A 3-Day Reboot!

I recently bought a book from The Happy Herbivore.  You see, lately, my eating hasn't been so great.  Is that a cookie?  Let me just eat one or three!  Or... oh we have chocolate chips in the cabinet? I'm just going to eat a little handful... Every Time I Go Into The Kitchen!  Seconds on dinner, big evening snacks before bed.  You see what I'm getting at?  I was doing Fabulous before my birthday!  I was at my lowest weight, I felt great and then... Happy Birthday!!  My birthday was back in October...
The age isn't the problem.  The fact that I went out to eat and restaurant food always causes a gain (and bloat).  Sure... maybe eating a bit too much while I'm out has something to do with it.  But still!  I don't get to go out very often so when I do, I may overindulge a bit.  Anyway, I gained a little extra and then Thanksgiving came.  Oh boy!  You see, it wouldn't be so bad if I only went one place.  At my grandma's, it's not so vegan friendly.  We bring our own meal.  I did great, didn't overeat!  But then... we went to the in-laws...   They love us so much that they cook yummy vegan stuff for us.  I, of course, ate too much. ::sigh::  Plus pie!  I love pie!
And of course following Thanksgiving, you have all the Christmas foods, which always include cookies.  Eating too much again...  I was starting to feel less than awesome.  You would think it would stop there but OH NO!  It does not!  You see...
Mid-January we have a birthday here in our little house.  That requires yummy food and, yep, cake!  Then February, you have to buy chocolates, March well... we became addicted to baked goods over the past few months so we kinda started making cookies and things pretty much weekly.  Cookies, cupcakes, donuts, brownies....etc... over and over again!  Mmmmmm!

Well, enough was enough!  No more!  :-/

That's when I saw that The Happy Herbivore had a lovely new book, '3-Day Reboot'  I bought it!  I also bought the '10-Day Cleanse' book, but to be honest, I'm not ready to do that one yet.    So we started it on Saturday.  My usual pancake breakfast was replaced with oatmeal.  It was good, but I definitely missed my pancakes.  Then my morning snack was a detox drink (water, ACV, lemon juice, cayenne, cinnamon and honey) and I would have preferred an apple.  Lunch was pumpkin chili, although we used sweet potato instead of pumpkin.  All the food was good.  The serving sizes were way more than I could eat.  We actually were able to feed both my husband and myself with just one serving split between us.  I doubled a few recipes and will be able to eat that stuff the rest of this week.  So my usual 6 meals/snacks a day got knocked down to 3 meals, one snack.  OH MY GOSH!  Sometimes I would be starving but I kept busy and drank lots of water.  We did it, all three days!  Although, we did have some chocolate with our strawberries one night.  But... we were about 90% with it the rest of the time, lol!

{And my youngest has been sleeping a bit better, he adds in hour in each night so that's less he's been in my bed.  Thank you PediaKids Sleeplessness!  }

And so, after my 3 Days I have to say, I'm doing good.  I am 1 lb away from where I was before my birthday, I'm not as tired as I was before and I'm in a better mood for the most part.  If I had the will power to keep this up that would be Fantastic!

So, if you're looking for a reboot, check out the book! Happy Herbivore

Spring Break

Just a few days after having a day off from school because of snow, my oldest started his Spring Break.  Sounds unnatural, doesn't it?  The actual seasons have shifted so much from our calendar expectations, it's hard to say what is what anymore!  And they say climate change isn't something to bother thinking about.  Ah well...

So in this house we don't celebrate religious holidays, we do it our way.  We don't really go too far off from what others do but I kinda like how with each passing year we are building up our own traditions.
Easter is just Spring for us.  Sure, we say Easter but it's just a celebration of Spring.  Flowers are starting to bloom, trees are (suppose to be) starting to get leaves, and everything is new again.  And warm weather usually comes but we haven't had the chance to get much of that yet.  For the most part our Spring (Easter) baskets are made up of toys with a bit of candy.  We made some of the candy this year.  Filled eggs, filled with Justin's Chocolate Hazelnut butter and filled with Justin's Maple Almond Butter, YUM!  We also did a few solid chocolates but the filled were definitely my favorites.

What about the eggs?  Don't my children get the joy of taking eggs and plopping them in mugs of colored water?  Well... no.  We don't eat eggs, we're vegan!  A few years ago I bought some plaster eggs and let the kids paint them.  We still have those eggs and since I don't like to throw pretty things away, if I continued to buy plaster eggs each year we'd eventually have WAY too many, te he!  So I came up with something new to do each year.  TIE DYE!

This was our second year doing it.  This year turned out so much better.  Our first year, I went with a fairly cheap kit, sat outside where it was a bit breezy.  I ended up ruining a pair of pants because my bottles leaked from under the cap and it was just a huge mess.  Plus I didn't use enough dye...  our shirts were more white than colored.
This year all went well.  I worked inside at the dining table.  Used plenty of dye and ta da!

I don't wear gloves, lol!  

I had just freshly painted my nail the night before too.  A beautiful new polish that I ordered from Zoya.    Ah well... my hands were all rainbow colored.  It has mostly worn off now though.  Which is great because my youngest doesn't like my hands this way.  He just looks at them, says: "No!" and backs away, ha!  

I did 15 tops, which means we each got 3.  A few days before tie dye day, my 4 year old and I watch videos on YouTube.  We saw a few techniques but the one that caught my little lovey was the heart.   Here is how his tie dyed heart shirt turned out.

I made one for myself too but I don't have a picture of it.

Oh and I should mention food!  We went to my in-laws for lunch on Sunday.  We ate a Gardein loaf, which I prefer over Tofurky.  We also had baked potatoes, I put Daiya cheddar, steamed broccoli and Tofutti Better than Sour Cream on mine.  I also ate too many chips and french onion dip but we won't talk about that.  

Today I'm baking bread.  The recipe changes a little almost every time I make it.  Maybe I'll share that recipe with you all at another time.  I hope everyone had a lovely weekend.