Whole Lotta Thursday!

breakfast - banana, 2 granola bars and coffee
with fat free coffeemate sand caramel Splenda
315 calories

I find photographing my food helps me maintain calorie discipline, so I’ll be occasionally sharing the photos if the presentation looks especially appealing. This one isn’t special, except that I LOVE granola bars and haven't had them in a long time, just a good photo to go with the introduction of the food shots here and there!


Ever have one of those weeks where you keep getting a day ahead? I’ve been that way all week! David asked if I was writing the wrong dates and I told him, “oh no, I have the wrong days of the week associated with the dates!” Today feels like Friday, Friday, May 22. Does that actually make me a whole year off?? It’s just been a busy and productive week. It makes me feel like I’m a year ahead!

Part of busy has been actually talking to a few people and a decent number of okay posted jobs in the during the day job hunt world. It’s a positive step! I’ve also been working on putting my portfolio together. I found a great site to guide me this endeavor. A portfolio isn’t just for people in a creative field. In fact, the first examples of types of portfolios they gave were a chef, a bookkeeper and a construction worker.

If you’re job-hunting, or even if your not, in this day and age you never know when you will be, check out the portfolio tips at Manifest Your Potential. Learn from what I’ve dug up being the person looking for work for so long so if it happens to you, it won’t happen as long.

I have always believed there is a reason for everything that happens. There is information I’m finding right now that will make a positive difference in my world, to me personally or to someone for whom I’m here. I just really hope I’m the example of what to do and not what NOT to do! But I think I’m doing okay.

With the exception of this morning, when I took part of the morning to blog, that’s been my before and after lunch days so far this week.



Lunchtime

What did Donna Reed eat for lunch? To be honest, I haven’t seen a ton of episodes of that show, I just know Donna Reed as the icon of an 50s-ish American Housewife. That’s what she was, a television characterization of that anyway, not the supportive homemaker who takes care of the home, the budget, has her husband’s back and molds the kids or the stay-at-home parent who is an active participant in the teaching and nurturing of the kids while creating that comfort of home and hearth so the parent responsible for earning the family’s financial security can concentrate on his or her profession, the stereotypical housewife of the time before I was born, cooked, cleaned and said “wait ‘til your father gets home,” when the kids got in from school. You never see them eat. Maybe that’s why they are all thin. Maybe they eat at the commercial breaks. No, I think that’s when they fold underwear. You see them fold laundry, but never underwear.

Anyway,the Donna Reed question is because I, with a smile, call myself Donna Reed while I am job-hunting, tending to laundry and such and have dinner ready when David gets home. I eat. I get light headed if I don’t eat, but I prefer to watch calories! I don’t get the extra exercise of running to do another load of laundry for just the underwear. So, I’m going to share a yummy recipe that I had for lunch yesterday!

Creamy Carrot Soup

This is a filling, lo-fat lo-cal lunch, high on the veggie scale with the savory sweet flavor of carrots.

Ingredients:
1 medium onion, diced
1 TBS olive oil
2 tsp dried basil
1 can chicken broth (vegetable broth can be substituted)
2 cups baby carrots or carrot chunks
3/4 cup skim or low-fat milk
ground black and white pepper to taste

In a sauce pan on medium-high heat, sauté onions in olive oil until soft. Mix in basil and stir until fragrant. Add chicken broth and carrots. Bring to a boil and reduce heat to medium-low. Cover and let cook until carrots are very soft.

Uncover, remove from heat and allow to cool until steam is no longer rising when stirred. Put contents of whole pan into a blender and mill until all of the carrots are ground. Slowly blend in milk.

Return to stove on low heat, stirring constantly. Garnish with basil sprinkled on top and serve with a Hawaiian roll.

Makes 2 servings, About 250 calories, with one roll


And now, for everyone that read the soup recipe and was thinking, “Where’s the REAL food?”

Credits - Kit - Chryssie by Darlene Haughin, font - Girls Are Weird

This is a layout I did with Darlene Haughin’s Chryssie kit for the Newsletter Challenge at SAS. It’s from the last day of Nanifest XLI last year. Darlene commented that she might want to try the festival idea! Nanifest is my birthday festival. For those of you unfamiliar with the concept of a Birthday Festival, it goes like this:

As a kid, birthdays were all about parties and presents, it was the celebration of getting another year older and another year closer to new experiences. Those parties were attended by relatives and school friends, many of whom were not there last year and might not be next year. You were learning about people, about everything, and your world was in constant change.

As an adult you have your world more established. There are new experiences, but now the people who you share those experiences with are not ever-changing. The friends with whom you share those experiences now are part of your foundation.

I recognize my festival as starting at 5:00 PM on the Friday before my birthday and running until midnight after the Sunday that follows it, for just over a 9-Day festival. When my birthday is on a weekend, I get from Friday the weekend before my birthday weekend until Sunday the weekend after for a 2-week festival! (How totally cool to have turned 40 on a Saturday!)
Where as a child, you celebrated getting another year closer to experiencing it all, now you celebrate adding another year to all you have. To me a birthday is an opportunity to be with as many of those people who’ve given so much to my life as I can, to share their company and thank them for the part of me they’ve helped form. Having a Birthday Festival gives me the time I need to juggle work and home responsibilities with all the people I want to see during my festival. It also gives more nights for ice cream!!

In that layout above, David and I are having ice cream at Cold Stone Creamery in Maumee, Ohio. Mine was free! What better way to celebrate a birthday than FREE ice cream?? Now I want to share that secret, or not-so-secret, of the free ice cream (which at 42, is more exciting to hear than “free beer”) with you!

Go to the Cold Stone Creamery web site and sign up for the birthday club. For your birthday, they’ll send you a coupon for a “love-it” size ice cream creation. That’s it, no charge to join, no taxes or fees, just free birthday ice cream. It’s just good promotion, and you know how much I like good promotion. Chances are you’ll bring a friend when you get you freebie, maybe more!

This link takes you right to the birthday club page!


I have one more announcement as I bring this LONG blog to a close. I have been invited to be a guest Creative Team Member for Beckie Wallace designs!


I was excited when I first went to her blog and saw the preview for Batter Up. Yeah, I’m sure that’s not a surprise that I’d get excited abut that. But she has so many kits that are just phenomenal! The first one I got to work with is Save The Last Dance. I’m telling you, I didn’t have to do any work with this kit. I opened a picture file, set up the review pane and selected papers and elements to open and they practically put themselves together. It was such an easy kit to use and it completely captures the spark in this great photo of my grandparents taken just before the were married. I just sat and looked at it for a little when it as done. I LOVE that photo and just didn’t have any elements I thought would scrap it properly. This kit just captured the romance of a WW2 elopement! I couldn’t believe I was the one who did the layout, which is why I said the kit did it itself!

You can checkout Beckie’s kits at Digital Candy and Stone Accents Studio. The CT blinkie on the right links to her Digital Candy store!


Whew! Now, make sure you read this and sign up for your Cold Stone freebie because there is Friday By Request coming tomorrow and tomorrow night will be the weekend blog with exciting new patriotic pages I did with a new kit from RC Mama Designs! Thanks for reading!