Weight Watchers Success!

Over the past year, my husband and I have tried various diets and weight loss schemes. After working my butt off and finding out I had a low thyroid that was causing me to gain weight, I became very discouraged. I finally had my thyroid stuff evened out and I tried calorie counting to lose weight. After two weeks I had only lost 1.6 lbs. Which was pretty disappointing after the amount of work I had put in. So I was starting to become discouraged and then my husband mentioned weight watchers.

I thought there is no way I am going in to weigh in every week and spill my soul to random strangers. Hi, my name is Lyndsey and I had a cookie this week. Ya know you make crap up in your head. So when he mentioned the online way, I became interested. It was nothing I had ever done before and thought well let's try it for 3 months and see where it takes us. It really went against my every way of thinking to lose weight. Especially the exact opposite of calorie counting. And they don't want you to work out to eat, which was all I knew. So it took me the first few weeks to wrap my head around what they do. But I am not going to contest it seeing as of monday I was down 7.7 lbs! Today we started our 5th week. My husband has lost 11. So far it is working and it is molding our minds to think of a healthy lifestyle versus a diet.

There are still days and times I struggle because old habits are hard to break, and sometimes I want more than just my portion! Especially Doritos, they are my nemesus! 14 chips are just not enough! So it's going to take time to change these habits, especially when you are hungry and you want to eat everything! It's very easy to mess up when you are hungry! Which is why I try to always have some sort of snack in my purse in case I do get hungry! So I figured of course I would use my blog to try and give out some recipes I have found for weight watchers!

This comes from www.hungrygirl.com
Too-EZ Mac'n Cheese
PER SERVING (1 heaping cup): 222 calories, 5.5g fat, 772mg sodium, 35g carbs, 6g fiber, 6g sugars, 8.5g protein -- PointsPlus® value 6*

Prep: 5 minutes
Cook: 30 minutes

Ingredients:

-4 1/2 oz. (about 2 cups) uncooked whole-wheat-blend or high-fiber rotini pasta (like the kind by Ronzoni)
-24 oz. (about 6 cups) frozen Green Giant Broccoli & Cheese Sauce 
-3 wedges The Laughing Cow Light Original Swiss cheese 
-Optional: salt and black pepper

Directions

In a large pot, prepare pasta according to the instructions on the package; drain well and set aside. While pasta is cooking, place contents of the broccoli & sauce package in a large microwave-safe bowl. Cover and microwave until sauce has melted and broccoli is hot, 10 - 12 minutes.

Once the bowl is cool enough to handle, remove it from the microwave and add cooked pasta. Unwrap cheese wedges and add those as well.

Mix thoroughly, ensuring that the cheese wedges are evenly distributed and the pasta and broccoli are coated in cheese sauce. Season to taste with salt and pepper, if you like, and then enjoy! 

MAKES 4 SERVINGS

This recipe is SUPER DUPER easy... seriously for a cooking recipe, it can't get much easier! And it is super delicious! This would be great for kids so they eat their veggies! This will be on the repeat list for sure! I could eat pasta everyyy day! I ended up tripling the recipe so we had lots!

Any one else done weight watchers? What do you think of it? 

Hope you had a great Halloween!!

Oh Sandy..

Even though we are far from this hurricane, we will still get some effects from it. Nothing like those on the coast though. Today I wanted to dedicate this to those who will be affected by this. I pray for your safety during this time. That you may use wisdom in making choices during this time. I pray you look to God for strength, peace, and hope. I pray that those in harms way be brought to safety. I pray you have continued patience and use this time to strengthen your family's bond. I pray this passes as quickly as possible and with as least damage as possible and that all will be safe. I pray after it's over that people will do what's necessary to help get all these areas cleaned up and back in order. Just know that there are many praying for all those being affected by this hurricane. So please stay safe!

50 shades of grey costume

So I thought I would share my costume in case anyone wanted to use it or create their own version of it! I thought it was pretty clever if I do say so myself, and that it wouldn't be popular yet since the book series is pretty new. I decided to do a play off words to 50 Shades of Grey, versus being an actual character. I looked up some ideas for the characters and they were a tad bit riskay! I mean you can go that way if you want, but as a married woman I prefer a bit more modesty these days! So that's why I decided I would get literal with it! So I made an outfit that was a bunch of different shades of grey, I probably didn't have 50 shades, but you get the point. I also made it, so if you want to just throw a quick thing together, it may be a bit tougher to do unless you find a way to wear a ton of grey!

The way I got most of my grey was to make a skirt and then take paint samples of shades of grey and then attach them to it. I don't sew, so I had to find a way to make a non sew skirt and decided to go with the tulle route. You could probably make many versions of a skirt to put paint samples on, but if you are like me and don't want to sew, this is your best route, unless you had a grey skirt that you didn't mind gluing paint samples to.

I wore a grey shirt, grey headband, painted my nails grey, grey leggings, grey flip flips, and grey makeup. I also decided to add in some things from the book series. I found a grey tie and used silver stickers to write laters baby on it. I also got some handcuffs from Walmart and used those as well. Here is the finished product:

Now to make this!

Supplies

for the skirt-size medium

-elastic band (I think I used 1 1/2 yards of the 1/2 inch thick. It was already pre-packaged)

-3 yards of grey tulle. It was pretty poofy with 3 yards, but if you wanted even poofier than 4 or 5.

-paint samples. I went to Lowe's and asked if I could take them and they said sure. Depending on what you get, you may need a lot of samples. I got the samples that had 3 colors on them and then just cut them up to the individual color and then cuz that in half so they would be little squares instead of a triangle.

-fabric glue

for the rest of the outfit

-grey tie

-silver stickers

-handcuffs

-grey makeup

-grey nail polish

-grey headband

-grey leggings or shorts

-grey shoes

To make the skirt:

-Take the elastic around the part of your waist or stomach you want the skirt to be at. You will then have to cut it to the length you want and I just tied a knot which I covered with some of the tulle.

-I would cut a strip lengthwise, then cut it in half. Take the strip and tie a knot around the elastic, and just repeat this about 939482202x! Well that's what it felt like! It is a lengthy process, I think it took about 4 & 1/2 hours to cut it all and tie it! Continue around the circle until you run out of tulle or you are satisfied with how much you have. I used all of mine.

Ready for paint samples!

-If you have to cut up the paint samples, I would do that first so it's easier to just keep grabbing them instead of stopping every few minutes to cut more. Once you have them cut up, add a small amount of fabric glue and attach it randomly to the a piece of tulle. The glue is very sticky so place something under you skirt so it doesn't stick to the table or floor. After I attached the piece I would flip the piece over so it didn't stick to another piece or the table. It was a puzzle moving those all around so they didn't stick together! I put a piece on every strip in the front since you would see that most, then towards the back I put less and skipped a lot more pieces. This process took probably an hr to an hr and a half. 

now to dry

-I let it dry for a few hours before I went back to flip all the pieces back over. And voila, it was pretty easy, just time consuming!

Finished!

For the tie:

I added the stickers vertically to say laters baby. Pretty easy! I also just bought a grey headband.

You could do so much to this costume, but this is a general idea to make a cute tulle skirt! You can be super creative with it! Hope you liked it and even us non sewing people can make a costume!!

I also wanted to show you my bloody intestines I made! Mwuahhahaha!

Would you dare to try some?

Happy Halloween All!!