TT Contest Week 10: Enjoying Summer

Wow, look at all the cobwebs around here. I've been a little neglectful. :) We've just been enjoying the summer, being outside, taking the kids on vacation, etc.

Workouts have been going well. I've decided to use the original TT for Abs for my last 4 weeks. (I only have 2 weeks left!) I'm not expecting a super dramatic transformation. I didn't gain any weight while on vacation, but I didn't lose any weight either. ;) Though I did complete all my workouts, so that probably helped. It was actually really cool. I was able to workout outside every day, just after sunrise. We were staying in a cabin that overlooked a lake and it was just beautiful to workout in that area. I even brought up my PowerBlocks (even though my husband gave me a weird look when he had to load them into the trunk) so I was able to complete my TT workouts.

One recent major achievement was my first 13 mile run. I actually had my husband follow me on a bike since it was my first time running that far. He would go ahead, and then drop behind, and then take a break, haha. I think he was more sore the next day than I was! My time was 2:22:27 (average pace: 10:58 per mile). I was very happy with that because a) I finished it without stopping; and b) I thought it was a good pace for me.

Finally, here are the promised patio pictures!

Here's the Before....

Looking one way:


And then the other way:


And here's the After (before the grass grew):


And another After (after the grass grew - the patio really isn't slanted, just took the picture at a funny angle):


Have a great week!

TT Contest Week 2: Burning Down The House

Week 2 is complete! Once again I skipped my Monday workout because I was so sore from all the work on the patio over the weekend! :) I did the workout on Tuesday instead. Overall, my nutrition has been kind of a mess this week. Some days good, some days...not as good. But my weight did go down just a bit. I think it must be all the extra work I've been doing on the weekends. lol

I've been using the TT Hot Zone Fat Loss Workout. It's one that I've never used before. One of the reasons I chose it is because on Fridays you do a 20 minute "high intensity" cardio instead of the intervals that you do on Monday and Wednesday. I thought this would help me gear up for all the running I will be doing this summer. I officially kick off my half marathon training on May 31.

The last day to enter the Turbulence Training Transformation contest and still have the full 12 weeks is May 31. Come and join me this summer in the contest! (To my sister-in-law, if you're reading this, This Means You! lol) You can read the all the rules here ==> TT Contest Rules

On Saturday night I made a pizza using the pizza crust recipe from a recent issue of Cooking Light magazine (except I used whole wheat flour). The crust was a lot of work, but on the other hand, not a lot of work. Let me explain. ;)

First, the crust had to be made 24 hours in advance so it could sit in the fridge. However, the only ingredients in the crust were flour, water, yeast and oil so it was easy to throw together.

Second, the recipe made the pizza more of a "Neapolitan" style - cooked at a high temperature (550 degrees F) on a pizza stone. My pizza stone hasn't seen the light of day in a while so it probably should have been cleaned a little better, but I popped it in the oven anyway. Soon thereafter, smoke started pouring out of my oven! With 5 minutes left of a 30 minute preheat, I made a last minute decision to ditch the pizza stone. By now, the smoke was getting pretty thick. So instead, I popped in my perforated pizza pan. Well, that started smoking too! lol

I put the pizza on the perforated pan, threw it in the oven, and lowered the temperature to 440 degrees F. Finally, the smoking stopped! I had to open all the windows and turn on fans to get all the smoke out of the house.

So after all that work, how did the pizza taste? My kids deemed it "super-duper-licious" and we ate the whole thing. I'll make this crust again for sure, but next time I'm going to follow the recipe for Chicago deep dish. Same crust recipe, but you cook it in a baking pan at a lower temperature. :)

Have a great week!




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TT Contest Week 1: Insomnia

TT Contest Week 1 is in the books and for some reason this week I have had trouble sleeping. This is totally unlike me. Usually I am out like a light and I don't wake up at all. A few nights during this past week I was awake every hour. As a consequence, I've been feeling exhausted all week.

Part of the reason may be that last weekend we started building a brick paver patio. It's a lot of work! Lots of heavy lifting. Both last Monday and yesterday I did not workout because my back was really sore. Instead, I did my Monday workout on Tuesday. (That's my plan for today as well. My back still feels tweaky, so I am going to try to take it easy.) Anyway, the patio still isn't finished. We didn't finish it the first weekend - let's just say someone (who shall remain nameless) miscalculated the number of bricks we needed. ;) Then it rained for much of the week so we couldn't work on it. Then this past weekend, we had all the bricks in place and realized it wasn't really level. (Bob Villa would not approve!) So it was back to the store for more paver base! We had to make 2 trips because the guy at the store feared our car would bottom out if we piled it all in. But we ran out of time again so the saga will continue this week. I'll post pictures when we are finally done!

Have a great day! :)

Like a Ton of Bricks

Yesterday was such a beautiful day. I got a lot of landscaping done. I'm building a retaining wall around one of the back corners of the house to fill in a low-lying area that becomes a marsh when it rains.

Our neighbor is digging an egress out of his basement and said that we could have some of the dirt. So he was very nice and dumped it in our yard. Right on top of where I needed it. Which would have been fine, except I needed to prep the area first. So I had to move all that dirt first, which wouldn't have been so hard, if it hadn't been mostly clay. That had been rained on. Wet, sticky, clay soil. Any of you who have worked with clay soil know what I am talking about. Impossible to move. I asked my husband if he would come out and help even though it was only 9:30am (very early for him). I owe him a big steak.

After lunch, and after my husband went to work, the kids and I trekked back outside. I dug the trench for the first row of the wall, filled it with paver base, raised our downspout so it will go over the wall, and moved all 100 stones into place. At 19lbs each x 100 stones = 1900 lbs. Add in 4 bags of paver base at about 40lbs each and I literally moved a TON of stuff yesterday!

Needless to say, I was exhausted by bedtime. I was lying in bed enjoying some downtime TV and all of the sudden I heard my daughter making noise in her crib. I gave her a few minutes thinking she may settle back to sleep. No such luck. At exactly 11:00pm she starts caterwauling. I know it was exactly 11:00pm because HSN was just showing the new Today's Special. She chose this most holy of times to start making a fuss. (I told you I was an HSN fanatic!) So I went into her room to make sure everything was OK - no fever, no foot stuck in the crib slats - and sat on her floor, not looking at her, while she cried (Supernanny would be so proud!). Well, after 10 minutes, that didn't work. So I left and went back to bed for 10 more minutes. There wasn't anything wrong with her but I know what the problem is. She's a cuddler and Daddy is wrapped around her finger. I think he puts her to sleep holding her in his lap on many days. Sure enough, after I finally went and got her and sat on the couch with her, she fell asleep in my arms (Supernanny would so NOT be proud of me!)

Even with less sleep I got up and did my Turbulence Training workout this morning. But I am getting more and more sore from landscaping as the day goes on. Especially in my hands and lower back. Need to take a full rest day tomorrow!