Lifestyle Change

My husband and I have decided to start eating healthier. Oh who are we kidding we are on a diet!  I'm trying to love it, but lets be honest eating fat free cottage cheese, celery sticks and pretty much zero bread SUCKS!  One of the few shows he and I watch is Extreme Makeover Weight Loss Edition. The guy that is on there Chris Powell has a website called Reshape the Nation .  Its a great site.  They give you an entire meal and exercise plan based on your height, weight, and body type.  We have been on it now 4 days and I'm already down 7lbs.  Of course I realize most of this is water weight, but who's complaining.  So for now this weight loss is enough to make me stay on it.  For the record however I am sick to death of cottage cheese and extra lean ground turkey.  I'm looking forward to being able to switch it up a little.  I also just for fun decided to stick the meal into My fitness pal , just to see how many calories this meal plan is. I was amazed I eat 5 times a day and am only eating 1500 calories.  I have added a few things that I love just to make sure I stick to it.  I have either a hot tea or hot chocolate once a day.  I can't live on just water and I hate those added flavor things you can put in water.  All in all I guess I really shouldn't complain.  I know I'll feel better and I know I'll get used to it.  I just miss my comfort foods. 

I made the decision a few weeks ago to fly the kids and I out to Idaho to visit my grandparents.  Now as the trip approaches I'm thinking to myself am I NUTS!  Flying with an 18 month old who doesn't sit still (on my lap mind you) and a 4 year old that is into everything.  I think I've lost my mind.  I know it will be the longest 7 hours of my life.  Buggy is super excited.  She loves going to Grammie and Popo's house.  They live on a huge farm so she gets to run around and explore.  I'm excited to go but dreading the trip and being away from the hubby for 5 days.  Should be an interesting few days. Pray that I make it without a total melt down!

 

Planes, Planes, Planes!

We live in post housing and not new post housing. We live in old post housing!  Although I love our floor plan there are many things left to be desired.  We have office building carpet, linoleum that is made to look like hard woods, the ugliest cabinets known to man, and of course 20 layers of paint on the walls lol.  We are allowed to paint, but that comes with the stipulation of having to paint it all back when you move out.  I started out thinking oh who cares its not that hard.  I'm painting any and every room in this place.  Then I painted Buggy's room.  Although it turned out super cute my motivation for painting soon flew out the window.  Now I am stuck with trying to come up with other ways to enhance each room in our home.  Right now I'm working on our son's room.  He is only 18 months old so he could really care less, but I want him to have a room straight out of better homes and gardens lol.  Problem with that is I'm no interior decorator and lord knows the army doesn't pay enough to hire one.  So what do you do, you go to pinterest.  Little man's room is themed in Old school airplanes.  I found a few cute paintings and some other things to go in it, but I really haven't found a lot.  Because of this I decided to create something to help spruce up the walls.  I'm very happy with the outcome. 

In all there will be 6 or maybe 8 depending on how much room 6 take up. Of course the pinterest version the pictures were framed in real frames.   After pricing frames I decided that was just way to much for my budget so I improvised.  I went to Michael's and got the 9x12 artist loft canvases.  They are flat and just the right size. Because the walls in his room are white I decided to paint the canvases a bright color.  I used plane old acrylic paint and had to put 3 coats of paint on each one.  I got the pictures off the Internet and printed them on regular ink jet printer paper.  Then I mod podged them onto the canvas and voila.  I really do love them and can't wait to see them hanging on his walls!  All in all it cost me 15 bucks for the entire project!

Painted Vase!

I've been so busy with other stuff I haven't DIY in a while. So I decided last night I was going to do something today!  I have been wanting these vases from Cracker Barrel forever because they would go so good in my bedroom, but I refused to spend $30 dollars per vase.  I had seen on pinterest that you can actually paint your own cheap vases I decided to give it a try!  Man I'm so excited I did. The first one I did turned out GREAT!  Here's how I did it.

This is my finished product!  Not to shabby for someone who isn't all that creative.
First thing you do is clean out the vase.  Then just has a little paint and start twirling making sure the paint is covering all parts of the glass.  Once you have the first color started add a little of the second color.  Keep twisting and the colors will swirl together.  It does take patience which if you anything like me is hard.  I added more paint then needed.  What I should have done was just be patient and wait for the paint to move.  I ended up with a lot of excess paint on my tin foil lol.  Once the entire vase is covered leave it upside down until dry.  I moved mine often so the it wouldn't stick to the tin foil while drying. 

 This is during the drying phase!  I love how the colors have  swirled together.

This is the paint I used for it.  I know a lot of people use the enamel paint and not acrylic but acrylic worked great for me! I can't wait to do the other two I bought and display them on my dresser.  All together for paint and the vase I spent $3.51. Happy Painting!

Settled?

We have been at Ft. Drum now about 3 months.  We are mostly settled in to our house and I say mostly because we are still waiting on our stuff from Washington to get here.  My dad and step mother and driving it up here in Sept.  I can't wait to have ALL my belongings in one spot.  We have a routine down for the most part and my precious girl has started taking ballet.  We've settled into life.  There is just one problem.  I am having a terrible time making friends.  I've met a few that were very nice, but didn't seem to interested in being friends.  The other problem I have is that my husband and I are older than most of the guys in his rank and so there is a big maturity difference.  I've never had such a hard time making friends before.  Is this what happens when you get older?  I refuse to give up though and I have found a few ladies that I'd like to meet in person.  Hopefully we can get the ball rolling.  I love my family but I need a girls night!  Lord knows my husband won't go with me to see Magic Mike!  Until then I'll keep myself busy with the kids, hubby and a house that still needs a little sprucing. 

BJ's work seems to be going OK.  I say just OK because he found out today that there is a pathfinder class opening up soon and he wants to do it.  The problem is his Commander won't allow anyone to do anything if there PT score isn't at least 280.  Keep in mind that the Army only requires you to pass the test which I think it like a 200.  Its frustrating because BJ is above that score, but not at 280.  The max you can get is 300 so they want them close to maxing out.  Its like this for anything including going to school.  Although I can understand it a little, it annoys me.  You are stopping your soldiers from becoming better soldiers cause they can't run 2 miles in under 13 minutes, or can't do 75 push ups in two minutes.  That's seems silly to me.  Now BJ is spending ever chance he has at the gym in hopes of increasing his sit ups and run time.  I know he can do it, but I wish he didn't have to jump through so many hoops.  Guess I better get used to it. 

On a happy note here is a picture of buggy on her first day of ballet!

Holy cow has it really been a month since my last post?  Crazy how things can change in a month.  We finally got into Post housing!  The house is by no means fancy, but I really like it.  Definately needs some paint and a little TLC, but for now its awesome.  Bj and I decided we would start doing one home project at a time just to ensure we didn't over extend ourselves.  In our housing community they have a contest every month for Yard of the Month.  My husband is determined to win it so that is where we started.  So far we have re-seeded the bare spots in the yard and put mulch around the gorgeous trees in our front yard.  Now we just have to clean out the flower bed area lay mulch and plant flowers oh and wait for the grass to grow in.  We have been watering it just about everyday and the seeds are already sprouting.

In other news we are now the proud owners of a purebreed huskey.  He is so pretty and super good with the kids.  His one downfall.  He's still in the chewing phase and he refuses to be in the backyard. Guess thats two downfalls isnt' it?  Jake as already managed to dig various holes in the backyard and escape.  I can't tell you how infuriating it is to chase after a dog while pushing a stroller.  On top of the fact that he chewed right through our new garden hose.  I just have to remember he's a puppy he's a puppy lol.  Thankfully when he got out we and some nice neighbors help me catch him. 

Neighbors what can I say.  We have some good and a lot bad.  The neighbors directly connected to us started out nice.  They let us borrow their broom to sweep the moving truck out before we returned it and they have been very friendly, but I'm starting to wonder about them.  They have 3 kids who spend the majority of their day hanging out of their second floor window talking to Jaden.  I'm worried one day one of them is going to fall out and land on their head.  On top of the fact that some of the things that have been said to Jaden have cause for concern.  One of the little boys who couldn't be more than 5 told her he was going to break into her room in the middle of the night and steal her panties.  What kind of 5 year old says stuff like that!  Then he told me yesterday he can't help but steal things all the time, he just can't quit.  Apparently the MP's have been called multiple times on them because of their kids hanging out of the window.  I know this because their mother came over and told me that I should watch out because Jaden was in the window and the lady behind us will call the MP's on us.  She apparently has called on our neighbor many many times.  She then proceeded to tell me how everyone around here is a gossip and that I need to be careful.  It was kind of an uncomfortable conversation to say the least.   I'm hoping it doesn't get much worse, but if these kids keep saying things like they have been to my child their parents and I will be having words I can feel it.   All in all we are settling in and enjoying being in our own home again.  In one more month we will get the remainder of our things from Seattle.  Then we'll really be able to call it home.

Itching to DIY

We have been at the Fort Drum Inn now for almost 3 weeks.  I can't say its been totally horrible because I haven't had to cook every night, but it really puts a damper on the DIY projects that I'd like to get finished.  I have a list of stuff I started before we left Georgia plus a bunch of other stuff I have now decided to do since moving here and I can't do any of it.   So I'll patiently wait the two more weeks we have until our house is ready to move into and then I'll DIY myself to death! 

BJ is settling into his unit and has found out that they pretty much do nothing all the time.  The only time they work is when an Apache breaks and it takes more than an hour to fix.  Apparently that hasn't happened since December.  So they'll wait for another to break and in the mean time he gets to work on getting his PT score above 250.  I have a feeling he's already there. We will know by Monday of next week when he takes his first PT test.

On a positive note, I have met a few ladies. They seem pretty nice and hopefully I can cultivate a friendship here and there. One of them I'm not to sure about. She was nice, but a bit aggressive when it came to letting me know about how crappy the women on this post are and how crappy the FRG for my husband's unit is.  I appreciate the heads up, but I'm more the type to find things out for myself.  I am of course wiry based on a few of the Fort Drum Wives websites I've seen, but I'm going in with and open mind.

Have I mentioned my kids are driving me nuts?  I guess for me that nothing new, but this hotel room is getting to them as well.  They are into everything, messing with everything, touching everything.  They have become those kids at the store that you look at and think wow their parents have done a crappy job with discipline.  Poor Jaden has been grounded from TV a total of 2 weeks of the 3 weeks we have been here lol.  Time out seems to be her new best friend as well as " front leaning position"  I'm not sure about asking a 4 year old to sit in the push up position as punishment, but my husband does it any way and ironically it seems to get her to chill out and stop her crazy ways at least for a bit.  Yet another reason I can't wait to get into our house and get them back into their routine.  14 days and counting :)

Here is a few pictures from out stay. ENJOY!

Fort Drum I hope your ready for the LIttle's

We have officially been at Ft. Drum for 10 days.  The post is beautiful and we've seen plenty of deer and even wild turkeys. Billy spent most of his first week in processing which even involved the kids and I doing stuff.  Its been interesting.  I think we are pretty much done with all of that thankfully.  Currently we are staying at the illustrious Ft. Drum Inn. Let me tell you I haven't stayed in this crappy of a hotel in years!  I know it sounds mean, but I really do hate it. The wall paper is old and peeling off the walls.  The linoleum in the bathroom is also peelings off the floor.  We have a small "butlers pantry" not even a kitchen.  We are here in total 35 days. I was told by the housekeeper that I am not allowed to cook using anything they haven't provided.  So no crock pot or steamer.  You can bet I just wait to start cooking until after she has cleaned the room.  How can they honestly charge me 65 bucks a day and then tell me I'm not allowed to cook for my family.  Your taking all our money I can't afford to go out to eat for every meal!  I guess to be fair they do provide breakfast and dishes to microwave food.  I think maybe that is how they make the breakfast as it seriously doesn't resemble food.  The kids are pretty much having cereal every morning and I have a bagel and cream cheese.  Beyond the horrible living conditions the post is nice and its so nice to have my hubby with us.  JJ is in daddy heaven.  All you ever hear out of her mouth is daddy play with me daddy play with me! 

We found out a few days ago we will be living in a 3 bedroom townhouse on post.  It only took two weeks to get offered which is really good. We move in on the 14th of June.  I can't tell you how excited I am to have my own house again.  We've actually bought furniture for this one and really want to make it a home.   So only 22 more days and I can officially settle into our new life.  I will post pictures soon!