My apology to all the single Moms that came before me.

I am a single Mom, and I have been for 8 years now.  It probably took me longer than it should have, but I need to apologize to all the single Moms that have come before me.

Growing up and to this day, I always had my parents together.  My circle of friends did not fit into that statistic of “50% of all marriages end in divorce”.   Single Moms were somewhat of a foreign concept to me until I become one myself.  And truth be told, what I did know or perceived to know about them was not in a kind light.

And when I became I single parent myself, I struggled and still do sometimes struggle with the stigma that is attached to single Moms.  But I have learned so much these past years about what it really takes to be a single Mom and I am in awe of the other Moms out there.  I only have 1 little one to look after and I am astounded sometimes how some Moms manage with 2 or 3 or more.

We don’t let our kids run around with dirty face and clothes, all kids do.  It’s the nature of their beast.  And those kids having complete meltdown in the middle of the grocery store…..they belong to ANY Mom.  Your marital status has NOTHING to do with it.  We love our kids just as much as any other mother and would do anything to protect them.

And truth be told, some of the single Moms that I know are the most organized, hardworking women…..and pardon my language but these ladies have their shit together.

So I need to profusely apologize to all those times I made the assumptions, I agreed with all those stereotypes and down and outright judged you.  Being a single Mom doesn’t make you any less worthy than those Moms that have the house with the white picket fence life.

We have just an amazing life; we just do it a little differently.

DIY Motivational Wall Hangings

Taking a short break from my “Fitness Friday” posts until I have some worthwhile content.  I don’t want to bore everyone with the same old thing every week.  But in the lines of my fitness theme, I thought I would share a DIY project I completed recently.  A little motivation on the walls never hurt anyone.

I recently became the proud owner of the new Cricut Explore One!  It was something I always wanted but was never in the budget.  I attended BlogPodium 2016 and walked away with one as a door prize.  Big thanks to everyone involved!!!  Needless to say, I wanted to start using it right away.

Don’t cringe at the bubbles in vinyl, I am still learning. 🙂

I knew that I wanted to make some sort of motivational art to hang in my bathroom.  First stop, my local dollar store to pick up frames and this project was off and running!

Krlyon had been kind enough to include some samples of their product in our loot bags that we brought home from the conference, so I knew I wanted to incorporate that into my project as well. One of my  paints was this amazing Sea Glass Cornflower color that worked perfectly with the colors in my bathroom.  I took the glass out of the frames and gave each one a coat of the paint.  Note to self:  next time put paper under what I am painting so it doesn’t stain my front porch.  Ooops!

This paint dries in 10 minutes so there isn’t a huge wait to move forward on the project.  In that time, I got the Cricut working and cut out the letters for each of my frames and got them ready to place on the now dried glass.  One thing I didn’t have readily available for my project was the Transfer Paper that Cricut recommends to move the cut out letters to their spot nice and neat and straight, so I had to realign everything a few times to get it right.  I will definitely know for next time.  Once everything was aligned, I popped them back into the frames.

As part of my fitness journey, there are 2 phrases that I often use; “You can do this” and “Never give up”.  I thought in my bathroom where I pretty much start and end each day was the perfect place to place these and remind myself of these things.

For my first DIY project with my Cricut, I am really pleased with the outcome.  It was a lot easier than I had thought it would be and have given me the motivation to do a lot more creative projects.

When you need a little Boost!

With kids back to school and it the busiest time of year for my job, a little boost in my day is always appreciated.  Some days, I sit down at my desk and before I know it, my stomach is rumbling and I look at the clock and it’s almost 1 pm.  No wonder I am so hungry.  But it never fails that I am right in the middle of something and I really don’t want to stop what I am doing.

I recently received some of the new  Boost High Protein chocolate shakes to try, thanks to ChickAdvisor.  Because I am forever watching my weight, I have tried meal replacement shakes in the past without a lot of success.  I was always left still feeling hungry shortly afterwards.  With these shakes containing 15g of protein, I was optimistic that perhaps these shakes would hold me out a little longer.

First, I have to say that the taste of these shakes is definitely better than others that I have tried.  Others that I have tried have often tasted very chalky and not appealing at all.  Most times I wouldn’t even want to finish them.  The Boost shakes are not too chocolaty and no chalky aftertaste.  They also come in Vanilla and Strawberry flavors which I am anxious to try.    And paired with a banana or an apple and it kept my hunger under control until I could get home to make dinner.

These shakes have really been helpful this week with work being so busy.  My hunger was controlled and I wasn’t feeling the need to pop into the burger joint next door by 3 o’clock in the afternoon and totally ruining my diet.  I will try and keep these stocked in my fridge at work to help me on the busy days or the days I forget my lunch so that I can make a healthy lunch choice.

Disclosure:  Although these items were provided to me, all comments, opinions and photos are strictly mine.

#tryBOOSThp #gotitfree

Keeping the family clean with Dial

Kids are back to school and that means dirty children from playing at recess, crafts in art class and germs being shared.  That’s why it is important to make sure everyone is washing up, keeping clean and preventing sickness from spreading throughout the school.

You can find a full range of products from Dial that can help keep you and your family squeaky clean.  I make sure I have a bottle of hand soap available by every sink in my home so there is no excuse not to have clean hands and to keep germs at bay.

The last thing I want is to spend the fall/winter months sick so I remind my son how important it is to keep his hands clean especially after he has been playing with friends or at a public place.  It really helps that the hand soaps have such nice yet not overpowering scents, you actually want to use them.  Our current favorite is the Coconut Water and Mango.

And with winter around the corner and having dry skin, I don’t want to use anything that will dry my skin out any more.  I really like the Coconut Oil infused body wash.  I come out of the shower feeling moisturized but not that greasy oily feeling.  I always use a moisturizer when I get out of the shower and after using this body wash, I didn’t feel quite the need.

So bring on the dirt and the grime and the germs that back to school and winter has to throw at us, with Dial soaps we can easily combat them.

Disclosure:  These products were provided to me to review, but all comments, opinions and photos are strictly mine.

Fitness Friday – Finally some progress!

I don’t know about you, but I have been dreading the thought of summer being over.  We’ve had such a nice, mostly sunny summer and I just don’t want it to end.  In addition to the lovely, warm weather, in the summer you can wear those nice flowy dresses.  They keep you cool through those hot, steamy days.  But even better, they are so forgiving if you are up a few pounds from over indulging at the plethora of bbq’s and patio parties that go along with a great summer.  Come fall and winter, I tend to skip the dresses and revert to the warmth that pants and jeans can provide.  But they are not so forgiving.  One day, they can fit perfectly and a burger and fries later and I can feel like I am a stuffed sausage.  And that is just not a comfortable feeling.

So this week, when the temperatures were a bit cooler I knew it was time to dig out the pants.  I was dreading it, to say the least.  But man oh man, was I surprised.  The pair of pants that used to fit me on a good day, but definitely weren’t buffet eating pants, were actually big on me.  It felt amazing.

For weeks now I have been really struggling.  I haven’t seen much movement on the scale and I definitely had not been as committed to working out and eating right as I had been earlier this summer.  It was such a great feeling to know that I was making progress.  It has definitely given me motivation to keep going and work even harder.  I really pushed myself when I was able to get to the gym this week and I continue to ensure I get my 10K steps in every single day.

Life over the past few weeks has been crazy busy and I haven’t been able to devote as much time to my posts as I would like.  Luckily, the madness is pretty much over and I can get back on track in all the different facets of my life.  Can’t wait to see all the progress that comes along with it!

 

Fitness Friday – Who wants to join me?

Another crazy busy work week but I really tried not to let it get the best of me.  Got the boy back to school so check 1 thing off on the list of getting back into our normal routine.  Now I just need to get work under control.  I see the light at the end of the tunnel and things should hopefully be a little more normal next week.  If there really is such a thing as normal in my life.  🙂

I have been really thinking about my fitness journey and thinking the one thing I am lacking is constant accountability.  Sure, I write these posts each week and a few Instagram pics but that is about it.  So it got me to thinking that perhaps I would start a Facebook group where people on similar fitness journeys could be accountable to each other and share our ups, downs, tips and tricks.  It wouldn’t matter what diet or exercise plan you are on, it would just be about like minded individuals getting together and counting on each other for support and a place to celebrate our achievements.  Anybody interested?    If you would like to be a part of this, message me and I will add you to the group once I get it set up.

Going to keep this week’s post short and sweet and promise for a much better update next week.  With the hopes of a calmer week, I will be able to devote more time to my post and to my journey so I have something to report on.  Thanks everyone for your continued support and kind words.

Back to school in groovy tie-dye style

A few weeks back, we were doing a little shopping and I asked my son if he wanted to pick out a new shirt for back to school.  He looked at me and gave me a huge sigh. For the life of me I didn’t I couldn’t understand his frustration until he said “Mommy, do I HAVE to buy a new shirt for back to school?  Can’t I got back to school as plain old me?” My heart melted.  If he doesn’t want to fuss and muss with back to school wear, so be it.

About a week later, we were discussing crafts and things we wanted to do and he talked about making a tie-dye shirt.  He had made one at camp earlier in the summer but the shirt was already a bit small on him.  (We’ve had a 1 1/2 inch growth spurt since July.)  It sounded like a fun idea and so I headed off to our local Michael’s to pick up supplies.  Luckily for me, the day I went, the shirts were on sale and there were 2 coupons available for me to use on my purchase.  My purchase ended up costing me less than half the regular retail price.

My son was thrilled when he came home and saw our impending craft.  He immediately decided this was going to be the shirt he wore to back to school.  There were kits with 5 and 10 different colors but I settled for one with 3 for our first attempt.   Next time, I would love to try more colors.

I made sure we wore old clothes that would be okay if they got stained and made sure the floor was well covered with plastic to ensure the mess factor was kept to a minimum.  The instructions were really easy to follow and before you knew it, our shirts were dyed.  They recommend letting the colors cure for 6-8 hours.  We ended up leaving ours overnight.  Mr. Impatient, however, couldn’t wait to see the end product.

I swear we were only up for 10 minutes the next morning, when my son asked if we could see our shirts.  I had to rinse the excess color from them and then put them thru the wash but at least we got a sneak peak before I had to throw them in the dryer.  They turned out amazing!!  Definitely not one of my epic Pinterest fails that I have endured before.

We each made one for ourselves and then we used the excess magenta dye and the extra shirt to make a shirt for my son to wear when they have Pink Shirt Day for anti-bullying later on this school year.  I ended up wearing mine that day to a friends bbq and got a ton of compliments.  And of course my son, wore his to back to school.  He LOVED it.

It was definitely a fun, inexpensive and easy craft to do with my son.  I am pretty sure we will be adding more of these to our wardrobes.

My son and I love to do all kinds of crafts however, after a few Pinterest fails, I became a little disenchanted.  With winter approaching, I was thinking I would need to start finding some new craft ideas when going outside wasn’t a great option.  I was kind of dreading it to be honest.  This has given me new motivation to find some new fun crafts.

Fitness Friday – A new outlook to end the funk!

I have to admit, it’s been an absolutely CRAZY week and I wasn’t even sure if I was going to get a post out this week.  However, I knew that not posting would make me feel like I was letting my funk get the best of me again.  Besides, I have a new outlook on my fitness journey and now better time than the present to move forward and start working towards the end goal.

In last week’s post, I talked about how I was in a funk.  I am not going to lie, that funk is lingering much longer than I had hope it is on it’s way out.  Last weekend, I was at a community event and a  friend that I  hadn’t seen much over the summer came up to me a gave me the nicest compliment.  She said that she had barely recognized me when she was walking up and I was looking great.  It was those words that made me feel like the work I had been putting in was amounting to something.  Maybe not a lot, but at least people were starting to notice.  It was those few words that lifted me up and pretty much out of my funk.

Like I said, it has been a crazy week.  At my work, it has been the busiest week of the year.  This week always is.  It definitely played havoc on my motivation to eat right and work out.  I knew this week would be this way so I haven’t been beating myself up about it.    As much as I hate to even think that summer is coming to a close, I will be glad to get my son back to school this next week and get back on my normal routine.  I never realized until now how much I was a creature of habit and the summer always throws me off.

I tried to start the weekend off right by hitting the gym.  Friday evening of a long weekend, the gym was pretty empty so it made me feel even better about myself being there.  Next step, whilst doing our back to school grocery shop, I am going to make healthy choices to start the school year off right and not give me any temptations in the cupboards for me.   I know that by the way I have been feeling the past week or two, my body is craving the healthy choices again.  I don’t want to let it down.

So luckily, it only took a few kind words to give me the motivation to get out of my funk and with my normal routine soon to be back in my life, I can happily say that I am moving full steam ahead to reaching my fitness goals.