More Randomness

I hope everyone had a happy 4th of July! I know I did! We made another trip down to Alabama to visit family and had way too much fun, as usual. Sadly I left my camera at home so there are no photos to share, but I'll leave you with a painting I finished last week instead.

I love the succulent from this post so much that I decided to paint it. Our walls are pretty bare, esp. for an artist living here, so I'm working on fixing that. However, most of my paintings will end up being for sale at the Monte Sano Art Show and Art on the Square in September (my thinking is that I can always make more, right? AND buy other peoples' art with my potential earnings). I kind of like the idea of art rotating out...

I'm having trouble getting back into the swing of things here at home. I blame the visit to Bama. I spent a whole weekend with people I love, visiting and chatting and catching up; and now find myself alone for most of the day. Sometimes it is a hard routine to fall back into. I'm working on getting through it (spent all day yesterday "deep cleaning" the kitchen to make it feel more like a place I want to cook in)...cleaning generates creativity, sometimes, if I'm in the right mood. It's funny what can trigger the creative spark...seemingly mundane household activities really do it for me. Haha.

Well, the week is halfway over. I hope you all are feeling much more productive than I am!

Random Weekend Update

Breakfast this morning: hard boiled egg, coffee (no sugar) with 1 % milk, water, whole wheat blueberry waffle, a smidgen of lemon strawberry preserves from the farmer's market, and vitamins (fish oil, multivitamin, D3, garlic, and cranberry)


I hope everyone had a good weekend. I know I did. A little too good, if you ask me. Daniel and I went out for sushi on Saturday and I didn't think to look up the caloric values for what I ate until after I got home. Talk about a buzzkill. The rolls I like (spicy tuna and shrimp tempura) are loaded with calories. And carbs. I don't know how I had the delusion that any/all sushi was "healthy" food before, but let me just say when we go out for it again...I'm sticky to plain fish and rice. No fancy stuff. At least not for a while. It's realizations like this one that make me think to myself, "Jeeze Keely, no wonder you can't lose weight! You aren't educating yourself on what you put in your body!" Learning can be painful sometimes...kinda like beating your head against a wall. But you get over it. And now I know to look up what I want to eat before I put it in my mouth and avoid the regret in the first place.

We walked 1.2 miles yesterday after the heat of the day died down. And I ate a nice lean breakfast this morning. Doing these things helps me stave off any negative feelings or doubts that I'm not doing enough to shed the pounds. I've also started strength training three days a week, according to the workout plan I have on Spark People. My energy levels are picking up since I've been focused on eating a more overall balanced diet (I was sooo tired on low carb.) and fresh foods, and remembering to take vitamins with breakfast in the morning is helping too. So even though I get that nagging doubt a few times a day, I still feel pretty good about what I'm doing. It really helps that I have a supportive significant other as well.

The Farmer's Market has become a Saturday morning ritual. Farm fresh eggs are just so delicious, and we picked up a few other goodies as well (fresh lettuce, black bean hummus, salsa, the preserves I mentioned for breakfast, and this succulent which I really love). I've been wanting to expand my succulent garden for a while now, and this little guy is the perfect addition. Plus I scored the pot at Ross for a mere $2.99.

I love the rosettes this plant produces. I'm probably going to make a painting of it some time soon. Our walls are so bare, esp. for an artist to be living here.

I've added a few new things to both KeelyB and StudioFinn. Stop by and check them out! Also, have a wonderful week!