Grilled Cheese Diet

Recipe:

2 slices of bread

Lots of butter

and a handful (or two) of shredded mozzarella. 

and this is probably the one and only recipe you'll see on my blog. I swear I cook more than just sandwiches but after being iced in for 4 days this is what my diet has consisted of. Bread. Butter. Cheese. Repeat. While that's 100% acceptable in my book, my thighs on the other hand are screaming at me. It doesn't help that we haven't done much exercising lately. The most we've done is searched for the remote, changed channels, and napped.

Same yoga pants. Different day.

That's not entirely true. On Saturday the dog and I braced ourselves and hit the slopes the sidewalks for our one and only walk since the ice hit Arkansas. Emily destroyed all of her toys in revenge from being stuck inside with her lame mom. I gave in once the sun came out a bit... but.. don't let that big guy fool you. It was still very well under 20 degrees. No worries though, thankfully I married a mountain man who made sure I had all of the REI essentials incase ice storms like this occur...

I've never been skiing, but I think walking your dog on ice is on that same level. After nearly falling twice, I let her roam freely while I walked/tiptoed behind. My hands and face were frozen so I can't imagine how the ice felt on her soft little paws. We walked and slipped around for a little more than an hour until my hair was turning into icicles. On the way home, I noticed my little favorite tree in our front yard finally losing the last of its Fall leaves...

Fall left the party, and Winter has arrived early. It was real Fall.... can't wait for you to return next year. Winter has made her presence known and plans on sticking around for awhile. No pun intended. I hope she lets up a bit so I can go to the grocery store and get more bread, butter, and cheese. Gotta keep my GC diet strong so I can fit into those yoga pants.... *side eye*

I Was Addicted to Tanning

Before I get to todays topic, I want to acknowledge the ice cubes, snow, and rain hitting our rooftop right now. Schools and businesses are cancelled/closed today, and most likely tomorrow. Although tomorrow is Saturday so school is a no-go anyway. I know some of you up north are laughing at us down here in the south, but just remember that we don't get winter storms like this often so our cities don't have the equipment to clear the roads. The million dollar equipment isn't necessary when we only have one maybe two storms like this per year.

Whew. Now that I got that out of my system, it's time for a little confession.

I was once addicted to tanning. If Intervention was around, then I'm sure I would have been on it.

I looked worse than Snooki and JWoww combined.

Worse than my favorite Super Bowl character.

Worse than these brown crayola markers.

and almost as bad as Tan Mom.

Here's proof:

 My favorite...

 WHAT. IS. THAT. 

It's hard to look at these pictures, because I now know the damage that was done to my skin. Not only was I addicted to tanning but also the duck face. I'll save those pictures for a different day.

It all started my senior year of high school. I worked during the summer at an after school program so I could spend my money on things I wanted throughout the school year. Mainly tanning packages, ripped Abercrombie jeans, and long white tip nails. Hashtag priorities. My mom refused to pay for such nonsense and she made it known that if I wanted that stuff, then I would have to pay for it.

So I did.

I would tan EVERY DAY. Unless we had a basketball game or practice that ran late. It got worse when basketball season was over and prom season was on the horizon. Not only would I tan, but I would get spray tans along the way, just to get that "glow". I would spend HUNDREDS on lotions, thinking they would make me look darker. I even used one of those nasty Playboy bunny stickers on my hip to see the progress of my tan. Disgusting.

I wouldn't use the normal tanning beds. No, no, I would use the extreme tanning beds. Ya know, the ones with the brightest bulbs and that cost nearly $100 a month to use. I would only have to be in there for 10 minutes and I would come out looking orange and what I thought was beautiful.

It got to the point that if I didn't tan that day, then I would feel pale. I would be up all night thinking about tanning the next day. I'm not sure if I was competing to be the tannest girl in the class or in the state of Texas, but I definitely had everyone beat by a long shot especially in the warm month of February. I was so tan that I was no longer considered tan, it was nearing a different culture/race. I would buy dark skin make-up and bronzer. And worse, light lip gloss.

It wasn't until after prom that I stopped going as much. I think it was the pictures that I saw the next morning and thought "not ok". If only prom was sooner. By college I was still tanning but not as much. Thank the big man above that there were no "good" tanning beds in the small city of Canyon, TX. I also didn't have money to spend on my skin. I bought a few tanning packages but was so busy with school I rarely went. Don't worry though, I was still rocking those white tip fake nails.

I graduated three years later looking my normal color...

... confused and unsure about where my life was taking me. I don't know why considering two days after that I was on-air reporting for the CBS station in Amarillo. Call that bragging, but I worked my butt off to get there.

Like most recent college graduates, I could barely pay the bills so tanning wasn't an option. It wasn't until I moved to Abilene that I thought I would get back into tanning again. A few trips to the salon, and bam, I looked like this...

My last tanning trip EVER was right before this picture was taken

At least you can see my eyebrows, but still I knew it wasn't ok, so I stopped. Just like that. I was tired of wasting money on it. I was tired of looking tan in the winter. And I was FOR ONCE IN MY LIFE worried about how my skin would look in the future. I also saw the beauty in natural skin colors and how pretty light make-up was. Lauren Conrad and Taylor Swift helped me see that.

I've been to the dermatologist several times concerned about certain moles on my body, but thank goodness everything has come back fine. I'm lucky now, but I don't know what's in store for my future. What I do know is that I'm wearing lots of sunscreen, applying anti-wrinkle cream (already), and warning others to stay away from this dumb addiction.

So what do I look like now? Most of you know but for those who are just stopping by today, here's an update:

You can see that my skin already has a natural tan to it. Why didn't I see that in high school? I'll never know. I will NEVER get in a tanning booth again nor will I allow my daughters (if I have any) to do the same. If they want to be tan, they can go outside and soak up the sun... with sunscreen on of course. 

Before I end this post, here's one last comparison for the road... 

Orange vs Natural. Which one do you vote for?

This is what dreams are made of....

I know this may come as a shock to you but there's a winter storm making it's way across parts of the U.S. I had no idea until I got on Facebook this morning and saw the 10 iPhone screenshots of the temperature on my feed. Not to mention, the 12 other pics of the temperature in their cars. I don't know about you but when it's -7 degrees the last thing I want to do is find my phone, take a picture, find the right filter, and then post it to every social media outlet I own. Also, I can't really feel my hands when it's below 40 so there's that problem too.

Anyway, enough with my complaining, yesterday morning two of santa's elves dropped off our new couch!

We've been waiting for it since October so you can imagine my excitement when it showed up on our front door/the Pottery Barn truck.

Before this we didn't have anything besides a leather chair in the corner. It was depressing. Some of you may know but Nate and I have had our struggles with furniture since the day I moved in last year. Here's the story, Nate was once in a relationship with a blue and white couch from the 80's. It was just the couch and him until I showed up. She was mad, and we got into several arguments when Nate wasn't around. So I gave him a choice,

It's either me or the couch.

You obviously know his answer but it wasn't pretty. So when it was time to move, the couch had to go because I refused to move it into our new home. You might be thinking "wow you're the worst person ever I can't believe he married you" and I often tell myself the same thing, but here's the deal... actually, I'm skipping the description of the couch and I'm just going to show it to you...

Ignore that precious face and let's focus on that couch. THAT COUCH. I can't handle it. It was time for it to find a new home. Craigslist helped us and it's now living inside the dorm of a college student where it belongs. We made some money off of it so you can't hate me too much Nate. 

We still need to furnish the dining room and the master bedroom. We're currently sleeping in the guest bedroom. Why don't you move the guest bedroom furniture into the master bedroom maxine? that doesn't make sense and you're somewhat right, but the master bedroom is too big for the furniture, and it would look empty. So that's our next big purchase. We're saving up for it now so we should have it by the spring.

Now that I've lost all of you, I'll wrap this up with one of my favorite music videos of all time....

YES.

My Pants Don't Fit

Todays challenge: successfully putting on my pants while breathing. Thanksgiving was (as usual) very good to me, and I may or may not have devoured my monthly worth of calories in 24 hours. Who am I kidding? I've been eating my thanksgiving leftovers, for breakfast lunch and dinner, since Thursday so I'm sure I'll be good on eating until NEXT Thanksgiving.

This year we celebrated Thanksgiving at our home in Little Rock. Nate's parents drove from Georgia to see our new house and to help cook the big meal. I was nervous to say the least, but they took on the role of cooking the turkey which made me happy because I'm not there yet in the cooking department. I was in charge of everything else besides the stuffing so it was still a stressful day but I definitely learned a lot on what NOT to do.

Like don't follow Paula Deen's pumpkin pie recipe, because oh I don't know, IT DOESN'T BAKE. I made 4 of them. FOUR!!!! and none of them turned out right. I finally went with another recipe and it was perfect. But still, I wanted to figure out why my PD pumpkin pie wasn't baking. Oh well, maybe next year.

Also, gravy is not easy to make. I felt like I was in a 3rd grade science project making glue. Note: you don't want your gravy to have the texture of glue.

Take pictures of your meal. You'll need it for the blog later. I wish all of you could see the beauty in my green bean casserole. I want some so bad right now.

Don't stress out. Thanksgiving food is like mexican food. It all goes together no matter what.

That's all the life changing advice I have for you today. Let's continue on to the rest of my holiday week, shall we? Nate came home from doing Air Force things, but won't be home for good for awhile. Hopefully he'll make it before my 25th birthday in the next couple weeks. We'll see. I told him on Wednesday that I really wanted to get a Christmas tree for our new home. I didn't care if it came from Goodwill or a garage sale, I just wanted the xmas spirit in here. A couple days later after doing some shopping, I came home to this...

How sweet is that?! He surprised me and I didn't even notice it until about 20 minutes after I arrived home. It's the perfect size and I can't wait to jazz it up with some ornaments. Although, we may have a naked tree this year, and buy ornaments that go on sale after Christmas and use those next year. I don't mind, I'm just thankful that we have a tree... in our first home.... with each other...

*awwww*