Dinner

We love fish and chips...and we used to eat it often.. 4 big pieces of fish dipped in all sorts of batter and fried up nice and tasty with a big piles of fries on the side. Well... totally not on the menu these days.. but we still love fish... so I took one of our cracker servings and made it into a powder and added a bunch of spices.. rolled the fish in it and baked it. So now instead of a pound of fish we get 3.5 oz. and instead of fries we have a big green salad and some cucumbers. I have to say it is in no way the same.. but it is really good. It makes the house smell so good and it looks so pretty.. and afterwards we have energy to do things.. used to eat the big pile of fried food and then have to sit around for an hour with a tummy ache. ( yes that is how we got fat ) Learning to eat until it is enough instead of eating as much as we can is a huge step in this... better choices in what we eat and how much we eat. It is awesome to be losing weight but the best part is how much better we are feeling.

North Cascades

Four day weekend and Dave had to work on Friday and Saturday and a few hours on Sunday.. as soon as he was done Sunday we packed a picnic dinner and headed out. We decided to head up highway 20 and check out some camp sites. We love the drive and it was such a beautiful day. Found a few great camping places and a few not so great... saw a lot of mountains. Went on a couple small hikes to some awesome lookouts and just had a wonderful relaxing day.

Followed the Skagit river up highway 20 in the North Cascades

The lookout from the Newhalem visitor center .. also checked out the camp ground here and Love it!

Spill way is empty... first time I have seen it with no water.. lots of huge rocks.

Diablo lake at the look out.

Watched the sun set behind the mountains over Diablo lake.

Camping on the North Cascade Highway

Some of the camping areas we checked out where not so nice.. there are some in Marblemount but not the kind we like.. they were mostly open fields sort of camping.. looked like you were camping in someones back yard. As we went further up we found some we really liked though.

Goodell creek is right before Newhalen and is very woodsy and nice.. there were some bigger motor homes in there... no reservations.. no flush toliets.. spots are a bit hilly.. right on the skagit river... more of a tenting sort of place.. but I like it for roughing it :) $10 a night

Newhalen creek is super nice.. just minute or two from goodell creek and on the way to the vistor center.. they have a couple of loops.. nice clean maintained place with lots of motor homes and they have flush toilets.. no power but really nice big spots. $12 a night ~ I am guessing you can reserve these as a lot had reserved signs on them. Photo of one of the back in spots.. nice and long and clean.

Colonial Creek, has camping on both sides of highway 20.. on the North side it is a bit more rustic with one loop.. pretty hilly sites... not really for bigger motor homes. South side of highway 20 has a nice boat launch and a lot of camping spots.. flush toilets... nice.. everything is just really nice. $12 a night

I believe most of these close down by the end of September... so I would be sure to call ahead to check on any of them. We will hopefully be spending a lot of time up there next spring and summer.. the hikes out of that area are amazing!

Here is a link for Camping in the area

Eating on Our "diet"

This new way of eating is working out really good for us... Lots of veggies and some fruit and some healthy meat... Since Dave does not like veggies I have been making up a soup that gives him 4 cups of veggies in every bowl. Today I made up a huge pan of it so that everyday I can warm him up a big bowl of it to go with dinner and he is happy and healthy :)

After this stage I give it a little puree so he can not see the veggies

I also baked a bunch of chicken and then cut up each serving into bite size pieces and put them in baggies we can have for lunch... and made 5 lbs of hamburger ( the 96/4) into 4 oz patties in the freezer. This week we added 15 servings of cod to the freezer too.. all frozen in single little servings I can just pull out and pop in the oven :) Eating like this is proving to be simple and easy.. to shop for.. to cook for and to eat.

It amazes me to think that in the last 17 days I have used no sugar.. no butter.. no breads.. no pasta... nothing preserved or boxed or fake.. everything has been fresh.. I did use stevia .. two little packets.. one when I made bbq sauce and one on some strawberries.. but that is it. I may not have lost a hundred lbs yet.. but we are both feeling so much better.. more focused and cleaner and in great spirits. A lot of people tell me negative things about this hcg diet... but a lot of them do not get it... for some of us, everyone is different, but like for us here.. being fat is a big mental thing.... this diet is teaching us how good we feel when we eat right.. and showing us some pretty bad habits we had.. we were not eating because we were hungry.. we were eating because it was habit. This diet has taken the hunger away and is letting us learn a lot about ourselves and how we work and allowing us the chance to change our habits and how we think about things. Not every "diet" works for every person...but this one is working for us.. not only are we losing weight.. and inches.. but we are feeling amazing... and learning so much and making huge life changes in how we eat.. what we eat.. and why we eat.

Focused

I can not seem to get focused.. my brain either seems to be stumbling around with nothing or it is in overload. No need for blonde jokes here :) I know this is part of the bi-polar and I am keeping an eye on it because right now it is in overload (upswing) so many cool fun things going on.

1, Started a group on Facebook Stanwood Area Barter Group Hoping to get lots of people involved and start getting some bartering going on in the area.

2, The diet Dave and I are working on... post about that here it is going great.. a lot better than I had expected... day 13 of 40 days and feeling great!

3, Coupons... coupons and coupons... yes I am addicted. It is crazy how many coupons are out there for so many things. I spent a couple of hours just this morning signing up to have samples with coupons mailed to the house... I may not need to ever by any tampons, pads, shampoo, soap, or anything else for the bathroom for years. My facebook and my email are not filled 98% with coupon related things... I am printing and gathering and stacking and sorting and organizing like crazy... I love it! I am ready to take my first envelope to the store this week for our weekly trip... I may only save a couple of dollars ( not going too extreme here... yet) but it is a couple of dollars we would have spent last week. Our grocery list is changing .. food wise we are only buying meat and veggies and fruit right now.. so I am only using coupons for cleaners and stuff for the next couple of weeks.

4, Working on some new craft projects. Have three new projects I have started.. but they are not really ready to be talking too much about yet :) Next week I should be ready with a blog post for at least one of the projects!

5, Cleaning the house... this may sound odd.. but now that the kids are out.. and Dave and I have everything how we want it... I am so in love with cleaning it. The best part is.. it is so easy now. When I clean the kitchen ... it stays clean. Sometimes I clean something and then spend the day walking past it just amazed that it is still clean. My kids were not dirty or messy.. in fact they were a lot cleaner than most teenagers I know.. it is just so different now.

Ok that pretty much wraps up what is going on this week for me. I am on an upswing.. not too high though.. should be fine.. and I am getting bunches down and feeling great! Hope everyone else is having a good week too.

*a huge hug and a prayer for someone I know who is in a hard place right now, it will get better*

This little butterfly bush was planted in April, post here a friend had given me the little one inch start that was almost dead... it did nothing for months.. then all of a sudden it started growing and now it is about 2 feet tall and around and has little flowers. Yay!

~Michelle

Great View on a Sunny Day

Well I do not really have a lot to write about these days... working on the house.. cleaning and organizing and sorting is mostly what is getting done. Getting ready to head out to the shop and start cleaning out there. Now that all the kids have moved out and we have brought everything home from storage it is as if Dave and I are finally moving in together. When I moved in here I left almost all my stuff in storage.. then he put most of his into storage so that he could make room for all of my kids and we could remodel the house. Now the house is done and the kids are gone and we are making it ours and it feels so good :)

Friday we went to Bellingham to pick up a couple of things for the house, a magnet door dick for the bedroom so the door stops blowing shut.. I am so afraid of the cat getting smashed. We also needed to get a new track for the closet door in the office.. we had the wrong one up and it made a really horrible sound when you opened it. On the way back we drove down Chuckanut Drive which is a beautiful drive and we stopped at a pullout to have our lunch and enjoy the view.

We visited a fun antique junk shop and found a few things we might need... decided it was best to come home and do some research and think about them first though. We then hit the hobby store and brought some track to set up Dave's very old train cars in so we can display them with our train stuff. Hit the grocery store for a lot of fruits and veggies... we did find a salad dressing that is everything free... no calories.. no fat.. no sugar.. no msg... pretty much there is nothing in there.. lol it is weird.. but it taste good so we enjoyed a nice green salad with some chicken in it and some fake? salad dressing.

This morning we had a lazy morning.. did our weigh in and we are both still dropping.. did our weekly measurements and they are down... Dave made up a bunch of charts so we can watch everything and then we went and hit some garage sales.. I got some fun baskets and a cool big glass bowl and a few other small things..tomorrow we focus on the shop and mowing the weeds in the yards.. the grass has all died off but those weeds are about 2 feet tall :(