Weight Loss Edition

Ok, so I told you that I was going to share the details about my recent weight loss. There's a lot of pictures so bare with me, but I truly feel the pictures really tell the true story. 

I'll start with by saying that I have always been just an average size girl, never been real thin and until babies never been overweight. Here is me shortly after graduating high school, about 19 years old:

I was probably about a size 8 here. This about the time that I met my husband, we dated for just a few short months before we got engaged in Dec. 2005. We were married on Sept. 30, 2006. Here are some pictures from our honeymoon:

So crazy that I was just 21! Seems like I was still a baby now that I'm older. But God sure did have a plan for me to marry that man. I can definitely see God's hand in our lives, I can't wait to see what he has in store next! 

Anyway, back to my weight. I have always enjoyed eating good food and exercising. I maintained this weight for a while. 

I got pregnant with our first son in Nov. 2007. I had an average preganancy, gaining 40 lbs, and that's what my doctor recommended me gaining. I admit though, I went crazy with the food: sugary cereal (with whole milk), brownies, lasagna, really anything with lots of carbs and lots of sugar. I would occasionally walk our neighborhood or on the treadmill but that was about it. 

Here's me towards the end of my pregnancy at my showers:

After giving birth to a 9 lb. 13 oz. healthy baby boy (and HUGE!!) I slowly started trying to lose weight. I had lost about 20 lbs after giving birth but the other 20 lbs were just being really stubborn! I starting going back to the gym a few times a week. I still didn't have my eating right though. Which makes a huge difference when you are trying to actually LOSE weight. 

Here I am on Mother's Day '09. My baby boy was about 9 months at the time. Still have those 20 lbs!!

Right after this weekend I found out that I once again pregnant!!

I was kind of freaking out. We had just got our baby boy #1 to where he was sleeping through the night and he wasn't so colic-y all the time. I was really enjoying this stage of his first year. I couldn't imagine having to go through that all over again but I was just going to trust in the Lord to give me the strength. I may of not have known what I was doing as a parent but God sure did know what he was doing! 

Here is me pregnant with baby boy # 2:

This was only a month before he was born but goodness, I had gained a lot of weight. On top of what was already there it just really added up. A month later we arrived for our scheduled c-section and the nurse asked my weight while I was standing in front of my husband. I told her 220 lbs. You should've seen my husbands eyes!! Which was more than what he weighed at the time. 

So, little baby boy was born. This was 2010. It took a while to get adjusted to having two babies and a 8 year old stepdaughter all at the same time but I got through it. Our second baby boy was such a good sleeper and hardly ever cried. I even got to breastfeed him till he was 9 months old. He was a complete JOY. I ended losing a little bit of weight shortly after he was born, I was back in the gym when he was 8 weeks old. Probably too soon after a c-section but I was so tired of being in the house! 

July 2010

I lost about 40 lbs combined with giving birth and getting back into the gym. That still left me with a lot to lose still. 

I stayed right at about 180 lbs for a LONG time. I was never truly happy but I was learning to live with it. It just seemed like whenever I would start a diet/workout plan life would get in the way. Also, starting a bakery company did not help AT ALL. Don't get me wrong, I still love to bake, but goodness, I needed to learn that I didn't have to sample everything!!

At this point I just felt really bad about the way I looked. Clothes shopping was no longer fun and I felt like I looked 10 years older than I actually was. My husband deserved better than that too, after all he had married a young, cute girl:

And I was just not anywhere near this anymore. :(

I think it was about summer of 2012, we took a trip to stone mountain for the day. When we got to the top when we had someone take a family picture of us. When I looked at it I could NOT believe that I had gotten so big. To describe it best I looked like a jumbo marshmallow with a head on top. It was bad, so naturally I deleted the picture. I regret that now. I did manage to get some pics of myself at my daughters 10th birthday party though. I think they best show how big I had gotten. 

These are really bad quality pictures, sorry. But I think it gets the point across. I had gotten BIG. Shortly after that, I was getting our son out of his car seat and ended up pulling something in my back. It was instant pain, I immediately started crying. I had never had my back hurt that bad before. I knew then that my weight was not only effecting my self esteem it was now effecting my health. My poor body just could not take carrying around 40-50 extra pounds.That was a pretty low point for me, I just felt so defenseless. Drowning in all of the reasons (excuses) that I couldn't be healthier and lose weight. 

In August of 2012, as soon as I got my oldest son back in school I decided that this time was going to be the last time I told myself I was going to lose weight. I was so tired of waking up feeling FAT. So, I put my little one in a jogging stroller and I started walking our neighborhood each morning. And what started out with walking turned into jogging and then turned into running 4 miles every day. Along with the exercise, I was eating SUPER clean. No cheating. Well, let me re phrase that, when I felt I was at a breaking point I would eat Fiber One's chocolate brownies. They are only 90 calories, I felt like I was cheating but I wasn't. That got me through the sugar cravings. Other than that I eat lots of salmon salad, egg whites, greek yogurt, grapes, apples, veggies, sweet potatoes, and tuna fish. (Yes, I do eat fruit, some people prefer not too when losing weight but I had given up everything else, I had to keep my fruit!) My rule was if God put it here into the ground or put it in the sea then it was okay for me to eat. As long as it wasn't fried or processed I would eat it, 5 times a day.  

It took me about 3 straight weeks of living like this to drop about 20 lbs!!! All the weight that I had been stressing about for years was all gone in 3 weeks!! It made me regret not doing this a long time ago. 

I was in the low 160's by the end of the 3 weeks, and if I'm remembering right I weighed 160 when I got pregnant the first time. I was so excited. I kept on going though, I knew that was not where I wanted to stay. 

Here is me with my two baby boys in October 2012. I was feeling so much better at this point. I wasn't SO painful to look at pictures of myself anymore. 

Here's one from earlier this month, don't pay attention to the heart, it was a project I was doing for my husband:

But now I am down 40 something pounds, (didn't really how much I exactly started with) and feeling great! I now look forward to clothes shopping and dressing up. There are so many things I have gained because I have lost the weight! There is nothing I could eat that is sweeter than that!

Thanks for taking a few minutes to read this, I hope I encourage anyone who felt like me to lose the weight. 

Hello Stranger and Some New Updates!

Hello!

I know it has been a REALLY long time since I put a new blog update on here. I have been so busy with the kids and just life that it hasn't even dawned on me that I haven't wrote a post in a while. 

So, what's new?? My babies have been growing up so fast! Our oldest is just a few months away from going into middle school- WHAT??- that is a super scary thought! The middle one is in his last year of preschool and the little one just turned 3 (not so little anymore.) The hubby has become super busy with work, he has so many different things going on right now it's crazy. He definitely works long hours but we are so very blessed to have the work right now. As for me, I have been working on finally getting all of the baby weight off. Since August last year I have lost 40 pounds!!!! It really didn't take as long I thought, all it took was some super dedication. I will have a post about all the details soon. I'm so excited! So, all-in-all life is good. God has blessed us so much!!

We have managed to do some updating around the house. We had a clothes dryer go out on us back in the fall so we ended up just getting a new pair, and so far I love them! For as much laundry as I do they are so worth how much money they cost! The washer can wash HUGE loads, which is what I needed. They are Kenmore Elite Top Loaders. We had looked at the front load washer/dryers but I just wasn't too impressed.  I just wasn't too excited about the kids being able to turn knobs and having to buy the pedestals in addition to the actual machines. They are super nice looking but it just wasn't my cup of tea. So here is our new laundry room/ washer & dryer. 

 I also organized and re did the wire shelving. When you first walk into the back door of our home you don't see this anymore:

Goodness, I can't believe it looked like that. And that was on a good day!! 

 We also landed a new microwave, dishwasher, and a stove from a house that my husband was flipping. He also got a fridge but it ended up being too small for our kitchen. So, we just have to buy a fridge to match the rest of the appliances. I am loving the stainless steel though, I think it's a much more modern, sleeker look to go with our dark cabinets. I still would love to do so much to our kitchen but that will just come with time. Here's a before with the white appliances:

 And here is what it looks like now:

We also bought a tv for our living room around Thanksgiving last year. We went for about a year without having a tv in our living room, some people would think that was crazy! But seriously, the only time I would miss having one was when company would come over. The living room stayed quiet and tidy for the most part while we didn't have one. Honestly though it is nice to have one again. I can see it while I am cooking dinner at night and that is awesome! I love how open our kitchen/ living room are that I am able to do that. Here is what our living room looked like before, with the giant clock over the mantel:

And now here's our new tv/ mantel:

We've also done some exterior updates to the house including these window/flower boxes:

My husband (and his guys) built us some new shutters out of cedar. I love them! 

The flower boxes were a lot of work to get up and going but I think they add some personality and color to a lot of the dark accents we have added. 

My daughters room has also got a makeover. This was her back wall before:

And here it is now with some built-ins my husband did:

She loves her shelves!!

There are still more updates to show you later. Hope you enjoy!

Where I've Been

Hey there! It's been a while since I've been on here but I promise you that I've got all kinds of blog ideas in my head just waiting to come out! We've definitely been busy with the kids and work and now softball is coming up and my husband and I are now coach and team mom. Pretty crazy! But we've managed to do a few little projects around the house that I am dying to blog about. After Christmas my husband took a week off, which is very rare around here, and helped me get some things checked off of the ole to do list. First was to paint our huge red accent wall in our living room. I think I got tired of that ugly, dark wall about, umm, maybe the day after we moved in but it just never got re-painted. Here it is before: 

   
And after we painted it:

Ahhh. So much better. I've actually rearranged our living room too and I LOVE this setup. There's much more room now and it feels more open. But, I moved our huge box tv out of the way so all this room could happen and currently we don't have a tv in the living room. Which has it's good and bad sides. The kids just watch their cartoons in our room now which makes for a mostly tidy living room 99% of the time. Eventually I  do want a flat screen for above the mantel but for now we are making it work :)

I also bought some curtains to add something to this now big, open wall. I ordered them from Curtainworks.com and absolutely love them. 

Another little project we did was build our farmhouse table for the breakfast room. We out grew our old round table and constantly had to pull chairs from the dining room where we could all have a meal together. We got the plans from ana-white.com, I love this site! I think Ana makes everything seem so easy to do! 

Here's my husband working on one of the first steps:

It came together in just a few hours on New Years Eve and it took me about a week to putty, sand, stain, and to move it inside. 

Now, we are working on finding time to build matching benches. In the mean time though we are using another bench my husband built. All three of our kids plus me can fit on one side of the table so we're making due with it until we get the other bench built. 

But other than that we have been doing great! 

Here's another picture of the boys enjoying their scrambled eggs at the new table one lazy morning, such sweet moments!

Stephanie

A Hot Pink and Zebra Stripe Dessert Buffet- Part One

My daughter turned 9 just a few days ago and for her birthday she wanted a zebra stripe and hot pink party. She also wanted her room re-done, which in a few weeks I hope I will be able to post about that! It's coming together very nicely. But for now, here is her party. We went for a pretty much all dessert party where I would not have to serve a meal, and the perfect time to do that would be 3:00, so that's what we did! All of her friends were invited to swim after we snacked, but it ended up started to rain. I still think it went well though! Here are some pictures of her party:

 The fudge I made turned out to be a hit. It was White Chocolate Cookies-n-Cream Fudge, here is the link for anyone interested: http://www.myrecipes.com/recipe/white-chocolate-cookies-n-cream-fudge-10000001923360/

 Instead of doing favors or goodie bags for this party I decided to lay out some treat bags for anyone to grab some leftover goodies and take them home, where I didn't have so much junk laying around staring at me for the next week. It was a win-win situation.

Here is a close up of the cake I made for her, the cake was one layer White Wedding and the other layer Paula Deen's Strawberry Cake and of course had White Butter Cream Icing. All of that was covered in Fondant accents. It turned out sooo cute! I think it is my favorite one yet!

I also had a drink table set up with some pink lemonade to match our theme:

The kids LOVED IT! My son ended up going so crazy with it, he knocked it over all over the floor! Gotta love those chaotic party moments with kids!

I am so bad about taking pictures during the party, I always get so busy talking and making sure everyone is happy. My mother-in-law got a few shots of the actual party, I'm hoping to share those soon! 

Steph

My New Dining Room

I am so in love with my dining room re-do. We don't exactly use this room everyday but when we do have get-togethers, they usually take place in here. So, I've always wanted it to be nice. We when we first moved in it was painted Macadamia by Sherwin Williams and was very plain looking. Here are some before pics:

The curtains that I had up before were one of the things that bothered me about this room. They were always too long for the window and definitely needed some work!

They overflowed into the floor for about 2 or 3 feet. I guess I just never cared enough to fix them, I don't know? LOL. But here are the new ones that I got from www.curtainworks.com. LOVE them! They are 95" Sailcloth Cotton Canvas with Grommet Top in Tan. And the best part: each panel was only $19.99!

I think they just make the whole room. 

We also added the shadow boxes underneath the chair rail and painted all of it white. Here's before I painted it white:

My husband had someone install them for us, he gets so tired of my little projects! Haha.

And here they are after I painted them:

To accent the all white bottom half of the walls I wanted a color for the top that was neutral yet warm. I had found the perfect color in my SW color swatch book and showed it to my husband. That is when he told me that he actually had that color left over from a job and it was just sitting there at his office. So, I painted the top SW Portabello, love that color!

We also added a strip of base cap about 3" below the crown molding at the ceiling. I just then painted white in between the crown and the base cap.

Here's the other wall near the window. 

One day soon, I hope to build a console table to fit this wall from www.ana-white.com and put some lamps on it and some cute decor. I think that would look so good.

But until then, here it is!