Thrifty Tuesday 7/26

Well this Tuesday wasn't much cooler than last Tuesday, but my partner in crime and I headed out anyway. There were TONS of sales in Morton today...we didn't even go to all of them. There was a sale out at Ackerman Farms so we started there and I bought a little wooden scoop that is just like the ones that the sell at the St. John Spice Company. We always bring home some gifts from this little shop on vacation and there are these multi-colored wooden scoops and bowls that I could never stop looking at. I bought one for my mother-in-law last time, but never bought one for myself. Well now I have a small one for a quarter :) I also bought a neat red glass candle holder, that price tag on the bottom from when they had it at their shop says that the set of three was $70. So that makes my 75 cents look even better. Red seemed good for christmas, valentines, or fourth of july. My next big purchase was some bottled water to keep us going a little longer. There were several houses that had kids selling home made snow cones. We ended with a house that had a sale earlier in the summer as well, with dirt cheap prices. My partner in crime found a vintage christmas tray that matched another tray she had found earlier in the summer. I found a cute christmas tin in the free box. We ended there for the day, but I got sucked in by a couple sales on my way home. I only bought one thing - a grapevine wreath for 50 cents. I thought maybe I could stick some hydrangea pieces or sweet annie in it and turn it into a fun fall wreath. So $1.75 today. I'll be taking the week of next week for vacation and after that work picks up a lot, so I'm not sure how many more Thrifty Tuesdays I'll get in this summer.

C25k - Why hello there week 7

Week 7, kids...I made it to week 7! Though this is really my eight week due to a double up on week 4, I'm still pretty excited. I started the same time summer school started up, so I've made it through our whole summer sessions (after finals tomorrow).
I was really hoping that it was going to be cooler this week - it's not. I went out this morning for Week 7 Day 1 which was a 25 minute run. I did not make it as far as I did when I did a 25 minute run on Saturday, but I didn't walk. Though I really wanted to. These long runs give a lot more opportunity for your mind to mess with you. With the intervals, just about when you were wanting to walk, it was time for walking anyways. Now I know that there's no walking. I think today I did 2.4 miles in 25:20. So definitely slower today. But, I have two more 25 minute runs this week so perhaps we can get back up to the 10:00 mile pace again. Maybe I really need that Queen at the beginning of my run :)
I rewarded myself after my morning run with a nice cold breakfast smoothy. I had been reading in this blog about a chocolate peanut butter banana smoothie...but I didn't have any chocolate milk or bananas. So that wasn't going to work. So I threw some vanilla yogurt, milk, strawberries and some ice in the blender. It was pretty tasty. Though that chocolate one might be better.

Couch to 5k - Week 6 done!

Well I survived another week - and this one was pretty crazy hot! Today I did my longest run yet...26 minutes (well, 25:55). Based on my google mapping, I think I did 2.6 miles in 26 minutes. The first 1.3 miles took 12:30 and the second 1.3 miles took 13:25. It started to feel really hot the second half and there was a big uphill. I didn't get up as early as I should have, so it was a little after 8:30 before I headed out the door. So the second half I was feeling the heat and humidity. I did take my iPod for the first time today, and though it was nice of my iPod to shuffle to Queen's "We Are The Champions" just as I was starting my run :)

I Heart School Supplies

I've had a love for school supplies since I was pretty little. The two best parts of a new school year were always: 1) Riding our bikes up to Lincoln School when they would post class lists to see who your teacher was and who was in your class and 2) Going to Farm & Fleet or Kmart to buy school supplies. There is just something about that perfect set of crayons and that blank notebook. Picking out the colors for your folders and pencils. I don't know. Because I still love it - I love picking out a planner at the beginning of a new school year (even if I'm not great about using them...) and finding some fun colored pens for doing my work.
So I was excited last Sunday when they said at church that they were collecting school supplies for the elementary schools in East Peoria. The bulletin said there was more details at the information table - so I made a bee line for the info table after church. They had four different lists that you could take, so naturally I took one of each :) So today I went to Walmart (with my ads for walgreens, menards, and kroger...my pricematching doesn't stop with groceries) and bought supplies for two students. This whole deal would be even more if they would just let me take two kids to walmart so they could get the colors they want on everything :) So I got markers, colored pencils, crayons, watercolors, scissors, glue sticks, and glue for some fantastic art time at school. A basic calculator, ruler, pencils, and erasers for learning some math. Notebooks, folders, and paper to record it all. And a green pencil box to keep everything neat and tidy. I hope these kids have as much fun with it as I did :)

Book Review: The Time Traveler's Wife

I picked this up for $1 earlier this summer at a garage sale, mostly because I knew they had made a movie out of this book and I thought, well if they made a movie out of it then it must be good :) I started reading it and was super not into it at first - the beginning is kind of confusing as you are trying to figure out what is going on with all the time traveling, especially when Henry is meeting up with himself at different times. Mostly due to a lack of any other books to read, I kept going (taking a short break to read a dog book in the middle - dog book always trumps time traveling romance book). In the end it was okay - a little more sex then I like in my books, but I'm kind of spoiled by my dog books and christian romantic suspense books on that one.
After reading it, I convinced Brad to download the movie so that we could watch that. Well the book is definitely better than the movie. The movie was pretty slow with some pretty terrible acting - I think if I hadn't already known what was going on from the book it would have been kind of confusing as well. Brad watched the whole thing, though I'm pretty sure he hated it.
All in all, I'd give the book one thumb up and the movie two thumbs down. The book has some pretty sad and depressing parts, as well as being confusing at the beginning, but it is interesting both in subject matter and the way that it is written (it switches back and forth between Henry narrating and Claire narrating). The book gave you dates with years at the beginning of each new section, which the movie could have used as well. Not too bad for $1.

C25k - No more intervals

Well today was my last day of intervals in the Couch to 5k program - all long runs from here on out. This week was on day 1 did 5-8-5 minute jogs with three minute walks in between and today was two 10 minute jogs with a three minute walk in the middle. It has been really hot all week, so I've been trying to go as soon as I get up...which is only like 7:45 :) They're my days off, okay?
This morning I made it like a block further in 10 minutes then I did on Saturday for my turn around point for my 20 minute run, so that was good. And for the second 10 minutes I felt really tired and hot, but I went pretty much the same distance as the first half despite feeling so slow.
Saturday I have a 25 minute run, and then a week of 25s, a week of 28s, and a week of 30s and then the end. So I should finish on August 13th. The 5k for Wishes is at Grand Prairie on August 20th, so I'm still considering that as a cap to my Couch to 5k adventure...though I haven't actually committed to that by signing up.

Mid-Summer Garden Update

Well it has been almost two months since we got our garden in the ground, and I am deeming our first attempt at a garden a success! So far we have enjoyed spinach and lots of romaine lettuce, which has been great since we always have salad every day. We have had one jalapeno which I threw into some Slow-Cooker Chicken Tortilla Soup on Tuesday (yes, that's right, it's like a 100 degrees and I'm serving soup for dinner...it seemed like it would go well with all this salad). Tonight a picked an Anaheim pepper and chopped it up and put it in with the shredded chicken in the crock pot for some chicken tacos here shortly.
There appear to be about 5 blackberries that are almost ready, which for the first year I was shocked that we had any. There are definitely some tomatillos going out there. Apparently they sent out their husk as a big puff first and then the tomatillo grows inside of there. Right now they just look like green puffs. There are maybe 8 gourds going...some green ones and some white ones in a couple different shapes. I'm pretty excited about the fall with all of the dried hydrangeas and sweet annie and fun gourds. Maybe if this teaching thing doesn't work out someday I can just have a roadside stand selling all of my home grown fun.

Thrifty Tuesday 7/19

Well it was a toasty day for standing around in people's garages. My partner in crime and I weren't really into it today with the high temps, so we were going to hit an "estate sale" at the optimist club since it is air conditioned and then go out for lunch. We went to the estate sale and really didn't see much of anything so we headed to Steak 'n' Shake for some shakes and turkey clubs. When I went to go home, I got sucked into a garage sale as I was driving past. And once I stopped at one I couldn't control myself and hit like 10 more :) It was ridiculously hot to be garage sale-ing and I definitely was dripping with sweat. But every time I left one there was another pretty close so they just kept drawing me in. I only spent 70 cents. I bought a set of replacement wicks for our tiki torches for 10 cents, a kids bible song three cd set for 50 cents (though one of the cds is missing and in its place is a women's country karaoke cd), and a neoprene water bottle holder that snaps onto your lunch box. Nothing real exciting. There was one girl about my age that had some cute clothes that were all banana republic and express, but I was having trouble focusing with sweat running down my nose, so I passed on those. Until next week...

Couch to 5k - Week 5 done!

Well I just completed week 5!! This feels like a pretty big accomplishment because at the beginning thinking about the workout for week 5 day 3 was pretty intimidating. Today was the first long run of the program - 20 minutes. I started out with my usual 5 minute walk down to country club and then started off. I went down and did the olympia fields circle and then continued down to the clubhouse and then turned around and did the same thing. It took me 9:50 to get down to the clubhouse and 9:40 to come back, so I finished out my last 30 seconds on sheridan. I google mapped my route because I have no concept of distance and it looks like I ran right about 2 miles in 20 minutes. Which my goal was to get to a 10:00 mile pace, so I'm pretty pleased with that. So I got in about 2.6 miles, with a half mile of that being walking at the beginning and end.
Five weeks down, four to go. Next week is the last week with any intervals - after that it is all just long runs. I found my iPod today and have it charging up so it should be ready to come along on the next long runs. I haven't used it much since grad school, so we'll have to see what good running tunes it has on it.

C25k - New Long Run

Well today I had a new longest run - 8 minutes of jogging, twice actually! Today was 8 min jog, 5 min walk, 8 min jog, 5 min walk. It is much, much cooler today than it was on Tuesday which helped a lot. And while 8 minutes isn't super long, it's longer than 5 min which was the previous high, so that's still something.
Saturday, however, the plan calls for a 20 minute run. I think I may have to break out the iPod for that one. When I was doing short intervals, I used all my brain power to keep track of when to switch from jogging to walking and vice versa, that my brain didn't have time for much else. But now that the intervals are getting longer, my brain needs some kind of distraction. Or a buddy...anyone want to go for a 20 minute run on Saturday? :)

French Dips - Round 2

So tonight for dinner we ate exactly the same thing that we has last night, which is pretty rare at our house. But the salad with strawberry dressing, french dips and scotacharoos were so good last night, how could you go wrong?
I decided that the part of these sandwiches that makes them so good is the melted cheese and crunchy bun from putting them under the broiler. The meat is very good, but I don't know that it is any better than the other crock put (edit: make that crock pot, I'm not sure what a crock put would do) shredded beef I have made. But I never did that extra step of putting the sandwiches open face under the broiler and melting the cheese and browning the buns. Totally makes all the difference.
And there's still some more meat in the fridge to have beef tacos tomorrow night. So my 3.5lb roast got us three meals which makes it a pretty good deal and some easy cooking for this week.

We Graduated!

Well I don't think we were the valedictorian, but we graduated! (And even got a certificate :) Sally did everything that was asked of her, except for laying down. We just are not very good at that one. She would only do it about half of the time at home and that was with a lot of treats, so I had a feeling that at class with no treats we didn't stand a chance. But she walked, sat when we halted (except once when I had to poke her bottom), did our about turn, did a sitting stay for 15 seconds, and came when called.
All but one of her puppy friends graduated, with some doing everything on the list. Only one pup didn't graduate. When Bryson was doing come when called, he ran over and drank Sally's water and then ran out into the horse arena and was just running around crazy. That wasn't part of graduation :)
The class was fun and Sally really did make some progress over the past few weeks. Now to just keep practicing to keep the crazy at bay as much as possible.

Cool Kitchen Cooking

On my off days from school I'm frequently in the mood to spend some time in the kitchen, but I really didn't want to have the oven going much this week. I'm pretty psyched about dinner tonight. We're having french dip sandwiches, salad from our garden with homemade strawberry poppy seed vinaigrette dressing, and scotcharoos. The beef has been going all day in the crockpot and smells pretty tasty. And it's a lot of beef so I'm hoping to get some tacos out of it another night this week and have some still to put in the freezer.
I came across this website "Our Best Bites" when looking at some of the linked recipes on Once A Month Mom. They had included the french dip sandwiches in their monthly freezer cooking plan. Our Best Bites seems to have a lot of good recipes - a lot of stuff that sounds like what we like to eat.
I'll post an update on how everything tastes later!

Update: Everything was fantastic! The sandwiches were really good...I think broiling the buns to give them a little crunch and melt some cheese really was the winning touch. The salad dressing went great with the fresh greens. Awesome meal :)

C25k - Steamy week 5

Well if how bad you smell is an indication of how hard you worked, man did I work hard this morning. I felt reaaallllyy slow and it is reaaallllyy hot and humid out. Apparently 8am is not an early enough start time on these central illinois july days.
But either way, I got week 5 day 1 done - three sets of jog five minutes, walk three minutes. I guess as long as I'm still jogging, it really doesn't matter what speed I'm going. I think my secret goal is that I would like to be able to run three miles in 30 minutes at the end of this, but really my more realistic goal is that I just want to run for 30 minutes.
The one down side to my Tuesday morning runs is that Tuesday is garbage day here in the neighborhood. So everyone has hot, stinky garbage sitting at the end of their driveway as I run past over and over again (I'm still just doing loops in country club). But the garbage man doesn't come until close to 10, and by then it would be REAAALLLLYY hot.

Couch to 5k - Week 4 done!

Well this one took a little longer then the first three, but week four is officially done! I did the work out once last week, then took a week off when I wasn't feeling well, and did the workout three more times this week. This week was 3 min jog, 90 sec walk, 5 min jog, 2:30 walk and then repeat all of that. So 16 minutes of jogging total. Today I ran on a treadmill for the first time in my five week battle (yes, that's right, battle). I didn't get out there this morning before church and this afternoon it was 90 degrees and humid, so I went up to my in-laws' house and ran inside on their treadmill. Running on a treadmill is definitely a different experience - though I kind of liked having a fixed pace kept for me and it was nice to find out what pace I've actually been running at. In my 30 minutes of jogging and walking I covered ~2.2 miles and my jogging pace is at about an 11 minute mile.
This next week stretches out the intervals in the first two workouts (three five minute runs on day 1 and two eight minute runs on day 2) and then ends the week with the first long run of 20 minutes. So next weekend I should make a better plan and get out there when it is nice and cool for my first long run.

Chicago Hut

We tried out a new restaurant tonight in Pekin. It is next to our pet store and Brad was eyeing the place the other night when we were buying some dog food. It is called Chicago Hut and is on Court St. in Pekin next to Food Depot and Pet Supplies "Plus". The menu is an interesting mix...gyros, chicago hot dogs, italian beef, tacos, homemade soups, salads, paninis. Pretty reasonably priced - the meals were $6-8 and include fries and a drink.
I got the italian beef sandwich meal and B got the italian combo meal, which was the italian beef with a sausage in there as well. The portions were HUGE! Giant sandwiches with melted mozzarella cheese and sweet peppers on the side and big piles of fries. The fries were fantastic - B voted them the best fries in Pekin. And the meat was great as well.
The place appears to be run by a mexican family, as dad and all the boys were working, which who knew that mexicans cooked good greek food, but whatever they're doing, they're making some good food. As my grandpa would say, "they're doin' a business".

We Grew Something Edible!

Last night we enjoyed the first fruits, or rather vegetables, of our garden labors. I harvested some spinach last night (that probably should have been harvested a bit sooner) and we enjoyed that with our dinner last night. It tasted pretty good! Brad did comment that the homegrown stuff tastes a bit more "planty" than the stuff from the store. I went ahead and harvested all of the spinach that was ready and put it in the fridge as we eat up salad pretty fast and it was pretty ready to be picked. There is romaine lettuce that will be ready here before too long as well. And one of my pepper plants has a little baby pepper on it already. And the tomatillos...oh man...we are going to have a lot of tomatillos...

"Look, she can run!"

No not me...Sally. We had week 5 of puppy class tonight. Tonight was review night, just practicing all of the things we have learned in the past four weeks. It was a small class tonight, only five "students" were there. We practiced walking in a big circle on a loose leash, working on our u-turns and about-turns, sitting down when we stop. Sally is pretty good at all of those things. We practiced stay, which we are great at, Sally is great at being frozen in place. Then laying down - we are terrible at that. And by terrible I mean she only does it if I pull her front legs out from under her. We did some figure eights and weaving in and out of other dogs. All pretty good. We ended the night with "come when called" practice off leash. We did it a couple of times just a short distance and then since we had extra time they had us go off to the far end of the arena kind of behind some bleachers so our dog couldn't see us. Sally was the last pup to go and when I got back there and called her I heard someone say "Look, she can run!". You see normally when I call Sally she just walks verrryyyy slowly over to me. Never once has she trotted or done anything close to a run. But when I got out of her sight, she was anxious to make her way over to find me. She came running around the corner with a big grin on her face :) Maybe she'll even graduate next week....maybe...

C25k - Week 4 Attempt #2

Well last week I started week 4 of the Couch to 5k plan, and after getting through the first of the three workouts, I ended up not feeling well for most of the week - definitely not well enough for running. So I didn't do workout #2 or #3. So today I started over with week 4 day 1. I could tell that I hadn't been out there in a week, but I got out there and did it before it got too hot today. Back on the horse...or something like that. I think Lucy was glad to see me get out there as it gave her a prime opportunity to steal two cookies off the counter...

Thrifty Tuesday 7/5

Well today I came home with nothing from our garage sale-ing adventures. My partner in crime only spent $0.20. It wasn't for a lack of sales, just a lack of anything I wanted to put into my home. There wasn't even anything that I was tempted with but unwilling to pay for. I guess they can't all be good weeks - and last week was pretty good. There's always next week...