Fast Food challenge week 1 complete

I did it!!!!!!!!
I went to macdonalds on day 1 or 3 (cant remember) but we only had iced coffee's, tia had a pink donut (i didn't even taste a single pink delicious sprinkle).
Tia and I went out around 11.30am, bad time to go out! We came home at 3pm and had lunch!
I did not go late night shopping til hubby is on his way home/meeting me out and then eating kfc on thursday, friday night!
Tia and i sat down at a milk bar/corner shop/hot food shop for 40mins while we waited for 3.15pm to walk back near kinder to the school & then buying school uniform. Could have easily asked for a burger with the lot (like everyone else) but relaxed in the air con, with flav water & magnum expresso ice cream x.x
Went out shopping on saturday, did not have lunch out!
(Alyssa was cranky on/off from 5am til 7am, when she decided she was fully awake) on sunday was/is uber tired... did not feel like going shopping for milk.. did not feel like cooking.. thought seriously bout pizza.. how easy it would be.. then wondered if hubby would cook *sigh* ended up going out shopping to woolies, grabbing stuff coming home and cooking dinner!
Mula saved= $60-90!!!!

Excited about school..

Tia is growing fast. Her speech is getting better, her vocabulary is getting bigger.. All good to hear! Yesterday after dropping tia off at kinder, i stayed and did "kinder duty" which is staying to help for a hour and a bit while they do several craft things. My table was making cards. Basically sticking a recycled christmas card front picture onto a piece of red carboard decorating with sparkles, sequins and little christmas tree & star sprinkles with the glue in pots and then using a glue stick to stick a little piece of paper that said "To my family, Merry christmas Love" on the inside.

I had one little boy (not going to prep next year) with the best manners stubbornly decline any decoration! I had one little girl who wanted the card to be horizontal and open that way. I had another girl who would only use the glue stick. I had a little boy who decided that using 10% of all decorations on offer should be put on his card. It looked so blinged! The teacher told him that was a bit silly as they would not all stick.. And then someone up-ended one of the sequin containers onto the floor and i was down after that picking them all up! lol!

Alyssa was pretty good.. up till the end. I had her in the bassinette pram thing (basket with canopy(think like a convertible), held in pram by 3 clips) and then on the floor towards the end so she could roll around and see more than just the ceiling..

The other 'stations' were making angels (painting and using glitter) and making christmas trees (threading and glitter) This all comes home on the last day which is also the concert/party day... i think i might stay and do kinder duty again that day. as the note says drop off the kids with morning tea as usual @9.15am and come back at 11am with plate of party food. It takes me half hour to walk there or back home.. which means i'd spend less than a hour? at home b4 walking back.. I'll just take a bottle that day, i think. (Yes Alyssa is having on average 1 bottle. Basically for when i'm inconvenienced(trying to run out door), think im empty (only been 2hrs) or know she will bite me (so impatient!)..

Dieting sucks

(note ive eaten mud cake today and baking further yummy stuff.. so im not 'dieting', i am not eating fast food & i do plan on eating much better very very soon..lol )

NO TAKEAWAY/FAST FOOD Challenge 3wks!!!

Starting Monday 24th Nov.
Ending Monday 15th Dec.

If you'd like to join in on the challenge, leave a comment and then drop in once in awhile as i'd love to hear how your doing!

I was pretty successful in the times ive done it.. i remember some 2 years back when i went months without any bad fast food! And while sticking to any "plan" has not been planned or implemented successfully over the past 4months (with the aid of being tired, breastfeeding, busy many excuses)

For me I will be passing up the usual fast food (kfc, pizza, macdonalds, chips.. pretty much all that we have thats on offer a 5minute walk or ph/net order away)..
I will instead be having salad sandwiches, veggie subs, ham n salad subs, (not the meat n cheese subs) steamed dim sims or home-made (no i dont own a deep fryer).

I'm wondering whether i should include cake, donuts, thick shakes also??!!.. baby steps i think for the first week? We shall see how it all goes!

So my first steps for a successful week will be:
1) Meal planning (including new recipes to avoid eating out due to 'boring' meals)
2) Buying ingredients for the planned meals.
3) Eat brekkie/lunch/dinner b4 going out.
4) If out walk towards the short line of subway not the huge line up of kfc/maccas.
5) Throw out pizza coupons & forget about the online sites of pizza vouchers.
6) Include perhaps a tray of oven fries (no extra added oil) or home made pizza planned for the weekend.
7) Have some fuss free meals (stag chili in a can & cc's, canned soup, dim sims) available in case i'm tired.
8) Blogging about the week challenge wise next sunday!

my visual dna..

Saw this on maria's blog! thought i'd have a go at it!

Picnic Cob & dinner pic

As usual i changed it a bit..
the recipe called for zuchini, eggplant, sweet potato, basil leaves, bocconcini.. none of which i have and in the case of the zuchini & egglplant both i dislike! I was going to get some bocconcini to try out.. but i forgot!
I substituted the bocconcini for some pepato cheese (pretty waxy, hard but crumbly) & some normal cheddar. I substitued the chunky red chili dip for pizza paste sauce, the semi dried tomatoes for fresh tomato and the veggies for triple smoked ham, mild italian salami & pepperoni... and i forgot about adding any salad greens to it.. thinking about it now wouldn't have done well anyways (considering in the recipe, which i didnt read to the end) they cook it.. i put 1 quarter in the oven, was yummy and the other quarter for 1min in the microwave and it was just as yummy, if not more melted and hot..
the next morning while clearing the bench i realised i left out the leftover salami & pepperoni! whoops!!!! Worked it out to be roughly the same cost as the veggie version, i found that the deli was cheaper than buying 100g packs from the over-packaged fridge deli section.. but then thats probably normal.. however the over packaged deli meats probably last longer in the fridge unopened..

finish up with a dinner pic, veal chop or cutlet.. with some salad.. i did add some addictive whole egg mayo to this..

Pnotes & portable HDs cool applications

P-notes is a very handy application!!! Hubby and I both have portable or personal hardrives.. the kind that are external to the pc. Recently he came across all these programs for portable/pocket hardrives.. like msn (imagine having the same version of msn where ever u go at work, home, from pc to ur laptop or friends pc.. u get the idea?) while some portable hardrives have insane storage e.g 1TB or 700GB.. these portable apps are quite small.. im guessing for ease of use for ur little 1G USB drives! lol!!!! :) But thats still good news for big or small stroage devices!!
Portable applications cane be found here
theres thunderbird (email), Firefox (browser), bible study tools, Pnotes...

what is Pnotes? hehehehe

Post it notes for the PC! How cool is that!!! Relatively environmentally friendly (assuming u turn your pc off every once & awhile..) No desk clutter (like ur guests care or even see your terrible desktop clutter on ur pc/laptop lol!) its also pretty Hard to loose them...

Pnotes can be found here

Ive been playing around with the skin editor.. but havent been able to make a successful one.. (must be something i am not doing right..) theres a few cute already made skins by other people to choose from that u can download optionally like the 'bunny notes' by Deepthi (shown in screenie) or the 'apple' & 'clasic pink' by Andrey Gruber (shown in my screenie, click for better view?!!)... *note my pnotes are transparent due to a option, u can have them as transparent or as none transparent as u prefer..
*note you do not need a portable HD or usb stick to use this program, its just handy if u regularly access more than one pc or are paranoid about loosing data...
*note pnotes is freeware

Disclaimer***I AM NOT PAID TO POST ANYTHING (never have or will). THIS IS NOT A ADD. THIS IS A UNPAID SERVICE I LIKE P-NOTES SO MUCH THAT I WANT 2 SHARE IT WITH YOU! ;) ***