I'm Back! - Chalkboard Painted Mason Jars

It's been well over a year since I've had any time for projects ... my time has been all consumed by studying for LSATs, writing graduate school applications, relationships, a new job, blah, blah, blah, blah ... but this morning, I woke up and found that I actually had some free time and it would be only marginally irresponsible - rather than wildly irresponsible - to use it doing something other than the aforementioned things.

So, I did a project! 

I've been dying to figure out a better way to organize the millions of different grains in my poorly organized, poorly planned pantry. While wasting time on Pinterest the other day, I saw lots of inspiration - mostly of the sleek, modern, mason jar kind - and I decided to create my own. My most important criteria was that I had to have some way to label my jars. It wouldn't due to go mixing up my couscous with my wild rice of-course!

Enter the ever popular among crafters, diy-ers and Martha Stewart wanna-be's everywhere - chalk paint!

Instructions:

1. Start by taping off the area on your mason jar that you would like to convert to an awesome chalk board surface.  Be sure that you tape up the entire bottom of the jar to prevent any drippage. I learned this the hard way. 

2. Mix the paint well and brush it on your jar in a thick coat. Try to use as few strokes as possible so as to get a nice smooth surface. 

3. Let dry according to directions on packaging. 

4. Remove tape.

5. Despite my thorough taping job, I had some dripping and oozing going on when I took off the tape. Nail polish remover worked wonders to touch things up. That stuff is amazing! A scraping tool was also helpful for cleaning up the edges of the painted area. 

Ta-da! You've got yourself some lovely, stylish, inexpensive new storage containers. 

Happy organizing

They don't teach that in Bio 101

Of course, with a new healthy-food-kick comes a new exercise-kick.

Like any normal American female... actually, these days I think that statement can be generalized to any American, in my constant quest to look like something that doesn't exist, I must obsess over exercise AND food... they come in pairs. So... like a life time ago, I bought a Groupon for an unlimited month of BCOR Boot Camp, and I finally cashed it in. I have been going to Spott's Park - which is beautiful, and I didn't know existed until now (probably because its in a valley that the boot camp people like to make us run up and down to the detriment of my gluteus maximus muscles) - at 6:00 AM a few days a week to get my tuchus kicked. A million sets of burpees, jumping squats and mountain climbers later I am plumb tuckered out. Try going to work after that! These are the days I wish my job was a little more like a desk job. Anyway, after all those fat burning calisthenics (mine hasn't seemed to burn so much) my entire body aches and feels like one giant human knot (I look like my grandmother for about two hours after getting out of bed each day). So, naturally, I've had to start taking yoga too.

Now, I like a good yoga class as much as the next gal, but I'm a little Type-A, Left-Brained,  whatever euphemism you want to use for uptight, and the loosey goosey flowy mumbo jumbo kinda gets on my nerves. The instructor is always up there talking about things like "heart space", which I take to mean chest - why can't he just say chest; "interlocking toes", I'm sorry, mine don't do that, I'm a homo sapien not a gorilla ; "sit bones"- the leg bone's connected to the what?; and so forth. This morning, I took a fabulous beginners yoga class at Joy Yoga, which turned out to be exactly what I needed - lots of stretching, but the language was all the same. This guy was up there going on and on and on and taking us from one pose to another via transferences of energy. I was totally lost - like Sandra Bullock trying to learn the Miss America dance in Miss Congeniality (If you're cool, you know what I'm talking about). While I'm feeling all nice and stretched out now, next time, I'll remember to take my translator 'cause they don't teach you where your "heart space" is in Bio 101!

Starting Fresh

It has been so so very very long since I have written anything here. I think I have quite forgotten how this is done. And, surprisingly, boy how I miss it. There was something that made life more interesting and creative when always looking for something new to post or considering the perfect wording of a sentence.

Things have been a little sad and dull without my blog juices flowing over the year, but every time I have considered writing recently, its seemed like such a daunting task... and nothing to write about anyway. Plus, the longer I post pone (no pun intended), the more I felt I had to catch-up on when I sat down to try again. OVERWHELMING! But finaly, here goes...

There has definitely (I can NEVER spell this word) been a lot going on in my life over the past year-ish... I won't bore anyone with the details, and I'll save myself the headache of a re-cap. Let's just say its on to fresh starts and new beginnings.

Fresh Start #1 - Get back my healthy lifestyle

While I have not considered myself an un-healthy person in a long time, I have recently, for various reasons, most of which can be labeled under omnipotent umbrella Stress, been a less-healthy person, and I was beginning to feel rather like one large, fatty, jiggly, sluggish butter-ball. So, in the name of fresh starts, I joined the Snap Kitchen 21 day Commit program.

I met with a nutritionist at Snap Kitchen - which was rather  uninformative as I (not to toot my own horn or anything, but you know...) have relatively few bad health habits. I eat a good breakfast. I don't drink sodas. I usually exercise regularly. I don't gorge on candy bars every night before bed, I know what the food pyramid - or plate or whatever - looks like, I know the difference between a vegetable and a carbohydrate etc, etc. Anyway, at the end of our meeting, the nutritionist and I picked a meal plan that would help me lose 1 - 2 pounds per week, and I paid a fairly hefty price for all of the food I would be eating for the next three weeks. I left feeling excited but rather worried that this was going to be like the Jenny Craig diet my mother went on a few times when I was a kid. I don't actually remember anything about Jenny Craig, these days it may be a wonderful program, other than that my mother ate unappealing frozen meals and complained about it every time she went on their program.

Well, seven days later, I'm not feeling Jenny Craig-ed at all. Plus, I've already lost some weight and certainly some jiggle, and I'm feeling pretty ding-dang awesome. Life's not so bad the Snap Kitchen way.

Lentil Curry soup and Vegetable "lasagna"
Yum!
( I need to work on my photography skills 'cause this meal was not photogenic)

Admittedly, the lentil soup was a little heavy on the curry, but I so love this lasagna. Instead of noodles, its made with veggies sliced and layered like noodles. Its delish. And TOTALY something I can make!

Here's to Fresh Starts!