The Boyle's First Christmas

Chris and I decided to celebrate Christmas at our house before all of our travels.

We did all of the traditional Christmas things!

First we opened presents and had one of our favorite dinners, Chipotle.

 We then made a batch of chocolate chip cookies and decorated the sugar cookies I made the day before.

We then watched one of our favorite Christmas movies, The Polar Express, and had real hot chocolate (real meaning with milk and not diet Swiss Miss). Of course we had it when they started singing the song "Hot Chocolate"!

We started off our Christmas celebrations with our trip to Lousiville.  We spent a couple of days with Chris' family celebrating!

 We got Caroline her first American Girl doll for Christmas.  Why you may ask?  Because the doll came out this year and her name is Caroline!  It was too perfect not to get it for her!

We then headed up North to Dayton to visit both of Michelle's grandparents.  We had a traditional Christmas dinner at Nana & Papa Stroede's and then headed south for Lasagna at Nana Leiter's.

On Wednesday, Cincinnati had a snow storm.  But that did not stop us from traveling to Michelle's parent's to celebrate Christmas.

 Our house by the time we got back from Christmas at the Leiter's!  We had lots and lots of snow!

This was shoveled before we left and it snowed that much in 6 hours!

Michelle's House Project Update

So my house project is taking me a lot longer that I expected.  I wanted to be done with the trim and door painting at the end of November.  It is now Christmas and I am not done.  

The trim takes a while to paint when you are trying not to also get paint on the newly painted walls.  The tannin is also bleeding through many sections of trim and doors causing me to have to go  back and paint it yet again.  It is worth all of the time though.  The house look so much fresher and cleaner.  

Here is an example of how it has transitioned.

I am hoping to complete my project while I have some time off during Christmas Break.

Weight Loss Reflections/ Tips

Through our weight loss journey I have learned a lot and wanted to share some of the things I have learned.

1) It Is Not Easy.
All of the things we have done have been a struggle at some point or another. No one said it would be easy. Hence why the majority of our society is overweight or obese. But it does help to have someone to do it with. Be it someone in your family or your lunch buddies. Get support, complain about it a little and continue on your path to lose weight and be healthier.

2) You Must Count Everything That Goes In Your Mouth
I mean everything. Oh, you had a peppermint. Yep, it has 14 calories. There are loads of websites that will help you track calories.  Chris and I use MyPlate from Livestrong. They have most foods we eat already entered and a easy to use app for your phone. Sparkpeople.com and myfitnesspal.com are also good ones to check out.  You also have to be willing to be honest and listen to the portion sizes. A good tool to figure out what you should eat is http://www.webmd.com/diet/calc-bmi-plus
It also calculates your height to weight ratio which can give you a better idea if you are health wise better.

3) Exercise Helps You Eat More
The majority of my weight lose has been through calorie reduction. My schedule has been too busy sometimes to work out properly. With that being said, if your calorie goal is 1200 and you burn 200 walking, you can eat 200 calories and still lose weight ( it will go faster if you are under, but it is not always healthy).

4) Serving Sizes are Smaller Than You Think
If you have never looked at a food label, now is the time. They are there for a reason. They tell you how much you can eat of something for a certain amount of calories. If you want to lose weight, you have to stick to them.

5)You Need To Enjoy What You Are Eating
Chris and I have lost a great deal of weight and continued to eat pasta. I have continued to enjoy my glass (5 oz) of wine. It would be unbearable to not treat ourselves to the things we like. And this is also putting us in a place of being comfortable eating what we like when we get to the maintenance portion of this.

With that being said, the things you like need to fit into your calorie count. I have my glass of wine. But 5 oz ( my glass can probably hold 20). You can have chips, but you have to count them like the bag says. It is the only eat you can enjoy the foods you live and still lose weight. And honestly, with the Internet, there are tons of places to look for what you want to eat, but healthier.

6) Have Cheat Days Without Going Overboard
We had a Christmas party. We ate what we wanted and lost weight. You can have day where you eat the calories you would if you were  trying to maintain(stay at the same weight). For example:

2 lbs a week diet: 1200 calories
Maintenance : 2200 calories

If you ate between 1200 and 2200 calories one day. You would not gain weight, just not lose 2 lbs that week ( unless you made it up with exercise).

To gain a lb of fat, you would need to eat an additional 3,500 calories. That would be 5,700 in a day (or more than your allotted over many days). That is a ton of food. Don't be scared to have a cheat day!

7) It Is Okay To Hate Dieting
I do. It is torture.

8) You Need To Plan Ahead
When I wake up in the morning and pack my lunch I first have to count how many calories I will be eating for dinner. Do I want any snacks for the day? Everything is about that magic number. Some days I can have lord of snacks due to lower calorie meals. Other days I do not get snacks because of higher calorie meals.  I have to type in everything that will go in my mouth for the day before I leave for work. Boring, yet effective.

9) Eat lots of protein and fiber
They will keep you full longer. You need about 20-30 grams of fiber to stay regular ( which can be affected since you are changing all the goods you eat so dramatically). Our taciturn treat is the following fiber bar. It provides 30% of what you need in a day. Want a double- whammy, eat beans. They are so good for you. Meijer also has No Salt Added Beans with 10 mg per serving. Regular beans have close to 200 mg. Reducing the salt reduces excess water storage.

10) It Is A Lifelong Struggle
Many people will say you get used to eating like this and it will become easier as you go. They lie. You will always have to be conscious about what you are eating. In the end you should feel better and be more healthy.

11) And buy a new pair of jeans if yours are too big. You don't have to replace your entire wardrobe, but treat yourself to something that fits.  And revel in the fact you had to buy something smaller!

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas.....

The Boyles love Christmas!  Our house if filled with lots of Christmas decorations.  I am excited to see what our House will look like as the years go on!

Thanksgiving

We had a great Thanksgiving!  We started our Thanksgiving festivities in Louisville with Chris' family.  It was a special Thanksgiving because we were blessed with a new member of the family, Caroline. She is a wonderful baby!  Chris and I really enjoyed getting to know her!

On Sunday we went to Thanksgiving at the Leiter Household.  It was a fabulous Thanksgiving.  Chris and I were able to see our families!  We cannot wait to see everyone again for Christmas!

Half Bathroom

This bathroom was my August project.  It just us a long time to get the new light put up.

The bathrooms in this house are cursed.  The old owners put up wallpaper without priming the walls.  Which if I am not mistaken is a sin according to the bible.  Unfortunately I had to paint over some of the wallpaper...... and yes the wallpaper is still on the wall.  You would not be able to tell where there is wallpaper and where it is not.  Here are the pictures of the bathroom so far.

This bathroom is not finished though.  Chris and I would eventually like to get hardwood downstairs in our house.  So when the flooring goes in, the old vanity goes out.  For our birthday this year, my parents got us a new vanity for this bathroom. Here is the picture of it below.

The color reminds me of chocolate milk.  We also put up a new light and painted the trim white!

Fall Full of Plumbing Problems

This fall we had the opportunity to use the home warranty we got when we bought the  house.  I called because we had a water spot on the ceiling in the foyer below our master bathroom shower. 

The plumber could not tell us what the problem was until we opened the ceiling.










 And voila!  We saw that we had water coming from a small crack in the shower base.  You can sort of see it in the top right corner of the drain.

This of course was not covered my our home warranty and would cost us extra to fix.

We didn't like this plumber very much so we decided we needed to call someone else.





 In the meantime, we have a bucket under the hole in our ceiling to catch the dripping water. 

Why don't you use the other shower you have?  Well......

 When the home warranty man was here, I mentioned that the handles in the hall bathroom dripped when turned on.  This was covered by our home warranty.

But when he tried to get the casing off the handles, they got stuck.  He was able to get the middle and right one off and replace the stem.  But the right one will not come off. 

Yes we have tried Lime Away and CLR to dissolve the mineral build up keeping the casing in place.  So we have to have another person get it off without breaking the pipes in the wall.

More than likely, they will have to cut into the wall and cut off the piece and add a little piece of pipe.

 One of the more successful stories was that we got a new expansion tank on our water heater.  Ours was dead.  I noticed there was a problem when large puddles of water would always be on the floor.

Another thing that went wrong was our garbage disposal died.  Yes, all of this happened in like a week or two period.

This was not a big deal as well.  But we got a new garbage disposal for free!

Our plumbing woes will (hopefully) come to an end soon.  We are going to have someone come to the house this week to fix the hall bathroom and we have hired a person to redo our master bathroom (as soon as the other shower is working).