Home Sweet Home

Well it's been an amazing month.  Our diets (lifestyle changes) are going great and we were in Italy for a week over our 10 year wedding anniversary!

We had an amazing holiday and even lived through the 93+ degree heat everyday!!  I took many many photos and I have put links to them all below.  You do not have to have a Facebook account to look through them... Enjoy!

Just thought I would do a quick check in... Nothing much going on to be honest.  It was rough going back to work on Monday after having two relaxing weeks off.  Andy and I didn't have anything planned but to just workout, relax and watch football.  Which is exactly what we did for two whole weeks... it was bliss.

Then Monday hit and it was back to work.  Oh well... it was great while it lasted!

Our next time off is scheduled in August.  We will be celebrating our 10 year wedding anniversary on August 11th and we will be celebrating it in.... (drum roll please).... Rome!  Can not wait for this trip, it is going to be a blast!  We were in Paris in May and that was a great 4 days but we have a whole week in Rome and it is going to be awesome!  I think we may take the train for a day trip to Florence and Pisa also.

Since I was MIA from my blog in May when we went to Paris I'll post a link to the photos from our trip.

I would first like to apologize to you that find my new obsession with exercise and calorie counting boring but it's hard to find other things to write about right now for the simple fact that it is a 24/7 lifestyle change and so much of my time is centered around this right now.  I hope you don't find it too boring!

Anyway... Look what I got today.

This is my new heart rate monitor!  I have used it four times already and I can not say enough about how much I love it!  The chest strap is just worn during any kind of exercise and it transmits your heart rate to the watch. You are able to keep track of calories burned, heart rate, laps and much, much more.

After you are done you can go to the Polar website and by putting the watch next to the microphone on the laptop it will transmit all of the details it recorded directly to your profile where you can monitor your progress.


This is my main diary page. It loads the data into the time in which it was recorded and then you can click on it for more detail.


These are the overall details from the exercise. This was recorded during a 30 minute exercise video 'Jillian Michaels 30 Day Shred'.  As you can see it shows my average heart rate and my maximum heart rate.

When you click on Training Zones...


It then breaks down the data into even more detail.  It will show you what percentage of time was spent in each Training Zone. I had no idea before starting all of this that there are better zones in which to keep your heart rate in as it will burn more fat in those zones.  For me the best zones to be in for this are Zone 3 & 4 (Green & Orange).

I would also like to say that of course when you do things such as exercise videos you have no idea how many calories you are burning as everybody is different. But on some machines, such as my treadmill, it has a calorie counter.  It had always told me that 3 miles = 424 calories. However now with my Heart Rate Monitor I know exactly how many I am burning which turns out to be more around 280! That is a big difference!

Okay enough about this... I think you guys get the idea of how much I love it!

At work we had a collection for Laura C. She is leaving us to go on maternity leave and won't be back for nine whole months!

She is a very creative crafty person so I knew she would appreciate something with a little thought and effort put into it.  So I discussed my idea with my co-workers and they all agreed she would love this gift.

Here is the before shot [after a long day of shopping in the 68° heat]...

After I found the colorful polka dot tea towels I knew that they had to be used and that it would be bright and beautiful.

Here is the after shot...


I couldn't really figure out a way to get the digital thermometer in the cake without taking up much needed diaper space so I decided to wrap it on the side.

So each level is made from folding and pinning the tea towels together and then rolling up diapers inside. It officially held around 85 or so.  Then all around the tiers, as you can see, I added little goodies for the baby.


My favorite part of the whole cake was the cute little caterpillar... how adorable?


I was off work on Friday but I took it in for Laura's last day and she LOVED it!  As we all knew she would.  I'm so glad it turned out so nice cause she deserves the very best!  I'm going to miss her loads over the next nine months. But I've already told her that there will be lots of visits.