The Dreaded 10 Pounds

Alright…. I’m throwing it out there. Time for some blunt honesty. I need to lose 10 pounds. Just 10 pounds. Only 10 pounds. It sounds like it should be easy…. Oh, but it’s not. I love to eat. I love food. Mexican food, chocolate, cheeseburgers, pasta, french fries, baked potatoes… any carb. YUM! Healthy food… bleh!

My mom was just in town and while she has always looked fabulous she is looking unbelievably FABULOUS these days!! She is a hard core Weight Watchers follower/fan and it has really worked for her. I have decided that I am going to follow her lead. Anyway, thanks to my mom, we have stumbled upon the lovely Hungry Girl website and all of its awesomeness. She has great recipes and at the bottom of all of them, she gives the Weight Watcher point value. So with Weight Watchers, Hungry Girl and a food/weight journal I just started to keep myself accountable, I hope to start losing weight.

I started this whole thing last week and Dan has been wonderful and supportive. He has already tried everything from mashed cauliflower to fat free sliced cheese (neither are as bad as they sound). Thanks baby!!

I worked really hard in college to get myself into good shape. I have gained 10 pounds since college and I want to get rid of it. We don’t have kids, very little to no stress in our lives, we have the ability to choose what we eat, etc. This should be the easiest time to lose weight and get myself back in check. I am a little embarrassed to admit this on a public blog for anyone to see. The only reason I am doing this really is in hopes that it will put more pressure on me to stick with it and lose the weight. I will just keep thinking about how good it will feel when I have lost the 10 pounds and can bite into that big ‘ole plate of gooey, cheesy nachos. Kidding!

Wish me luck (and lots of willpower)!!

Another Late Update....

August and September were busy months for the Murray’s. We had the Avery family reunion in Ohio, which was a blast. We had some good Avery time, some good Zargo time, some good roller coaster time and we even saw half of the Sames clan. It was a wonderful family-filled weekend!

In September we headed to Houston to spend some time with the Runty’s and the Purcell’s. These are friends that Dan went to college with. It was great to see everyone and to meet their adorable kiddos. Since this is a public blog, I don’t want to post pictures of peoples kids, so the only picture I can find of that weekend is of Dan and I eating a cookie (and it was a good cookie).

My mom is coming to town in a couple of weekends and I couldn’t be happier. We are going to go to Oktoberfest in Helen, GA and then we are going to go around and look at apartments for when she moves here (only 6 months away!). Then Mom & Dad P. and Grandma & Grandpa Zargo are coming down for Halloween. This is going to be fun! We are planning a big Halloween party.

We have been painting a lot in our house. It seems never ending!! Our bedroom is done, so are our built-ins. Now all we have is the entry way. This is going to be someone else’s job. It is WAY too high for us to paint. Hopefully we will get that done soon. I will try to remember to post pictures of the new stuff soon.

Side Note... Happy Year and a Half Anniversary Baby! I love you!! ;-P

New York City

I think I am finally starting to recover from the long weekend in New York City last weekend. We had a blast! Of course we had all of the typical NYC experiences… site seeing, shopping, Time Square, Central Park, Statue of Liberty, getting into a fight with a bum and almost getting jumped. Ask me about the last two for a couple of good stories! We walked all over the place. I think NYC is the only place you can go and eat horribly and not gain weight just because of all the walking! NICE! No wonder everyone in that city is so dang skinny!! Since I posted my NYC pictures on Facebook, I thought I would steal some of Ryan’s NYC pics and post them on here.

Yummm... brick oven pizza. It was so good we ate the whole thing. No seriously, the whole thing!

Me in Central Park

Ryan got much better shots of Drew Barrymore than I did. She is the one in the black shirt and green pants

Ryan in front of Radio City

These are all M&M's. We could have gotten ourselves into all kinds of trouble here. But we were good!
At Buddakan

Cosmos in NYC...what else?!?!

Dan and I are going to O-H-I-O next weekend! Can't wait! We will be sure to post some pictures of the Avery fun!

We got a camera!!

Mom P. gave Dan and I a camera for our birthday (for those that don’t know, Dan’s and my birthday are exactly a week apart - well a week and two years). It is SO nice to be able to take a picture and actually SEE the picture after we take it (as a girl, this is a great feature to have back again)!

I came to a stall with posting on this blog, but hopefully I will pick up with it again. Honestly, this summer has just been nice and relaxing, not much to post about, just enjoying the weather, the pool, the friends and of course that wonderful husband of mine.

I don’t know if anyone else feels this way, but I feel like this year is just flying by. I can’t believe next week will be August already! We have a very busy second half of the year coming up, so I have a feeling the rest of the year will pass by quicker than the first part has. Next week, one of my best friends, Ryan, and I will be going to New York City for a long girls weekend. I am really excited! We are going to play most of it by ear… but we do have the Sex and the City tour booked. That was the important tour to make SURE we had a spot on. We will miss our hubby’s but we never get to see each other anymore since we live in different states, so it will be a blast to hang out with her again! Then a couple weekends after that, we are going to the Avery family reunion in Ohio. (Why do I have a feeling that is going to be a weekend I need to recover from?) Then we get the second part of Mom P.’s b-day gift – a trip to Cedar Point Amusement Park. Google it, it looks pretty awesome. I guess it’s the largest amusement park in the US – with the largest/fastest roller coasters. We are going to spend the day there with Mom and Dad. It will be a blast! I love roller coasters, but I haven’t been on any since high school. Then in September we will be visiting with the Runty’s and the Purcell’s in Houston for Labor Day weekend. Then Mom and Dad P. and some of their friends will be coming down to Atlanta for their “annual Halloween trip”!! haha Then we have the cruise in December. See what I mean about the rest of the year passing by fast too?!?!

We are also eagerly awaiting Mom and Dad M’s move to Atlanta. They were here this last week and I think they are going to move as soon as Dad M. gets the job transfer. It will be so nice to have them here! And my mom and brothers are still on track to move here in the Spring of next year. Really, I think the next year is going to go by fast!! We have so much really good stuff going on, that seems to be when time passes by the quickest.
Anyway, I will end with some pictures of the house – that I can finally update now that we have a working camera!

Just for comparison sake... this was the living room the way it was when the house was up for sale:

And here is the living room now:

Here is the "formal" living room, we still want to add a bar piece. (Not sure why the couch is showing up greenish in the picture, but its a blue couch) Dan was a good sport with the color on the wall:

Dining Room:

Office:

One of the guest bedrooms:
Now, we just have to work on accessorising the house. As you might have noticed, there is not a lot of stuff on the walls. We will be working on that!

I am really happy with how the house is looking. It definitley feels like it has Dan's and my touch!

We need a new camera....

I was on such a role updating this blog. I have a good reason for not updating recently, I promise. Our camera screen broke about a year ago. Part of the bottom of the screen still worked and we got really good at lining it up to take good pictures so we just never fixed/replaced it. Well, we have some how turned off the flash and since the screen is broken, we can't figure out how to turn it back on. Go figure. So I guess it's time to get a new camera. 

Our living room is done except for the built-ins. So hopefully we will get a new camera soon and I can post finished pictures! 

Adventures in Gardening

Dan and I needed to plant some bushes in our backyard because it was just looking plain back there. You can’t really tell a difference because they are little right now, but hopefully next year they will have grown and look better. We also planted watermelon, squash and tomatoes in a garden. Hopefully they’ll turn out. It’s a toss-up knowing me, I’m not exactly known for any kind of Suzy Homemaker -ness. Here is a picture of the bushes… you have to really squint to see them. Haha

Five minutes after this picture was taken Brenner ripped one of the bushes out of the ground and ate it. Go figure.

Chocolate

This is a random post, but oh well. For those that don't know, (which is probably no one because I have been talking about it NONSTOP for 40 days) I gave up chocolate for lent. I love chocolate. This was a hard thing for me to give up, but I did it for all 40 days (minus a slip the first week at Jason's Deli.... I honestly forgot). On Easter I had some of the Girl Scout cookies that had been sitting in our freezer taunting me for a month. They weren't nearly as good as I had made them out to be in my head. Last night, though, I got my chocolate fix! YUM. Dan brought home the most awesome brownies I have ever had and I ate the whole (probably 1,000 calorie) thing.... and it was worth all the calories! I love chocolate!!.

As a side note.. I will try to remember to post pictures of our living room tomorrow. The painting is complete and it looks wonderful!!