So a couple of weeks ago I bought an elliptical machine off someone on craigslist. I’ve been using it almost daily and it is a really good workout. I got a high quality one. I’ve also been tracking what I eat again using MyFitnessPal. I started using it last fall after I quit weight watchers (cause I didn’t want to continue paying for it) and I decided to start using it again since I’m back on the wagon or whatever. Here’s my little ticker that shows my progress. To date I lost 3 pounds already and I just started like two weeks ago

Created by MyFitnessPal – Free Calorie Counter

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So apparently twitter has this thing where you can only follow a certain number of people before they cut you off. This is based on how many people are following you. Some kind of categories. Well, I don’t have that many followers, but I follow tons of authors and book review blogs because following counts as an extra entry to their giveaways! So being cut off is evil and keeping me from extra points. So, if you’re not already following me, would you please follow me? I’ll follow you back @Juliecookies.

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I have a funky story to tell about our recent trip. So every year we go over to Florida for the annual family Christmas on hubby’s side. There’s the giant party with everyone where we do secret Santa and then we go visit people we rarely see and have a smaller Christmas with us, hubby’s parents, and his sister and her new family. Well, this year while we were visiting one of our cousins, we ended up adopting a dog. We’ve been wanting to get another dog for a little while but have been putting it off cause getting a dog from a breeder is expensive and all the vet bills for a puppy are a bit too much for us right now. But Dixie is 6 now and it is a good time to have her help train a younger furry friend. So when Katie told us that a lab mix puppy had been hanging around her house for the past week before we arrived, we thought we’d check that out. She already has 4 dogs and this one was so scared and skittish that she was afraid to have him around her one year old twins. She was planning to take him down to the Humane Society but since there isn’t a huge demand for stray dogs in that small town, she was sure he would get put to sleep. Well, after playing with him for a little bit, we had him up on hubby’s lab and were hand feeding him, so we are sure we can get that skiddishness out of him. We think now that he’s a boxer mix. He is about 40 pounds but he is very strong and solid. We’re pretty sure he’s going to outweigh Dixie pretty soon (she’s 60 pounds). We named him Diesel It fits him very well because he is so strong (and we wanted another D name since both our current pets have D names).

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So in 2010 I managed to read 36 books. For 2011 I decided to try the Goodreads reading challenge and challenged myself to read 50. Then when I quickly reached that goal, I increased it to 100. Thanks to audio books, and short stories, I have reached and exceeded that goal.

2011 Reading Challenge

Julie has

completed her goal of reading 100 books in 2011!

hide

112 of 100 (112%)

view books

So that widget thinger links to all the books I read in 2011, and all my ratings and reviews (if a review was posted). Many people have been listing their top 10 reads for the year, so I figured I would also list my favorites.
In no particular order, here are my top 10 favorite books (or series) I read in 2011.

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Happy Thanksgiving to all. We have a lot to be thankful for, even if sometimes things don’t seem perfect, when you look at the important stuff you see what really matters. We have each other, our family and friends, a comfortable home and I have a job that helps sustain our lifestyle. I’m hopeful that this coming year will bring my husband a good full time job, but in the mean time we still have a lot to celebrate.

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Halloween is my favorite holiday. I love to dress up and to decorate the house with fun and spooky things. Hubby didn’t let me buy the zombie babies from Spirit Halloween but those were awesome. We hosted a party again this year cause last year was so much fun. This year I had some fun with the menu. We made pumpkin chili (theme appopriate!) and a king ranch chicken casserole but for funsies I made some demon eyes. The weird thing is I guess my guests were kinda freaked out by them cause few were brave enough to try them. It was just food coloring and olives added to regular deviled eggs, chickens!

I dressed up as a Saloon girl and hubby dressed up as a Cowboy. My costume turned out to be pretty cool. I bought it online cause I was able to find one non-hoochy costume (where the dress sort of reaches the knees!).

I tortured the pets as well

Angriest kitty vampire ever:

Doggie was a pumkin:

Most of the guests brought dessert, and it was quite awesome. One couple was really creative. Karie dressed up as a hippie and baked brownies with some green flakes in them cause they were “that kind” of brownies. Her hubs Robert was a cop and brought donuts. Fun. More photos are on facebook (not linking it here to protect the privacy of my friends).

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These two weekends in a row I have agreed to so outdoorsy activities.

Last weekend we went camping at Inks Lake State Park (outside of Austin) with our neighbor friends who just got engaged. Yes, their celebration of engagement was going camping. It was an interesting experience, had some ups and downs. It turns out hubby had a really nice 4 person tent and we had an air mattress, so we were able to get a somewhat comfortable set up for sleeping. The engaged couple brought food for everyone for the entire time, as well as a propane stove and metal dishes. Yea, they’re super campers. Their family members and some of their friends made it out too. We had about 8 people (some left early, others came later). I had an issue on Saturday with dehydration which was kind of unfortunate. We went hiking after breakfast, but I hadn’t really had a chance to drink a lot of water yet, and even though I drank from hubby’s camelback the entire time, I still got really headachey and dizzy. And I also had a flare up of my plantar fasciitis from all the walking on uneven ground and rocks. My foot is doing better now but it wasn’t nice to me then. I’m not hanging out with athletic people anymore, it’s just not safe for my health to try to keep up. So that was not fun, but otherwise it was a nice trip. Neighbor lady really planned the meals nicely and I was impressed with all the variation for each meal and all that little stove could do. Dixie also had a great time swimming and walking around and sniffing things. Though she was a bad dog when it came to hanging out at the campsite. Dogs had to be on leashes, and she whined the entire time. She is ok with her leash when she is walking with us, but at home she is free to walk around and follow us so when she is tied to a tree and we are not right beside her, she whines like an annoying monster mouse. Yea, I was not happy with her. Neighbor lady’s sister brought her dog and that dog was so well behaved. Gah, Dixie can be a pain sometimes. I took some photos of the pretty state park scenery and got some photos taken of us as well. Heres’s one. More on Facebook.

Yesterday we had a horseback riding lesson. I bought one of those daily deal coupons and the stables are super close to our house. This was my first time on a horse, ever. They had a staircase for us to climb up to the saddle but then we still had to swing our leg around. Well I had nothing to hold onto (this is english style riding, so the saddle didn’t have anything to grab onto) so I almost fell off but I grabbed onto the horse’s great big neck and got myself steady. I had some balance issues cause I already don’t have good balance when I’m on the ground but here I’m in the air with no seatbelt or anything to hold onto. The instructor had to be super careful with me and hold onto my food to make sure I wasn’t falling. But I got the hang of sitting up on the horse toward the end of the lesson and the leading techniques are pretty easy. I’m thinking this might be something I might be willing to continue to do. I definitely need a lot more lessons to get fully comfortable on that beast of an animal and be able to move faster than a walk. Hubby never had official lessons but he rode horses as a kid (just the get on and stay on method) so he didn’t have any issues. So I might need more lessons than him to get us to the point where we can go rent a horse and ride some trails together. But it sounds fun. Though this morning I am super sore. Wow what a workout!

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So last weekend hubby and I went camping with some friends. More on that later, but I just wanted to ponder some ideas of what people consider comfortable. We had a 4 person tent and an air mattress and I even brought a pillow and comforter from home, but I still had trouble sleeping and could not get comfortable. The friends that we went with, the couple that lives in our subdivision, they slept in very late. Apparently my friend is super comfortable and relaxed while camping so she gets to sleep in. I have a hard time understanding that since once the sun is shining through the tent and the birds start their obnoxious chirping, there is no sleep to be had. So when I normally sleep in till about 9 on weekends at home, here I was waking up around 7. Our air mattress was good, but it wasn’t anything super special. It still had a plastic sound every time you moved, and if one person got up, the other person sank to the ground. So it was only comfortable when both of us slept perfectly still, which come one, no one sleeps perfectly still. Now what would really be cool would be if we could get some fabric sofas for home-like comfort in a tent! But if we’re gonna go there, let’s just get an RV or even a hotel. That would be perfect for me.

Yes I know I am a princess. But it is interesting that if you put the money into it, you can make camping a lot more comfortable. My friend’s air mattress had separate compartments so it doesn’t shift when you move around on it. It cost a lot more than ours though. And of course a little googling can find some great articles on making camping comfortable. This website has a nice list of what you should spend some money on to add to the comforts. I like the idea of the camping heater and fan, but are those really battery powered? Cause there’s no source of electricity unless you have your car idling the entire time lol.

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I’m hosting a girls movie night in a few weeks and it got me thinking about my seating options. We have a decent amount of couch space, as long as people don’t hog half the couch to their lazy stretched out selves. We have a recliner chair, a (pull out bed) couch that should seat 3 comfortably (maybe more if all the smaller people sit on the couch), a love seat that has two separated reclining seats with an arm rest in the middle where you can put food, and a round piece that connects the couch part to the love seat part (that is where the dog sits). For just the two of us and the dog, that is plenty of space. We usually just sit on the couch but sometimes use the love seat if we want to recline while watching a long movie. The couch is nice, but it is old. It shows wear and has doggie slobber stains all over the arm rests. I know, animals are gross. But I figure we can at least fit 7 or 8 people comfortably and the others that might show up will need separate chairs or maybe pillows if they will sit on the floor.

Someday we will get around to replacing our couch. I think we might look into a corner sofa from Fashion4Home or some other place. I like the corner couches because they are larger and have more space to lay down. I’m such a couch potato. We do spend a lot of time in front of that TV.

I’ve also been looking at some ideas for a future purchase, and I noticed that ehow has some really awesome articles. There’s an article with tips you can bring to the store with you to help you make decisions. There’s also another article that talks about things to look for to make sure you are getting a quality couch. It is pretty amazing how many good tips are out there if you know where to look.

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