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The Ducks were a HIT

Easter Sunday is certainly a day to remember our Lord and the sacrifice He made.  It is also a day to spend with those you love.  In my case that would be my LB and my Family.  I have three grown children, a precious daughter-in-law and the most adorable grand-baby ever!  My extended family includes my sweet Mama, my sister, and her family.

This Easter we gathered for Sunday “dinner” after church.  As a bonus, there was an after dinner Easter egg hunt.  Three children [three years old and under] were center stage:  My sister’s two grand-babies Levi and Thea, and my little Lydia.  This was about as entertaining an Easter egg hunt as there ever was.

Every year I will make up Easter baskets for my kids.  They expect it and they truly appreciate it.  Now that Lydia is part of the family she gets an Easter basket as well.  This year her Easter basket contained Cheddar Bunnies, a bunny headband, a cookie in a tin, 6 plastic eggs, a white plush bunny with a carrot shaped blanket and a tube of plastic ducklings [pictured is Glammy and Lydia who is wearing the bunny headband and holding the tube of ducklings in her right hand].

We spent the next hour playing with the six little ducks.  Lydia would declare that she needed help and I would promptly hold out my hands so she could turn them out and one by one pluck them up and place them back into the tube.

Easter

Our Lord has written the promise of resurrection, not in books alone, but in every leaf in springtime ~ Martin Luther

Azalea

Enjoy this beautiful spring day!

 

Mark 16:5-7

Cookies & Colored Eggs

The Saturday before Easter Sunday would not be complete without coloring eggs.  This year I decided the day wouldn’t be complete without cookies as well.  I started early in the day with spritz cookies.  The recipe I used is from Remarkable Home and I found it on Pinterest.  When I first came across this post, it was cuteness overload.  The Artist has sandwiched the cookies onto pop sticks and formed them into a bouquet.  Intent on using my new bunny platter, I had no intention of going to bouquet route, but it was certainly adorable.

With my handy spritz cookie press and the basic recipe from Remarkable Home I was able to create these festive flowers:

And they are tasty.  The cookies are all brushed with a light glaze.  The pink and orange have colored sprinkles; the green and blue do not.  The general consensus is that the sprinkle cookies taste better, however those without sprinkles look better.  Maybe I went a little overboard on the sprinkling.

After I decorated all the flower cookies I placed them on the Garden Bunny Cake Stand from Pier One that I purchased on a recent shopping trip.

Isn’t it cute

 

This evening I drafted my daughters to do the egg coloring for me.  Stephanie and Amanda took care of the metallic and tie dye Easter eggs and did a great job.  We decorated 18 but my math/division skills were lacking at the time so we ended up with 10 metallic and 8 tie dye.  My bad.  Nevertheless, I enjoyed the time with my girls.

 

This is Eloise

 

Diet Day 3

Am I skinny yet?

Today I remained faithful to the Paleo plan I began on Monday.  In addition to this, I have remained faithful to another plan that I didn’t even realize was a diet trend.  I mentioned on Monday that I am counting calories and skipping dinner.  Apparently this is a method associated with one of the world’s most popular health and fitness trends — Intermittent Fasting (IF).  Here is what I’ve learned:

  1. The Leangains protocol is a period of fasting daily that begins with skipping breakfast and then restricting food intake to a period of 8 hours, for example noon – 8 PM.  Then begins the fast for 16 hours.  I have not learned why skipping breakfast is supposedly ideal, but I know that skipping dinner and evening snacking is definitely beneficial.
  2. The Eat-Stop-Eat method involves fasting for a full 24 hours weekly.
  3. The 5:2 method involves restricting caloric intake to 500 twice a week, non-consecutive days.  You are free to eat normally the other 5 days of the week.

Have you tried IF?  I have had success in the past by eating normal meals during the day and then “closing the kitchen” at 4 PM.  If you have less than ten pounds to lose and can do this for a few days, it will result in a much happier bathroom scale.

I’m looking forward to seeing what my bathroom scale has to say to me by the end of this week!  Until then…

teen wolf tyler posey scott mccall stiles stilinski lydia martin GIF

Today my pants were extremely tight, but I wore them anyway to remind me that I need to keep my fingers out of the mixed nuts!

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Every Single Diet

…that I ever fell off of was because of potatoes and gravy of some sort ~Dolly Parton

Image result for potatoes and gravy not copyrighted

Yesterday I mentioned starting a diet based on the Cave Women Don’t Get Fat book, which is Paleo. My co-worker Wendy has been following the Ketogenic diet and has lost 20 pounds.  That said, we have been talking nothing but diet for the past three weeks.  Both the Keto and Paleo are popular diet plans and it is interesting to note their differences/similarities. The Paleo plan is so named for Paleolithic – meaning stone age, hence the reference to Cave Women.

The Ketogenic plan originated to help manage epilepsy.  This plan targets driving the body into ketosis in order to burn fat. Oddly enough, the plan is rich in fat and focuses on controlling the three primary macro-nutrients, which are divided 70% fat 25% protein and 5% carbohydrates. Wendy is very conscious of the amount of carbohydrates she consumes and tries to keep them under ten grams per day.

The Paleo diet focuses on eating the way our ancestors did, when they were hunting and gathering. The balance of macro-nutrients isn’t as important as the elimination of such categories as dairy, grains and processed foods, basically the food that wasn’t readily available, if available at all thousands of years ago.

One of the most obvious similarities between the two plans is the restriction of grains. Paleo because grains were not available during the stone age and Ketogenic because carbohydrates are taboo on this fat rich plan.

I’m very proud of Wendy and I remind her to “stay strong” as we part ways every evening.  She is doing great! (insert picture here as soon as she lets me take one).  As for me – diet day two – still hanging in there.

Changing subjects, as I left the house this morning I noticed 2 lakes and a river that were not there [in my yard] the day before.  Not surprising with the 6 inches of rain that fell yesterday.  It was a dreary, rainy day so I wore a bright sunny yellow blouse from New York & Company

 

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