Good morning!

What's happening this week?

I'm on evenings which (other than alienating me from my family) is my favourite. I can get my life in order before I go to work and relax when I get home. It also gives me my three day weekend!
My mornings are starting to fill up with appts but nothing before 11 so I'm good.

I'm going to Halloween costume party today. Food might be a challenge, I probably will practice portion control, depends what they have,

Well I couldn't sleeep so I decided to get up and do stuff... or continue to avoid doing stuff by coming on 3FC.

Yep.

My weekend was good, had my final weight/measurements for october. Pretty happy with 3.4lbs gone and 1.75 inches adios.

The rest of today I'll be at school doing school things. ugh.

Of course I will be going to Halloween party this wednesday. Should be fun. I plan to bring along a plate of delicious sugar cookies (the only recipe I've made that I like, I normally hate sugar cookies.) covered in black and orange icing of course. Hmmmm.

Other than that I'm looking forward to a chill week.

Let's see....tonight is dinner with the in-laws and then a concert at DD's school. Wednesday is the homecoming parade. Friday is the homecoming game. Sunday is the gay pride parade and then the Mother-Daughter tea. I think I'll be quite busy!

My weight hasn't been going down as planned. I'll be doing some better planning this week in hopes of a loss later.

Good morning everyone! Well, I don't *feel* like a featherweight but here I am!!!

I had a Halloween party today too, at story hour with the 2 year old I babysit. I had: 2 small slices of pumkin bread (homemade, never had it before, it was so yummy!), a slice of apple, some cucumbers, and about 5 mini (real small) cookies. Then came home and whipped together some chicekn soup... I only used chicken broth, pepper, chicken, egg noodles, celery and a piece of carrot. Now I gotta figure out points!!!
Tonight, one boy has basketball.
Our nights are always busy doing *something*!!!

I feel like I spent the entire weekend in the kitchen! We are inundated by guavas right now, so I prepped three batches (that's three 5qt pots) of guavas for jelly (as of this morning, I have 14 quarts of guava juice in the freezer to make into jelly). We may be handing out guavas to trick-or-treaters for Halloween (actually, we're handing out toys--no Halloween candy for me!)

I also canned 6 pints of green tomato salsa (well, there were also a few red tomatoes thrown in--trying to use up the last of the crop--so I'm calling it Christmas salsa). And I made my lunch for the next six days (tuna, rice, and veggie salad). That was a lot of work, so now I'm looking forward to a few days off from the kitchen. I need to make dinner tonight, but it is going to feed us for three nights, then Thursday night is going to be scrounge night and Friday I'll be going out with the girls for pedicures and dinner. Of course, I'll still have to prep a batch of guavas every night.

I have to get through Halloween and then get back on track.

Just received an email from the City. The commercial dog walker's permit is coming up for debate again and once again they've scheduled it so we have to take time off work (and lose pay) or not go to the debate.

I'm so glad I had my vacation before this came up again. At least that wasn't ruined as the rest of this week now will be.

And Halloween is my favorite holiday too. SIGH.

Dagmar (don't know whether to or )

Today, the head of my project was in town (normally she works remotely), and she took us out to a really nice lunch. However, I was actually disappointed, because I was looking forward to the yummy and healthy lunch I packed! I did better than I usually do when I go out to eat (had only one small piece of bread from the bread basket), but it still wasn't too diet-friendly. We split tomatoes and mozzarella for the table (not my choice, but I didn't want to be rude and refuse) for the appetizer. For the main course I picked chicken marsala, because there weren't many options that looked healthy, but I asked for the roasted vegetables instead of potato croquettes with it. Sounds like a simple enough switch, but the server made a HUGE deal out of it. "I'm going to have to charge you for that!" Okay; fine - just do it instead of calling out to the table that I'm trying to eat healthy. Then at the end of the meal when she brought the check AGAIN she mentioned my extra charge for the vegetables. I was slightly embarrassed by that whole thing... it was just annoying. However, aside from her and aside from the fact that the food wasn't healthy, it was an enjoyable and tasty outing. Anyone else have any similar stories from eating out at work?

Tonight for dinner I tried to eat really healthy to make up for it. Did some tofu boiled in dashi (Japanese soup stock, basically) and then with some spices, then spinach with a touch of sesame-soy, and finally a big bowl of broth plus a few crackers. Unfortunately, the recipes did NOT come out like I wanted them to... first time I've been disappointed with the Japanese recipes I've tried. At least it was healthy!

Hopefully tomorrow's food will go better. However, I swear I feel myself bloating already. I'm sure it's me being paranoid, but especially after losing a lot last week, it's going to be hard not to plateau/gain.

Good morning!
Today is the dentist (ugh) I need to make funeral sandwiches and then work. Now that I'm sitting here in my jammies sipping coffee at 9 am, I sure wish I'd gone to the grocer yesterday. However ... I'll have to make three seperate trips and it's all walking so ...

What are funeral sandwiches ? I am assuming you are not making sandwiches to take to a funeral.

Ok, I'm trying desperately to get back on plan, I'm tired of maintaining and want to hit my goal once and for all...so for the hundredth time in the past two months, I'm working on my eating. I've done well for two straight days now so hopefully I'm back on track. I am, and have been, thankfully staying very consistent with my exercise and running. I'm even bumping up the exercise lately b/c I love seeing muscles and desperately want to eliminate my ugly glute folds.

I bought Halloween candy today for the first time this year. Usually as soon as the Halloween candy starts hitting the shelves I'm buying it for us and when I purchase candy for the kiddos I always buy only stuff I like and lots of extra stuff for us. BUT this year I haven't wanted to buy any of it b/c I know what happens when it's in the house. Today I forced myself to b/c I really don't have any time left since Halloween is tomorrow. So, I have several grocery store bags full of candy that's haunting and taunting me sitting in the other room. *sigh* I dread Xmas coming.

How many trick or treaters dose everyone get? Last year I think we got somewhere around 50 kids or more.

Kim~when I lived in Palm Springs, we'd get anywhere from 20-100 kids (usually around 50, though), but since we moved to Palm Desert, we hardly get any. We have a few little kids that live in the neighborhood that might trick or treat so I am prepared. I doubt I'll see more than 10 kids. Most of my neighbors are retired and in my old neighborhood we had a lot of everything (most of the trick or treaters were driven in from the neighboring mobile home parks, though).

I think we get between 30-50 kids. Last having the Halloween candy around was such an ordeal--am I giving away too much, will I run out; am I not giving away enough, will I have too much left; if I have some left, do I eat it or not eat it; if I don't eat the leftovers, what do I do with them. I have enough in my life to worry about without stressing about Halloween candy, so this year I got smart and bought little toys to hand out from the Oriental Trading Company. We are handing out dinosaur eggs, stretchy lizards and frogs, and daisy bracelets. If I have leftovers, they'll keep until next year.

Yup, when our church is the gathering place ... we women make the food. I always choose sandwiches cuz I've never made a decent square in my life. Salmon on whole wheat today.

I never worry about running out. I just bring in the pumpkin and decorations (I go all out - this is my favorite holiday) when I'm out of stuff. Last year we had a bunch left over and DH ate it all - I only got the sour gummie things and I don't like those. The first year we were here we had about 100 kids. Last year only about half that so the leftovers.

Doritos chips (which I gave out last year) keep forever. I'm still eating the leftover bags once in awhile and they're perfectly ok. Serious preservatives - now I know what to stock the nuclear fallout bunker with

Am going to go eat my healthy veggie stew now before the onslaught of tricksters. Have only had about 20 little chocolate bars so far.

It's Halloween. I'm gonna eat candy.

Dagmar (later on this will be )