Friday Favorites!!!

1) Lose It! - I started using this app about 3 weeks ago and I LOVE it! It makes it so easy to track calories. It has the calories for tons of restaurants, which is a big plus. Some dishes that look not so bad aren't as low calorie as you might think. With some of the dishes being as many calories as they are, it's no wonder America is so overweight! I don't need to lose much weight, but it has been really hard for me to lose the little bit of weight that I do want to drop. This app is definitely helping! If nothing else, it makes me think twice about my portion sizes, which is enough to make a huge difference. My goal is to lose a pound a week. So far, I have done that. I should reach my goal weight by early April. Plenty of time to get into bikini shape in time for vacation!

2) Working out - I've been working out most days for the past 3 weeks. I think I've finally found something that works for me. The key is just variation! I get so bored with things very quickly. I've tried to do the 30 day Shred SO many times. I like the workout, but I got bored of seeing the same moves daily. I've been doing the Shred about once a week, 6 Week 6 Pack (love this workout!) twice a week, Killer Buns and Thighs once a week, then yoga or pilates once a week. I enjoy these workouts much more than when I was running, and I burn SO many more calories doing these. Win! 

3) Trip Home - We went home to visit family this past weekend. We left late Friday evening and got in about 2 am on Saturday. We thought we wouldn't hit any traffic since we left so late...we were wrong. We still had a good time though! We got to see everyone. We went to breakfast with Josh's mom and stepdad Saturday. Then we went to Josh's dad's to watch our basketball game. It was a close one, but we pulled out a win. We went back to Josh's mom's for dinner after the game. Sunday we met Matt for an early lunch at San Jose. I probably haven't been there since high school. The food is still delicious and it's still about the same price! Crazy cheap! Bailey stayed with Nana while we were out. She was really good! Next, we packed up and dropped Bailey off with my mom while we went to meet my dad, sister and Natalia for second lunch. Neither of us were hungry, but Nikki worked all weekend, so we only got a chance to see her during her lunch break. We caught up with them a little then took Natalia for ice cream. She rode with us back to my mom's house. She's a hilarious kid. I can't believe she's almost 6! It was a quick trip, but we had a good time!

4) Brew Day - Josh and I both had Monday off. It's been forever since we've brewed and we were invited to brew at a friend's house, so we decided we would brew our barley wine! I didn't stick around for the whole time since I had some projects around the house I wanted to take care of (more on those later). It was a very productive but still relaxing day.

5) Bailey - Thursday afternoon we came home and Bailey wasn't in her crate. That morning, Josh thought I crated her and I thought he crated her. She usually sticks up our butts until we crate her in the mornings. Thursday, Josh turned on the radio for her and I didn't see her anymore, so I thought she was in her crate. He had to run upstairs to grab his wallet and he didn't see her any more, so he thought I crated her. Sneaky girl. Haha. She didn't mess up a single thing! She didn't even grab her bully stick that was sitting on a counter! I was SO proud of her. We had gotten to the point where we would leave her out if we were going to be gone for an hour or so, but not for a while work day! Josh thought she didn't eat the house only because she had camp the previous day and she was exhausted. I had a little more faith in her :-). I talked him into letting me leave her out on Friday. I had to agree that I would be responsible for any damage she did before he would agree to that. She was an angel again! My little girl is finally maturing! Haha. We will start to leave her out more now, but we do want to crate her sometimes. We want her to be used to it in case we need to crate her while we're traveling.

Friday Favorites!

I wrote this post last Friday morning...I JUST realized that I never posted it! So, here goes...

1) Super Bowl - We watched the Super Bowl at a friend's house and had a great time! Of course, it's always more fun when the team you're pulling for wins :-). 

2) Kindle Fire HD- We just got one and we love it! The best part, it was free, just for participating in a bank promotion we likely would have done anyway! YAY!

3) Tuesday off - We really enjoyed taking Tuesday off to celebrate the Ravens win! See my previous post for details.

4) Game Night - After we got home Tuesday night, we had an impromptu game night and dinner with Jen and John. 

5) Vacation - I mentioned last week that we have decided where we're going. Well, our deposits are all paid, travel insurance is paid and we're all ready to go! Now, we just have to wait just under 4 months.

6) Travel Agent - We used Jennifer for our honeymoon and we loved her! Naturally, we wanted to use her again for this vacation. She was a huge help and took a lot of weight off our shoulders. If you need a travel agent, I definitely recommend her! 

Purple Fever!

This is a little delayed...but aren't all my posts? Either way, I'm SO excited for the Ravens and all of Baltimore! The game Sunday was absolutely amazing! What a way to end a season for the Ravens and a career for Ray Lewis! 

There was a parade on Tuesday to welcome the team back home and to celebrate a big win. We caught purple fever with everyone else and decided to take the day off to head into the city. We took the light rail into the city because traffic was awful. All the stadium lots were free to park in, but they were ALL full within an hour or so of opening. I'm SO glad we didn't count on that. Our stop was one of the very first, and I'm extremely thankful for that. We only waited in line about 10 minutes for tickets then we were able to make it on the first train through. I know someone who waited at the next stop for 45 minutes just to buy tickets, then the first 3 trains were full from the previous stops! That's CRAZY! 

Once we got into the city, we decided to watch the parade from the street rather than going into the stadium, that way we could beat most of the crowd to lunch after the parade. We found our spot at Camden Yards (where the parade route ended) and waited about...2 hours. It. Was. COLD! Maybe an hour before parade reached us, a helecopter flew over and announced that the stadium was filled to capacity. We thought this meant that there were about 71,000 people inside. We learned later that is was closer to 100,000! That's a LOT of people, especially when they were expecting around 30,000. People were PACKED into the aisles, on the field, all over the place. 

This is a random pic I found online, but I had to share anyway. There were people climbing up to the second level of the stadium to get in! 

From our spot just outside the Warehouse.

 Thanks for the photo bomb John!

Take 2...I like this one better anyway :-)

 The marching Ravens! 

Of course Poe was there

Not the greatest pic, but it is the greatest Harbaugh! 

Yay Flacco!

Ray Rice

Ed Reed with his little one

Ngata!

T-Suggs filming the crowd

And finally...Ray Lewis!

We started making our way to Federal Hill for lunch right after Ray Lewis passed by us.

Champs!

 We saw SO many people on the way...

...apparently they didn't get the memo that the stadium was full.

We went to get lunch right after the parade. We made it to The Abbey (one of our favorite places to go for burgers) in time to watch the festivities on TV. It would have been great to see it from the stadium, but it was nice to not have the crowd around. All in all, we were glad we chose not to go to the stadium. We ended up staying in the city until about 5:30 because of the line at the light rail. 

We had a great time celebrating a big Ravens win! Hopefully we can do it again before we leave here :-).

Friday Favorites!

1) State Win! - Of course a highlight of my week was watching my Wolfpack beat Carolina! It wasn't the best of games, but it was still a win. I won't speak of what happened Tuesday night...this is a favorites post and I want to keep it positive :-).

2) Bar Progress - We've been working on our bar for about...4 months now. Haha. We haven't done a whole lot to it lately, but we got the trim put on it this weekend. There's still lots to do. We need to stain the trim, put tons of coats of poly on the whole bar top, and attach it to the base of the bar. We're taking baby steps here. 

We hope to get this done in the next couple weeks. That shouldn't be too hard since we've promised ourselves not to start any more projects until we finish this one...and I'm pretty excited to get started on our next one!

3) Power Tools - Yes, I'm a girl, but I love power tools about as much as I do fun kitchen tools. This is directly related to our bar progress. We were able to measure the wood pieces, cut them to size and nail them to the bar in maybe an hour. The nail gun is a HUGE time saver! We got it about a year and a half ago when we tiled the foyer. We bought it to put the trim back on. We started with just a hammer and nails, it didn't take Josh long to go pick this baby up! Another tool that was a huge time saver for this project was our miter saw. We were using a hand saw and miter box at first, but it was taking forever and our cuts were not very clean. Josh has been wanting a hand saw for quite some time and we have a few projects we hope to tackle in the near future that will require angles. Yes, it was a LOT more expensive than the miter box, but we've already used it for 2 projects and it has saved us a ton of time on each one. I don't even want to know how long it would have taken us to make all those 45 degree angle cuts by hand. I'm not a patient person, so I enjoy getting the cut done in about 2 seconds!

4) My Husband - He's amazing! He surprised me by cooking pretty much all our meals this weekend! We did have pizza once, but other than that he made breakfast, lunch and dinner every day over the weekend. I helped him with some meals, but he did the majority of the work. He also cleaned up the State room while he was off work Monday. That was a very welcome surprise since he had his own to do list. This room is nearly impossible to keep clean since it is also Bailey's play room and where we spend the majority of our time.

5) Vacation! - We have FINALLY decided on a vacation destination and our spot is held, now we just have to book it officially, which should happen this afternoon. YAY! 

January BarkBox

Barkworthies curly bully stick - We're saving this one for a rainy day, but our local pet store has these. I've paid about $4 for them in the past.

3 oz Lamb Toasters from Superior Farms - $7.99

Bailey hasn't tried these yet, but she does love lamb ears, so I'm sure she will love these too. We're saving these for the times she's more distracted since they are such a high value treat. 

6 oz. bag of Peanut Butter flavor yumZies - $7.99

Bailey is a big fan of these. They're the perfect size for training treats. I like to put them in her puzzles.

Jax and Bones, Elton the Octopus - $16

I think this toy is absolutely adorable. It feels very well made and is probably pretty durable if your dog doesn't like to shred everything. They have even cuter ones on their website...so many different animals and other shapes! Kangaroos, turtles, penguins, lobsters, anchors, holiday shapes (the deer is adorable). 

Bailey loves the octopus.

It's great for throwing, but not so great for a heavy chewer. This is Elton after a few minutes of Bailey. Obviously, it was her goal to take ALL of his tentacles off. I think one like the dolphin, without so many pieces sticking out of it would have been better for Bailey. I was able to tie off some of the strings, so he should still last a little while. For this reason, I would not spend $16 on this toy.

The total value of this month's BarkBox is $35.98. Absolutely worth the $10 promotional price we paid for it! Even though the toy is not very long lasting, I still don't think I would have been very upset if I had paid the full $17 for the box. The treats are great, so that more than makes up for it.

If you're interested in trying BarkBox, sign up HERE and get $5 off your first subscription.

Oh, and for a quick update on a previous BarkBox toy...remember the moose from the December box? He's still going strong!

 Still fully intact!

He's only missing a tiny piece of one ear...pretty good for being with Bailey for over a month!