21 Day Challenge

I have decided to join and 21 day challenge at A Bowl Full of Lemons to try and get my house organized in a way that I am able to keep up with. I have adapted it a bit. There are 21 challenges to do one a day. I will not be doing them in order as I am starting with the most desperate areas of my own home. Some areas like my bathroom closet need attention immediately where our computer desk really doesn't have much clutter on it. I am going to be putting the challenge up on my sidebar and crossing off the items as they get done. I am going to try to take before and after photos of each space and make a post about them. I started today and forgot to take a before photo but will write a post soon with an after photo along with a photo of all the junk I threw in the trash. If you want to join me feel free to link up at A Bowl Full of Lemons.

Sleep, Oh How I Miss You

We are still battling sleep in our house. It seems to get better for a bit when we try something new then progressively gets worse over time. Last night I was up for 3 hours with a toddler who just wanted to play. He is almost 18 months old now and has only slept through the night a couple times in his life. So tonight we start working on getting E to sleep through the night yet again. I am so tired that something has to be done! Wish us luck. Any tips would be great!

Waist Watcher Wednesday

One of my fellow Biggest Loser Challenge participants has started Waist Watcher Wednesday on her blog. (See the button on the sidebar) I will be sharing my journey in both Wednesday and Friday/Saturday posts. Today I thought I would add to the measurements I took the other day along with adding my starting weight...

Measurements:

Bust: 44"

Chest: 33"

Waist: 34"

Hips: 41"

Thigh: 24"

Calf: 14"

Upper Arm: 11.5

Forearm: 9.25

Weight.....

151.2

Friday is a weigh in so we will see if I have managed to lose anything. I haven't been doing great on exercising so I am not expecting much.

Biggest Loser Challenge

Hello out in blogland! I have severely neglected my blog for the last year and a half. Ever since my son Eli was born I have not been good about updating. However, I am going to be using my blog to help keep me accountable during a Biggest Looser Challenge that I have joined. I have joined with a few friends who have also had friends join so there are about 15 of us. We encourage each other, hold each other accountable, and can win bragging rights. The challenge officially started today with our starting weigh in. I however have a broken scale so I can not weigh in until tomorrow. But I did take measurements today. With the challenge you weigh in every Friday starting this coming Friday. I will also be taking my measurements every 4th Friday. I don't wan't to do them too close together so I don't get discouraged with no change.

So here are my measurements......

Chest: 44"

Waist: 34"

Hips: 41"

Hopefully the next time I post measurements they are smaller!

40 Bags in 40 Days Challenge

This is a challenge that I found on Pinterest. It was originally meant for the 40 days of Lent however, we are hosting a big family Christmas party in mid December and thought it would be great to purge 40 bags of crap from our house. I am planning to officially start the challenge on November 1, 2011. I am hoping I will be able to get a button and stuff set up so that if you wish to join the challenge you can link your posts on your own blog to this. The bags can be any size. For me it depends on the size of the space. Cleaning out Eli's toy box may only take 1 plastic grocery bag while cleaning out the bathroom closet could take a huge trash bag. Either way it's getting rid of junk that you no longer need. Please keep in mind if it is something you think others will use to donate to Goodwill, Salvation Army, or another organization or individual who could use the item. My next post, before the challenge starts will be to post my list of 40 spaces to clean out. If I think a space needs more than one bag it will be listed on 2 days. Good luck to everyone and I hope you will join me!

Where oh Where Have I Been?

Life has been crazy and blogging has just gotten away from me. I don't even know when I blogged last but I do know it was a long time ago. Eli will be 15 months old on Friday and I still can't believe that! He is quite a challenge. He takes after his mommy in his persistence and stubborn attitude. This leads to many many face off's between Eli and I on a daily basis. It is a constant battle of the wills and who will give in first. Right now the score is about 50/50. I have a few personal posts to do as well as a few challenges. I am planning on posting about sleep in our house! Eli still is not sleeping all night and we are up at least 2 times a night. Also, I will be posting my views on what it is like to be nursing a toddler almost exclusively. That leads me to my last post about having a toddler with an Oral Sensory Disorder that is causing him to not eat most foods. We are starting to work on this at home and again with his strong will this is a daily battle. I am going to also be starting a 40 day challenge which is going to force me to blog daily. If I could figure out how to allow others to sign up and link their blogs of the challenge I will also be doing that. I am going to see if Dan will help me with that later this week. Lastly, I hope to put up some reviews for different cloth diapers that we have used on our big boy. When I was looking for reviews on what diapers work best for large babies and toddlers I couldn't find anything so I feel it is necessary to give my opinion on what we have tried.

Tickers

On the left of my blog there are 2 new tickers. They are there to motivate me to reach my goals.

The top one is weight loss. I am starting with loosing 22lbs. This gets me down to my pre-pre pregnancy weight. I have 12 pounds to go to get to where I was before I had Eli. The extra 10 will get me to a much healthier weight and where I was when we got married, before my miscarriage. I have been procrastinating long enough. It was time to take action. I have used the excuse that I am a nursing mother for 10 months now. Well the weight isn't coming off anymore. Yes, I need to eat extra calories to make milk to sustain the life of my amazing little guy. But apparently I don't need to eat as much as I have been. So today I took a big step in signing myself up for Weight Watchers. I chose weight watchers because it is the only plan that I could find that has something tailored specifically for a nursing mom. They know how much extra you need to add to your diet to keep up your milk production and stay healthy for both you and your baby. Tomorrow morning I will be doing my initial weigh in. Then I will be weighing in every Monday morning. I have told myself that I am not going to officially start until Monday. This holiday weekend would be killer on my diet.

Ticker number 2 is Traveled Miles. I have started walking and will soon move on to a combinations of walking and jogging. I have no specific goal of how many miles I want to cover and in how much time. The only thing is that I want to keep going. I picked 50 miles as a starting point because it seemed manageable. My plan is to track the miles I cover in 2011.

With the 2 tools I hope to meet my goal weight and run a 5K at the end of summer. Encouragement is always welcome.