Happy Friday!

Thank you, Jerome's Furniture in Corona for my Christmas present.  I love it!

Our old couch had HAD it.  It was leather and one little split turned into a shredded mess.  I forgot to take pics before it went to the dump. :(  Used to have to sweep pieces of leather up twice daily.  So annoying.

To give you some perspective of our formal living room a couple years ago...

Blah!  That's the table I used to make my ottoman, btw.

And today...


 Color! Texture! Yay!

And the family room now...


Got the blinds a few months ago.  They sure beat the off-white ones from 1992...

We got the lamp for this room the next day:


It's a fillable jar so we're gonna start collecting stuff at the beach to put inside. :)

That's all for now!  Someday I'll remember to take pics of our master bath to share.

Have a wonderful weekend!
♥ Holly ♥

Happy December to y'all!    ******SEE UPDATE VIDEO BELOW******

Daniel finished the counter top to our "coffee bar" and I'm so excited about it!  Especially because we've been living with a piece of plywood for our counter top for at least 6 months...

Wood-look tile

I'm in love!!!  We got the tiles at Home Depot and they're only $1.49 each.  It's about $16 for a box which is all we needed for this one counter top.  The edge tiles are from the sheets (like below) they make for back splashes and stuff.  Those are more like $5 each but we only needed 2.  
  I couldn't find ours on the website but you get what I'm talking about from the above pic.  

I can't wait for the rest to be done!  We're in that mode now, so we'll continue to work on the counters.  Our goal is to be done with all of them by Christmas since everyone will be coming to our place.  

Have a wonderful week guys! 

♥ Holly ♥

UPDATE VIDEO All the countertops are done, just waiting for the back splash now:

I'm back!  We all knew I would be at some point.  Last time I posted (back in April!) we had failed our Whole 30 Challenge.

I'm sad to say that I've been terrible lately, food/drink wise.  Healthy?  Not so much.  My rolls have increased considerably because of it.  No bueno.  But I've decided that crazy diets and "challenges" don't really work for me.  Once you stop whatever one you're doing everything comes back.  I've been eating better for the most part lately and haven't been drinking alcohol so that's helping.  I just need to get back to a place where I'm working out consistently.  Struggle of my life...

In other news, our bathroom remodel is coming along nicely!  Daniel even surprised me while I was away for a bachelorette party by doing the baseboards, yay!  Seriously, we've been in that house for 10+ years and took the baseboards off when we tiled the floor back when we moved in.  Here are some "before" pics. 

So blah...

Paint is done, baseboards done, hung some curtains (which need to be hemmed), spray painted a candle holder, hung it up.  I also mounted 2 pieces of art that we got on our honeymoon but have yet to hang them.  

I whitewashed the boards too. Pic to come later.

It looks a million times better though.  It got held up because I started to peel some cracked wall texture and discovered mold, eek!  Daniel had to cut out a chunk of drywall and re-do it. 





As for the rest, I'll wrap up the last few details soon and post "after" pics. Until then, or until I feel like writing again, ta-ta for now!


♥ Holly ♥

Happy Monday!

Okay so this Friday the 30th would mark the end of our Whole 30 challenge.  Would  being the operative word.  Yep, I may as well admit we failed.  Hard.  We were great, golden, for the first half, I swear.  But Daniel had to travel 3 weeks out of this month and we felt cheated.  The only solution was to go to our favorite Mexican restaurant (Guadalajara's here in Lake Elsinore, amaze-balls) and have a Cadillac Margarita and lots of deliciousness.  LOL

Of course you know, this is a slippery slope.  Once you have that cheat meal or drink, it's all over.  For us this was the case at least.  I'll tell you that in the first 12 days of the diet I lost 10 pounds.  Yeah, we were totally weighing ourselves too.  Also a cheat.  Hey, we're human!  Haha  The 10 pounds came off in time for me to order the size 8 bridesmaid dress for one of the 2 weddings I'm in this year, so that's awesome.  For reference sake, I wore a 12 at a wedding a couple years ago.  Waaa! :'(

The diet works, it's not that difficult but lezzz be honest (Pitch Perfect reference) eating clean is no fun at all.   I do wanna be better though and make better decisions food-wise.  Out of the challenge I gained a new love for the zucchini noodle as I mentioned before, so that's cool.  I learned how to make a pretty decent vinaigrette and I made my own mayo yesterday for the sole purpose of making deviled eggs and they were delicious.  I have a new found respect for ground turkey and have discovered that it's on sale a lot at Staters. 

In a nutshell, I'd recommend trying the challenge.  I'll probably do it, or close to it, again for the summer.  I gotta be bikini ready by July 5th for our trip to Cabo...  Not to mention the cruise to Ensenada in August as well as the weekend in Palm Springs.  Yeah, this summer's not gonna suck.  Or as Daniel refers to it, "The year of Holly".  LOL
 

Have a great day, y'all!
♥ Holly ♥

Howdy!

   I cannot WAIT to weigh myself when this challenge is over.  My size 8 jeans are so baggy now, it's awesome.  I can actually fit into those ill-advised jeggings I bought on clearance months ago! Haha! 

We're on day 16 today and still going strong!  I don't even really think about it anymore.  The key is preparedness.   I cooked like 3 meals on Sunday, including a breakfast casserole for the week, which helps a lot.  Since little league baseball games are at 5pm during the week I've been bringing my dinner to work to eat before I go.  Then I'll have maybe some almonds or a pickle for a snack when I get home, if necessary. 

I'd say the only annoying thing about this diet is the lack of drink variety.  I have, water 90% of the time, black coffee in the morning and a cup of green tea most nights.  I'm looking forward to a glass of wine... or God, even a glass of milk! LOL 

Two weeks from tomorrow will be our last day.  Of course I'll be posting my results.

In other news, I got a bug up my butt to give our Master Bath a mini-makeover the other day.  Dan gave me the okay so I'm gonna go shopping today.  Yay, shopping!  I'll be sure to post pics when I'm done.  The ONLY thing I've done to our bathroom since moving in about 10 years ago is paint the off-white vanity brown and change out the hardware.  That's it.  It's still builder-grade Swiss Mocha on the walls, no window treatments, nada.  I take that back, I did nail 2 things up on the walls; a picture collage of me and Daniel and a wall sconce with palm trees and a candle.  I'll be giving that a makeover too I think.  My budget for this is approximately $60 in paint and decor.  I love Fallas, which is a crappy little store at the outlet by my work.  They have curtains for $6 and rods for $8.  It's redic.  The most expensive thing on my list is the paint at $33.  Can't wait to freshen things up.

Anyhoo, that's all for now folks!
♥ Holly ♥

Good morning!

As I sit here drinking, and actually enjoying my black coffee, I thought I'd bring y'all an update on my Whole 30 challenge.  We're on day 10.  Woohoo!  1/3 of the way through.

Overall it hasn't been hard.  Shopping at Costco was a drag, but we prevailed.  Damn you, delicious samples!  I can feel my pants are a lot more loose so that's amazing.  I can't say I have a ton more energy but Daniel's been out of town so I've been running around to baseball games and what-not.  I let the boys sleep in the bed with me last night and the dog so I got to sleep on a sliver of our king sized bed.  *sigh*  The coffee helps.  I don't know that I could give that up as well.  I really haven't been hungry, I mean extra hungry.  I'm not starving myself so that's probably why.

I've given up on my organic shampoo.  My hair is much happier using my Paul Mitchell stuff.  On that note, I'm getting my 2 inch roots done tonight!  (Insert chorus of Angels)   Thank Gawd.

My most surprising food-like discovery has been the zucchini noodle.  I have my Zpaghetti with ground turkey and tomato sauce leftovers for lunch today.  The zoodles taste amazing and have the consistency of al dente pasta I'd say.  I found a great pasta sauce, called Wholesome Goodness which has no added sugar, preservatives, etc.  Check out the Key Attributes and Ingredient lists, pretty awesome.  And it's affordable!  Unlike that $10 jar I found at Albertsons.  I found this stuff at Stater Brothers for under $4.  Much easier than making my own.

Anyway, so far so good.  I really hope I can fit into my skinny jeans after this challenge. ;)

Have a great weekend!
♥ Holly ♥

Happy Tuesday!

I know I said we'd be starting our #Whole30 challenge on April 1st, but after feeling like poop yesterday we decided to start early.  So today's the day!  Woohoo!
I'm not going to post pictures of my food except for this:

Trader Joe's stock up

And not unless I come across an amazing recipe that I wanna share.  

Sidebar: I found some great jarred spaghetti sauce at Albertsons yesterday; no added sugar, preservatives, gluten, soy, etc.  Looked wonderful, so I grabbed it.  Went and rang up my order... It was $10!!!!!  Um, I don't think so.  I'll make my own, thank you very much.  

Also, as promised, no daily pictures of my muffin top.  I will share a before/after pic when we're done (If there's a good difference!) and share my before/after stats at the end; weight, measurements, etc.  

It's day 1 and it's early, but based on my breakfast this morning and what I have planned for lunch and dinner tonight I think this is going to be a piece of cake!  We actually think the hardest part is going to be not weighing ourselves.  Did I mention that?  No weighing in until it's over.  So we weighed and measured last night for comparison's sake.  And boy do I need this! LOL

Good luck to us!!! ;)

♥ Holly ♥

Hello there bloggisphere!

I guess you can say I've been on a bit of a hiatus. Hiatus from blogging aaaaand hiatus from dieting. For realz tho. I've let myself fall into some really bad habits and the effect on my body has been tremendous. I say tremendous but I've really only gained another 5 or so pounds that I didn't need. I'm at an all time high (not including any prego weights cuz they don't count). I'm embarrassed to say that I let myself get up to 145 recently.

As a reference, after my 90 day Visalus challenge I got down to 129. After children I've been floating around the mid 130's. My ultimate goal in life is to get down to the low 120's. I'm 5'3" so this is not unreasonable. According to the BMI scale, I'm inching my way towards obese for my height/build.

At any rate this has inspired me to do something about it. I joined a gym that specializes in training boxers. Daniel has been doing the same at a different gym and you can really see the definition in his muscles since he started about a year ago. I've only been 3 times so far and have been pleasantly sore after each session. But I know that it takes more than exercise to transform your body. You've got to do it from the inside out.

So, with that in mind, Daniel and I will be doing the Whole30 challenge.  Check out the site if you'd like detailed information on it but in a nutshell you have to stick to a strict Paleo diet for 30 days.  No gluten, soy, dairy, alcohol, etc.  We can have all the organic meat, nuts, fruits and veggies we want and even coffee (black).  "Can't you see we talkin', white."  Sorry, when I see a chance for a movie reference I take it. (Zack and Miri)



My friend Rachel over at LoveFitLife inspired me to try  do this Whole30 thing.  Of course this led her to start using organic soap from soapur.com.  Which led me to want to use organic soap and shampoo.  It's a slippery slope. LOL  So I went to Walgreens yesterday and got an organic soap called SheaMoisture.  It was the best I could find.  I also got an organic, gluten free shampoo by Hask but discovered last night that it has soy in it... Damn. Gotta keep looking.

Embarrassing admission: I have a bad scalp condition on the lower back half of my scalp.  It itches and flakes constantly.   So you may have noticed me scratching the back of my head a million times or so.  It started when I hit puberty I believe.  I just remember being about 14 when it started.  It is horrible.  I hate it.  Daniel hates it.  He's always telling me to stop scratching.  I have been to 4 doctors and a dermatologist and tried all sorts of treatments, all to no avail.  I am fervently praying that these changes help it.  Rachel said that only after a week of the Whole30 and about 3 days of natural soap that her eczema is gone.  Completely.  *Fingers Crossed*

I used my new soap and shampoo this morning and had a terrible realization when I got out of the shower.  I don't have organic face or body lotion!  Ugh, I'm so dried out right now.  Gotta grab some today.  Dude, even my deodorant has soy in it!  Which is not allowed on this challenge.  I figure why avoid eating it if I'm just going to get it into my body another way... right?  Luckily I had another deodorant that didn't list soy as an ingredient. 

We'll be shopping at Trader Joe's this Saturday and starting the challenge on April 1st.  It's amazing the things that have sugar added to them.  My unsalted, whole almonds even have a gram or so of sugar added.

I'll be posting, probably once a week, about my progress on the challenge.  Some people have had amazing transformations in just 30 days, from losing weight to having ailments cured.  The point is not to lose weight, but it happens usually.  It should, I mean, you're putting a ton of healthy stuff into your body.  The point of it is to heal your stomach and re-set your body for eating. 

That's all for now, folks!  Wish us luck!

♥ Holly ♥