Pinterest Review - A Gorgeous Shrug

Love my shrug!

I came across this pin about 2 months ago on Cre8tionCrochet and immediately pinned it.  I've got lots of things on my Knitting & Crocheting board on Pinterest, but it seems like there's always time to pin, but rarely time enough to do all the lovely projects that we pin.  This shrug was so absolutely beautiful that I just had to immediately put down everything and get to work.

I used her tutorial for the Foundation Chain Double Crochet (FCDC) stitch mentioned in the post. I'd never done it before and anything that makes the foundation look better, twist less and cause me to swear less is two thumbs up in my book.  She links to the tutorial on her site and it really is an easy stitch and turns out beautifully.  Having said that my only complaint with the tutorial was not telling me what to do at the end of it.  I learned to crochet about 30 years ago.  My sweet neighbor, Hazel Blum, taught my sisters and me, but we did very basic stuff.  Everything else I learned was self-taught and sometimes what is obvious to a crocheting pro is not to me.  So just in case there are others like me out there, allow me to state the obvious…you need to slip stitch into the top and make your shrug into a loop.  Goodness that sounds like a rubbish explanation doesn't it?  Perhaps this is why I don't write my own patterns.

Either way, once you've slip-stitched and made your project into a loop (joined it to the beginning of your work…yes, that sounds better) you begin working on your rows from there.  When you're all done with the shrug you go back and sew up the gap left at the beginning.  So, it would probably be prudent to say that you should leave yourself a nice sized "tail" at the beginning of your work.  This way you won't have to cut a piece of yarn just to sew that little bit at the beginning.

Remember the tail at the beginning so you can close your work

My explanation still rubbish?  This video from Crochet Geek explains and shows you how it's done much better than I can!

Cre8tionCrochet also tells you how to make the shrug bigger.  When I completed 100 of the FCDC I looked at it and said, "Dude…no way this is going to fit" so I did 120 FCDC and worked from there. Yeah…don't do that unless you know you need to.  Your work will stretch when you wear it.  So now I have a shrug that looks great and then falls down too far after it's on me for 5 minutes.  I made a pink one for a friend and now that it's completed and the size looks good I'm going to make another one for myself without any adjustments!

If you've got a few hours to spare and know the basics of crocheting you can knock this shrug out quickly.  This shrug is absolutely gorgeous and easy.  Cre8tionCrochet did a wonderful job with this pattern and was so generous to share it!  Her pictures are so much better than mine too!

Even though the shrug I made for myself is a tad bit big I've gotten numerous compliments on it.  In fact the very first time I wore it to the bus stop one of the ladies there grabbed me and asked me where I bought it!  I was thrilled to be able to say that I made it myself.

Making a Harry Potter Sorting Hat

My Sorting Hat

I wish I had taken more pictures of this project.  I neglected to take a picture of the paper mâché hat that I bought at Michael's, but when I got it (on sale for about $7.00) I immediately thought "Sorting Hat."  It was the entire reason I decided to get it.  I didn't know how I was going to make it into a Sorting Hat, but it was almost there so I grabbed it and figured I'd work out the details later.

I started saving newspaper.  I figured I'd just add on to the existing hat with homemade paper mâché.  I'd never done that before, but I found some recipes to do it and figured "how hard could it be?" Famous last words, right?  Well, my insanity never got that far because as I was preparing to make this crazy hat I came across this post on Practically Functional as I was searching for photos of the Sorting Hat from Harry Potter to use as a guide.  It would seem that I wasn't the only one to spy this hat in Michael's and thought of Harry Potter (you can see a picture of the original hat on her website here)!

So instead of creating my own paper mâché mess, I decided to follow her instructions.  I ran out to the store and got some modeling paste (THAT was more expensive than I thought!  Almost $15.00…yikes!).  I then hot glued my "W" of newspaper onto the hat as she did for eyebrows and followed suit with a mouth.  I slathered on the modeling paste remembering that she said that you could smooth it out later with a second coat.  Well, if you glob it on like I did, you'll regret that advice.  Try to get it as smooth as possible with the first coat of modeling paste.  Let it dry (anywhere that required a lot of paste to fill in holes will crack…that's OK).  Sand down any rough spots.  This is my advice because mine really needed it.  Hell, even after the second thin layer of paste and another sanding I still wished it was smoother.  Until my husband lets me play with his high-speed sanding tools, I'll have to live with my version of sanded-enough.

Don't worry about cracks.  You'll get those with the next coat

So after that first sanding, follow with a second coat of modeling paste trying to make it as smooth as possible and filling in any spots that cracked while drying.  Sand again if needed and then it's time to paint!

Second coat of modeling paste

I grabbed a large bottle of brown paint at the store.  I really didn't need that much, but I use brown a lot to prep my ceramics so it was no big deal.  Paint the whole thing with a coat of brown paint and let dry.  You'll notice that some areas don't hold paint as well as others. Just add another coat of paint and you'll be good.

Now for highlights.  I decided to add these because, while I think the author of Practically Functional did a kick-butt job on her Sorting Hat, I also think that the finished product looked like wet clay.  Perhaps it was the sealant.  I haven't sealed mine yet (and may or may not), but if I do it will be with a matte finish and not a glossy one!  So for highlights I took the brown paint that I had originally used and squirted some onto waxed paper.  I added a couple drops of black. mixed and got a darker brown.  Don't worry about how exactly I got my brown.  Yours doesn't need to be the same.  Just get a darker brown and relax.  This sort of thing doesn't need to be perfect!

Use a sponge brush and dip into the darker brown.  Blot off the majority of the paint and then dab the brush in the eye sockets of the Sorting Hat as well as the mouth area.  Don't worry about putting too much in those areas.  You'll be able to go back later and touch up. Using the same dark brown paint, sponge brush and blotting method, dab the darker paint onto the hat in random areas (especially indentations/low spots which would naturally be shaded a bit darker).

Front of hat before blending

So now you have a hat that looks like my 7 year old highlighted it. Good.  Perfect.  If you're stressing over its lack of perfection grab some wine (or a beer) and get ready to blend it all in.  Don't pitch the remaining dark brown…you may need it later if you want to add more dark areas.  OK…Now on another piece of waxed paper (Oh, OK you can use a paint cup to put your paint in or another vessel, but I'm cheap here!) squirt some of the brown paint you originally painted your Sorting Hat with.  Using the SAME sponge brush that has NOT been cleaned, dab it into the brown paint, blot it a bit and then just start dabbing all over the darker brown you just added.  Don't worry about covering up your hard work.  If you dabbed off the majority of the paint before sponging the hat this won't happen, and if you had too much paint on the brush, well that's why we kept the darker paint!

When you dab over the dark brown, start from the outside of the dark spots and work your way in to the center.  You don't need to completely dab-over everything.  The fact that you're using the same sponge brush with the remnants of that darker paint underneath will actually help with the blending.  When your dabbing is done, put your brush down and walk away for a few minutes.  Come back about 10 minutes later and check your blending.  Still too dark?  Dab some more of the original brown on in the same manner. Trust me…you'll get the hang of this fairly quickly.  I wish I'd taken video, but I was multitasking as I did the highlighting and didn't think of it.  If I'm rambling and you need further clarification, just let me know!

Back of hat before blending

I'm not sure how long my Sorting Hat will last without a finish on the outside, but I haven't decided whether or not I'm going to sand it again (still hoping for power tools!).  I will most likely add that matte finish in the end.  Until then, I'm fairly happy with my finished product!

NOTE:  Don't stress about having your eyebrows and mouth exactly like mine or like Practically Functional's. The Sorting Hat talks.  It moves/leans in the movies and as long as your eyebrows and mouth are approximate, you'll be happy with the results! Oh and post-Halloween is a great time to get a deal on the paper mâché witch's hat!

Finished/blended back of the hat

Pinterest Review - Homemade Cough Drops

I rolled them in powdered sugar so they hopefully
won't stick together

I searched Pinterest for some cough drop recipes that I could make for my sister.  She's allergic to soy and apparently most cough drops on the market have soy in them.  When she gets sick she pops hard candy to suck on so she isn't always coughing.  I heard that she's been fighting a cold for the past couple weeks so I committed to making these tonight.  They won't get to her for this cold, but I see her in a week so I'll be packaging them up and giving them to her when I do see her.

I don't know if these cough drops are going to be effective at halting her cough, but they sure are yummy and they've got to be at least as good as sucking on hard candy.  I mean, they are hard candy, but they're tea, honey and lemon hard candy!

I originally found the pin on Artzcool's Blog and I'm not going to steal her recipe and share.  Click on the link to get to her recipe.  Visit her site!  I will, however, add some comments/experience that I gained by making this recipe.

I didn't use the medicinal/cold-type teas like she brewed.  Not that it would be a bad thing to do**, but I just never liked the taste of them so instead I used my favorite tea...orange pekoe!  I also used some local-ish Colorado honey.  I didn't use the 1/2 lemon.  I never seem to have them just lying about so I grabbed the bottle of lemon juice from the fridge and used 1 tablespoon.  They aren't really lemony so I may add more next time.

Cough drops hardening in powdered sugar.
The light brown tops on some are bubbles.

I love her idea of using powdered sugar on a cookie sheet and carving out indentations with a measuring spoon to shape the candies...ahem...cough drops.  I believe she said that she used a 1/4-teaspoon.  I used a 1/2-teaspoon for mine and this made 54.  I can tell you that I had to grab some more powdered sugar and another pan and make about 24 more because there was still so much left in the pot!  That's not a bad thing, but I was unprepared.

Her blog says that when you spoon the candy into the little indentations that it will just fill the nearest hole.  True, but you have to be relatively close for it to just slide on in there.  As you can see from my picture I've got little drippings in between cough drops.  Naughty little things!

The mixture does harden quickly, but not so much that you need to freak out and rush and proceed to spill liquid sugar on you.  That would be bad people!

My choice of tea and honey

Also, that whole bring to a boil and in 10 minutes it'll be done.  Bullshit.  OK, I am cooking at altitude and all, but um...no. One, she doesn't say what setting to bring it to a boil over.  High?  Medium?  Low?  In between?  So I brought mine to a boil over medium heat, stirring frequently and then lowered to medium-low.  Candy thermometer stayed in there the whole time and while I didn't time it, I can tell you that bitch cooked for at least 30 minutes.  Don't just assume it will be the same for you and walk away, but be prepared for a long wait.

Overall, I'd have to say that I'm incredibly pleased with the results.  Whether they stop the cough or not, they're certainly tasty!

UPDATE - You should probably keep in mind that if you don't like the taste of honey...you won't like cough drops with honey in them.  I loved these, but both of my children who don't ever put honey in tea, didn't like them.  Oh well...more for me and my sister!

**Always remember to check ingredients on herbal teas...well, on herbal anything.  Just because it's an herb or "all natural" doesn't mean it belongs in your body.  Check with your doctor regarding the herbs used in herbal teas (and anything else if you're on meds or pregnant).  I have seen other recipes with slippery elm in them and this can cause miscarriage!  Think before you drink (eat...whatever)!

Halupkie - A Family Favorite

Halupkie....Mmmmmmm

(This post is originally from my genealogy blog HaveYouSeenMyRoots?)

My mom would make Halupkie when I was little.  Halupkie is another one of those family dishes that my mom made that had nothing (that I'm aware of) that had anything to do with my family history.  Or perhaps I should say it had nothing to do with her family history.  My mom's 100% Irish.  Halupkie (as we spelled it) or Halupki (as I found on the inter-tubes) is apparently a dish of eastern European origins and is quite popular in northeastern Pennsylvania.  

Get a cabbage leaf ready for stuffing

My father's side of the family was from Lithuania so perhaps this was a recipe that my mother made for him because he had it growing up.  My father referred to them as "Polish hand grenades." As I mentioned he wasn't Polish, he was Lithuanian, but I should still give my mom a call in the morning and check to be sure if she learned to make them for him.

She loved collecting recipes from her friend Linda Moyer's mom and would make them for us.  Perhaps this was one of the Moyer recipes if it wasn't from my dad's side of the family.  We grew up with family recipes that had nothing to do with our Irish heritage.  I tried corned beef once...perhaps that's why she branched out...YUCK!

Either way, this is a lovely family recipe that reminds me of happy times with my mom when I have it. She would make a much larger batch than this and would cook it in one of those large blue or black roasting pans...you know the ones with the little white flecks on them.  I wish I still had mine.  I'd post a picture.  Either way, any large roasting pan with a lid will suffice.  I altered the recipe to fit my crockpot.  It worked too.  Same taste and I love crockpot recipes (especially the ones that don't burn and this didn't).

Add a good scoop of meat (how much depends on the leaf)

One bad thing that happened was that the liquid started spitting out of my crockpot.  It was about 1/2-inch from the top when I started cooking, but it all expanded during cooking which resulted in tomato soup on my hardwood floor and on seat of a nearby chair.  Oh well.  You live, you learn.  Less liquid next time!


Halupkie

1 large onion, diced 
4 stalks celery, diced
2 lbs ground beef
1 tbsp salt
1 tbsp pepper
1-1/2 c cooked rice
1 large head of cabbage
1 (50 oz) can tomato soup
Olive oil

Fold the sides over the meat mixture and roll up

Place the beef in a large bowl.  In a pan with some olive oil, saute the onion and celery.  Add to the bowl with the beef.  Add salt and pepper.  Generously shake Worchestershire sauce over the meat (this is not a precise measurement.  Shake enough in until it smells good and Worcestershire-y).  Add the rice and mix well with hands.

Boil cabbage until bendy.  Carefully remove cabbage from pot and remove the outer leaves of the cabbages to line the bottom of a large roasting pan (reserve some of the leaves from the center of the head of cabbage that are too small to use to cover the top of the halupkie in the roasting pan).  Continue removing leaves from the cabbage.  When this becomes difficult you can return the cabbage to the hot water and boil until it softens.  I brought my cabbage to a boil, let it boil for about 5 minutes and then turned it off and just let it sit for about 30 minutes in the pot.  It worked wonderfully!

Fill the cabbage leaves (not the ones reserved for the bottom and top of the pan) with about ½ cup of the meat mixture on the leaf and roll.  To roll the cabbage, place the meat in the center of the leaf then fold the left and right sides in, then bring the bottom of the leaf up over the meat and roll up.  Place seam-side down over the layer of cabbage that is lining the roasting pan.  Continue to make the halupkie in this manner until done.  Place the second half of the reserved leaves over the top of the halupkie and tuck the sides into the pan.

A nice cabbage roll

Pour the tomato soup into a large bowl.  Fill the empty can with water and mix with the soup.  Pour the mixture over the halupkie being careful not to overflow the roasting pan.  Cover with the lid and bake at 350 degrees (F) for about 2 hours.

NOTE:  You need to get really good sized cabbage for this recipe otherwise the leaves will not be large enough to roll the meat in.

Crockpot variation - Make the halupkie as directed above, but when adding the tomato soup/water mixture stop pouring when you get about an inch from the top of the crockpot.  Make sure the crockpot is not near anything of value or that would stain if it starts to splatter.  Cook on low for 8 to 10 hours.

I hope you enjoy this recipe as much as I did.  As an adult I enjoy cabbage.  As a kid...not so much, but I'd always eat this cabbage!

Remember to put cabbage leaves on the bottom!

More cabbage leaves on top

Pour the tomato soup mixture leaving space at the top

The Makings of a Successful Diet, Part 2 - The Lose It App

So as promised I'm going to go over why I love the Lose It app and some of it's features.  This is by no means going to cover every aspect of Lose It.  I encourage you to have fun and explore the app for yourself!  I guess I should mention that I am in no way associated with the creators of Lose It...I just love it!

So the first thing that you'd want to do when diving into this app is set up your profile.  It's been a little while so I can't remember if it guided me through this or if I pegged it out on my own.  Either way it isn't very difficult to figure out.  There is a section under the "More" tab on the bottom where you can click on "Lose It! Account" and then "Edit Profile Details".

Click "Lose It! Account"

Click "Edit Profile Details"

But what you want is to enter a goal...and it's got a tab for that.  There are 2 things that you can do under the "goals" tab 1) Modify program, or 2) Record Today's Weight.  You're going to need to get a program going so that's where you want to be!

Enter all your starting information

Click "Modify Program"

After you put all your starting information in you need to click on the "My Plan" section of the Program page (shown above, right).  Here is where you tell the app how many pounds you would like to lose each week.  Notice that it won't let you select any more than 2 pounds.  To me this is a sign of a good program.  It's not going to help you starve yourself and lose weight too quickly which is NOT healthy.  Of course, you may lose more than the 2 pounds, but at least it won't help you abuse your body and health.

Once you select how many pounds per week you would like to lose you'll notice that at the bottom of the "My Plan" page where you just clicked around, it will tell you by what date you should achieve your goal.  Pretty neat.  It also will tell you your daily calorie budget.

Weekly weight loss goal

Off the program page (right below where you selected "My Plan") is a section called "Daily Calorie Budget".  I haven't used this, but apparently this is a place where you can adjust your calories.  In other words, you want your budget to be for fewer calories than the program assigned to you to achieve your goal.  There is certainly a section here that explains why you may need to do this, but I'll let you explore that for yourself.

Should you need to adjust

Now that you're all set up, you should check out your homepage.  On Lose It this is the "My Day" tab.

This page is great.  You can add food that you've eaten and exercises that you've done from this tab.  Sooooo easy.  It also tells you how many calories you have left for the day.  You can see that I'm fairly close to my limit with 197 left.  It also says that I'm 897 calories under for the week.  The week goes from Monday through Sunday and then resets.  I really don't pay much attention to the pie chart beneath that that tells me about my fat and carbs.  I suppose it could come in useful, but it's just not something I've ever paid much attention to.

So far I've described a fairly basic app for dieting.  All that stuff is great, but you need to put your food in there and sometimes that can be downright painful.  This is the REAL reason I love Lose It...

Select your meal

You click on "Add Food" then select which meal you're adding for (or a snack...which isn't a bad thing!) and then you've got a page with all these wonderful choices!  My favorite?  Scan barcode.  I can scan a bottle of Guinness and it knows the calories!  You can also adjust just how much of that bottle of Guinness you drank!

How to add food

How much Guinness was that?

So I love the ability to scan barcodes.  I really, really do.  Any once you do the food is stored under that tab "My Foods" so you can look for it there or be lazy like me and just scan the darned thing again and again and again (do I drink too much Guinness?).  But you can do so much more here.  You can "Search Foods" to find something that either doesn't have a barcode, or perhaps you got an error with the barcode and that Guinness turn up as a slice of pizza (sadly errors do happen, but I haven't seen too many of them).

If you eat the same thing for breakfast everyday...click on "Previous Meals" and it'll let you scroll through what you've logged before and enter it again for today.  One drawback here is that it enters the WHOLE thing, so if you select a previous breakfast it will log everything that you ate for breakfast that previous day.  You can always go back and edit your meals so it isn't the end of the world if you didn't have your morning coffee with your bagel...just remove it.

You can also add a recipe.  I LOVE this feature too.  When I'm cooking (or before I start) I go through and create a recipe (I'll talk about that in a bit) and then the nutritional information for my recipe is there so I can add it whenever I make it.  Just like with any other food, you can adjust how many servings you ate.  You also know how many calories are in those chicken strips you make each week!

Going out to eat?  No worries.  Many restaurant foods can be found here too!  Just click on "Brand Name Foods" and select "Restaurant Foods" (yes you can enter something from a supermarket here too, but you can also scan the code...check here if it doesn't scan).  You'll see that there are so many restaurants to chose from and then so much to select under each restaurant.

Eating out?  Check here!

Is everything in there?  Heck no, but if it isn't you can search for it's nutritional information online and then enter it in your app.  What did you just say?  ENTER IT INTO THE APP!?!?!

YES!  You can create your own food item!  See the bottom of the page where you decided how to enter what you ate (scan barcode, recipes, etc)?  Well at the very bottom it says "Create New Food".  Too cool and too easy!

So how easy is it to create recipe?  Fairly easy.  It would be nice if you clicked on "Recipe" above and be able to select to add a new one, but sadly it will only let you add a recipe you already created.  Not to fear, just head over to the "More" tab where you started out entering your profile info.

Click on "Recipes"

Click "Edit Food & Exercises"

So you click on "Edit Food & Exercises" and then click "Recipes".  Here you'll find all the recipes you've entered and a little plus sign "+" at the top right of the page.  Click on that and you'll be able to create a new recipe!

Select a recipe or make a new one!

Now how many servings do you put for a recipe?  If it's a recipe from a cookbook that tells you how many servings it makes, you can go by what they say.  Honestly though, if you make a Chicken Pot Pie and you know that it serves your family of 4 and you still have 2 servings left, then it serves 6 so you know how many servings to put down.  Aren't sure how many a new recipe you're trying will serve?  No biggie.  Guess.  Yep...guess and then you can edit your recipe after dinner when you know for sure.  I've done that numerous times.  It's one of the things that makes this app so easy.  You can edit the recipe instead of having to delete it and redo the whole thing.

I've created recipes for things as little as a cup of tea.  Why?  Because each time I make a cup of tea, I don't want to enter the amount of sugar, milk and tea I use.  It's the same each time so this is much easier to do.

What a recipe looks like

So did you see what is at the bottom of that recipe?  You can share your recipes with friends using Lose It!!!!!

I'll briefly mention the "Log" tab.  You can go here to see what all you've eaten as well as edit/remove something that's on there.  You can use this page to add more food with the plus sign "+" at the top right instead of through the "My Day" page.

Mmmm...ice cream....

So as you can see, I'm allotted 1451 calories each day.  Do I eat more than that?  Usually...and yes, I've busted my calorie allotment from time to time.  That's OK.  Just don't do it everyday.  Anyway, so how can I be eating over my calorie limit and still lose weight?  Remember to EXERCISE!!!  If you burn 300 calories exercising then you can eat 300 more calories (or not...depending on how hungry you are).

Exercise can be so many different things and this app covers so many of them!  You can even enter how long you played Hula Hoops on the Wii Fit...yep...you read that right.  It even has SEX in there as an exercise and what its "Intensity" was.  LOL.  Count it all!  Don't see an exercise in there that you do?  You can create a new exercise!  So easy and comprehensive.

Add an exercise

Wii Fit anyone?

I mentioned yesterday that a friend posted that she was using this app and wanted to know if anyone else was using it and/or would join her using it.  So what was all that about?  Well there's a tab at the bottom called "Motivate" and you can have friends join you on the app to encourage you.  They can see your progress (and if you've been busting your calorie limits for the day!) and they can see how much exercise you do (or don't do!).  Peer pressure can sometimes be a good thing.  Keeps you honest!

Spy on friends! :)

Get motivated!

Don't have friends?....OK, I'm kidding...but even if your friends don't want to join Lose It you can still find other ways to get motivated with this app.  You can join a group/team that's doing a particular activity.  You can join a challenge (kind of like a team, but usually for a specific period of time).

Challenges

Groups & Teams

You can also earn badges for weight loss as well as for just continuing to log your progress.  That's important too.  Everyone loses weight at different rates and you shouldn't get discouraged!

You need some stinkin' badges!

There's also a profile that you can create under motivate that your friends can check out to see what your goals are!

Motivate Profile

OK, so it's getting late and I wanted to get this post out.  I've come to realize that I'm starting to get a bit loopy.  Perhaps I've tried to fit too much in one post.  Perhaps it's time to step away from the computer and do some walking.  Either way, it's time to end this post.

Some final thoughts.  Lose It is so important to how I lose weight because I simply did not know how many calories I was eating each day.  If I were honest I'd guess I was eating close to 3000 calories and doing very little by way of exercising.  No wondering my weight was going nowhere but up.

Was it difficult to reduce what I was eating?  Yes.  That first week was hard, and I'm sure my family didn't like me much, but I made sure that I entered EVERYTHING.  If you cheat and don't then don't wonder why you aren't losing weight.  After that first week, I got used to eating less and it became easier.  Having to enter something I ate in the program also caused me to turn and walk away from the pantry on more than one occasion.

This app helps with moderation.  Yes, I can still have a cookie or piece of cake, but now I know how that's impacting my calories for the day.  I may walk a little longer to make sure I make up for it, but now I KNOW how much I'm eating and when you're dieting...Knowledge is Power!

The Makings of a Successful Diet, Part 1 - Why I Decided to do It

I've mentioned in previous posts that I'm dieting and using some apps to help me along.  I wanted to post on my diet for some time and then I went on vacation and drove from Colorado to Pennsylvania with lots of stops in between.  I've returned home to Colorado and my children and I survived, a.k.a - I didn't choke them although they really made me want to at times!  So after unwinding from the drive and starting to put the house back in order, I'm ready to post on my diet.

The apps that I'm going to post on are called LoseIt and Striiv.  I chose them because they got pretty great reviews and were FREE!  Gotta love free!  But why use an app?  Why not just diet?  Good question, thank you for asking.  That's the reason for this post.  You gotta understand why I use apps before diving into the apps themselves.

I was in the military for nearly 10 years.  My last assignment was as a Drill Sergeant (DS).  One of the many things that you're responsible for as a DS is Soldiers that are on the Army Weight Control Program (AWCP...unless the acronym has changed since I got out many moons ago).  I never had a problem with my weight when I was in the military.  I ate what I wanted and I did the Physical Training (PT) that my unit did and I was fine.  For many Soldiers with different body types and metabolisms this is not enough.  A Soldier on AWCP would usually be given additional PT.  This can certainly help, but it's not a solution.  We would always tell our Soldiers to keep a food log.  To write down everything that they ate each day and how much.  Sounds great on paper and a food log can be very helpful...if you know what a serving size is and how many calories are in each serving.  The bottom line is it was really up to them to lose the weight or they would be separated from the service.

So I got out of the Army pregnant with my 2nd child and there was no one to whip this former DS back into shape after leaving.  To add to the lack of organized PT in my civilian life there was the fact that 1) I had to teach myself to cook so I could feed my growing family, 2) I realized that I'm a pretty damn good cook, 3) I loved eating what I cooked, and 4) I was depressed.  No this wasn't post-pardum depression.  This was post-Army depression.  I had a stellar career.  I was a DS...people knew who I was and now when I would go to functions it was all, "So who's your husband?"...like I wasn't a person of my own with my own achievements and dreams.  It.  Was.  Depressing.

I discovered that when I'm depressed or stressed I eat.  Not good.  When I joined the service at 23 I weighed about 120 pounds.  When I left the service I weighed 140 pounds.  Sure some of it was muscle, but many times when you're a DS you spend more time correcting the form of trainees doing PT than participating yourself and there's little "free time" to go off on your own and exercise.  Too busy a day and too long a week.  Being a DS rarely ends when you go home for the night. 

So after being out of the military for over 7 years something happened.  At the beginning of April I was at 163-ish pounds and the doctor told me my cholesterol was going up.  This is par for the course in my family.  I was only borderline, but my good cholesterol wasn't high enough.  Exercise would help.  OK...I'll put that on my long "to-do" list...whatever.

Then around the same time I noticed how big my arms were looking.  A common complaint from my sisters, but I never really noticed before.  I also began to notice that my clothes were getting way too tight for me and I had already sized-up a year or two before.  If I didn't do something soon I'd have to buy new clothes for the expanding new me.  While I have no sadness over a good clothes shopping spree, this wasn't the direction I wanted to be heading.  Additionally, when I would go clothes shopping all the cute stuff wasn't looking as cute on me anymore.  I was wearing clothes to hide my body.

Everyone would tell me that I didn't look like I weighed 160+ pounds, but what I really was doing was hiding it.  What mattered was that I started noticing.  The pictures I was in with my boys did not make me feel any better about myself.  I had gone from a fairly fit person to a 40 year old not happy about the way she looked.

You can say all you want about how television/media makes us feel like we have to be skinny.  Sure.  They show us some unrealistically skinny people and I don't want that.  What I want is to be happy with how I look and that meant dieting.  I'd tried dieting before and it didn't work.  Why would this be any different?  I wasn't convinced it would be, but I knew that I had to do something and I had to do something that worked.  That's when using the apps started.

A friend of mine posted that she was using LoseIt and wanted to know if any of her friends had the app.  I went to look at it and review it.  Great reviews and a great price.  Let's download this bad boy!...then I checked and saw that apparently I had downloaded it previously and NEVER USED IT!  Yeah, that's typical me....so I finally started using it.

I like techno-gadgets.  I'm no computer guru (I've got a tech-saavy hubby for that) but I do like boundaries.  I'm a military girl at heart and I like organization.  I also want something easy to use.  This was.

My pedometer was crap...crap...crappity crap.  It broke.  I replaced it.  It broke.  I said "screw it!"  I went looking for a pedometer app for my iPhone and found Striiv.  Odd name, but like LoseIt the reviews were great and the price was right.  Heck I take my iPhone everywhere anyway so why not use it as a pedometer and get credit for ALL the moving I do during the day.  The ones I purchased at the store were horribly inaccurate too (yes, I've worn two at once to compare).

I gave myself a goal of hitting 135 pounds by the end of October.  By the middle of June I had gone down to about 148 pounds.  I'd never been able to stick to a diet and as silly as it sounded these apps were really making a difference for me.  I did gain about 2 and a half pounds when I went on vacation and found counting calories rather inconvenient, but I should be able to make my goal or get quite close by my deadline.  I may even change it to 130 pounds.  I'm excited and, yes, I started noticing a change in my clothes.  It's not time for a new wardrobe yet, but the muffin-top is gone and the clothes fit properly.  I'm not hiding as much, but I'm not where I want to be....yet.

Will using these apps work for you?  I don't know.  What I do know is that you have to find something that suits you or it won't work.  If just cutting back on your portions works.  Great.  If keeping a log works.  Great.  This works for me.  Great.

I have friends and family that do fad diets.  Fad diets are bad diets in my opinion.  You will NEVER see me doing an all liquid diet to "cleanse" my body.  They don't work.  You think they are working, and you do initially lose weight, but it's not long term unless you make a change.  Fad diet.

Others cut wheat or carbs completely out of their diet.  Not gonna happen here...EVER.  I love me some pasta and bread and BEER.  Nope.  Not gonna happen.  Do you know what happens when you try stuff like this?  You'll lose weight.  You'll most likely also plateau and then wonder why you aren't losing anymore.  You can't just cut one thing out of your diet and expect miracles.  All you are doing is depriving your body of nutrients it needs.  I've been told "Oh after awhile I don't crave the candy, bread, pasta, etc anymore."  Great for you.  Do you know what most people will do during a crazy fad diet?  Binge.  That's not good for you or your diet.

If you want to avoid GMOs (genetically modified food) then the easiest way is to eat organic.  No, I don't because it's EXPENSIVE and we're a single income family.  I have my dream of retiring to a farm in Wisconsin and growing my own GMO-free food for eating and preserving, but right now it's not feasible.  I'd love to see our government deal with the GMO issue (which is still very new to me) but they can't deal with anything right now so the outlook is grim there.

I'm no certified nutritionalist.  Apart from my military and personal experience I can only tell you that when you do crazy things to your body, your body will do crazy things.  Don't starve yourself of what your body needs.  Give it what it needs in moderation and exercise.  The exercise can be ANYTHING!  Get up and MOVE!  If you think you're too heavy then stop shoving food into your mouth.  That was a hard lesson for me to learn because I didn't realize I was even doing it.

I know that many of my friends that have tried fad diets would just say "zip it, Cherie, " and that's fine, because the bottom line is if they truly believe that the diet worked for them (placebo effect or for real) then I'm happy for them.  Worried about the lasting effects, but happy that they are happy.  Just as my idea of what I want to weigh and look like may not be right for other people.  I wouldn't want it to be.  Just remember to be HAPPY with who you are.

Tomorrow I will post on LoseIt which was the first app I started using.  I don't know everything about the app, but I know what I love about it and I'll try to explain/share some of my favorite features and why I think it's so convenient.  I'll post on Striiv after.  They just updated the app so I'm relearning a few features, but it shouldn't take long.

I leave you with a little Foamy the Squirrel from Ill Will Press.  It's rather harsh and lots of swear words, but it does express very well my distaste for crazy diets (Weight Watchers is NOT a fad diet and it has proven effective for so many people although I have no experience with it).

Pinterest Review - The "Best" Scones Ever

I quickly opened the toaster oven to get a picture of how it expanded

Oh, Martha...I love what you do, but you thought I would be able to take this "dough" and transfer it to a "lightly" floured work surface, pat into a circle and cut it into wedges and then transfer it again to a parchment lined baking sheet? Been sniffing something?  To be fair, the pinner that I grabbed this from labeled these the "best" scones ever...not Martha.

Wow was this liquidy!  I was going to ignore the whole transfer to a floured surface anyway because that's not how I make my scones, but this dough was so sticky that sticky doesn't even begin to cover it.

You see that picture?  Yeah...that's the scone after baking for less than 5 minutes.  See how big it is?  It oozed like the blob almost 2-inches bigger than it had been when I put it on the sheet.  You think you'd be working with that on a lightly floured surface?  Yeah...me neither.

Now I'm not a scone-making-novice here.  I've been making various scones for more than 20 years, but I'm always willing to try a new recipe.  After all...these are supposedly "the best".

OK.  Enough picking on Martha Stewart (for now)...so why do I lump my scones onto a sheet like this and bake? Well, it was an idea I took from a scone recipe years ago.  With the first recipe I ever used (and used for many, many years because it was so tender and eggy-smelling) I used to roll the scones out and cut them into circles.  This isn't ideal for many reasons....

First - time constraints.  It takes more time to roll and cut which leaves the butter/margarine out longer and could/should result in a less flaky scone.

Second - mess.  When I have to use the counter to work dough, I use it.  I have no problem doing that whatsoever, but I hate the cleanup so if I can avoid doing it I will.

Third - if you cut your scones into little circles, you can't use the remaining dough...unless you're planning on just throwing those leftover schniblets onto a baking sheet and bake them along with your pretty round scones.  If you reworked the leftover dough so you could cut more circles, you would be over-working the dough and your scones would lose that flaky texture you want so badly.

After baking.  Looks pretty good, but no score-lines

Lastly - ease.  What could be easier than spooning the dough onto a parchment-lined baking sheet?  You could also drop them onto the same baking sheet if you want individual scones.  I don't.  I spoon the whole thing on there and then if I'm going to brush with butter or milk/cream, and sprinkle with sugar I do it.  I then take a knife and press it gently into the dough, scoring it into wedges.  The score-lines stay during baking.  When it's done I transfer it to a cooling rack until I can handle it, then I break the wedges off.  No cutting.  Sweet.

I tried to score Martha Stewart's recipe like that.  Do you see score-lines in either of these pictures.  Didn't think so.   The scones did finish baking and smelled really good.  Even though there's only that one egg in them, the egg smell reminded me of my own scone recipe.

Now, you may be asking if I varied Martha's recipe at all.  To be fair, I did.  I substituted fresh blueberries for the currants and accidentally threw in that extra tablespoon of cream (I used milk) into the batter.  So did that make the dough super liquidy?  I don't think so.  Blueberries certainly have a lot of liquid inside them, but not outside and that 1 tablespoon of liquid shouldn't have done all that much.

The link to Martha's Cream Scones with Currants  recipe can be found here.  The version with my method and substitutions can be found below.

Blueberry Scones

3/4 c milk (I used 1%)
1 egg
2 c flour
1/4 c sugar
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
6 tbsp margarine
1 c blueberries

Preheat oven to 400 degrees (F).

Combine the milk and egg in a small bowl.  In a large mixing bowl add the flour, sugar, baking powder, salt and give a mix with a whisk to combine.  Add the margarine in pieces and using your hands incorporate into the flour until it resembles pea-sized crumbs.  Add the blueberries and stir.  Add the milk and stir until just combined.

Pour the dough onto a parchment-lined baking sheet or drop by spoonfuls.  If desired, brush with melted butter or cream/milk and sprinkle with sugar.  With a large knife, score the scones into wedges.

Bake for 18 minutes or until it is golden (make sure the bottom doesn't burn!).  Transfer to a wire rack to cool and then break the scones into wedges.  Serve while warm.  Remember if your batter is as liquid-filled as mine, you'll have to cut because the score lines will not work.

Taste results?  They tasted good.  Not the best scones I've ever had, but very good.  Thumbs up or down?  I'd say somewhere in between.  The taste may get a thumbs up, but the directions give it a big thumbs down.  I can just imagine some poor sod trying to put this on a floured surface and it makes me cringe.  Still it's flavor that you're after.

If you give the recipe a try, let me know if you get another result!

Nutritional information (as given by my LoseIt! app):  Serving size - 2 scones; 397 calories; Total Fat 12.4g; Sat. Fat 4.3g; Cholesterol 49.2mg; Sodium 523.7mg; Carb. 51.2g; Fiber, 2.8g; Sugars 8.1g; Protein 9.7g