Shrimp Recipe??

Wow it's been a while since I've posted, sorry :( I am going to work on this, promise!

And speaking of things to work on I have a few other things I need to work on.

• Homework - Just like with my blog posting I've been putting homework off.  I am getting it done though, just very rushed at the last-minute.  As a result it is obviously not my best work.


• Cleaning - My room is a mess and needs to be cleaned, badly.


• Work outs - I've been making excuses to not work out, bad idea.


• Mountain Dew - I've been drinking it when I want and as often as I want.  Empty calories are not helping me reach my weight loss goals.  I'm going to start working on cutting back to 2 (12oz) sodas per week.

Four things to work one, well five including the more consistent blogging, will be enough for me to work on for the rest of the month.  Too many goals will make me go into overload and I'll fail miserably.

Now to the title of my blog.  Do you have any recipes for shrimp? With Lent right around the corner seafood is starting to go on sale so it seems like the perfect time to try out a new seafood recipe.  I really like shrimp so I would like to find a recipe for that.  If you have any suggestions or any suggestions of where I could look for a shrimp recipe let me know!  I enjoy pasta and rice so the shrimp could be paired with either one of those.

Sorry for the short post but I don't want to bore you with all the boring details of my life since my last post.  I will definitely work on posting more consistently so this doesn't happen again.

Another question for you bloggers...how do you change the font color when posting a blog??  I see others doing and haven't been able to figure out how to do it myself. Please help!

Update: Thanks to Alexis I now know how to change the font color in my blog. Yay!

Baking Lesson Learned, 126 miles in a day, & Love at the Olive Garden!!

What is going on my blogger friends??  I've been a busy beaver these last couple of days so I'll just recap the highlights for you.

Thursday the most exciting part of my day was making a Chocolate Peanut Butter Bunt Cake.  It tasted FANTASTIC but didn't look quite as good as it did when Holly made it (check out her cake here).  I had asked my mom the night before when I was planning to make the cake how I got the cake out of the bunt pan.  She said to take it out of the oven and turn it over on a plate or something right away so that's what I did.  My cake turned out rather flat, almost brownie like instead of high.  When my mom saw it she asked what I did.  I assumed it was because I was caught up in the TV show I was watching and forgot to take the bunt pan off of the cake.  But after talking with my grandma, who is an awesome baker, it turns out my cake my have fell flat because I turned it upside down too soon.  According to my grandma I should have let the cake sit upright for about 10 minutes for it to set up and then flip the pan over on a plate or something, leave it sit for about 5 minutes or however long for the cake to fall from the pan.  Like I said, the cake still tasted really really good so it wasn't a complete fail, just a presentation fail.  Oh well, lesson learned for the next time I attempt to make it :)

Thursday when I was walking out of school to my car my aunt texted me asking if I wanted to go snowmobiling the next day if she could still get off of work.  I told her I would and I would be inviting my dad who also didn't have to work.  So Friday my dad, aunt, and I went on a 126 mile round trip ride.  We left our house, which is only a 1 & 1/4 miles from my grandparents' where my aunt still lives, and rode to Tomahawk (about 45 minutes by car) for lunch at Freddy's Pub & Grill.  Freddy's is a mexican place with amazing food.  I had a shredded chicken chimi (yum yum yummy!).  After eating we hit the trails again heading home, stopping once to use the bathroom (after eating & drinking you always have to go more on the way home lol) and again to put gas in.  We had started our trip around 12:30pm and were home around 7pm.  Overall it was a great day for riding, trails were awesome and the weather was great.

Saturday I had planned on working on homework all day so I could enjoy going out for lunch and shopping on Sunday without that voice in the back of my head reminding me about a bunch of homework that needed to get done.  But plans changed, my mom was no longer needed at a church function that evening so my grandma, mom and I ended up going to town to do some grocery shopping at Sam's Club and eat lunch.  We had lunch at Olive Garden, which I had only eaten at one time before and didn't like.  I decided to stay away from spaghetti or lasagna as that was what I remembered having tried the first time many years ago and not liking.  My grandma makes both so I think I'm biased as to what would taste good to me.  I had the Grilled Shrimp Caprese and fell in love!  Here's what their menu says: "Grilled marinated shrimp served over angel hair pasta with melted mozzarella, fresh basil and tomatoes in a garlic-butter sauce."  I could have done without the tomatoes as I didn't eat them anyways but I know now for next time, and there will definitely be a next time :)

And now today has been homework day, nothing exciting.

How was your weekend?  Do anything for Valentine's Day or are you like me and think tomorrow is just another day?

I'm going to leave you with a video from the 2010 CMA Awards of Jason Aldean and Kelly Clarkson performing one of my favorite songs from Jason's most recent album My Kinda Party.  This was also the best performance of the night if you ask me.  The song is "Don't You Wanna Stay", enjoy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VqmjDrecgzA&feature=fvst

How I Got Where I Am Today & Facing the Music

I have a horrible habit that needs to be changed.  Every night I set my alarm for a decent time to wake up that will give me plenty of time to get ready for school or work and have time to eat breakfast along with anything else I might want to do before heading out the door.  And every morning I hit the snooze button repeatedly.  This morning for instance, my cell phone alarm was set for 6:50a and my iHome alarm was set for 7a so my intention was to get up at 7.  I woke up for the first alarm, and snoozed it 3 times which I had planned for.  Now between the 2nd and 3rd snooze of the cell phone alarm my iHome alarm went off meaning I should get out of bed but if not my last cell phone alarm will be my final call.  That didn't happen.  I ended up snoozing my iHome alarm until it was 7:30!!  Now by no means was I late for anything as I don't have class until 11a today but I had wanted to get up at 7 to work on reading for the class I have later in the day or preparing the speech I need to record and submit.  I've done neither :-/ From 7:30-8 I laid in bed reading blogs (they're addicting!!) and then finally at 8 I figured I needed to get out of bed.  I didn't use my morning as I had planned to but I did weigh in, something I needed to do, and write this entry, which I definitely didn't need to do this morning.

It's been 53 days since the last time I weighed myself...probably because I know I haven't been putting in the effort to lose weight and I didn't want to face the music.  I put my big girl panties on and dealt with it though.  I needed to see the damage that my lack of effort and dedication did.

A gain of only 2.2lbs in the big picture isn't THAT bad.  But to me it's bad.  When I initially made the decision to lose weight it was June of 2009 and I was at my highest weight of 179.5lbs.  I lost weight that summer, my lowest being 172lbs.  Not a huge loss but it was progress in the right direction and I was happy with it.

And then it was all downhill (or back up the hill) from there.  Another semester of college started, I gave in to the temptation of having Mountain Dew at school just because it was available to me, I was eating unhealthy food for lunch due to a large break between classes, and I wasn't exercising as much if at all.  By the end of October I was back up to 179lbs but quickly moved back in the right direction, by 11/13/09 I was back down to 175.3lbs.  But then I "fell off the wagon"...I stopped weighing in once a week so I wasn't able to see what my actions were doing to my body.  It wasn't until 1/2/10 that I stepped on the Wii Fit again and what it told me wasn't good.  I weighed 182.5lbs, a gain of 7.2lbs since 11/13/09!  A new highest weight, not something I had ever wanted to say.

My weight has been like a yo-yo since then going up and down, up and down.  Not a lot just a pound or two here and there but eventually the weight started going up more than it was going down.  I wasn't staying around the same weight any more.  First it was 184, then I found myself at 185, then 186, 187, and finally at 188 which is where I am at now.

In 2009 when I had lost some weight I didn't notice a difference in my body.  Now as I've put on some weight I've noticed a huge difference in my body.  I used to only have stretch marks on my hips, the love handles.  Now I have stretch marks there as well as my stomach on the left and right sides of my belly button just below it.  When I lay on my back my hip bones no longer stick out, there's too much fat in the way for that to happen.  I can no longer "suck it in" and make my stomach appear flat.  If I knew what would happen to my body in 2009 I would like to think I would have worked harder to keep the progress going, or at the very least not let my weight become worse than it was but of course hindsight is 20/20.

So now what??  As much as I dislike what my body has become you would think I would be out there hitting the gym or working out at home all the time, eating healthier foods, cutting out Mountain Dew but is that what I'm doing?  Honestly, no.  I try to cut Mountain Dew out and I do well during the week when I'm at work all day but with school I again am tempted to buy a bottle from the vending machine to enjoy during my 2.5 hour long class twice a week and on the weekends when I am lounging around with nothing to do but homework I think about how good one would taste so I cave and have one, or two, or three (yes I seriously did that Sunday).  I've hit the gym once in three months and haven't been back since.  Should I go today after class?  Definitely!  But I have a 3-4 minute speech I have to write and record by the end of the day so am I tempted to not work out?  For sure!  Excuses is what it is.  Do I want to lose the weight or not??  By my actions you would think no but by my feelings towards my body you would definitely think so.

So how do I get myself moving in the right direction again?  How do I get myself to commit and keep that commitment?  Tough questions...ones that I haven't found the answers to yet :(