Scribbles 'n Scraps

See, I told you guys I really don’t like Halloween.
All this candy sitting here waiting for tonight, and do you think I can avoid it? No. Of course not.
Do you think we bought gross candy, so that we wouldn’t be tempted? No. Of course not.

We went out and got the best stuff out there – Kit Kats, Reeses, Whoppers, Skittles, Hersheys, M&M’s, Jujy Fruits.

So what am I sitting here doing? Yeah, apparently I am replacing all of my missing dairy and pork with 1,000,000 calories worth of candy fat. Love life, really I do. But mmmm….they do taste good.

What is your candy pleasure?

Mine? Reese’s Peanut Butter Pumpkins

I have been on a health kick lately. Part of it is because I am trying to lose weight, and the other part of it is because I realized how many things we put in our bodies that just shouldn’t go there.

The first thing I gave up was Pork. That was hard because Mike makes these to-die-for Pork Ribs, but alas – Pork is the worst possible meat for our bodies. Next to go, but not completely (because I am such a die hard Cheeseburger lover) was ground beef. I am substituting with ground turkey which is by far better anyway. Talk about a yummy flavor.

So jump ahead to the past two weeks. I have cut down on my dairy intake immensely, which has been incredibly hard.  I hate milk, and don’t drink it anyway, BUT It doesn’t help that I love cheese, sour cream and yogurt. No, not all together. Instead of using two piece of cheese on my sandwiches or whatever, I am using only one. I haven’t bought yogurt in about a month and well, I am still using sour cream but less of it and really only on my baked potatoes (yeah, yeah, I know – starch!) I have kind of halved everything. It has really helped because in one week’s time I dropped over 2lbs without doing much!

Now it’s time to find an alternative to milk, since much of what I cook requires it, especially when baking.

Jasmine had a post today over at Our Wicked Weighs, about the evils of milk. I already knew how awful it was and it makes me just so sick that I have been avoiding it for years anyway. You should really read her post.

I was going to reply to her, but while I was writing my response, I wrote so much it could be a post all in itself, so here is what I was going to write in response to what she wrote:

Jasmine,

I have totally been thinking about trying these two different types of milk, so I am so glad to see them on your blog and hear what you had to say about them. I decided to try and cut back on dairy a lot (and yes that even means cheese though I am not giving it up completely).

That said, I already gave up milk years ago because I hated how it made me feel. So I am missing my cereal badly and caved in last night and used skim in an over full bowl of cereal so that I really just had a little something to moisten it with. Uhm. Not again.

I felt like crap afterwards and I don’t think Skim is that different from 2% obviously based on how I felt.  I won’t be doing that again!   BUT, I am going to go get these two and try them out.  Thanks for the advice!

Erin,
My mom gets Silk all the time.  My daughter loves it, especially the chocolate. I have been wondering about that one too and have tasted it – not bad. So now I’m going to be standing in front of all these trying to figure out what I need and knowing me, I’ll just get all three.

To both: Using the one for cooking because it isn’t sweetened is an excellent idea! I am thinking that would be wonderful, and the kids would never know the difference!!

Ok, now that I have written a post, I’ll be gone. (I didn’t post all this because I thought they’d both think I was crazy with a response that long!)

So gals, thanks for the heads up today! I needed a reminder and after my fiasco last night, this post could have been written for me. For those of you who are dieting and/or eating healthier, you need to seriously consider cutting back the dairy and completely eliminating the milk.

Now, if you read this far and didn’t read Jasmine’s post, go read it now!

Bet you don’t know what that is? Well, maybe you do if you read this blog, or definitely this blog.

However, if you don’t know what it is – it is National Novel Writing Month, and it is coming up in just a week.

I have been going just about crazy trying to decide on my topic/storyline. I have been participating in some random challenges from the website, just to keep myself occupied and fresh. What wound up happening though, was something I didn’t expect.

I wound up finding a story in our blended family. I decided to use part of our lives to create a character who was going through a similar thing and voila – I found a whole book. No. Seriously. I have no idea how I am going to do it either, because I now have a chapter written and it is against NaNoWriMo rules to write your book ahead of time. So that one will have to wait on the back burner until after the extreme writing craziness of November and extreme editing craziness of December. Which sucks btw: because I had some great storylines going.

In the meantime though, it gives my mind something else to think about instead of stressing over my ideas for the actual NaNoWriMo competition. I am initially aiming to win the 50,000 words, but am hoping I can bypass that and come close to 100,000. Say prayers. Lots of prayers. I need them.

I feel so eternally blessed when I look at my five children. They are so open to learning, to living and to experiencing everything a child can experience.

I have spent time with them lately trying to expose them to different things.

We have watched The Little Princess. They loved the story of Sarah and her beautiful imagination.

We have watched two different versions of The Miracle Worker: The Story of Helen Keller. They absolutely loved the story and were upset when the movie ended. Desperately wanting to know what happened to Helen later in life, so we will be doing some research on that.

And now tonight I have them watching Heidi. I have four girls totally enthralled in this movie and I think they will be equally sad when it ends.

I plan to also get my hands on Black Beauty, The Secret Garden and even Treasure Island. They might not wish to read the books, but watching the movie is just as good to expose them to our classics. Two of the girls have already expressed an interest in reading the Heidi books.

Next on my longer list is the Little House on the Prarie series. I love how open minded my children are.

I wanted to include a few more photographs that I got back from this past weekend. We are all still so incredibly proud of her.

This is perhaps one of my favorites. Waiting for her turn was so hard. Here she is watching her friends compete.  

Dixie and Brielle with their first win – third place ribbon.

Right before she competed. 

This was her as she took home her second win – FIRST PLACE! woohoo!

I try not to brag too much, you know we all have great kids. Today was my daughter’s first ever horse show. I am so proud of her. She entered three classes, with an optional (but mandatory in her mind) 4th class that consisted of a costume contest. With that being said, I have never been more proud of her.

The day started great, when she found out she got her first pick on horses. Her beloved Dixie (show name: Miss Budweiser…why? She looks like a miniature Clydesdale). Her first class was a Ground Pole Walk/Trot and she placed 3rd. We got a great shot of her face on the video camera when she realized she won an award (we were so happy for her!) Next up was the Ground Pole Course A which she took home the 1st place ribbon, right after that was Ground Pole Course B and she took home the 2nd place ribbon for that. She wasn’t doing actual jumps yet in the show (she can do cross-rails), but she did do ground poles. Regardless she was up against some stiff competition, many of those kids have been riding for years, but she did SO well. I am so very proud of her. Oh, she did place 6th in the costume part, but she was perfectly happy with that, and besides, there were some AWESOME costumes there! (and sorry but all I cared about was the actual show and she was soooooo good!) I will try to get our video coverage uploaded to the computer so I can show her off

Here’s my princess with her horse Dixie.

Many of you horse lovers out there might have seen this video. My mom sent it to me several months ago and I actually fell in love with this horse. I have absolutely no interest in actual Dressage, neither does my daughter, but if you have never watched a Freestyle Final – WATCH THIS! It is amazing!! Have you ever seen a dancing horse? It’s long, but it’s worth it!