Christmas Painting Sale

Hey gang. I'm doing well and hanging in there. The scale is staying the same, which is always better than going up.

Today I am posting about something that has absolutely nothing to do with low-carb. It's a shameless plug for my business. BUT, this is my blog so I can do that now and again, right? ;-)

I'm now taking orders for my Christmas sale on painted photographs. These are hand painted, by me, in Photoshop from digital photos, then printed on canvas. Here is an example of a painting I did of my daughter:

Original photo:



Painted Photo:


Details:



I can use almost any photo for this, although I will require a copyright release from any taken by a professional photographer. I'm now taking orders for Christmas. If this is something you'd be interested in learning more about, please contact me using this address.

Thanks for humoring me! :0)

Kick me.. (ignore the sign)

I'm not wearing padding either....

I'm depressed right now. This is very unusual for me this time of year. I love Christmas. It's my favorite time of year. But this year I'm having a hard time getting into it. I've never had this problem before, so it's weird to feel this way.

I would venture to say part of it is exhaustion. This move took a lot out of me. It also took an awful lot out of our bank account, which is probably another reason I'm not feeling so festive. But I think the biggest part of the problems is that when I started preparing for the move, I got too busy to take care of myself. The result? In two short months I've regained about 10 lbs. No..that's incorrect. I've regained OVER 10 lbs. I was at 159 when I quit making progress. Now I'm at 171. That just royally stinks! It's depressing and frustrating. Anyway, I've changed my progress tickers to reflect the bad news.

My challenge now isn't to get back on track. The hardest part will be to overcome the emotions so I can get back on track. See, when I quit low-carbing, I slowly start having health issues. Most of them creep back on so slowly that I don't notice them until they are pretty bad. My depression issues are that way. I can manage without medications when I eat as I should. But when I start eating carbs they slowly edge back in. Then one morning I wake up, pull the covers back over my head and wish I could sleep forever. That's pretty much where I am now. I'm very frustrated with myself. I guess I should just be glad that I haven't gained it all back already. I think the only reason the damage is minor is because I did eat low-carb foods... just not all the time. There were way too many fast food places in my menu the last two months, and I didn't make good choices.

So, this is the start of a new day, right? I can get back on track and do my best to ignore my emotional roller coaster ride until I am well again. Or at least that's what I keep telling myself. Once again I'm going to use this blog to keep me on the up and up. I'll try to post daily if I can (except Sunday). Knowing that I need to check in may be just enough of a kick in the pants to help me get there.

So get your boots on and prepare for some exercise... my rear end is huge and you'll be kicking frequently.

Having a very optimistic outlook today...

I can't say what the cause is, but I'm glad I feel this way. It really helps you get through the day, ya know? The scale is back down below where I was before Thanksgiving. When I weighed Thanksgiving morning I was at 196.4, today I was at 196 even. Progress is progress... even in tiny increments. :0)

I do need to measure myself. I haven't measured since I started back up. I know there will be days when the scale shows nothing, or even a gain, while my inches are still going down. I'll report back with measurements asap.

I'm not hungry enough for breakfast this morning, so I'll probably just eat at lunch and then take my supplements. Lunch will be either a grilled hamburger patty and salad, or baked cod and salad. Will depend on my mood at the time. Dinner tonight will be meatloaf (low carb of course) and spaghetti squash monterrey. If you've never tried spaghetti squash, you are missing out! I'll try to post the recipe to this later in the day.

I'm going to spend some time today catching up on much needed sleep and sewing a dress for my daughter. I still have a few gifts to wrap as well. We are doing something fun with the kids this year. Instead of putting their names on the gifts, we are going to put "Thing 1" and "Thing 2" on them and let them guess which is which. They love Dr. Seuss and thought this was a fun idea. So now I won't have to worry about one of them getting upset because the other one has a bigger box - OR them guessing ahead of time what the gift is because they know it's for them. My kiddos are experts at looking at a box and deciding it's the same box from something on their wish list.