What I've been up to...

I have been a little MIA lately, so I thought I'd fill you in on what I've been up to while I have been neglecting the poor blog.

I went home for a day to visit the fam and somehow ended up making supper and baking cookies!

I also did a little Iphone surgery with my "little" brother. It was a very loving event :)

I have also been cutting out things that I had laminated like crazy! 86 feet so far! And that my friends is a whole lot of cutting!!

Lots of things for my tutoring kids this summer and lots of fun things for Niki's kidlets too! I also scored a lot of awesome stuff on our huge sale at work the other day. wa-hoo for mega sales!

Also while I was home I snagged a stash of teacher stuff to use for my tutoring kids. I seriously bring a whole new meaning to the term pack rat! I have got to learn how to get rid of things!!

I have also been doing a lot of reading of teacher books. I have my reading endorsement but haven't really had a good chance to use it, so I did a little studying after meeting my tutoring girls and figuring out what we needed to work on. Yeah, I took notes, don't judge.

I have also been hard at work on Etsy orders and working on an update to our planner at the same time.   I'm feeling more busy now than I did during the school year!!

I have also been running like crazy! Niki wants to do a warrior dash and a 15k so this girl has got some serious training to do! Even got a new tank and I loooove it!!!

What have you been up to?? What things are you working on?

Our first race

Niki and I ran our very first real race on Sunday! It was such a great day and I am so proud of her for reaching this accomplishment. If you haven't been following us for a while, you may not know that a year and half ago, Niki was diagnosed with Hodgkin's Lymphoma. So in that time she has gone through radiation and chemotherapy. She is almost 9 months out from her last chemo treatment and is healthy and doing so well. She took her cancer diagnosis as a jumpstart to getting healthy and staying healthy. Completing this 5K with me was a huge milestone for her and I am glad to have gotten to share it with her! And I didn't even have to pull her in the wagon like I told her I would!

Here we are in the car driving to the race...

heading in to the finish...

Just before the finish line.

And here we are afterwards.

Yes, it was the Susan G. Komen Race for the cure run, but we wore Niki's cancer shirts we made this past year. Our team name for the last couple year's has been "Faith for the cure", ya know since Niki's daughter's name is Faith. Yeah, we're crafty like that. But next year our tag line for our shirts is going to be "cancer isn't just pink". We do have two grandmother's that had breast cancer and it is a cause we very much support, but we have many other cancers that run in our family who are not "pink". So it is our way of supporting all cancer research.

Have a great day everyone.

Getting April in order

The beginning of a new month means getting all of our lives in order. Shannon showed you how she gets a new month started in March, so now I am showing you our craziness. She has 3 jobs, I have 3 kids, so our planning looks a bit different.
I have my AMAZING life planner that Shannon designed for me. We took a ton of inspiration from the web and she made it fit my life! I love it and use it daily. I always say, steal my purse, leave my planner.

I start every day checking out my planner. I double triple check it on Sunday nights so I know what is going on for the week.

My planner has our meal planner built in. It is the boxes at the bottom of each of the days. I just could not maintain two different planner for meal planning, and I do ours by the week. So on Sunday night when we are planning for the week, Tim and I meal plan. Easy meals for days he works late, the kids have practice, that kind of thing, bigger meals on weekends so we can have leftovers for lunches. We also get input from the kids. What have they been craving? If they help create the meal plan and the meal, they are more likely to eat it!

I also make a monthly calendar for Tim. He has no need for daily plans. He does want to know what all we have planned, dance, ball practice, concerts, fun stuff like that. So I started making him a beautiful monthly calendar. He doesn't care that it is beautiful, but I sure do. :)

I also have a work-out calendar. This has not been working well. I am "training" for a 5K but I haven't ran in weeks. Boo. This month Shannon created a Bikini Body Challenge for us. So I printed that bad boy out. I am going to do my best, but I make no promises. I need to focus on my running, but I'm going to try to fit this guy in too! The best thing is it can all be done at home, with no equipment. She also snuck in a shower challenge, which I already forgot to do. So, I will get it in before bed.

Finally I have a blog planner. It really deserves a whole post, but for now you get a snap shot. I usually post Tuesday and Thursday, Shannon usually posts Monday and Wednesday and Friday is always High Five for Friday! I also have tons of fun planning pages. I use them to plan out things I want to blog about, then I decide when I can get them done, photographed and blogged about. Right now, I have little idea about when things are going, but lots of ideas.

Just for fun, I thought I would throw out the Bikini Body Challenge and an Awesome April Arms challenge as freebies. There is still plenty of time for you to catch up!

What does your beginning of the month or week planning look like? Are you more like Shannon balancing work schedules, or like me balancing kids schedules?

A {fitness} guest post

Hello everyone! We have a very special guest post for you today. Our cross country/former roomie bff, Amanda! She's here to share about her {current} fitness journey. Since you all know that we are both "working on our fitness" (sung Fergie style)
Here she is:

At the beginning of January I had this extremely persistent (and mildly annoying! J/K) friend that kept texting me and calling me, trying to get me on board the workout train. I resisted and resisted until I couldn't honestly come up with any reason not to get my butt of the couch and do it! I started by walking on the treadmill in our home office. I would walk 3-5 miles at a time...sometimes for almost 2 hours! I decided I needed something to look at while I walked so I went to my wonderful Pinterest board “Motivation” and started printing off my favorite quotes. I found some construction paper, glue sticks and poster board and this is the end result.

I soon got bored just walking and started going to the gym. That ended as fast as it started because my 2-year-old hates the babysitting room. So I started doing Couch to 5K on my treadmill, but soon decided I needed more if I was going to reach my goal by the end of April (and our family vacation to San Diego!) Off to Pinterest again! (What did we ever do before Pinterest?!) I found a workout titled ‘10-Week-Workout Plan’ that I’d pinned on my “Fitness & Nutrition” board. Fantastic! I conveniently had just over 10 weeks until vacation time. It was supposed to take 70 days to complete because they didn’t account for rest days. I did however, and subtracted 10 days to give myself some days to rest. I can’t do anything the easy way and just print it off and there you have it, so I wrote it all down in my ‘Handy Dandy....NOTEBOOK! (And yes, I just said that like Steve from Blue’s Clues. Don’t judge me, I have toddlers!) Here is a link to the ‘10-Week-Workout Plan’ and a few pictures of my notebook.

After 2 weeks of working on this program (and really loving it), I again decided I needed more. (I think I’m really a glutton for punishment, what do you think?) It was also the beginning of March and all the wonderful monthly challenges were popping up. I found a personal challenge to work on through a Google search (I believe I just typed in monthly challenges and scrolled through tons until I found one that I liked) and then also chose the March Challenge that Shannon sent me. (Yes, this is on top of the ‘10-Week-Workout Plan’ I’m still doing...told you, glutton for punishment!) So I printed of my personalized blank calender from CLD and set to work. Here is the finished product.

love her workout calendar? order your own in our etsy shop!

Okay, you’re probably wondering what all the numbers and colors mean, right? The colors mean nothing...except that I like all of my Sharpie Highlighters equally! The numbers on the bottom of each day are my countdown of the ‘10-Week-Workout Plan’. I like to countdown, something about numbers getting smaller is very exciting to me! The top entry on the calendar is the activity from the Google search and the middle entry is reminding me to complete the March challenge. I have that as a reference taped up below my calendar (one can only be expected to write so small!) I also write the number of minutes it takes me to complete the whole program each day. I saw someone that set a goal of working out 1000 minutes in March and I don’t want to set a goal like that until I know what I am typically at. Speaking of goals, i wrote those at the top of the calendar as a daily reminder.

There you have it! From couch potato to wanting more, more, more! I just keep telling myself that I will feel better and have more energy if I keep it up! I wonder if I could squeeze in another 30 minutes each day... ;)

1. We already mentioned that she's our cross country bff. That automatically gets points.

2. She lives on "the cape". Way cooler than Iowa.

3. She is a constant source of motivation and accountability to both of us! We do our best to keep each other on track and at the gym!!

4. If she can do it with two little pumpkins at home, so can we!! 

5. Plus, she's mega organized in her fitness, and we love that!

a little inspiration

With the fall and winter holidays quickly approaching, I know that I could use a little inspiration for a lot of areas in my life, and I figured I would share that inspiration with you too!

A Christmas table decoration idea from As long as its fancy....super simple, but so pretty. There are some other holiday ideas on this blog post as well. {Check it out here} I like this one because it is something that I could do on a practical budget, which is basically nothing. Only problem is I can't light candles in my apartment, because clearly I would burn the place down. Or least according to the boss I would.

A super cute holiday outfit :)

The wonderful world of Polyvore has like a million amazing outfits. I just wish there were more of them in my closet!!!

And a yummy snack! Taco Cups!

Where I pinned it from on pinterest just linked back to flicker, but I'm sure they are easy enough to figure out. Taco shells or wontons and the normal taco ingredients. Pop them in the oven and delish! A great snack for when the whole family is home hanging out even just a Sunday football day!

And to follow the snacks....a healthy habit. An article from Runner's World about weight loss and runners. My recently turned sedentary lifestyle needs a turn around and quick! I went from coaching softball and running around all day to sitting around at school all day long. Which was not good for the waistline!

And maybe a new core workout? I get in a rut and just do the same things over and over...maybe its time to spice it up a bit.

This one is just a tumblr image, so there's not much to link back to. But there is a credit link at the bottom of the image that might offer some other ideas?? www.blogilates.com 

A cute holiday printable...too bad the pin I found didn't link back to the source.

And some subway art for Thanksgiving from How to Nest for Less

Maybe I will swap out my current Fall subway art when it gets closer to Thanksgiving. It hangs outside our apartment door.... Trying to make it look like someone actually lives there. Not sure what I will do when I have to swap out for Christmas, I don't really have much for decorations and there is really no budget for buying them either....

Have a great pinterest board that I should be following?? Send us a link and we will gladly follow you! Not a pinterest member yet? We can send you an invite so you too can share in the gloriousness :)

a new {healthy} product

Are you trying to live healthier? get fit? or just get back on track?
We created a weekly food dairy to help you (and us) do just that!
We don't claim to be health or fitness experts, but in our lives we have found that tracking what you eat and drink and how much you exercise can really help you make progress! It makes us think twice about eating that handful of m & m's, or potato chips or how much ranch we put on things.
This food diary is available in our Etsy Shop right now!

Here's a quote I found on pinterest:

It takes 4 weeks for you to see your body changing.

It takes 8 weeks for friends and family.

It takes 12 weeks for the rest of the world.

Keep going!

What great inspiration to keep trying!

Set goals and stick to them, you can do it!

Here are a few more pinterest tips…..