I had my usual breakfast today of an egg on a whole wheat English muffin with coffee. Later that morning I had a mug of earl grey tea.
I had a Larabar for a mid morning snack
Lunch was lentil soup again. I have one last bowl left that I will have for lunch tomorrow. I’ll be happy to see the end of this soup.
For a late afternoon snack someone brought me dilbahar! I LOOOOVE dilbahar. It’s a syrup soaked ooey gooey sweet.
I went to my in laws for a barbeque this evening and I had two glasses of red wine.
Dinner was delicious, some of my favourite things. There was potato salad and burgers. The burger patty was a Beyond Burger and done on the barbeque, which is a real treat for me as I don’t have a barbeque. I usually pan fry my burgers. It was delicious and so nice to see people again.
I was pretty stuffed after dinner, but didn’t turn down a small bowl of chocolate ice cream. After dinner we went for a short walk and then it was time to go home.
Halfway home I caved and had another dilbahar. I should have cut out some of the snacks since I was going to a dinner, but I didn’t. I’m thirsty but it’s late. I’m going to have a small glass of water and go to bed.
This morning I had my usual weekday breakfast, an egg on a whole wheat English muffin, with black coffee. This is a recycled photo because I always dig in before I remember I’m supposed to take a photo of my breakfast. I’m not all there in the morning.
Mid morning I had my usual cup of tea. This is also a recycled photo, but it’s so sunny it makes me happy. I love this tea.
Mid morning I had a Larabar. I usually have a second one in the afternoon, but I didn’t need it today. I was really busy this afternoon and didn’t have time to think about food. Maybe that’s the secret… keep busy!
For lunch, again I had homemade lentil soup. I still have at least another two bowls of it left, so you’re going to see it a couple more times. I’m starting to get sick of it, but I’ll finish it.
For dinner I had a pita. I had my favourite pita. Halloumi! I got a small halloumi on whole wheat. It was delicious and I ate the whole thing. I always think to myself “I’ll just have half now, and half later”. That never happens. I chow down and it’s gone.
After dinner I had a glass of oat milk. I’m writing oat milk, like it’s supposed to be called, but I always call it oaty milk. WIth the y. Oateeeee. Oaty milk.
I just finished drinking this can of peach Bubly. I may be up all night peeing. That happened last night too! I starting drinking it too late.
You’re going to see repeating photos from yesterday. I had a lot of the same foods. Breakfast was an egg on a whole wheat English muffin and black coffee, made by my spouse. We love the Hamilton Beach sandwich maker. It makes breakfast a breeze.
Later that morning I had a cup of tea. I’ll buy another box when this one is done. I really like it.
I had two of these Lara bars, one mid morning and the other late afternoon. I had two macadamia nuts with the second bar, but I forgot to take a photo of it. It’s hard to get used to taking photos of everything you eat.
For lunch I had a bowl of homemade lentil soup. I have a lot of this soup left, it’s going to show up for many days to come.
Check out this monster strawberry! This is the biggest one I’ve ever seen! I split it with my spouse and then had a second strawberry (about a third of the size of this one), but again, I forgot to take a photo of it.
This was my dinner. It was a monster salad with balsamic vinaigrette. I was craving it all day. It’s pretty awesome for me when I crave salad. I made it with spinach, cherry tomatoes, a shredded carrot, red pepper, cucumber, shredded cheese and cashews. I topped it with a packet of pita strips and slivered almonds. This came out of another salad packet that someone gave me. She doesn’t like the salad toppers that come in the kits. What the what!?!? That’s the best part of the salad! I had this salad with a big glass of oat milk.
I had a couple sips of my spouses gin and juice cocktail, I made it for him after he finished mowing the lawn. I was going to do that today, but he beat me to it. This cocktail is delicious! I don’t like gin, but I like this drink and I’ll tell you how I make it. Take a small bottle of cheap gin and throw in about 6 sticks of Juicy Fruit gum. Let it soak in there over night and then strain it (be careful because the Juicy Fruit will be soft and will get all over everything. To make the cocktail, use the juice of half a squeezed lemon, a shot of the infused gin, and then 1/2 a cup to 1 cup of sprite. It’s fantastic.
I’m currently drinking a pineapple Bubly and have finished eating for the day. I did great today! I know I should drink more water, but I’m not there yet.
My day started with my spouse making me breakfast while I slept (the man is a saint), an egg on a whole wheat muffin , and black coffee. I asked him to skip the cheese from now on to make it lighter on the calories. He added some curry powder and it was good. I didn’t miss the cheese at all. I got on the scale this morning and I’ve gained weight. I knew I did because I’ve been indulging every craving I’ve had and binging a lot. From now on, I’m blogging what I eat. I’ve read that writing down everything you eat helps keep you in check. I wonder if taking photos works the same.
During the week, I like to have a mug of tea mid morning. I haven’t had Earl Grey in awhile. I forgot how much I like it. Usually I have green tea, this was a nice change. I refill the mug and toss the tea bag back in and make a second cup which I sip on until evening.
I’ve been having Larabars for snacks. I had two of these today. One mid morning and the second late afternoon. They are really good and have ingredients you can pronounce.
This is a terrible photo of my lunch. It’s homemade lentil soup. This is one of my fridge clean out specials. I make this a lot when I don’t have anything particular planned. I chuck soup stock, lentils, and whatever else I can find in my fridge in a pot and make it into soup. This one had onion, lentils, vegetarian soup stock, spinach, corn, carrots, and chickpeas. It was okay. This is a 500mL mason jar full of the soup.
My dinner is where I took a wrong turn.
I had to pick up something at Home Depot and my spouse suggested we stop at Harveys. I was more than happy to go along with that idea. I love love love Harvey’s veggie burgers. I got one and we shared the fries.
After that I went to Healthy Planet… and bought a cookie. Yep, I bought junk food at the health food store. I messed up a little here. Maybe there is something to keeping track of your food because going over this again, I realized I wasn’t anywhere near as well behaved as I thought I had been today. The cookies and fries should have stayed at the stores.
When I got home I had a glass of Earth’s Own Unsweetened Oat Milk. I love this milk, it’s the first milk I’ve tried that I want to drink a plain glass of. This was a 250mL size glass of milk. After that I mowed half the lawn (the battery died and the second battery wasn’t charged. I can’t say I was super sad about it. I’ll finish that job tomorrow… maybe) and then had a can of Peach Bubly. I’m starting to get hungry again, but I’ll be going to bed very shortly and have finished eating for the day. I’m putting an end to late night snacking.
I have no idea how many calories this is. I don’t want to get into calorie counting. I’ve tried it before and find it too time consuming and I don’t stick with it. I’m still searching for what works for me.
It was a long weekend here in Ontario. I spent the first day making cards and catching up on some chores. I’ll post a video of the cards I made and the supplies I used to make them with, below. Some of them were really cute and I loved the new dies.
I saw the snake again this weekend. It’s much slimmer now, it’s either digested a giant meal, or has laid some eggs. It’s much more mellow away from it’s beloved garden hose (I mentioned in a previous post it was lunging at my spouse when he was trying to turn the garden hose on. We think it might have had a crush on the garden hose!). I was pretty close to it when I was doing some weeding, and it didn’t seem to mind too much. It was also between me and the door this morning and I had to step over it to get into the house. It didn’t seem to mind that too much either. I’m happy to see it’s in much better spirits these days. We had always got along in previous years.
We had wanted to go on a kayaking adventure out of town, but with potential thunderstorms looming, we decided to play it safe and stay on the local river. I brought my camera with the underwater case and took a looong video of the underwater view. It’s pretty murky as the day was gloomy for most of it, but I think it looks pretty cool. I’ll post that video below. I was looking for the really pretty rainbow darter fish, but they were mostly gone (I didn’t get them on the video). The Canada geese were also a lot more relaxed, including the ones with babies. They are terrifying and will come for you if you come too close. The local creatures seem much more friendly lately.
I had my regular big Sunday breakfast of a croissant and eggs with coffee and fruit. Monday, I had an omelet (pictured above). I had CRAVINGS this weekend. I wanted strawberry ice cream and cookies. And I had them, a lot of them. I have completely come off track lately. I haven’t worked out, or gotten that much exercise and my diet has been horrible the past week. I keep falling off the wagon and feeling discouraged with myself.
Time to pick myself up by the boot straps (what does that even mean??) and start again.
This morning I laid in bed for about an hour after I woke up. Normally I get up right away, it was nice to be dozy and stay there for awhile. Breakfast was quick and easy. I heated store bought croissants in the oven while I scrambled eggs and made coffee. I sliced some bananas and served it with blueberries and a slice of cheese. It was delightful.
I’ve had a sweet tooth this weekend (of course I did). Saturday my spouse and I like to go for a walk around town and get a latte and egg and cheese sandwich from the Stonetown Cafe. We did that, but instead of a sandwich I got oatmeal cookies and a latte. She makes a delicious oatmeal cookie there.
I made more cards this weekend. I loved the size of the dies for these beverage cards. I’ve noticed they’ve started to make larger sized dies and I love them. I do prefer they fit on the note card sized cards, as that’s my preferred size to make. These did fit, it took up the majority of the cards surface, but they fit. They fit even better on a slimline card, which I rarely make, but they look best on that size. I loved how these cards turned out. My umbrella is placed too high, but I still like this card and love the die set.
The card on the left was a clothing die set. It had other accessories like a tie and suspenders and i made it into a Fathers Day card. I loved the dinosaur die set too. It came with a top hat, which is what convinced me to get it. Too cute! The little spines near the tail were a pain the butt to glue down, they were so little, but the rest came together easily.
I made these cards as well. The castle card had congrats on it because I’m giving to someone who just got a new home. The die set of that one is really big and needed 12″ x 12″ paper to cute the folding base out. I store dies in a binder, this one is going to pop out the top, but it’s worth it. I loved the die set. It cut out really well. Even the small holes popped out super well. Normally with small finicky dies you have to run it through the machine a million times and tear the pieces off a little bit. Not this set. It came right out. I was really impressed with it. I’ll post a video of the supplies I used, below.
There were four cheeses to try this month, and I liked all of them. I’ve signed up for a year and the cost is $30.00 a month. Once your package is ready, they’ll send you an email to come pick it up.
The first cheese I tried was the Havarti. It was a very creamy, semi soft cheese, with a slight bitterness to it. It was okay, but will enjoy it more added to something than by itself.
This next one was a little bigger than this when it arrived, my spouse got into it before I could snap a photo of it. This one had a hint sweetness to it. I’ve never had celery flavoured cheese before. I liked it.
The Apricot Wensleydale was sweet with pieces of apricot in it, I also liked this one. It tied with the celery cheese for my second favourite.
The Gloucester was my favourite. It was creamy, mild, and delicious. It was the kind of cheese you can pop in your mouth and enjoy as is. This one was my favourite, I loved it. It’s my favourite cheese of all time! That’s one of the reasons I love Of The Month packages. You discover new favourites.
Ontario has interesting weather this time of year. Yesterday, I was in a Winter coat, and today it was over 20 and I was kayaking. The weekend started with coffee and a bagel at the Stone Town Café in St Marys. We sat by the river in the sunshine and watched a muskrat swim around in the river, while we had our breakfast.
I felt like decluttering more of the bathroom today and tackled my hoard of a medicine cabinet. It was so overfull, that things would fall out when I would take something out. Half the bottles were empty, or expired.
This is everything I removed. The allergy medication had expired in 2018! It’s good to check on these things. Most of these containers are empty and going into the recycling bin, but the little Rubbermaid container and the glass jar I’m going to wash out and reuse. The Rubbermaid container had corn starch that I was experimenting with using as a dry shampoo. It worked okay, but not as good as the spray on type. The glass jar is going to end up in my crafting room.
I used these masks with my spouse after I finished cleaning out the cabinet. I bought them because people make them look fun online. We watched a TV show while we had them on (Gravity Falls, cute show!). They were really moisturizing, but I’m not a mask person.
It’s still pretty full in there. A lot of these bottles are sample sizes from Ipsy, that I won’t be buying again when they’re empty, same with the brands that use animal testing It’s a lot more functional now and things don’t fall on top of me when I pull something out. Overall, I’m much happier with it.
Sunday breakfast was a bowl of oatmeal with peaches, maples syrup, and pumpkin seeds. I used steel cut oats and they took a lot longer to cook. I like the rolled better, but these keep me full longer. I’m not sure which one is going to win, convenience, or the steel cut.
I made Mother’s Day cards with a new cutting die set. I love these teapot shaped cards. Too cute! They come with a word set that says Tea Party. I LOVE tea parties. I’ll use them again for invitations when we are able to have gatherings again.
I made the one on the left with an embossing folder and used gilding wax to make the pattern stand out. The love birds card is cute, but my love birds look terrified. I need more practice colouring pupils.
The card on the left is my favourite. The one on the right is a little plain, but I love the spa girl cutting die set. I’ll have to play with it more.
This bookworm die set is super adorable. I love it! I’ll post a video with a link to all the supplies I used below.
I’m relaxing on the couch listening to thunder and light rain. I love these sounds, they’re relaxing. I am having cravings for chocolate. It hit me hard near the end of the day. I went to Healthy Planet for vegetarian beef chunks and sprouting seeds, and I left with those things, but I also left with a cookie. I’ve noticed that if I stay up too late I end up snacking, so I’m going to go back to going to bed early.
Except for the cookie, I ate pretty good today. Breakfast on weekdays is always an egg and cheese sandwich on a whole wheat English muffin, with black coffee. My spouse is the one that wakes up and makes breakfast during the week, so he gets to decide what we’re eating. I enjoy those extra minutes for more snoozing. For lunch I had my usual Healthy Choice bowl. Dinner was the above photo, with brown rice, sprouts, broccoli, beefless chunks, and avocado, with squeezed lemon and some toasted sesame oil. I also put sauerkraut on it too. These bowls are fast and easy. I steam enough rice for the whole week and if anything needs to be cooked I usually toss it into the air fryer. Easy peasy.
Shark week is coming and I can feel a raging froth of PMS broiling inside me. My spouse is watching television and it’s killing my peaceful vibe of nature sounds. He’s already turned the sound down and it’s still irritating me. I AM GROUCHY!!!! Murderous rage!!!!!! I must look into sound proofing.
I’m still working my way up the treadmill. Yesterday I was on it for 20 minutes at 3.6mph, it’s come up from 15 minutes. I’m working on lengthening the time, then I’ll tackle speed. I’ve been enjoying it!
As for soapy nuts… I fell down the YouTube rabbit hole and stumbled on soap nuts. I’ve known about them for awhile and have even had them before (I think I had them for laundry), but I don’t think I’ve ever washed my hair with them before. This girl in the video washes her hair with them and her hair looks good to me. I tried them this morning. I boiled 7 soap nuts in two cups of water and applied it on my dry hair. I left in on for a couple minutes and then rinsed it off. I didn’t use conditioner either. It seemed to work pretty well.
My hair was still pretty easy to comb out afterwards and it did clean my hair. As a bonus my scalp wasn’t itchy like it usually is after washing it (I think it’s because I let my hair air dry). Once isn’t enough to tell how they work, I’ll post an update after using them for a month. I still plan on using shampoo and conditioner to wash out my bimonthly hair dye. I seriously doubt soap nuts could handle that nightmare, but who knows. Not this person.
I paid for one of these plants, the other I traded years ago for an espresso maker, I didn’t use anymore. Guess which is which? The large dieffenbachia is the one I traded for. It was half the size and not very happy. Where the trunk(?) stalk(?) curves is how tall it was when I got it and it only had a couple really droopy leaves. I had to move it around a lot before I found a place for this guy to be happy. Turns out it likes a really dark corner. It’s beside a window, but it still doesn’t get very much light at all. It’s taken over a year, but this plant is finally starting to grow. It’s doubled in size and growing a lot more leaves. The leaves are getting big too.
The second plant, the leafless stem, I got on clearance at a big box store a long time ago too. It had a couple leaves on it when I bought it, but it was doing poorly. I decided to see if I could revive it. I also moved this plant to a lot of different places (including a dark bathroom), but I couldn’t make it happy. Eventually it dropped all it’s leaves and I was going to give up on it. Then I saw a video of Harli G on YouTube (she’s a plant Youtuber) and she picked up a stem that looked just like this one and was going to replant it. I thought once a plant lost all its leaves, it was done for. I decided to repot the plant in different soil (I don’t know why I didn’t try this a long time ago) and put it beside it’s sister plant (I call it sister plant because they are both dieffenbachias, but the leafless stalk has much lighter leaves), and try again.
It seems to be working. Something is starting to happen, and this is also why this plant will forever be known as Nubbin. I’m going to keep it where it is and hope it can be revived.
Sunday breakfast satisfied a craving I’ve had for days. My spouse was craving bagels, which got me craving berry cream cheese. So for breakfast today, I made scrambled eggs and bagels and cream cheese, and I loaded that bagel with cream cheese. The coffee was an instant cappuccino that I got as a sample, and I hated it. We both did. It tasted artificial and chemically. We dumped it out and made a regular coffee that was much better.
My healthy eating took a nose dive this weekend. We ordered a pizza last night and I had it for lunch today too. I went on a short hike with my spouse, but it was really cold and the trail was mucky so we turned around. I had another bagel with cream cheese when I got home, followed by a piece of dark chocolate. and I’m currently craving another bagel (I think shark week is coming). I’m going to wait and have a proper dinner, made with much healthier options. I don’t want to get on the scale Monday.
I made some cards this weekend. I like these vanilla bean cards. I don’t know what sentiment I want on them yet, so they remain unfinished. I was thinking something to do with beans, but nah, I’ll probably just stamp a “Hello” on them, or something similar.
I was meh about these two. I would like the autumn one more with a different colour. The green didn’t go very well, and this castle card needs something more.
I liked these two. My favourite of all of them was the girl reading on the chair. I liked the Hello card a lot too, but my glue seeped out at the edges. I can get rid of that with an eraser and a little patience. I’ll post a video of the supplies I used to make the cards, below.
Lobster Shorts 