Ladybug Studio

Beauty Stuff

This morning was one of the coldest so far this year and I had to stop and put gas in the Kia on the way to work. The planning wasn't very smart on my part, I know. Last night I knew that it needed gas and that I was just setting myself up for a chilly rude morning, but I didn't want to do it then, reasoning that while it would be much colder this morning, at least I would be dressed warmer. We were on our way home from mountain biking and I was still wearing shorts. Naturally, I dreaded that decision today.

It's about 52 degrees outside right now. The sun is shining and it's completely beautiful, but the there's a biting wind. I'm not looking forward to the tennis lesson this afternoon. Though, I did bring pants, as I won't have to worry about having pockets for holding extra tennis balls. I'm still kind of dreading it though. Last Thursday turned out to be great, so hopefully today will too.

But I've had a stomach ache since about 8:00 this morning. It just won't go away and I really don't feel in the mood for running around. However, it will probably hurt to sit at home too so I might as well breathe in some cold fresh air and burn some calories.

I'm really hoping to lose one pound at weigh-in this week. If I do, then I will have met my WW goal weight and will start my maintenance phase. For the next six weeks I can't go more than two pounds over that weight. If I manage that, I will become a Lifetime Member and won't have to pay any more fees. I'll just have to weigh-in at least once a month, keep to no more than two pounds over and I'm good. As far as I know, it's okay to go under that goal weight as much as I want.

This weekend was active and fun. I'm just having regrets that I didn't get more done around the house. But then again, what's really important in life? Housework? At the end of my life, I don't want to look back and think, "I didn't get to do much, but my house was clean!"

Friday after work I had a makeover at Lancome. I've never used any of their makeup before, but I'm sure it's great and I always love a makeover. And I'm a total sucker for beauty products. Anything that might possibly make me anywhere near pretty… I'll buy it! So naturally I ended up spending way too much money. I've been a Clinique girl for a number of years now and I have whirls of facial cleansing products, moisturizers and makeup items. I don't actually need anything, much less a whole new set of everything. I'm having buyer's remorse now and I'm seriously thinking of returning half of the stuff I bought.

But speaking of personal care products and the like, I have found a new fragrance at Bath and Body Works that I love, love, love! Midnight Pomegranate, "a warm, enticing blend of luscious and exotic notes." I don't know about all that, but I rubbed some lotion onto my left hand and spent the rest of the night with my hand plastered to my nose. I'm going to get some at my earliest opportunity!

Comments regarding the new purse: Jenn - I can fit everything that I always carry, with a little more room. I know it looks small, but I have gotten used to carrying the minimum. Krista - there's no other way to know if a purse is right for you. And the sales ladies won't bat an eye. Take out the stuffing and move all of your things into the new one. See how everything fits and how the purse feels on your shoulder, weighted down.

Hi Little Purse!

For Christmas, Denise gave me a wonderful box of guilt-free chocolate indulgences. Everything in it either looked like chocolate or smelled like chocolate. She also included two boxes of No Pudge Fat Free Brownie Mix. I had heard about these supposedly delicious brownies, but had not tried them. Well, I made a batch of them last night and they deserve all of the hype and praise. Very chewy and fudgy. I brought them to work to share and everyone proclaimed them wonderful. (the next batch I'll keep for myself!) I highly recommend them.

We're have a bit of a cold snap down here in sunny Florida. While it rained yesterday morning, it cleared by the afternoon, just in time for singles league. But it was chilly - about 53 degrees - and I was feeling a bit whiny about playing tennis. However, I met my partner at the courts and it turned out to be a wonderful day for tennis. Once we started moving around, we warmed up nicely and it felt great. I don't know if it was the weather or osmosis from watching Australian Open matches, but I played very well too. Nancy and I are usually neck and neck, which makes it fun and challenging for both of us. But yesterday I won both sets: 6-1, 6-2. Which put me in that weird spot, wondering how happy I could be without becoming annoying. It's a fine line, I think.

Wednesday's shopping and cooking extravaganza was great, by the way. Oh, first, I went to my hair stylist for a trim and some color. I've been having her dye my hair to my natural dark brown, which hides the grays and covers what's left of the summer highlights. Before blow drying my hair, she used some "forming cream" and I swear it made my hair look like silk. Naturally, I bought a bottle. Because she's not in a salon, she doesn't push her products at all. But she could if she wanted to. I'm a huge sucker and will buy just about anything she uses in my hair if I think I could possibly achieve the same results.

So I met Lisa at the mall and the first store we visited was Coach. I spent a good bit of time putting my things into the potential new purse, wearing it around the store, taking things back out, basically trying it out as best I could. Ultimately I decided that yes, this purse would work for me and I bought it. Isn't it beautiful?

Next we went to Sephora. Lisa wanted to check out some mascara she had read bout (Diorshow) and I ended up having a good time learning how to use an eyelash curler. Seriously! Those things look really dangerous and I've always been afraid of them. I bought one, of course, and for two days now have successfully curled my eyelashes without injuring myself!

Unfortunately, we didn't get to do much shopping, because it was soon time to go to Williams-Sonoma to browse the store (10% off!) and secure the best front row seats for the cooking class. The class was interesting and the food was delicious. What little we got. It was by no means a meal. We got to taste a bit of everything, but with 12 people, the food didn't go far. I now know that a coulis (pro: coo-lee') is a sauce made from puréed and strained vegetables or fruits. Both Lisa and I agreed that the Roasted Winter Vegetables were the best, with the Lime Grilled Scallops with Red Pepper Coulis a close second. I'm excited about the scallops because the chef cooked them in a grill pan. I use my grill pan a lot for chicken and now I have another use for it.

We had just enough time after the class to hurry down to Godiva for a Dark Chocolate Decadence Chocolixir with raspberry syrup. The salesguy was nice enough to split one into two cups. It was a huge, but truly decadent indulgence. (hardly guilt-free, let me tell you).

It's All About the Shoes

I am really loving the pair of tennis shoes I bought at Sportgirl a couple of weeks ago. I consider it a sign of a comfortable shoe when I don't even think about my feet while playing tennis. It's afterward when I realize that my feet feel great. The model is the Prince T9 Roadster and I bought the pair with black accents. I love them so much that I contacted the store and they are saving me another pair, but this time with light blue accents.

Then, I discovered that I could have these shoes! My K•Swiss. They are so me. Similar to Nike's ID collection, these shoes are customizable to many color combinations. Also similar is the $100 price tag. Which I guess isn't terrible for a pair of good quality court shoes.

But I have other things to spend my money on. Like expensive purses and cooking classes. Which will both be happening today. I signed up to take a class called Lighten Up Dinner at Williams-Sonoma at Florida Mall. Lisa, Carl's wife, is taking it with me. We will be learning to make: Winter Greens Salad with Grilled Salmon, Lime Grilled Scallops with Red Pepper Coulis, Pan-Roasted Winter Vegetables and Chicken with Lemon and Oregano. The class is more "watch and learn" than hands on, but it should be very informative. Plus we get a store discount for the day. I've looked through their latest catalog and made a shopping list. (such a geek)

Lisa and I have plans to meet at the mall a couple of hours before the class so we can wander around and shop. I'm going to fully investigate a little Coach purse I've had my eye on. If, after the inspection and modeling session I love the purse, then I will buy it. No commitment right now, but it's looking promising.

Christmas is Officially Over

It was a good weekend. I feel like I had plenty of fun, yet got some chores done as well. Friday was lovely because when I got home from work, I curled up on the futon and watched some TV shows I had recorded. Then Tom and I ordered Pizza, our usual Friday meal. Very low key evening, but just what I wanted to do.

We got up fairly early on Saturday, organized and loaded our mountain biking gear and headed to Santos Trailhead near Ocala. This trip had been planned three weeks ago and I was so thrilled that it worked out. Just like in the good old days, we had a nice sized group of 6. Any more than that and it starts getting too complicated. Anyway, we met Dallas, Carl, Vicky and Matt for a full day of biking. And I do mean full. We were on the trails for about four hours and covered around 18 miles. That's a lot on a mountain bike.

Everyone had a good time, though Carl, Vicky and I ended up on a red (most difficult) trail that I hope to never see again. It was a rocky climb with a shear cliff drop to our left (yes, cliffs in Florida!). We did more hiking than biking and thought we'd never get to safer ground.

I thought I rode really well. There were some obstacles that gave me trouble, but there's always something. I worked on riding fast and smooth, trying to stay off of my brakes, or at least feather them gently. On one trail I was keeping up with the Cardio Crew (Tom, Matt and Dallas). It took everything I had to do it, but I was flying along (wheezing all the while) when we came across a hill with a log and a twist. I had to put a foot down and that's all it took for them to lose me. Rats!

Sunday I spent some time working in the yard. While listening to an audiobook (Social Crimes), I trimmed all of the bushes around the house. I had sort of let the yard work slide leading up to the holidays, but it looks fantastic now. But the major and most important thing we did was finally take down the Christmas tree and get it and the boxes of ornaments into the attic. Yes, four weeks after Christmas and the tree was still up! Well, not decorated or lit, but still up. It's so embarrassing. Bonus: it feels like the house just got bigger!

Snack Attack!

I definitely spoke too soon when I said that I wanted to reach my personal weight goal by my birthday. My weight loss has slowed down considerably. I gained 1.5 over the holidays, which wasn't too bad really, then I lost .5 last week, but this week my weight stayed the same. I had burned over 4000 calories during the week between biking and tennis, too. But I think my increased snacking is causing the trouble. I am so bad when I work on the computer. I eat out of boredom, I know. Freelance at home is a particular problem. I polished off a third of a bag of Xtra Cheddar Goldfish and God knows how many M&Ms on Wednesday night. (not a good idea the night before weigh-in) My saving grace - the Goldfish and the M&Ms are gone and the freelance work is done.

Tennis nights are the best for me because I don't snack. I go to the courts straight from work. Then I run my butt off. When I get home I generally shower, then start dinner. So there's no time for snacking. I don't miss it either, though I'm usually pretty hungry by the time we eat dinner.

Occasionally though, it's nice to simply go home from work, with no sporting activities planned. I will have to convince myself that there's no need to eat, if I'm not hungry. Or keep myself busy doing things around the house. Yard work is a good one. It's hard to shovel M&Ms into one's mouth while grubbing around in the flower beds pulling weeds.

Weekend Condensed

I had a very busy weekend, and like most weekends, it went by much too quickly. I did some shopping, ate pizza, washed a load of dark clothes, worked freelance, had a tennis lesson, washed my car, trimmed some bushes, helped Tom take down the outside lights and got stung by a saddleback caterpillar, went to Lowe's, brought home fast food from Arby's, packed up the rest of the Christmas ornaments, washed a load of towels, went mountain biking, ate at Macaroni Grill and did more freelance work.

That's the condensed version.

Most of it doesn't need any elaboration. However, I do want to talk about the tennis lesson. I met with the new instructor, Chip, on Saturday morning. He showed me some techniques that I think will make a real difference in my game. Especially my serve. Just a little wrist snap thing that's not even difficult to do. I have to wonder whether Tom ever has any intention of teaching me that. Or maybe he doesn't care if I'm stuck forever in Group Lesson Mediocre Land. Seriously, there's no reason why he couldn't teach me a few advanced moves while the others work on the current stuff. And I have approached him about taking a private lesson or so to work on difficult areas, but he's essentially blown me off. So if this works out with Chip and I end up stopping the group lessons, I won't feel all that bad about it.

I have another lesson scheduled with him in two weeks. I hope I can manage to do some "homework" before I forget everything he taught me.

Mountain biking was a lot of fun. Tom and I met our good friend Vicky and her husband Matt at Econ. We rode all of the usual trails, including the front section that gets so sandy. Lately we've been skipping it, but it wasn't too terrible yesterday. No one fell, there was no serious blood, so it was a successful day. I burned over 1200 calories too! That's a lot of work. I was feeling good too and riding hard. Up until the double track leading back to the parking lot, when I slogged through some sugar sand and my quads decided they'd had enough.

Going to Macaroni Grill afterward was a treat. I've only eaten there once and it was quite some time ago. I thought I was being smart, ordering the grilled pork chops, but checking the points today I found out that it was actually a very bad choice. Maybe it was the mushroom risotto that sent the numbers sailing. Oh well, it was a delicious dinner that was well earned. I just can't afford to eat the leftovers.

NSV

At Weight Watchers, whenever something good happens that doesn't involve one's weight, it's called a Non-Scale Victory. Well, I've had several in the last two days that I want to share. I'll work backward, for no particular reason. Today I went to the KSC exercise facility to have my body fat composition and girth measurements taken. Back in October I had the body fat caliper test and was thrilled with my results: 21.3%. My new results: 19.1%. That's a great number and as I am beginning to feel that these last 10 pounds are reluctant to leave, a good boost. It will be interesting to see if the girth measurements change much after a couple of months of strength training.

The other two related victories happened yesterday. I was fishing around in a dresser drawer, searching for a pair of jeans and I ran across a pair of pants that I'd bought during our mountain bike trip in October. They're the only item I've bought that I couldn't currently get into comfortably, not wanting to give them away once they became too large. For the heck of it, I slipped them on and they fit great! Very attractive, flattering and comfortable too. I wore them to work and got several compliments. The best of which came from Lynda, who told me, "You're looking skinny." Well, I know she's exaggerating a bit, but it certainly put a smile on my face.

Tennis unofficially started last night. But either the majority didn't want to play or didn't understand the instructions and we only had a foursome show up at the courts. But at least we did have four so we played two sets of doubles. Once again, I found myself playing with people much better than myself, but they kept the game fairly low key and I was able to contribute a few points and have a pretty good time. One of the guys is quite good and I was surprised to find that he'd only been playing tennis for 2.5 years. He's been taking private lessons at $25/hour. My instructor charges $40/hour for private lessons.

I've been considering a change in instruction lately. The group rate is wonderful, however, it seems we're only as good as the least experienced in the group. Recently, a woman and her 13 year old daughter started taking lessons with us. They're both very nice, but I'm beginning to feel that I'm being held back. Especially when I compare my ability to Alex's. Granted, he's more athletically inclined and much stronger, so it's natural that he'd be better than me. But by having weekly private lessons, he has learned skills and techniques that we aren't even beginning to discuss.

I got the name and number of this other tennis instructor and have a lesson scheduled for this Saturday. If I like him and think we'll work well together, I may give up the weekly group lesson and start taking bi-weekly private lessons. Maybe in the future I can afford weekly lessons.

Sportgirl

Much of the weekend was spent taking down the Christmas decorations. It's always so refreshing to see it all go. I really love the festiveness, but every January first, I am instantly sick of all of it. I don't want to see the red/green combination or anything sparkly or glittery for quite some time. Right now all of the boxes are stacked in my side of the garage, so my car has to hang out in the driveway. That tends to motivate me to get everything organized into the attic quickly. Unfortunately, I'm still dealing with the Christmas tree and ornaments. Finally got everything off of the tree (I think) and separated into categories. I'm dreading the Keepsake Ornaments though. There's a thousand little boxes to open, each ornament has to be wrapped and inserted into its box and then the thousand little boxes have to be put back into the large plastic box. It's like a giant Christmas puzzle. And the process is rather time consuming. That's the task for tonight.

But the weekend wasn't all about putting away the holidays. I had some fun and did some shopping. (that qualifies as fun, in my opinion) Most of it was sports related, too. On Saturday Tom and I went to Adventure Cycles in Merritt Island. Both of my bike helmets have become a problem. My hair has gotten fairly long and while I do put it in a ponytail while we ride, there's no hole to pull it through (like on most ball caps) so it's pushed to the nape of my neck and tends to tangle as I turn my head back and forth. My biking friend, Vicky, likes Trek helmets, so on her recommendation I tried some on and found that she had a good suggestion. I ended up buying a mountain biking helmet - a blue one with a couple of red flowers. I have picked out the road helmet that I want (yellow to match my road bike), but I will have to buy it somewhere else. Adventure Cycles doesn't carry Giro brand.

Next, Tom and I went to Sportgirl, a women's sports store in Rockledge. The store was having great sales, but that's both good and bad. Good because I got a great price on a pair of Prince court shoes and a Tail tennis skirt and matching top. Bad because the store is closing. Not because they aren't having success, but because they have decided to focus mainly on swimming and become vendors at swim meets. I am disappointed about that though. A local sport shop dedicated to women, run by women! Too good to be true I guess.

Break's Over

It's been a slow start to the new year. I caught Ann's cold, the one she was just getting when I arrived in North Carolina, and I'm only now beginning to feel any energy. Fortunately, I started getting sick toward the end of the holiday break. And it progressed slowly, without any real conviction. Last Friday I woke with a sore throat. It was mild, though excruciating whenever I sneezed. Saturday was much the same, with an occasional need for a tissue. Sunday, again the same, with a greater need for tissues. On Monday my throat was better, but the need for tissues was almost constant. Tuesday I went to work, but only stayed for an hour. That was a fairly miserable day and I stayed home Wednesday as well. But after a lot of rest, I started feeling better and was back to the office on Thursday.

Joy and Tom are home today with similar but elevated symptoms. They both have bad allergies and are susceptible to colds and sinus infections. Personally, I think it speaks for my overall good health that I didn't get it nearly as bad as it appears they will. My fingers are crossed that Mom and Dad stay healthy.

It's a relief, honestly, to finish up the holidays and get back On Program with Weight Watchers. I had intended to let myself enjoy Christmas dinner and some of the baked goodies. But it became increasingly easy to slide back into my errant ways. However, I only gained 1.5 pounds and I'm back to my routine. Lots of grilled chicken and steamed vegetables. Mmm. I think the biggest problem for me was the lack of activity. Which had actually decreased prior to the holidays. I'm playing tennis this afternoon with Nancy though and the leagues start up again next week. Now to add in some biking and I'll be losing again in no time.