52 things in 52 weeks: checking in

I've crossed a few more items off the big 'ole list of 52 Things in 52 Weeks!

We're now up to a grand total of 12 Things that have been completed. Here's what I've been up to lately.

#21: Design a piece of art and frame it in our home.

I'm pretty proud of this picture I designed myself.

It might not qualify as "art" to anyone else, but it does to me. And it looks great in our bedroom!

#40: Write/type in my journal every day for one month. 

I did this back in March, and it was great! Unfortunately, I've only written in my journal a few times since then, but at the very least, I now have a month's worth of entries that will help me remember what life was like in 2013. And hopefully I can encourage myself to journal more often.

#46: Have personal scripture study every day for one month.

I know I should be doing this without such a strong reminder, but I don't always. And I'm happy to report that I've been much better about reading the scriptures on my own since doing this challenge!

Throughout April, the month I did #46, I came to think of reading my scriptures as something to check off my to-do list during the day. And while that mentality is not great, it did help me realize that scripture reading doesn't need to take place right before I fall asleep; in fact, reading the scriptures during the day often worked better and helped me more than reading them at night did.

#50: Make and deliver dinner to someone else.

This is another one that makes me feel a little silly to even admit to putting on my list. But alas. I had never taken dinner to anyone who needed some dinner! I am not a very confident cook, and I've always felt intimidated by the idea.

So when a family from church welcomed a new baby last month, I volunteered to take them dinner! Thanks to an easy lasagna recipe from my sister Rachel, it wasn't even painful. And now hopefully I can be less of a wuss.

three-day juice fast

Another goal from my 52 Things in 52 Weeks challenge is to do a three-day juice fast. Not a cranberry-juice-with-cayenne-pepper kind of juice fast. A raw-fruits-and-vegetables-juice kind of juice fast.

If you've ever seen the movie Fat, Sick & Nearly Dead, you may be familiar with juicing and juice fasting. By consuming the juice of only raw fruits and vegetables (preferably heavy on the vegetables), you give your body plenty of the nutrients it needs without any crappy filler. Joe Cross, the man from the movie, lost over 80 pounds by juice fasting for two months.

Since I'm not that crazy, I figured three days would be a good length for my fast. And after a great spring break (i.e., lots of eating and zero exercise), I decided now was as good of a time as any. That's logical, right?

We bought our fancy juicer a few years ago, and since then, Andrew has done several juice fasts here and there. He's found that his chronic congestion (and, ahem, snoring) completely go away when he does juice fasts.

The Omega VRT350HD.

I would drink one or two juices with him, but I never really considered doing a fast myself. I'll be honest; I'm not a vegetable lover. And vegetable juices taste like vegetables. I know it's childish, but there you have it.

But with this new goal in mind, I knew I could do it! Even if the juices tasted nasty (and some did) and even if I really, really wanted a steak or a cheeseburger or even a salad (and I did). It was only three days, after all.

So here's how it went.

#36: Do a three-day juice fast.

We started on a fateful Wednesday. I felt pretty hungry all day, but I wasn't seriously tempted to quit.

My go-to juice: kale, apple, and grapes.

On Thursday, I tried to combat the hunger by putting lots of kale in my lunch juice.

The ingredients.

That's seven cups of kale, folks. (And way more fruit/sugar than you're supposed to have in one juice. But whatever.) Back to the kale--it has more iron than beef does, and it also has tons of vitamin A, vitamin C, vitamin K, and calcium. I was still pretty hungry on Thursday, but it wasn't as bad. I drank more water, and that helped too.

And then Andrew quit on me and had chili for dinner. No worries; I stayed strong. On Friday morning, I was still feeling pretty good and had a great juice for breakfast.

Ingredients for Friday morning's juice.

I started getting a headache mid-day on Friday (a common side effect of juice fasts), but I drank lots of water and powered through. Then I made a big juice, drank some for lunch, and saved the rest for dinner.

Mmm greens!

The Results

Overall, the main change I've noticed is that I feel less bloated. Too much information? Oh well. I also lost five pounds, so let's hope I can keep them off by being more healthy and juicing more often!

my dairy-free adventure

One of my goals from the 52 Things in 52 Weeks challenge is to refrain from consuming dairy for one month.  I've read several blogs and articles that tout a dairy-free diet as being better for your skin, and I have skin that's as clear and beautiful as the skin of a 14-year-old boy, so I decided to give it a try. What could it hurt?

Turns out it was a lot more complicated and difficult than I had anticipated--tons of foods have dairy ("dairy") in them. Most commercially prepared breads, rolls, and buns have milk in them (I should've known that, but I just didn't think about it). Lots of chocolate products contain milk, and so do many other packaged foods. Who knew?

I sure didn't. I ended up starting and re-starting my month of no dairy several times, so I finally had to sit down and come up with some actual rules for my experiment:

• No cow's milk, yogurt, ice cream, cheese, sour cream, cream cheese, or any kind of cream in their regular forms, including anything that has been cooked or baked using any of these products.
• Products that had been cooked or baked using butter were allowed sparingly. (Butter has only trace amounts of lactose in it, so I figured this was okay.)
• No food that contains any kind of milk or cheese product on the ingredient list. (I tried really hard to follow this, but I was not perfect at it.)

So here's how it went.

#4: Don't eat dairy for one month.

No milk: not very difficult (except when it came to hidden milk ingredients and cream).

No yogurt: not too hard.

No ice cream: a little harder.

No cheesy things: the hardest. No pizza. Or cheeseburgers. Or Italian food. Or anything delicious.

I know you're dying to find out if it helped my skin. And I will tell you—I think it did.

Results

I did an embarrassing thing and took a picture of my makeup-free face at the beginning of doing no dairy. I'm sorry if you're easily grossed out, because this is gross.

No idea why I felt the need to close my eyes. More dramatic?

And here's my no-makeup face after a full month of following my no-dairy rules.

Conclusion

I think a lot of the improvement shown in the pictures would have happened just with time passing; a month and a half would've allowed my breakout to go away on its own without any treatment or intervention. However, during a typical six-week period, my face would've broken out a least twice, so it seems possible that cutting out dairy kept my breakouts at bay. Another difference I detected was that blemishes that popped up seemed to heal and disappear much faster than they usually do.

I can't say I'm a huge fan of being the person who has weird dietary restrictions, especially since this is in no way medically necessary. But since I have definitely seen improvement, I'm going to continue eating as little dairy as possible. I can't say I'll be able to stay away from pizza much longer though...

52 things in 52 weeks: checking in

I am happy to report that I have completed a whopping 5 of my 52 goals so far. Go me!

I should also report that my goals have been slightly altered since I first posted them. I made a few of them shorter (lasting for one month instead of two or three) and changed the month of no eating out to a month of no eating dairy. 

Without further ado, here are the things I've completed!

#6: Go on a weekend getaway (alone).

You can read all about our adventure in my weekend getaway post.

#7: Floss every day for one month.

It is very, very possible (read: 100% likely) that I had never flossed my entire mouth by myself until this month. I am ashamed.

(I also never knew the actual technique for correct flossing. I may or may not have found this out halfway into my goal. Whoops.)

But now I can say that I have flossed every day for a month! A consecutive month.

Yes, I needed a reminder stuck to my mirror.

Once I started doing it correctly, I definitely noticed a difference in how clean my mouth feels. And I'm fairly confident I'll keep doing it at least occasionally.

#16: Strength train three times a week for one month.

Like everyone else in the entire world, I decided that 2013 would be the year that I finally got in shape and got to my goal weight. I'd like to think that I have slightly more motivation than the average person, since I still have post-baby flab to tone up, but only time will tell. At the very least, I know I can do strength training exercises regularly for a month.

I'm definitely going to stick with strength training, because it gets you awesome results! I wish I could show you a before and after picture, but alas; I am not that brave. (Also, I didn't even take any before pictures. So there's that.) Just know that I have started the ongoing process of recovering from pregnancy and childbirth!

#35: Do a cardio workout four times a week for one month.

This goal got a little tricky in the final week, because our elliptical broke down, and I am not a fan of running outside (and we don't have money for a gym membership). I improvised by getting my Dance Central on and finding random exercise videos on the Internet. Emerson was highly amused by all of it. (He laughs hysterically whenever I do lunges. Is that a bad sign?)

Now that I'm done with this specific goal, I'll probably go back to my regular schedule of doing cardio two or three times a week. I'll have you know that these fitness goals have helped me lose over seven pounds so far! Hooray for progress!

#48: Make homemade baby food.

I know this isn't a big deal to a lot of people, but it seemed daunting to me before I did it. As you may have guessed, I'm not a confident cook!

I cooked up Emerson some acorn squash, and he loved it.

Squash halves after being baked and scooped.

The final product. (This wasn't all of it. Just a baby serving.)

Emerson was intrigued.

You could say he was a fan.

Well there you have it. Five down and only 47 to go! Oh boy.

52 things in 52 weeks: weekend getaway

Two days before my birthday, Andrew's dad spontaneously offered (at 6:30 p.m. on a Friday night) to watch Emerson overnight (that night) so Andrew and I could have a fun getaway at the Oregon coast. (And he paid for the hotel! What a great birthday present!) (Did you like all my parentheses?)

We almost turned down his offer--we were worried that it would be too rushed, that we hadn't planned anything, that we wouldn't find a good place to stay, etc.--but at the last minute, we decided to go. I'm so glad we did! We had a wonderful time together, and I think we really needed a nice break.

Andrew called around and got a really good deal at a nice resort in Cannon Beach. We were right by the water, and the room was awesome.

So was our view!

On Saturday, we got pastries for breakfast at the local bakery and spent the morning relaxing and walking around town. We found this gem at the local grocery store. There was one for Democrats too. Segregation much?

Andrew tried his hand at a player piano.

And we saw bacon frosting in the local candy store. 

Then we headed up the coast to Seaside and took a walk on the beach. It was a little chilly, but overall quite nice and sunny for the Oregon coast.

Can you tell the sun was in our faces?

So now we have gone on a weekend getaway,* and I can check off #6 on my list! 

*I know that since this trip was one night (instead of two), it might not technically count as a "weekend getaway," but I am definitely going to count it. It was the first time we'd left Emerson anywhere overnight, and it was on the weekend, and it was fantastic. Not that I don't love my baby, but yeah. It was nice.