lot more, fantastic! But for now, just move 7 minutes.  I'm doing the 7 minute stretch and some days I will do it twice, but the goal is to do as many as you can can. So Far I've done it every day for a week!  Go ME!

What are you doing to move more this new year?

New Year, New Me.

New Year, new Me.  Time to get rid of all those pounds I gained over all those sick weeks when all I did was sleep, eat, cough and craft.  Time to get back on track.  Like so many of you right?  Here is one of go to breakfast's that fill me up.

Bacon, Egg and Cheese Muffins

I love these easy to make muffins that are packed with wonderful goodness! They fill me up and help me to stay trim. I also love how easy they are.  I have a small 6 cup muffin tin that fits perfectly in my toaster oven so I make 6 at a time for Hubby and me.

Here is what you do

6 eggs
2 slices bacon
Heavy Cream
Cheese of your choice ( I like cheddar cheese sliced thin)

Spray the muffin tin with spray and preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Cook the bacon anyway you want to and drain on a paper towel, and then break it up into small pieces.
Scramble the eggs in a bowl with the heavy cream and a little bit of water.
Pour the egg mixture into the muffin tin and place your cheese of choice into the mixture. Evenly place the bacon bits into the mixture as well.

Bake for 12-17 minutes (again I used a toaster oven so if you use the big oven, watch them). It's done when a tooth pick comes out clean.

Let cool a few minutes and for the eggs to settle and then take them out and place them on a plate.

Each muffin has 1 carb. But more importantly, it's So good!

What are you doing in the new year?

What to do when you're home sick.

Well, Craft of course.

When I wasn't coughing up both lungs and all 10 toes, I was crafting.  After all it was Christmas time.

I made some body pillows for the grand girls.  You've seen them I'm sure on Pinterest.  Basically you take 5 pillowcases and sew them together, stuff them with pillows and you have a body pillow.  Since I couldn't find 10 "Frozen" pillowcases, I made the pillow cases for both grand girls, then Hubby went shopping for 10 pillows to stuff them with.  Here is what the finished product looked liked.

It touched my heart that both girls used them to sleep on the floor for a few nights and loved them.

The other thing I did was create a better way to hold on to August's rompers.
What's a romper?  It's play clothes for a small dog to wear either as jammies or to play outside in the winter and stay warm.

August goes to day care every day with me and while I work (with Becke in my office as my office buddy) he plays.  If the weather is really terrible the small dogs will play inside with the door to the outside open  so that they can go outside to "go".  So the inside room is just as cold as the outside.  If it's not too terrible, the small dogs play outside even in the winter.  Either way, August is cold so he has play clothes to wear out there.

I've bought a few outfits but made most of them.  There is a child consignment shop in the big city and I get either 6 month or 9 month size outfits and adjust them to fit his "boy parts". T-shirts are often onezeeze with the snaps cut off and then hemmed.  Easy!  His one pants and tops are often just that, a top and pants sewed together, then the middle is cut out for his "boy parts".  It really is easy.

As for storage, I found this doll clothes rack and hung his clothes on it.  It was $6.99.  The hangers, were either hangers from baby outfits I bought for a gift and kept the hanger or one of these hangers from the Dry Cleaners.  Pull off the cardboard, bend to fit the new smaller outfit and hang your dogs clothes.

From this 

To this

2 pieces sewed together

All hung up and ready to find what I want.

Did you do any crafting this season?  What did you do?  How did it work out?

Where the heck have I been??

I have been away for a long time and I'm sorry for those who kept checking this blog and at the same time, I'm so grateful that you did.  Where have I been? Here at home.

Sick

Really sick

Tired

Really, really tired.

I came down with a cold that wore me out and then the cold turned into pneumonia.  I was on home quarantine and could not leave the house and no one could come to visit me.  Living with Cancer is a whole new lifestyle that I am not use to yet.

See, I'm in remission but I still have Cancer and I have to be extra careful when I get sick.  I can't handle others who are ill or even have germs on their clothing.  No one wants me in the hospital and so I am grounded at home.  It stinks.

Hubby ends up doing all the cooking, cleaning, washing, dog care, dog clean up, shopping, everything!!! The worst part was it was at Christmas time.   Good thing I do most of the Christmas shopping before Thanksgiving, and this year, I sent everything out to the "west coasters" right from Amazon and my wonderful Daughter In Law (DIL) wrapped all the gifts for me to put under the tree.  The gifts for the east coasters were wrapped by us before I got really sick.  But still, the house needed to be decorated, and food needed to be prepared.  We ended up not sending very many Christmas cards at all and didn't make 1 Christmas cookie.  Hubby bought Christmas cookies for the first time in 42 years.  That made me sad.

I started this year, having my Stem Cells Harvested and loosing all my hair.  I ended the year with a full head of new hair and pneumonia.  Sick at both ends with lots of bumps in the road in the middle.  I sure hope 2015 is a better year.

May your 2015 be filled with joy, laughter, and especially HEALTH.

HAPPY NEW YEAR  See you Monday.

A FRIGID END TO A WARM YEAR!

This is the last Hodgepodge of 2014!  Where did the time go?  Joyce has done a fantastic job putting together the questions for us all.  She has a busy life and still, she found time to do this.  I'm impressed! Join us will you?

1. Share a favorite moment from your Christmas holiday celebration.

The favorite moment from this Christmas was when our grand girls saw their "Frozen Body Pillows" and curled up on the floor with them.  Later, I got a video of them sleeping on them for the night.  It made me very happy that they liked them so much.

2. What would you say has been the biggest news event during your life so far?

So far, I think that traveling in space has been the biggest news event during my life.  The fact that we traveled to the moon, and have landed on Mars with the Mars Rover to cover the planet in search of anything.  I love that someone has the guts to ask the question "What if?"  And then come up with a way to answer it.  I love the science news that we hear so often.
YUP Space Travel is the event that fascinates me.

3. The Pantone Color of the Year for 2015 is Marsala. What say you-like or no like? Would I find this color anywhere in your home or wardrobe? Will you add something in this shade to either?

OK, I had to look this up because I didn't know what the color was.  It's beautiful!

It's a pop of neutral and I really do like it.  I don't know if it's in our home but I will get some tops in this color.  Reminds me of blush make up from the past.  

4. Would you rather meet your ancestors or your great grandchildren? Explain why.

WOW that is a hard question.  Meeting my ancestors would allow me to fill in the blanks as to why I am the way I am but meeting our great grandchildren would allow me to know if any of us is in them.  I choose both.  It's my blog, I get to pick the both.

5. Share one life lesson learned in 2014?

Good Health is something that I took for granted.  When the doctor tells me that I'm healthy I still laugh.  Healthy?  Then why am I sitting in the Oncologist office talking about living with Cancer.  Define Healthy Please?   So the lesson I learned, I'm better off than many and not as well off as some.

6. What was your best or favorite purchase made in 2014?

We didn't buy a lot of things this year.  We don't need a lot to make us happy so I guess the purchase we made was our vacation in the fall.  The kids were all back to school (no lines), the weather was warm (unseasonably), and the company (Hubby and dogs) was the best.  It was relaxing, refreshing, and just plain wonderful.

7. What is one thing you're looking forward to in the new year?

Getting back to my pre-cancer weight.  I have a plan and pray that God will bless it and allow me to get back into shape. I also want to get back to blogging on a regular basis.

8.  Insert your own random thought here. 

We don't have any snow, and the last few weeks it's been down right warm (in the 40's) for NH.  However, it's NH and so the cold weather will return.  In fact it did on Tuesday and will remain with us all for awhile.  But you don't shovel cold and we have the pellet stove going keeping us all warm.