A Quick Update..

I thought this was newsworthy enough for me to make a post about. It's 8:35 p.m. I got back from the gym about a half hour ago. Normally, right now, I'd be eating a bowl of ice cream, or some cookies, or something entirely unhealthy. But no. I have right in front of me a bowl of cantelope. I don't know what's wrong with me. I went into the freezer all ready to get out the ice cream, and I had a sudden craving for cantelope. So there you have it. This is probably a once in a lifetime event. Tomorrow will be ice cream again. Even though it's freezing here, I still have to have my ice cream!

And to make this post somewhat exciting, I will put up some pictures of our bathroom. We're working on #46: Completely finish renovating the bathroom. We painted half of the bathroom a sage green this past weekend. We only did half of the bathroom because: 1) we're kind of lazy and 2) we wanted to see if we liked the color before doing the whole thing, and 3) we're kind of lazy.

We then put together our shelving unit and medicine cabinet that we got for a nice deal at overstock.com. $1 shipping is the best! And then, last night, came the big step. Actually putting our new mirror and medicine cabinet on the wall, without making unnecessary holes because we measured wrong. We only yelled at each other maybe twice during this process and that yelling must have been key, because we were very successful. We got them up with just one try.


Oh, and we got a new light. yay! (We're going with the bronze fixtures--I feel they don't show water spots and dirt as much as brushed nickel and chrome--therefore, less cleaning for me. Another yay!)

Here are some pictures of our handy dandy work.

A Melting Pot Experience

Other than the ongoing items, I haven't done anything big off of my list. But, just so you know I'm still alive, I figured I should write something. So, I am going to tell you all about my Melting Pot restaurant experience.

Our good friends Sarah and Scott came to visit us from Sheboygan last night. We haven't seen them since their wedding back in October! This is the Sarah and Scott from #18 on my list: Go to Sheboygan to visit Sarah and Scott. However, I can't mark that one off of my list since they came to visit us instead.

We decided to go to the Melting Pot for dinner since they had a gift card they got for their wedding and they had never been there before. It was a very fun experience, and I even took pictures of the different courses, so you know what we're working with. It was all very good and probably more food than I should've eaten in a day.

We did the "Big Night Out" dinner. That dinner included all 4 courses: the cheese fondue, the salad, the meat fondue, and the dessert fondue. From the Big Night Out menu, we chose the 'Fondue Feast' for the meat portion. The 'Fondue Feast' includes: filet mignon, cedar plank salmon, Memphis BBQ pork tenderloin, Key West shrimp, Honey Dijon Chicken, Spinach Artichoke ravioli, and fresh vegetables.

First, we started out with the cheese fondue. We decided upon the listed cheese: Boston Lager Cheddar Cheese Fondue. The description of this is 'aged cheddar cheese blended with Samuel Adams Lager, Tobasco sauce, Worcesteshire sauce, and chopped chives. (Please note that some of those items should have the trademark 'R' with the circle around it after the names, since they are brand names....I just don't know how to do that on here). :) This cheese fondue was very good! They give you bread pieces, vegetables, and apples to dip in it. If you're like me, you may be thinking that it seems VERY strange to dip apples in cheese. But, I tried it anyway, and I am surprised to say that it was VERY good. And I don't even like apples. So there you go. Here is a picture I took of our cheese fondue pot:

Next course, you get a salad. I got the Southwestern Cobb salad. I didn't take a picture and I'm not going to go into detail on this because I'll just assume you've had a salad before.

Next course is the main course--the meat fondue. I listed all of the meats that come with the 'Fondue Feast' above, so I won't get into that again. But here is a picture I took of the plate of meat that Josh and I shared. Yummmmmm, raw meat.

It may not look like a lot, but trust me, it is. We barely finished this whole plate. But Josh stepped up, and finished what I couldn't. This next picture is of the fondue we cooked the meat in. We chose one called 'Coq au Vin'. All I know is that it had some garlic in it, some wine, some mushrooms, and some other random spices and such. It was very good. Here's a picture I took of that:

How the meat works is that you get another plate to put your cooked meat on. Each person has fondue sticks that are different colors, so that you can put your piece of meat into the pot, without getting it mixed up with someone elses. You put a piece of meat on the stick, and place it in the pot. Chicken and beef you leave in there for 2 minutes. The rest you can leave in for 1 1/2 minutes. I usually just kept them in the for a while to make sure they were cooked fully. I get nervous about stuff like that. We also got a ton of sauces to dip the cooked meats in. It's all very good. Unless you're a vegetarian, then it's probably not that great.

And now we go on to the final course...and possibly the best course...the dessert! Even if you're stuffed after eating the prior 3 courses, you'll somehow make room to eat the dessert. We chose the 'Cookies n Cream Marshmallow Dream' chocolate fondue. It was dark chocolate, with marshmallow cream and oreo pieces. VERY GOOD. You get marshmallows, cheese cake, pound cake, brownies, bananas, and strawberries to dip in this. Here's a picture of the dessert:

They start it on fire when they're first mixing up the chocolate. Don't worry, the fire goes out before you dip your dessert in it.

And finally, here's a picture of the 4 of us at the restaurant. It was certainly an enjoyable experience!

Oh, and then we came back to our place and listened to the audio clip online of the 911 call in Connecticut, of the woman who's chimp attacked another woman. Just a great way to end the night. :)

What do you think constitutes a workout?

I'm only asking because I don't know if I should count my last two "workouts" for #67: Workout at least 3x a week. If these past two don't count, I don't think I'll have a problem hitting my goal for the week, as I went to the gym on Sunday, and am planning on going tomorrow and then Saturday. But I'm still curious on your thoughts.

Let's start with Monday...I went to the gym, with the intentions of doing my normal non-weight-lifting-workout of an hour on a treadmill or the elliptical, or a combination of both. However, I had a headache. I had this headache before I left, but it wasn't that bad, so I thought I could still go on with my night. Boy, was I wrong though! After about 25 minutes on the elliptical--and not going at my full intensity--I just couldn't take it anymore and had to go home. Which I then left immediately, and pretty much went right to bed when I got home. Does this count as a workout? I fell 35 minutes short of my usual time there. I didn't sweat too much--just enough to make it look like I had done something, but not enough for Josh to be too grossed out to sleep next to me.

And then, yesterday, Tuesday...Josh and I went to the gym right after dinner. However, since it was The Biggest Loser night, we were on a time crunch. I have to be home for The Biggest Loser! So, we got to the gym by 6:15 and we just lifted weights for about 25-30 minutes, and were walking out the door by 6:45. Does this count as a workout?? I do lift weights about 2-3 times a week. I strive for 3 times, but sometimes only do it twice a week. But usually, when I lift, I then follow it up by a half hour on a cardio machine. Which I didn't do last night. I had high intensity while lifting...which even caused me to strain a muscle in my neck.

So, now that you have the facts, let me know your thoughts on this. Do these count as workouts for my #67?? I mean, yes, I did do something to attempt to work out those two nights, but nothing compared to my usual workout, and I barely felt tired after each of them. I'm torn.

Oh, and to follow you up on #69--my push-up goal...I did 28 push-ups last night! My plan to accomplish this goal of being able to do 40 consecutive push-ups, is to do one more each week. I do push-ups whenever I lift weights at the gym, so about 3x a week. And each week, I'll do one more push-up than the last. This week is 28 in a row. So, based off of this, I should have this goal accomplished in about 3 months!

A Clean Car and a Night Out. Yay!

I'm back and working on a couple more items on my list! I'll start again with the boring ones. I have doing well so far on: taking my vitamin every day, going to the gym, giving Josh's massages, and reading the Bible with Josh. This week we will have a true test though...we can't go to our 20-Somethings group on Wednesday night, so we don't "have" to read the chapter of Acts they're going over. But I have faith that we'll make time for that anyway. It's always good to have that time with Josh. Oh, and I've been consistent with eating grapefruit about every other day so far. This week, though, my fruit of choice will be cantelope, since that's what we bought at the grocery store. I would've LOVED to have come green melon to go with my cantelope, but I couldn't believe the prices of the melons. Since they're out of season around here, one small green melon was $4.50. I just couldn't get myself to spend that much on what would probably get me a few pieces of melon. I guess I'll just have to wait until summer!



Last Sunday, February 8th, I cleaned out my car. That was the start of #93: Clean out my car and keep it clean for one month. I didn't want to write about this last Sunday when I first did it, because I didn't know if I'd be able to actually keep up with having my car clean. All it takes is one stop for coffee, or a store, and my car will have empty coffee cups, receipts, bags, etc., littering the floors. But I feel like I can write about it now, because it has been one week, and I have kept it clean! This is a VERY BIG deal. Yesterday, Josh and I stopped for coffee before the gym, and instead of leaving empty coffee cups in my cup holders like usual, I took them out and threw them away. That's progress. Last week when I first cleaned it out, I had 3/4 of a garbage bag full of stuff from the floors and the trunk. Napkins, cups, bags, church programs, water bottles, etc. And because I felt good about having a clean car on the inside, Josh and I took advantage of the nice weekend and got our cars washed as well. That didn't last long, as it rained and snowed last week, but at least my car looked good for a day!



Also, this past Friday night, Josh and I might've accomplished #2: Dress up and go out to a nice dinner. However, I don't think I'm going to count it because it was for my work, and not just by ourselves. But because I don't get to dress up very often, I'm going to write about it anyway. :) My work had it's "Evening of Honors" at the Pfister Hotel. It was a very nice event. It started out at 5:30 with some cocktails. Then a short speech around 7 and finally dinner around 7:30. We were served salmon and filet mignon. Very good stuff. Then some awards were given out and finally we got to dance the rest of the night away! It was a very good night out! Here's some pictures of us looking all fancy. :)

We're planning on going out somewhere for our anniversary in a couple months, so hopefully then, I'll be able to cross #2 off of my list!

The Case For Faith

I've decided to start working on #58: Read 5 new books a year. If I want to actually finish 5 this year, I need to get going! I'm not a big reader, which is why I set the goal to only 5. And even that seems like a lot to me!

My first book this year is 'The Case for Faith'. My 20-Somethings group at church read this book and discussed it last summer. However, Josh and I didn't join this group until they were on the very last part of the book, so we missed reading it and having the discussion. However, we did come in on the final day of the discussion, and it seemed very interesting! First, I started reading this book last fall, but my school work started to build up, and soon this book moved to the back burner. So, now I'm trying again. I better get the majority of my books in this year before school starts full time in the fall!

I'm only on page 37 right now, but so far, I'm very intrigued. As a person who has faith in God, I find it interesting to read what holds other people back from having that relationship with Him. As it says in the first pages of the book, "But faith isn't easy, even for people who desperately want it. Some people hunger for spiritual certainty, yet something hinders them from experiencing it. They wish they could taste that kind of freedom, but obstacles block their paths. Objections pester them. Doubts mock them. Their hearts want to soar to God; their intellects keep them securely tied down."

Here are the 8 objections to faith that this book will discuss:

• If there's a loving God, why does this pain-wracked world groan under so much suffering and evil?
• If the miracles of God contradict science, then how can any rational person believe that they're true?
• If God really created the universe, why does the persuasive evidence of science compel so many to conclude that the unguided process of evolution accounts for life?
• If God is morally pure, how can he sanction the slaughter of innocent children as the Old Testament says he did?
• If Jesus is the only way to heaven, then what about the millions of people who have never heard of him?
• If God cares about the people he created, how could he consign so many of them to an eternity of torture in hell just because they didn't believe the right things about him?
• If God is the ultimate overseer of the church, why has it been rife with hypocrisy and brutality throughout the ages?
• If I'm still plagued by doubts, then is it still possible to be a Christian?

The first objection is something I've always wondered about. While it never stopped me from believing and having faith in God, it is an issue that has come up in my head from time to time. If there is a loving God, how can He allow their to be such suffering in the world? I'm hoping this question is answered for me after I read through the first objection. I'll let you know!

Just call me Martha Stewart

Wow, yesterday was a big day for my list! I don't know where to start. Well, I guess I'll start with the ones that I'm 99% sure you don't care about. I took my vitamin all 7 days in the past week! And, I went to the gym 4 days. Oh, and I did give Josh a massage at least 3 days. Probably more. Yay.

So, now onto the ones that are more interesting to write about.

First, #42: Bake something from scratch. This probably the most exciting one! I am completely knocking #42 off of the list. That's not to say, however, that I won't bake something else from scratch in the next few years. Yesterday, I made a brownie cheesecake from scratch. And it was awesome. There were 4 parts to this cheesecake, and I'm happy to say that every.single.part turned out. I got this recipe from this blog: http://lepetitpierogi.blogspot.com/search/label/Cheesecake , who got it from someone else's blog, who probably got it from someone else's blog, etc..

The first part of the recipe involved making brownies from scratch. I could've just stopped there as far as baking something from scratch, as I've always just made brownies from the box. But I decided that if I was going to do this, I was going to do this big.

Here's the brownie recipe:
Ingredients:
4 ounces unsweetened chocolate
3/4 cup (1 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter
1 3/4 cups sugar
3 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup flour

Directions:
Preheat oven to 350*F. Greatse 13x9 pan.
Microwave chocolate and butter in large microwaveable bowl on high 2 min. or until butter is melted. Stir until chocolate is completely melted. Stir in sugar. Blend in eggs and vanilla. Add flour and salt; mix well. Spread into prepared pan.
Bake 30 to 35 minutes or until toothpick inserted in center comes out pretty clean.
Cool the brownies, and then cut them into 3/4 to 1 inch squares for use in the cheesecake. You will only need 2 cups of the brownie squares for the cheesecake, so you will have to decide what you want to do with the rest of the brownies. :)

Here's a picture of the brownies that I had left AFTER I cut out the ones needed for the cheesecake.

Next, I made the oreo crumb crust. I doubled this recipe, because I like a lot of crust. However, I felt that was even toooo much crust, so I suggest just making it as the recipe says.

I do also have to give a big THANKS to Josh, for scooping all of the middles out of the Oreos, and then crushing them to use for the crust. :)

Crumb crust:
Ingredients:
1 1/2 cups (or 5 ounces) finely ground Oreos (or another chocolate cookie)
5 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted
1/3 cup granulated sugar
1/8 teaspoon salt

Dirctions:
Stir together ingredients and press into the bottom and 1 inch up the side of a buttered 10" springform pan. Fill right away with the cheesecake, or chill for up to 2 hours.

My picture-taking abilities aren't that great, but here's a picture of my crust in the pan:


Now, for the cheesecake:

Ingredients:
3 (8 oz.) packages of cream cheese, softened
1 cup granulated sugar
4 large eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla

Directions:
Make crumb crust as directed above for 10-inch cheesecake.

Preheat oven to 350*F.
Beat together cream cheese and sugar with an elecctric mixer until fluffy. Add eggs, 1 at a time, then vanilla, beating on low speed until each ingredient is incorporated and scraping down bowl between additions.

Fold brownie cubes in very gently and pour mixture in prepared pan. Put the springform pan on a baking sheet, to catch drips, and bake for 45 minutes, or until cake is set 3 inches from edge but center is still slightly wobbly when pan is gently shaken.

Here's a picture of my cheesecake:


And, finally, the Ganache Glaze:

Ingredients:
3 oz. bittersweet chocolate, finely chopped
4 tablespoons (1/2 stick) unsalted butter
1/4 cup heavy cream
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
1 tablespoon powdered sugar

Directions:
Place finely chopped chocolate in a medium sized mixing bowl. Scald the butter and the cream together in a saucepan (or in the microwave 1 min.). Pour the cream mixture over the chocolate and stir until the chocolate is completely melted. Whisk in vanilla and then whisk in powdered sugar until smooth. Spread over the cheesecake while ganache is still warm.

Chill the cheesecake until ready to serve.

And, here are some final pictures of my cheesecake. I will say, it was DELICIOUS. And let me just say that if I can make this recipe, anyone can! It was easy. Just a little time-consuming.

Now, let's move on to #38: Make a new recipe every month. After a lot of searching, I decided to make Cheese Chicken Crescent Supper.

I was a little nervous about it while making it, but it turned out to be VERY GOOD! Everyone who ate it, liked it.

Here's the recipe:
Ingredients:
2 cups chicken, cut into small cubes (I used 2 chicken breasts, cut up)
2 cups shredded cheddar cheese (separated)
1 10.5 oz. can condensed cream of chicken soup
1 cup milk
1 8 oz. can Pillsbury refrigerated crescent rolls
Salt and pepper to taste

Directions:
Preheat oven to 350*F. Grease a 13x9 pan. In a large bowl, mix the chicken and 1 cup of the cheese, and the salt and pepper. Set aside.
In a small saucepan, heat the condensed soup, milk, and 1/2 cup of the cheese. Heat over medium heat until cheese melts and sauce simmers.

Spread a thin layer of sauce over the bottom of the pan. Reserve the remaining sauce. Open the crescent rolls, separate into individual triangles. Place 2 tbsp. of the chicken mixture on a triangle, and roll it up into a crescent shape with the chicken mixture inside. Place on top of sauce in the pan. Repeat, and line up all of your crescents in the pan about 1 inch apart. Sprinkle remaining 1/2 cup of cheese over the top.

Bake for 20-25 minutes or until crescents are puffy and lightly browned. Serve with remaining sauce, and enjoy!

I don't have any of my own pictures, because by the time I took it out of the oven, we were hungry and just wanted to eat it. But here's a picture from the recipe I took it from: (and I'm happy to say, mine actually looked like it was supposed to!)






And, now, you ask, who at all of this wonderful food? Not just Josh and me! I then completed #45: Have another couple over for dinner. My best friend, Marisa, and her husband, Tim, came over to enjoy this food. It was nice to have company, since it doesn't happen very often! I didn't take any pictures of us, but here is a picture of Marisa and Tim on their wedding day this past September. (not the best picture, but it was all I had of the two of them!)


And because I hung out with Marisa last night, #12 has been done this month. (Although, I do hope to hang out with her more!)

See, I told you it was a big night. Oh, and I can't forget, Josh and I read through a little of Acts Ch. 9 last night. (#1: Read the Bible with Josh once a week). We're currently studying the Book of Acts for our 20-somethings Group at church. We usually read the part for the week separately, but we've been trying to do it together lately. We're hoping to read through more of it tonight, so I'll have to let you know what comes from that!

Wow, flossing really does work

I flossed this morning. So that means I'm half way done with #79 for the week. I will admit that my motivation behind flossing wasn't because I felt like I should floss because it's healthy for my teeth and gums. Nope. My motivation was because I had a popcorn kernel stuck in between a tooth and my gums from when I ate popcorn yesterday. And it was REALLY bothering me. So much so, that I actually had to bring myself to floss. And guess what!? It worked! It got the kernel out. But then I thought, why stop here? I mean, I have all of this floss out, I might as well do the rest of my teeth. So I kept going. I even flossed in between the teeth that are so close together, that it makes the floss hard to get through. And you would not believe what this floss came out with! (I won't go into detail on this, as that would be gross) So I am possibly becoming a believer of flossing. It really does get stuff out at the toothbrush misses. I may even try this again tomorrow.

In other news related to this list...I've taken my vitamin every morning so far. And I've been to the gym twice this week. Woo.

The Best Time to go to the Gym is....

During the Super Bowl! It's still day 1 of this list, and I am on my way to completing #68: Go to the gym 3x a week. I do have to say that I usually do this. I love the gym. However, I do hate the gym during the months of January-March-ish. Too many people make it a New Year's resolution to lose weight and go to a gym, so it's always soooo much more crowded right now. But, I had the best time at the gym tonight! It was pretty much empty, besides me and a few other women who have no interest in the Superbowl. I lifted weights for 40 minutes, including doing 26 push-ups. I'm on my way to 40! :) And then I went on the elliptical machine for 40 minutes. It was great to have my pick of any machine I wanted. Tomorrow, I'm sure I'll hate the gym again, as all the people who ate too much during the Superbowl parties will be there trying to burn off all of those chicken wings and taco dip. But that won't stop me from going.

Grapefruit with bananas???

Well, it's Day 1 of the next 1001 days. Ever since I finished my list a couple weeks ago, I've been thinking about which items on the list I wanted to tackle first. I thought it'd be cool to knock off a big one on the very first day...you know...like #37: Build up to $10,000 in our emergency fund or #69: Be able to do 40 push-ups at one time. But, let's face it. I'm not close to either one of those.

While I haven't done anything big today, and I don't really have any plans to do anything big in the next 7 1/2 hours that there are left in the day, I have accomplished THREE of the ongoing ones. Yesss, three of them.

We'll start with the easy one. I sure hope I accomplished this today, because my goal is to do this all 1001 days and it would sure suck to mess it up on the very fist day. #76. Take my multi-vitamin every. single. day. And I got up this morning, and took it right away. Feel free to be proud of me. Actually, you don't need to feel that proud of me. I'm usually pretty good at taking this. I'm not cheating by adding a really easy one to my list, however, because my downfall with taking my vitamin is when I run out of vitamins. Even though I'm a big planner, I NEVER plan ahead with getting a new thing of vitamins before my current one runs out. On average, it takes me about 2 weeks before I remember that I need more. Soooo, it's for times like those that I put this on my list.

Speaking of vitamins, I thought I'd just let you know that I recently switched to the Target brand of the women's multi-vitamin. They're like...$2 cheaper than the Centrum One-a-Day! I find that to be a lot of money. For the past 6 or so years that I've been taking this multi-vitamin, I've always looked at the cheaper brands...like the Target brand, or Walgreen's brand, or Roundy's, but I'm usually too afraid to try them. However, now that I've finally made the leap, I've realized that they are EXACTLY THE SAME THING! I even took the time to compare the percentages of all the vitamins in them, and yes, they are exactly the same. This is going to save me like...$12 per year. I could probably buy a squirrel with that. And because I like pictures, here's a picture of my Target brand vitamins:



And also, a picture of a squirrel for your viewing pleasure.




Ok, so the vitamins are good so far. On to my second accomplishment of the day.
#40. Eat at least one fruit a week. You may not think that's a big deal, but it is for me. I don't eat fruit. Ever. I SWEAR that I have what is called an "oral allergy". No one believes that I have this, but I am not making this up! To back up my problem, I will direct you to this website: http://allergies.about.com/od/foodallergies/a/oas.htm
In short, an oral allergy is a reaction from the proteins in fresh fruit, vegetables, and pollens. In fact, a large number of people with an allergy to pollen, have this oral allergy. And yesss, I have an allergy to pollen. So there.
Now that you have my explanation to why I don't eat fruit, I am going to try to incorporate one fruit a week at least into my diet. I pretty much took this to the next level today, and had TWO. And this is probably the best combination of fruit a person can eat. Bananas cut up on grapefruit. And in order for it to be good, you have to eat the slice of banana at the same time as the piece of grapefruit. This might be my staple fruit for the most of these 1001 days. So you can visualize this wonderful creation, here is what I ate this morning:



And since I bought 4 grapefruits, I will hopefully be eating this 3 more times this week. This is going to be a big week.

And lastly, on to the third and final item on my list that I did today. #8. Give Josh a massage 3 times a week. We do like to give each other massages, especially after a good workout. But sometimes I'm lazy and don't want to do it. So, in order to make sure I'm being a good wife, I made my goal 3 times a week. I don't have a picture of this like my previous two accomplishments, but again for your viewing pleasure, here is a picture of the love of my life. :)



I also need to give a nice shout-out to Josh because today is his half-birthday!!! He's pretty excited too. The big 25 1/2. It really is a big day.