Good Gracious!

It's been a long while since I've posted! I get caught up in my other blog Thickin and Thinnin and don't update here as much as I should!

Things are good here on the ole homestead. We just returned from a 10 day vacation to Navarre Beach Florida which was a nice relaxing time. I missed my critters, but it was nice to relax on the beach just the same. My wonderful friend Darling Deb took care of things for me here, and she did a fan-tab-u-lous job! I wasn't worried a bit and she claims that she had fun doing it. We are looking into therapy for her, don't worry ;)

The weekend before we left we butchered our meat birds. The Man and I did them together, 12 on Saturday and 14 on Sunday. I must tell you that we skinned them rather than plucked them and things went much faster. Since I'm on Weight Watchers, I don't eat the skin anyway and he doesn't care as long as I double dip his in milk/egg and flour before I fry them so he has lots of good crunchies to eat! These birds were nice! Great big ole breasts and legs! When we butcher chickens we package them up in parts. We package legs together, thighs together. We also bone the breasts because I eat alot of boneless chicken breast. The breasts on these birds were so big that I put one HALF of a breast in a package for the three of us to eat. That means out of 26 birds, I got 52 packages of boneless breast! That is awesome I do have to say!

The goats are doing well and hopefully all three of the girls are bred. My fingers are crossed for that because Naomi got bred back in July and didn't show heat again. I thought she was bred and was looking forward to December kids. Then the silly goat came into season in October!! So hopefully she is bred this time. I'm almost positive that Star is bred. She shows heat very very strongly and she hasn't come in since she was bred in late September. We plan to butcher Icing Ears within the next couple months. I'm very excited for this as I've never eaten Chevon before, but it is a very lean, healthy protein source.

Moon's litter of bunnies will be ready to butcher in a couple weeks as well. I plan to can some of this rabbit meat for quick meals such as BBQ rabbit. Mmmmmm, BBQ rabbit.......

I'm almost done quilting the baby quilt that I will be gifting to a friend who is expecting a little girl. It has really come out nicely and I'll post pictures as soon as it is complete.

Thanksgiving was wonderful. My family came here and I got to cook all day (which is what I love!) and we had a nice holiday. I enjoy Thanksgiving and it's my wish that everyone will remember to be thankful EVERY day of their lives. God is good to us, and we have only to think about our blessings rather than dwelling on the negatives!

Till next time.............GOD BLESS FROM GOODWIFE FARM!

Lettin it all hang out......

Ok, so on our vacation I let it all hang out. I didn't drive 750 miles to hide in a mu-mu! I know that this has been a topic of conversation around AG and perhaps on a few blogs. As some of my readers may know, I'm usually a pretty confident girl. I love myself (because every single pound of me is worth loving) and most of the time feel pretty attractive regardless of my size. However, when I got home and downloaded my pictures, I wasn't thrilled with this one! I'm posting it though because I'm still a beautiful woman with a terribly sexy husband! Besides at any given moment there were around 20 people on the beach, none of whom were 25 and supermodel sexy!

Till next time.......I'm unTHICKINandsoTHINNIN!

I just have a few minutes free and wanted to let you all know how Thanksgiving went here at my homestead. My folks came and my sister, her hubs, and daughter. My daughter's birthday is on Christmas Eve so we combined Thanksgiving and a little birthday party for her. It is very hard to get everybody together in December! I cooked turkey, dressing, scalloped corn, rolls, mashed potatoes, gravy, homemade noodles, green beans, corn, pumpkin pie, chocolate layer cake (for Shayla's b-day) and banana pudding. We also had cheese ball and crackers. I may be forgetting something, but at least you get the gist!

What I am about to tell you may be very controversial here at WWers. That is my disclaimer. Thankgiving is the only big meal that I do every year. We don't do a big Christmas dinner. I decided that I was going to eat what I wanted and enjoy the meal. I didn't track a thing. I could have just counted it as all of my weeklies and dailies and said forget it, but I didn't want to sabotage the rest of my week by taking away my weeklies, so the way that I chose to handle it was to call it a free day. As I've stated before, my goal is to be normal with food. It has been and will be a huge NSV for me to be able to enjoy Thanksgiving guilt free and then just resume my tracking immediately after. That is what I've done. I am very proud of myself. My vacation was a great pregame warmup for this one big meal. I will confess that I ate until I felt ill, but I didn't feel any guilt! I sent home carepackages with my family, and then I took EVERY SINGLE LEFTOVER to my chickens, except for the turkey. Such a Thanksgiving feast my birds had but I didn't want to be tempted beyond Thanksgiving Day. I enjoyed all of my traditional foods and then this morning I got up, went for my run, lifted my weights, and got right back to my healthy eating plan.

As I stated, this isn't the way that everybody chooses to handle Thanksgiving, but it is the way that I chose to handle it and it worked well for me. The key to this program is working out the best way for you to "work" it and I am exceedingly thankful that I'm figuring out how to work it for me!

Till next time, I hope you all had a fabulous Thanksgiving full of love and thankful hearts! I'll be here, unTHICKINandsoTHINNIN!

Oh how I missed Thee, let me expound upon the ways.......

We are back from Florida! It was a fabulous trip and very relaxing. The ocean was gorgeous and the weather beautiful. I missed so many things while we were gone. I missed my goats, my horse Champ, my dogs. I missed my bed, and I missed talking to my sister nearly every day. I missed my weight watchers buddies as well, but there is something that I missed even more than all those things. The thing that I missed the most and the thing that made me the happiest to get back to was my FOOD. Oh whole grains, how you make me happy! Dear lovely unprocessed, homemade food, how I love thee! Our condo had a full kitchen and we went grocery shopping late Saturday afternoon upon arrival. However, most of the things that I fix myself to eat here at home are a bit labor intensive and I didn't want to spend all of my time in the kitchen. Breakfast every day was cereal and toast with cream cheese. I bought whole grain bread (Arnold 100% whole wheat and it was delicious!), peppers, mushrooms, onions, pickles, ham and turkey. That means that every single day we were gone I had a sandwich for lunch. I like sandwiches, but that was a bit much! Supper is what presented the biggest problem. I did by pre-cooked grilled chicken strips and some rice in a pouch that you nuke in the microwave so that sauteed with some peppers, mushrooms, and onions was supper two nights. Two nights we had Pizza Hut hand tossed pizza, one night we had CANNED CHILI (Yuck!), and even though I had turkey chili, it wasn't good at all. One night I grilled me a sandwich and had fries with that. I also drank diet soda for the first time in months! I was craving good wholesome food so badly!!

We worked out every single morning that we were in Florida except for Thurday and then the Saturday morning that we left to come home. I completed week 7 of my C25K program and we walked for miles on the beach, and played in the ocean for hours. It was great! I didn't weigh while I was gone because I didn't have my scale, but when I weighed this morning I was down 2 pounds, whoo hooo! TOM has his toe on the scale too, so I was very very happy with that.

This trip was a gi-freakin-normous NSV (non-scale victory) for me. I was so worried about taking this trip, being away from my good food and my tracker. My entire goal for this Weight Watchers program is to be like a "normal" person. I want to be normal about food. I want to be able to pig out on Thanksgiving or any other occasion, and then go right back to eating normally the next day, like my mom and my sister do. On previous weight loss journeys, I have done ok as long as I didn't fall off the wagon. Once I fell off, the damned thing would run me over, drag me down the street, and then drop me on a train track so that the train could hit me too!! It would take me months and yes sometimes even years, to get straightened back out. I was so afraid to "live a little" on vacation so I was allowing myself to get stressed. However, after a couple days of being gone, I loosened up. I allowed myself to enjoy the pizza from Pizza Hut, and even ate a couple mini powdered donuts of my daughter's. I was thrilled to realize that what I was missing most was my good and wholesome food! I couldn't wait to get home so that I could have whole wheat pancakes (which I made the first morning we were back) and my sweet and spicy chicken pasta! We have been back since 11PM Saturday evening and I have had no desirings to get off plan. I really cannot express how this makes me feel. I know that alot of you will know exactly what I mean! It's a good feeling and a truly FABULOUS NSV!!! I feel empowered and for the first time I truly feel like I can whip this demon for good!!!

Till next time.....God Bless and Happy Thankgiving!

I'm still unTHICKINandsoTHINNIN!!

18 week update!

Down .4 this morning! I know that some folks get a bit upset when they don't lose alot of weight. My thinking is, as long as that scale is headed in the downward direction, then I'm cool beans! Actually as long as I'm eating healthy, exercising and not lying to myself about whether or not I'm following the plan, then I don't care what the scale says!

We are off on vacation to Florida for 10 days as of Friday afternoon! Whoo hoo! For a long time leading up to this trip, I was nervous as a cat, scared as a chicken with a fox in the hen house! I have no laptop so I will be computerless, ie trackerless for 10 whole days! Oh the horror!!!! But now I'm cool as a cucumber, fresh as a daisy, free as a bird! I can do this. I know what to eat, I know how to judge portion sizes, and I can keep track of what I eat in a notebook. I'm going to go on vacation, work out every day with my hubby, run on the beach and have a blast! Life is good, embrace it, welcome each day with joy, reflect on the good, let go of the bad! My brother in law will turn 40 this year. He isn't happy about it because he thinks he is getting old. My daughter and I were discussing this and my dad said, Well I've got news for him, he IS getting old! My daughter said that wasn't old, 70 is old (lol, and apologies if you are 70). I said, Well it's better than the alternative! My daughter said, What's that? And I said Death!! In short, live life while you are still alive to enjoy it!

God Bless and get up and MOVE!!

Till next time.....I'm unTHICKINandohsoTHINNIN!!

I DID IT!!!!!

I cannot even tell you all how I feel right now. I feel like Richard Simmons, Susan Powter, and Tony Little all rolled into dynamo of energy and power!!! Ok, so I'm doing the C25K right? Yup I surely am. Well today was week 5 day 3.......20 minutes of uninterrupted jogging. As I was driving back from taking my daughter to school I was telling myself.....Self... you are so not ready for this! Then I proceeded to kick Self's @$$ because I refused to defeat myself before I even got started! So I headed off on my walk, telling myself to just jog as long as I could, no shame if I didn't make it the full 20 minutes and if I had to vary my pace then so be it. Well GUESS WHAT????? Didya guess yet? That's right, I MADE IT!! 5'3", 197 lb, 32 years old MADE IT! And I did it outside! Well not it, I mean I have done IT outside but I'm talking about jogging right now!

During the last 5 minutes of my 20 minute jog I was at the bottom of a nice stretch of hill and really wanted to give up, but I did it. Seriously, I'm sitting here with sweat rolling down the back of my head, and I've got to go lift my weights and do my crunches, but I just had to come in here and tell you all that I did it, and you can too, we can beat this overweight monkey off our backs! I shall shout it from the rooftops.....

Weight Watchers, you've created a monster........just call me FITNESS-STEIN!!


Til next time, I am as alwaysunTHICKINandsoTHINNIN!

17 week update.........

Hopped on the scale this morning (I wonder how long it will be before I stop being nervous about getting on???) and I'm down another 2.6 lbs. This brings my 17 week total to 31.8 lbs, and puts my weight at 197.2! I feel fabulous and strong and just so good to be learning how to work through my emotions, from fear, to anxiety, to frustration, to plain ole boredom in other ways than stuffing my fat face! However, as I've stated before, losing it has never been a problem for me, it's keeping it off that has been my achillies heel. Therefore I try not to get too cocky and just keep praying that I will be able to make these changes permanant ones and that I will keep the focus on my HEALTH, where it belongs!

My stats since July 7, 2009 (17 weeks) are as follows

Weight lost......... 31.8 lbs
Inches lost
Waist............4
Hips..............4.5
Thighs...........5
Arms.............2
Bust...............3

Till next time..........I'mstillunTHICKINandsoTHINNIN!!

Sometimes It's Not Easy

Being a homestead kid. Most animals around our homestead are destined for the table. Of course we have the layer hens, the adult rabbits, and our milking does, but alot of the babies that are born here will eventually wind up in the freezer. As an animal loving 10 year old girl, it can be hard to not get attached to those darling little babies! However sometimes, once in awhile, a girl can get lucky and she might get to keep a sweet little baby to be a replacement momma.



This is The Youngun and Clover, who will be kept to add to our little rabbit herd.




It's quite the love affair. She takes Clover for walks and cuddles with her several times a day. The Youngun has a really good grasp on the way things work. She's great about understanding that these animals are our food, but it's also nice when she can get attached to one and know that we are going to keep it!

Hope things are great around your homestead! Till next time..............GOD BLESS FROM GOODWIFE FARM!