Pumpkins Carving and Painting : Pokemon Theme!

Wow. We had so much fun doing those pumpkins! Thanks to Pinterest for the ideas! I'm not bad for art, but I'm not really creative.. I did the Pikachu, my man did the Gengar, and my older one did the Pokeball! 

My little one wasn't feeling great, so after 10 minutes of painting she went to lay down on the couch (poor little munchkin :( ) but overall, we had a great time! Took a bit longer than expected (3 hours!!) but we are proud of the result.

Here's the pictures :)

Trying Something New

I decided with a friend to try something new... I don't know why, but doing the other program was kind of boring, maybe because I've done it so many times... Even if I know it work, because I lost 30 pounds last year with it (weight that I regained within a year) I needed something new to try. My friend told me about this program, 21 day fix. Seems cool, new for me and new for her. For everybody that don't know this program, click here. *I'm not promoting at all the product, I'm not a representative either. I'm just giving the info in case someone is curious about the program ;) For a quick summary, it's a program with DVDs with 30 minutes of intense work out and a meal program. We can decide what we eat, but only what's on their list (to be honest its a pretty big list, so not to drastic) and everything is calculated with little plastic containers. We have to calculate at the beginning how many containers we are allowed per category according to your weight. We can also have the shakes, but this is not something I like, to drink water with powder... I make my own healthy shakes.

We decided to do this together my friend and I.. We cooked together almost all the meal we needed for the next week, except maybe 2-3 things that we find better fresh than reheated. That was so cool to have someone with me and cook everything together and then split in half all the meals. We cooked :

- Fajitas in the crock pot (click here for the recipe)

- White fish in the oven (click here for the recipe)

- Easy Egg Muffin (click here for the recipe) 

- Juicy Chicken Breast in the oven (click here for the recipe)
- Pinky Smoothie (click here for the recipe)

It wasn't that bad to prepared, we took 2 hours including feeding our kids (she have a little baby) and cleaning the dishes. 

So day 1 for me today! Hopefully we will see some change! I decided to NOT weight myself, and just take the measurement at the beginning of the program and then at the end!

Organization

Its been now a month since my older daughter started kindergarten! Wow, what a month! So busy, it's crazy! My kids are not going to the daycare (I'm extremely lucky, my mommy comes to my house to watch the kids while we work!) so we are not used to have a routine/rush with them! Having a good healthy lunch everyday for my daughter was a big challenge for me.

For me and my man, I was doing it the day before real quick, if we didnt had much we would just pick up something at lunch time... No worries or rush.

I decided to be organized (haha) and do the grocery on Sundays, and prepare all the lunches (including me and my man) as soon as we comeback from the grocery store. So instead of putting everything in the fridge, I directly put yogurt, cheese, crackers etc in separated Ziploc. I do 5 Ziploc for my little one, I have a mini-fridge only for lunches, So I put thoses Ziploc aligned in the fridge. That way, the person taking care of the lunch in the morning only need to empty the bag into the lunchbox! So easy! Only thing missing is the main meal, but I usually just put to leftovers directly in a Tupperware. Super easy to do, and I have a peace of mind for the week!

Here's this week (only 4 days this week!)

Mother - Daugther Day

*Sorry, I'm so late in my post... I wrote it a month ago but never had time to finish it!*

For my daughter's 5th birthday, we had a really good day! She's not really happy about going to kindergarten, so I made cupcakes for her class for the day of her birthday, so it could be a little bit more special for her. And I think it worked, because she said a lot of classmate spoke to her. She was a bit shy and wasn't going toward other kids, so I think it broke the ice for her. She also had a allergic reaction the day before (mosquito bite in the face), so her face got really swollen... Her teacher called me at work a few minutes before the bus was bringing her back home, to tell me she wasn't comfortable letting her "alone" in the bus. So she stayed at the secretary room with her and the teacher for 30 minutes (time to get there), and she felt special having her teacher only for her! Sounds stupid, but this allergic reaction helped a lot for her integration to her school hehe!

I promised her that I would go pick her up at lunch time and we would have the rest of the day together. I brought one of my really good friend with me, my older daughter love her so much, so she was ecstatic to see her too! We went to her favorite restaurant for some mozzarella sticks (her favorite!) and like I said in previous post, she's such a little princess type of girl. She love having her nails done and being <<chouchouter>>, having massage and stuff. So I took an appointment at the nails salon for the 3 of us, she found it so cool! She was extremely excited when she saw the flowers in her feet bath, doesn't take much to make a little girl happy!

We also built so LEGO at home during her sister's nap time. And to finish, she went for a sleepover at grandma, to give me a chance to put up all the decorations in the house with my friend's help!

So we had a perfect day :)

Minecraft Birthday Party !

OMG. 

I'm sooo tired. Exhausted. But at least, it's over! All the big rush is OVER! It was my man's birthday the last week of august, the back-to-school for my big girl (she just started kindergarten), her birthday (a family supper last weekend, her real birthday on friday and the kids birthday party yesterday) and on top of that, she had a big allergic reaction on thursday at school, she got bite by a mosquito on her cheek and it got so puffy and swollen, the school got scared and called me. I had to go to the doctor rush rush that evening to get a prescription for EPIPEN and for Benadryl so they can have the authority to do the administration of the medecine in case it happens again. But now she's ok :)

It was a crazy 2 weeks to be honest. It was really hard to deal with all the new routine, on top of all the birthdays.

Now it's OVER and I can BREATHE!

I was really proud of all the stuff I did for my daughter's 5th birthday party! It took a lot of time, but I was really happy with the result! Same with my daughters! A lot of DIY (thanks Pinterest) but wow it was worth it! And a big big thank you to my friend Genevieve who helped me a lot to do the decorations :)

Here's a few pictures !

CREEPER TOSS 

This one is my favorite DIY project! I saw it on Pinterest, I found it was really cool! I also created those little pockets with red and white felt, rice, glue gun and a black Sharpie. 

The green panel I bought it at Michael's for like 8$ CDN, it was already folded like that.

BALLOONS :

I did also a lot of balloons ... 

I used colored balloons, differents ducktape colors (bought at Michael's, pretty expensive to be honest, it was like 7 or 8$ per roll... I had to buy 3! I also bought some crepe streamers for the arms for about 1-2$ per roll (used that also for other stuffs!)

Here's Reuben the pig and an Enderman :

Here's a CREEPER 

GASP 

My favorite one, a Mooshroom !

The Spider (and a little black cardboard with ducktape for the eyes, just for a little Enderman face)

GIFT BAGS 

For the gift bags, I bought/made :

- See through gift bags at Walmart (2$ for the pack), 

- 7 boxes Minecraft Blind Box Serie 3 at Toys r Us for about 4$ each,

- 7 Hershey's chocolate bar at the dollar store and I printed some Chocolate Bar Wrapper here. Just had to glue them on the chocolate bar! The kids were so excited to eat Minecraft Chocolate Bar ;)

- Minecraft Bookmarks that I printed here. I bought some crafting stuff to do the strings for 2$ at Walmart.  

- "Thank You For Coming" paper that I got here

So it came up max 5-6$ per bag, thats pretty good I find. Previous birthdays I was going to the dollar store, but it always end up costing at least 10$ per bag in order to have something decent. The kids seems really happy !

The food table

I had so much fun doing this! I had a hard time finding some nice FREE printable food labels.. They were either expensive, of just not really nice... I could have done them myself, but I didn't had the time to do it this time. I found some really nice one on another Blog (Fiveinsix). She made them herself and shared them on her blog, so thank you very much! I made 2-3 myself for the one that was missing.. The only thing I didn't do, it's the cupcakes and the cake. I have zero talent so thank you very much to Christine-et-gourmantines.com for those nice goodies :) I bought all the things at Bulk Barn and the grocery store. 

The diamond sword were really popular! For the grass, my mom made some brownies with chocolate frosting with food coloring. 

NETHER PORTAL

I think this one was the more popular with the kids. It was super easy and cheap to do! I got the idea from Pinterest, I just bought 2 different purple crepe streamers and a black one, and I used construction paper for the NETHER banner. 

Happy Birthday Banner

I also found a nice free printable banner here. I printed the letters, cut them and glue them on a thin cardboard (the paper where rolling up, so I had to find something more strong) and I used some green rope and a glue gun to fix the banner. Pretty simple!

OTHER DECORATIONS 

I also put other regular decorations, I used a lot of crepe streamers in the Minecraft color theme. 

* Sorry for the bad lighting for the one on the window! ;) *

 And now, for the games! I had a lot of fun to do that too! 

Minecraft Mask 

I bought a big black cardboard (same one as the Creeper Toss!) and cut both side in 3 (it was making perfect squares) for a total of 6. I also bought a pack of wood sticks at Walmart (I used the glue gun to fix the stick on the back of the cardboard)

*I used the middle of the cardboard to avoid any waste, to do the Enderman, the face next to the spider before*

I just used a knife to do 2 holes for the eyes. I also cut a lot of little squares construction papers of differents colors and put them in differents bowls. I cut them the size for a perfect fit 8x8 like the template. I bought 6 small glue stick and a pack of wood sticks at Walmart.   

I made a table just for that, and it was a big hit! I printed the templates for the faces (I can't find the website, I'm sorry! But it can easily be found on google images for all the faces you want!)

And for the last game... 

The Little Piggy!

It was also a big hit !! Easy to make (just research pictures on Google Image, or just look at mine hehe!) and really fun! I used felt and glue! Super fun for the kids!

It's All About Resistance...

So... It's been a few days, everything went well. I'm having A LOT of fun with my Vitamix, despite my little one phobia of the noise of this machine hehe. She always been extremely scared of loud noise, like the vacuum, lawnmower, big truck etc.. I'm trying really hard to make her understand it's not dangerous..  Even when it's not working, and the container is just laying there to dry, she's scared to go in the kitchen, poor little munchkin!

I've made my first green smoothie ever, and wow it's soooo good! I'm really impress! Ok there's a lot of fruits, but still, it's really tasty! I did half the recipe, and end up with 2 big bottles like on the picture! That's a lot!

My daughter was requesting since day 1 to make homemade lemonade, so I bought a few lemons and we made the lemonade together. It was a really easy recipe, 1 1/2 to 2 lemons depending of the size, 3 cups of water, 1/4 of sugar or sweetener and a lot of ice. It was really good, a bit bitter thought. But drinkable, my daughter loved it!

Even my little one liked it! So far so good with this little machine!

For the diet, it's been good so far. It's always about resistance. Resisting from opening the fridge door every 10 minutes, resisting from eating the leftovers from the kid's plates, resisting from taking a nice fancy coffee with caramel syrup and whip cream, resisting from taking more than 1 slice of bread in the bread bowl when we are visiting family and friends... I could go on for a really long time.

I find it's easy when you're at home. I don't buy chips, candy or any fast food. Same for my lunch at work, I do my lunch the night before and I know what's inside. But the hard part, it's when we are outside of our routine. When we go to the restaurant with friends and family, when we are invited somewhere, when we are going out for the day for a family activity...

But so far so good! 

Day 1, I Had A Nice Surprise At The Door!

We got up for our first carpooling this morning, I was so happy for us to be together. I've had my new morning schedule for about 5 weeks, but my man was starting his new schedule only today. We had to get up at 5am, it was hard for him, but me I'm already getting used to it!

No more muffin and coffee at McDonald for me! It was my little routine every morning, but we all know that their muffin is not really a muffin, but more like a cake in a muffin shape. So I brought some grapes, one slice of bread with peanut butter and I stopped for a coffee. I had a good day at work, I said no for the free food my boss was offering us, I was proud of me.

At my job, they're always giving us free food. I work for a bank, and we are really well treated. They are always offering us snacks, coffee, bakery, Mr Freeze in the summer, and a lot of pot luck during the meetings. So for today, I said no. It's nothing major, but it's a start. 

When I got home, I had a super nice surprise in front of my door! On one hand I was really pissed off that the delivery man left the box super visible with the big brand name on the box, outside. And he didn't even bother to ring the doorbell (there's always someone at home with my little one). 

BUT! OMG I WAS SOOOO HAPPY! BEST DAY EVER! MY MAN OFFERED ME A VITAMIX FOR MY BIRTHDAY!

This might sounds silly, but I feel like having this BEAST at home will help me a lot. I always loved smoothies, homemade juice, sorbet etc. And this blender is so impressive. And not just for that... Soups, homemade milk (cashew milk is so good!) and all sorts of inimaginable stuffs possible! I was hoping that my daughters would love the juices and smoothies at least. It was never a big hit here, but I had a crappy blender and the results were never really impressive. 

My older one was so excited when she came back from school and saw my nice new toy on the counter! 

After the supper and the bath, she asked me to try it. I didn't plan to receive it so fast, so I didnt had much in the fridge, and I'm not familiar with all the recipe, but I found a recipe that I had all the ingredients (All my recipes can be found here). 1 cup of red grapes, 1 cup of strawberries and 6-7 ice cubes. Both of my girls LOVED it! And me too of course. It was so refreshing! And you can't imagine how happy I was that they liked it! Juice bought from the grocery store are not good for them, and I always wanted to have healthy alternative for them. I found my first one! 

SO... Day 1 was a good success! And I feel like getting my Vitamix on my first day back on track was a sign!

Doing This All The Family Together

We decided, my man and I, to do this together. Like I said before, we manage to loose a lot of weight last year (30 pounds for my part and 15-20 for him) using a specific program. I won't mention it here, because this blog is not to do the promotion of this program but more about having an healthy lifestyle and good habits. It worked really well, this program was about teaching us the value of what we were eating, and developing good day-to-day habits related to food and exercise. 

We had no good excuses, we just stop doing the program. Even without doing this program, we didn't took back right away the weight.. But slowly we started to eat more junk food, more snacks at night, and like I previously said in another post, working night, eating really late and having 4-5 hours of sleep per night ruined everything. 

We are starting a brand new lifestyle/routine if I could say this like this... Everybody is having a new schedule. My older daughter is starting kindergarten, I'm starting now a new day shift, and same as well for my love. It will be easier to have regular supper, eating normal time etc...

We are starting on September 1, and we are both really motivated!

This Is Not Only About Me Now...

I'm sure everybody knows that, we will always be the prettiest mommy in the world for our kids, no? At least this is the case for me... For her eyes, I'm so pretty. When I change my hair, when I do my nails, when I wear a nice dress, she will always be the first one to let me know how nice I look. But I also know that, at her age now, she's aware of different types of body and specially the cause of it.

She always loved pretty girls. She a princess type of little girl, always like to wear pretty dresses, put a bit of sparkles on her eyes for special days, wear a few kids jewelry, go in front of the mirror and play with her hair. She also always tells me when she see a pretty woman "OMG mommy look at her, she's so beautiful". Not the type of anorexic non-healthy girl, not necessarily super thin either, but women that clearly are taking care of themselves.

I wish I could be this healthy mommy for her, for them. At one point, she asked me why I had a big belly, and I told her it's because mommy is not eating really well and don't exercise, so I'm having difficulty to loose the weight I gained in the past. And she simply answered (because it's always so simple in a kid's head) ''Why don't you eat healthy food and exercise then?''. I wanted to answer at first that it's not that simple, but in reality, it is. It is that simple. Not easy, but yes, the formula is really simple. And at the same time, what kind of influence does this have on my kids?

And I'm not only talking about the way I look, but my health also. If I want to be healthy for them, with them, the way we live need to change.

Retrospection

When I was young, around 9-10 years old, I had a normal weight, but I started to eat my emotions. It got out of control and I got obese pretty fast. I was bullied at school, nothing major, I had good friends and everything, but still a mean comments here and there, and obviously it was hurting my feeling. When we were at the park, when playing seesaw there was 2 kids on one side and only me the other side so it could balance. If I was forgetting my shirt for the gym, I couldn't borrow one from my friend because it was too small. I had to shop in plus-size stores, so the clothes were more for older woman than a young girl. It was all these day-to-day things that was affecting me a lot. During one summer, I went on vacation alone with my mom. We rented a chalet next to the water, with a pool there and enough place to play and run around. Within those 2 weeks, I made so much exercises without knowing, that I lost some significant weight. When I came back home, I got all sorts of compliments from everybody. I felt SO good. It was amazing. It's unimaginable how I felt. So I continue that way, until I lost almost everything. The feeling I had when I manage to fit in girl clothes wow crazy. I was a kid again. I kept a normal weight for all these years until my pregnancy when I was 21.

 

I always feel disgusting about myself. I'm ashamed of myself at work when I walk in the hallway, when I have to stand up and talk during a meeting, I run away from any kind of pictures, I don't want to go to social events because I feel like I'm the big fat elephant of the night. When we have a lunch during a meeting, I'm shy to take some food because I feel like everybody will think "Oh look at the fat girl eating all the food". And this is only work related.

 

At home, even if my man keeps telling me I'm pretty, that my older daughter (the young one doesnt talk much yet) keeps telling me I'm the prettiest mommy in the whole world, I don't find myself pretty anymore. I used to be happy of what I was seeing in the mirror, but now I feel terrible. I want to get back to that point. The time I was happy when I was looking at the reflection.

 

But it's not just about me now..

Pictures Through The Years...

Here's a few pictures of me through the last 9 years...

 

The first picture it's me on vacation, a month before I stop smoking and gained my first 30 pounds. I was at that time 140 pounds

 

 

The 2nd picture, it's me just before I got pregnant, around Christmas time. I'm at 170 pounds. 

Still not bad at all!

 

 

This is me a few weeks pregnant with my first little girl. 

 

 

This is me a few days before I gave birth, September 2011. 

I'm at the highest I've never been, 245 pounds. 

My man never made me feel like I was disgusting, always 

telling me I'm pretty even if I looked like a whale ready to explode hehe. 

I only lost 5 pounds when I gave birth (pre-mature baby at 36 weeks)

 

 

This is at my daughter's baptism, she was 18 months. It was in 

april 2013. I still didnt lost my weight. I've been trying, but I was

so discouraged, it never really worked out. 

 

 

This is us, at my 2nd daughter's baptism in May 2016, so 3 months ago. I'm at my highest weight ever, 255 pounds. My man also gain a few pounds (nothing major like me, but he gained 25 pounds in the last year). 

 

 

We've been working crazy hours, leaving the house around 1pm but coming

back home late at night (pass midnight). We were eating after work, going to bed around 1:30-2am, and getting up with the girls around 6am. So eating before bed and no sleep (barely 4-5hours per night) is clearly not good. But now, we both got really good schedules at our jobs, I'm now doing a 7am to 3pm, going to bed early. It's time to get back on track.