Detox Update

Well, I didn't die. I didn't make the whole 10 days. I did do 8 of them though. Let me tell you why...After the first day, I decided I couldn't stomach drinking the lemon detox concoction cold. I don't like hot drinks in the afternoon on hot days. I ended up drinking about a mug (1 1/2 cups) per day in the morning. I just couldn't take any more after day 8.

If you have absolutely no idea what I'm referring to, see Trying a Detox Concoction.

I'm going to get right to the point here. I know the mix cleaned out my system. I'm sure you get the idea, so no TMI from me. Is my "Boring" belly gone? Not exactly. BUT, the pans I used to make the drink in are super clean now!

 The pan on the left in the top picture was not used to make the drink yet.

(I didn't get a before picture of the pan on the right.)

I had to make the drink in pan left just to prove how well the lemon detox drink cleans.

The bottom picture shows the after of both.

Here's my take, if that stuff can make my pans look like new, then I'm sure it can make my intestines look new too. I think the only way to really lose the belly is to eat right and exercise. adding a little lemon detox concoction to the mix, in moderation, might be good too.

This drink is all natural, you know what you're putting in it, no surprises. I may do the lemon detox every 3 months or so. But I'm only going to do it for a week. I also tweaked the recipe, reducing all the spices down to 1/2 teaspoon each. I kept the water and lemon the same. I didn't change my diet in any way. I did feel less hungry drinking the mixture, even with the changes.

I think the spices just kick things up a notch. The lemon is the actual detoxing agent here. But, who am I to say. I'm not a doctor or a scientist. If you wan to try the lemon detox, read my Trying a Detox Concoction post.

Trying a Detox Concoction

I have to admit I am a Pinterest junkie. Every morning I wake up, get the family moving, and head to Pinterest to see what's new on my feed. The other day there was a pin about a drink you make from a wide variety of ingredients. The title boasted that it would rid you of your "Boring" drooping belly.

Well, I ran right out and picked up the ingredients I didn't already have stashed in my cabinet.

I have had two kids. My stomach is not what it used to be. And, to be perfectly honest, I have not been exercising like I used to. I just got over a bout of bursitis in my hip that has been quite the pain in the butt.

This detox recipe pin was from another blogger here on blogspot, Water-Detox. But it seems they got the recipe from another site called Home Healthy Recipes. I actually found the recipe, or a version of it, a lot of places, so forgive me if I don't give everyone a little credit.

Today, May 28, 2016, I'm trying it for the first time. I'm posting this because when I did my due diligence to research the concoction, no one posted any results or even if they tried the drink.

Here's the recipe:

1/2 tbsp Tumeric powder
1/2 tbsp Ginger powder
1/2 tsp Cayenne pepper
5 tbsp lemon juice
1 tbsp Stevia
1 liter water

Boil the water. Let it sit 5 minutes to cool. While it cools put the other ingredients in a container then pour the water over them. Mix. Drink over the course of the day.

Here's what it looks like:

Now you're supposed to drink this every day for ten days. I read varying accounts about how you drink it over the course of the day. One reply to the Water-Detox blog said drink one cup a day. I don't think that's right. Unless they were telling how they did it. The original posting says to drink the mix over the course of the day.

I'm going to do it over the day. In the morning I'm going to drink it warm, like hot coffee or tea. In fact, I'm drinking it as I write this. I'm thinking of replacing my morning coffee with it because I rather like the flavor over bitter coffee.

About the flavor. It's spicy. I like spicy food, so that's a good thing for me. You can also taste the lemon very well. To be honest, I only put in 1/2 tsp, instead of 1 tbsp, of the Stevia because I don't like those sweeteners. But I can taste a hint of the sweetness.

When I first tasted the drink, it reminded me of the hot and sour soup you get a a really good old Chinese restaurant (just the broth). It does have a bit of texture because of the amount of spices you put in there.

After the first few sips I started feeling a warming sensation in my stomach. This feeling gradually increased as I drank. Toward the end I started feeling really full. In fact, I don't think I want to eat any breakfast.

Just for the sake of shortening this post, I linked the ingredients in the recipe to the benefits of each. You should do your due diligence to research before you try something like this. I am not a doctor, so I can't give you any health information or diagnose anything. I'm just posting my thoughts here.

Speaking of which, I am starting this over Memorial Day weekend. My husband is home all weekend, plus Monday, just in case anything happens to me.

I'll post an update in 10 days or so...UPDATE HERE.

Hail Storms Across Texas

Texas has been getting plummeted by weather lately. Between floods and hail, insurance companies are bogged down with claims. Up until last Saturday we had a run of good luck avoiding damage.

Early Saturday morning my husband bolted from our bed. I could hear thunder and hail pounding our home. Then crashing and cracking noises filled my ears. It was evident when lightening lit up the sky, our home was suffering.

In the daylight we found both skylights cracked. Three sides of our vinyl siding destroyed. And the roofs on all three structures on our property are done for. All three cars got pelted and we lost two windshields.

The insurance adjuster came out yesterday. Homeowners does not cover the damage to the vehicles. Guess what? We just canceled the full coverage auto a few months ago. Go figure. 

Well, the next few weeks there's going to be a lot of construction activity around here. But that's okay because our home deserves to continue to look good. I just hope the contractor we hire does a good job.

Half Price Books: My Experience Selling

Yesterday, I went to Half Price Books to sell some books, CDs and electronics. I had some good stuff Suze Orman, Suzanne Summers, among others for books (about 10 of them). Some new-age talk tapes and lower ranking motivational books that I threw in the batch. I put about 20 pop, rock, and rap CDs in the mix (Brittney Spears, Kesha, and Coolio et. al.). And, Some great Leap Pad and Leapsters games and consoles that I even still had the boxes and paperwork for.

Everything was in better than good condition, most of it was "like new".

$10.50

Yep, that's it, ten dollars and 50 cents. I had decided before I went in, I was taking whatever they offered. Otherwise, the stuff was going to the Salvation Army.

My assumption about that place is they give you about 10% of what they are going to sell the stuff for. Had I the time, or want to, I would have sold the stuff on Ebay or had a garage sale.

But, it is what it is.

If you just want to get rid of your old books, you're only going to get pennies on the dollar and Half Price Books. If you want more, you're going to have to put some effort in it and sell the stuff yourself.

Dealing with the Loft

I'm still dredging through my Spring Cleaning. I'm really taking my time this year because I have set a few personal goals that are dependent on great results. Yesterday I started tackling the loft.

The loft used to be the nursery. When the oldest went to college, the little one took over her room. The loft became a big old storage dump. Whatever I couldn't get rid of, or didn't know what to do with, got put in the loft.

It hasn't been pleasant walking by and seeing boxes of unused stuff just sitting there. Granted, because of my little problem with OCD, it's been organized chaos. Organized chaos is still chaos in my book. Well this spring, I'm fixing the problem.

Today I'm going to donate several boxes of baby items to our local help center. After that I'm heading to Half Price Books to see what I can get for some old books, CDs, and electronic games. I'll follow up this post with how that turns out.

Wish me luck!

Who are You?

We have decided that aliens have abducted our youngest daughter and replaced her with and evil clone. Now, this is not our first rodeo with a pre-teen. But, this time around I swear we're dealing with needing to get an exorcist.

The other day, after one of many arguments, I looked at her and she gives me the deer in the headlights stare. I told her, "I don't know who you are, but would you please bring my daughter back?" 

She laughed. Does that mean she is a clone?

Here with Grandpa

(The good old days)

Soup 'n' Sam-itch

After yesterday's post, I made a dish pinned a lot on Pinterest called Carrabba's Sausage and Lentil soup. Lately, I've been serving up a, what we like to call, "Soup 'n' Sam-itch" night. (Spelling issues are purely intentional). The whole Sam-itch thing came about watching an episode of Duck Dynasty and Godwin called a Sandwich, a Sam-itch. 

My spelling may be off, but the phonics aren't. He actually said what sounded like "Sam-itch." If you've ever watched the show, you know what I'm talking about.

Anyhoo, my oldest daughter had actually wanted me to make it. She had tried the soup at Carrabba's and sought out the recipe. She made it and said it was delicious! (I don't know how her version could have been good, she omitted all the good stuff).

It's called Carrabba's Sausage and Lentil soup. The copycat recipe is on Food. So, I made it and there were all kinds of good smells going on in the house all afternoon!

I read through some of the comments and ratings for the recipe and opted to make some changes to the original recipe. I will definitely make this soup again on a future Soup 'n' Sam-itch night. 

Next time I'm going to take a lot pictures so I can post my recipe changes on my Family Night Dinner Ideas blog. 

 Yummy!

*Note: the picture I took was right after I threw all the ingredients in the crock-pot. I had to take a picture to text my daughter to prove I was making the soup. I didn't take anymore pictures after it was done because we sat down to eat our Soup 'n' Sam-itch!

Bon Appetit!

My Etsy Shop is Live!

I did it! I opened an Etsy shop! You can see my hand crafted items on the side bar over there. It's been a lot of work putting it all together. Like I said in my post, "Planning Today," I want to do it right, if I'm going to do it.

There's a whole lot more to opening an Etsy shop than one would think. Not only do you have to make what you're going to sell, you have to list it, and promote it. Okay, that did make it all sound simple, but when you get down to the nitty gritty, there's really a lot to it.

Etsy suggests listing 10 items to start with. Well, for me at least, what I want to sell requires a lot of thought, sewing, drawing, assembling, and supplies. For example, one piece I made to sell requires upwards of $70 worth of supplies and equipment just to make it.

Hey Diddle, Diddle!

Given all that, and the time it took me to make it, I decided to make smaller pieces to help even the scales.

Twinkle, Twinkle little Star!

Hubby and I discussed the cost of overhead, time, and the "what ifs" prior to opening shop. The idea of starting with 10 items flew out the window. However, I'm working on more inventory anyway.

So, in an effort to help with branding, I started a blog just for my Etsy shop: Truly Unique Baby. (Notice how the new blog and my store have the same name? Cute huh?) Check it out if you have some time. Right now there's only a couple of posts. But, I'm working on creating more.

Along with all that, I'm still cleaning up this blog. The Internet has evolved so much since I started it, a lot of the old links don't work anymore. If only there were more hours in a day...

Well, if I'm going to get anything done, I better get to it.

 

Take care!

Piles of Paper

Spring cleaning continues in my world. How does one accumulate so much stuff? I think secretly I'm a pack rat.

This week I've been tackling paperwork. Since hubby had to do the taxes, I figured I'd do my part too. It's long overdue. What do you keep? Well, who knows? For instance, bank statements. Please don't ask me why we still get these, I've wanted to go paperless for years. Some say keep bank statements for three years. Some say one year. I decided to be safe and do three.

Tax returns seven years. Jeez that's a lot of paper to keep around for that long. When you're young, childless, and single you're looking at a couple of pieces of paper. When you grow a family you've got to keep seven book thick bundles of paper in your file cabinet.

Medical statements. Do you have to keep these? I've been holding on to stuff from twelve years back! Enough is enough, I decided to let them go. From now on I'm only going to keep medical stuff for one year to make sure insurance and payments are processed.

Mortgage statements. We've got a lot of those. Every single one from the first payment we made on the house. Plus, we've got another batch starting from a land purchase. We're keeping all those. Why? Because we heard a Clark Howard radio show saying you should. You must keep every single statement and payment receipt (stapled together) just in case. His theory: on the day you pay off your house, what if they come back and say you missed a payment? You'll have proof.

Funny how when you hear stuff like that you remember it forever.

Anyway, I'm off to the store. My paper shredder blew up.

 

How Do They Do It?

When you look around at different sites, do you see what I see? Given my latest research, I see a lot of Mommy blogs and sites talking about all the stuff they do. They're crafting, writing a blog, selling stuff, promoting stuff, etc. How in the heck do they find time to do any housework, let alone spend time with the family?

I mean, some of these women have itty bitty babies. Some have more than one, even THREE, in diapers. I remember when my little girl was a baby. I didn't have time to shower some days!

Take today, for instance, after I get hubby off to work and the girl off to school, I have to go do all the grocery shopping (which involves a whole lot more driving than shopping), then put everything away, and spruce up the house for the weekend. All that takes up pretty much the whole day.

When everyone gets home, there's dinner to prepare, more cleaning up, eating, cleaning up, and getting people to bed. I'm exhausted just thinking about it.

Now I did all that, and more, when I had a baby in the house. But I do not think I could take on doing what all these women talk about they're doing online with babies to care for.

I know...They're all multi-millionaire moms with a nanny, personal chef, and they pay for content writers. No...that can't be it.

Maybe grandma lives with them?

Hubby works from home and can do daddy duty?

I guess it's all in their time management skills. Kudos to them!

Planning Today

Today I'm still spring cleaning up my Internet ventures. I found some place called Superblinky that has a lot of my content. I don't know why it's there but I know it used to be on AC. Well AC was taken over by Yahoo Voices and when Yahoo Voices went away, I guess, Superblinky got it.

It's not like the content was ground breaking, or anything like that, but it was mine. The byline just says "editor". Doesn't even mention little 'ole me. Alas, I didn't keep up with it so shame on me.

On the bright side, I got to do a ton of things with my little girl! I will never regret that.

I've been thinking about embarking on a new venture. I've taken to creating gifts for my family and friends rather then buying stock stuff from the big box stores. And, doling out gift cards just seems so impersonal. They seem to like them and some have even suggested I sell my creations.

I actually started researching different things that go along with selling stuff. Of course, like most people, I have a profile on Ebay and I have sold some stuff we didn't need anymore there. But, I think Ebay is too big for handcrafted goods.

Now Etsy seems promising to me because they have carved out a niche in handmade. So, being the way I am, I decided "if I'm going to do this, I'm going to do it right!" I started working on a plan.

Etsy sellers have a "store" they sell from. To me, that's like big business on a small scale--Love it! If you plan on opening a store, what do you do? You dream about the name. The name. Hmmm.

That brought me back to the blog today. I was thinking about all the research I did way back when with SEO and Keywords. Hey, If I'm going to open an Etsy shop you know I'm going to utilize all that, and more!

I came up with a name that Google adwords liked and guess what? Somebody already has it. Back to the drawing board...  

Wow! I haven't seen This place in a while!

I started spring cleaning. I'm doing the usual, you know, cleaning. I've made it my mission to change a few things in the house and my life. Today I've been focusing on my computer stuff.

...Wait...

Let me catch you up. Here's the short list:

• Husband is fine now and back to work.
• The little one is growing up and in middle school now.
• I took a long break from any writing so I could get the youngest into and through elementary school; and, the oldest on to graduate not only high school but college too.

There it is, the short list. Now, one might ask, why did those things keep me from writing, releasing whatever I'm thinking about on paper, um, blogging, or whatever? I just found myself always having something else to do.

Well, everyone has to have an excuse. Back then, I found myself using this blog as more of a technical journal. Something to link everything else to. Anyone can see what was going on. I was writing on AC, Shared Reviews, Squidoo...Trying ever so hard to learn all the ropes about SEO, html, and such, I lost myself.

Then the accident happened--the wake-up call. You just never know when those life-changing events will occur. A moment in time that you get a notion you have so much on your plate that things better change or you brain is going to explode.

Then there's my beautiful little girl. I wanted to enjoy watching her grow up. I wanted to be the mommy helping at the class parties, going on field trips, and volunteering in the library.

We did all the cool stuff: aquariums, costumes, dollar summer movies, museums, and zoos! You name it, we probably did it.

All that kid stuff was a fun ride!

So, I'm back to where I started, spring cleaning...Yesterday I sorted through clothes, today I sorted through my blogs, tomorrow is another day. I'll let you know how it goes with my spring cleaning...