P.Y.T

I got P.Y.T (Pretty Young Thing) by Michael Jackson stuck in my head, which is surprising since I don't listen to his music very often. I wonder where I heard it and got it stuck in my cranium?


I'm so happy because in about 2 hours I get to go home, and not work for the next TWO nights! I'm trying to decide what I'm going to do with myself on New Years Day since my love is working :(. I really could use some alone time, maybe I'll go to the mall or the movies? I don't really (read EVER) do things alone like that!

So tomorrow night, Marc and I are going to Polonia (Polish Sport Club) to celebrate New Years Eve. It's a really fancy dinner and dancing event thats annually held. I'm excited, yet a little nervous! I hope that we aren't the only ones who might be slightly younger (ahem), and I hope that we can have a good time without feeling nervous or embarrassed. Marc and I don't dance very often together because he is much taller than I am and it's hard to get it right. I think when we get home tonight I'll show him some youtube instructional videos on learning to dance LOL! I'll let you guys know.

So I couldn't get a hair appointment in for New Years Eve (BOO!) but I'm not worried I think i can pull something off. I'm wearing this dress and I want to put my hair up because the collar of the dress is supposed to "floof" out. Yes, that is the technical term. So I think I'm going to go with this hair tutorial.


I have no idea how I am going to pull this off with my bangs. LOL! I have faith in my magic hands though! :)




Ok so on to today! I was FAMISHED all day, I couldn't seem to get full! Also, I woke up feeling a little puffy which is weird. I'm going to blame it on late night stress. My treadmill's belt kept going off center, which is a pain to fix. I'm not going to be walking on it tonight, and hope that tomorrow I might have some time to fix it? If not I'll absolutely do it on Saturday. I know that I'll be needing to take a walk to Walgreens tomorrow, so that can be my exercise. I need to buy bobby pins, face wash, eyeliner,a new eyelash curler and foundation. I just got 35 dollars as a new years gift, let's see how far it'll go! Anyway, holy sidetracked...

I woke up feeling puffy and weighed myself and was still down another pound! YESSAH!

Todays meals were very much the same as usual.

Yogurt with apple and cinnamon for breakfast


A spinach, mushroom omelet

a MIM (muffin in a minute) with strawberry jam on one side and Earth balance (olive oil butter) on the other

Two servings of chicken pesto soup

and a pinch or two of unsweetened coconut.

When I get home I'll have some yogurt, green tea, and milk with vanilla god that stuff is good! that actually reminds me, i have to get more vanilla maybe they have some at walgreens??

Well hope you guys have a good night and I'll try to remember to bring my camera tomorrow!




On another note, losing weight has BROKEN ME OUT! I got not one mt. Vesuvius on my face, BUT TWO! I ended up putting on a mint julep mask, and these are just too funny not to show off.

Well have a good night, I'll try to remember my camera tomorrow!

One more pound!

I'm so excited I lost another pound! This actually surprised me because I was really feeling like I wasn't going to see a good number. So that means I've lost 6 pounds in 4 days! I feel so much better, and really don't crave any crap, which I thought would never happen. Yesterday I was craving so bad...

maybe this...


omg this....


and end with this...


But you know what I figured out today? Yes these foods are awesome and comforting and great, but I know what they taste like, and I know what it feels like to eat it! That's why i eat it, because it makes me feel good! But maybe instead of feeling good for the 10 minutes it takes me to scarf down this unhealthy food, I can trade it in for feeling good forever! Once I get off this phase of my diet, I'll be eating more food choices, lean red meats, shellfish, potatoes, brown rice, and oats. I know that i am going to be able to resist the sweets and the junk and the "fake" foods because I've recharged my taste buds and my willpower. This change has made me realize how strong I really am (believe me I have cinnamon rolls, chocolates, fried chicken, and french fries in my house right now) I haven't given in once! I can do this, we all can do this!

Today I read the new issue of People magazine and it gave so many inspirational stories of people who have conquered their struggle with food and weight. I recommend picking it up, it is really inspiring! I'm thinking of tacking up some of the pictures next to my treadmill!

My meals today:
Hot water with lemon
Plain nonfat yogurt with strawberries and blueberries
Roasted chicken thigh and drumstick, skin removed. Serving of grapes.
Muffin In a Minute w/ sugar free strawberry jam (I don't think this is allowed on my plan, I'll see what happens with weight tomorrow more info later on)
Chicken Pesto Soup
Yogurt with cinnamon

A Muffin in a Minute is something that I remember making a lot while I was on the Atkins diet back in 2008. I really enjoyed it for a snack and thought I'd try to make it today! I am not sure if it is allowed on this plan but I substituted the butter for Canola oil.

To make this (which is way high in fiber, and omega 3's)
Mix together in a mug
3 tbsp flax meal
1/2 tsp baking powder
1 packet truvia, or other sugar substitute
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp canola oil, or butter (depending)

Microwave for 1 minute, and enjoy!

Marc and I went to Target today and picked him out a shirt to wear under his new suit jacket! We are so excited to be going out for New Years this year! I can't wait to show our new outfits!

Much love guys!

Where's Czesia?

Czesia has been HIDING, no I'm not dead!

No really I haven't given up on my blog just life got in the way. Call it life, call it lack of creativity, call it writers blog...whatevs.

Let's see since I've blogged last (pardon me some of this may be very random)...

I was way sick for a while as you've read before. I ended up staying in bed for a whole weekend, it was terrible! This sickness I thought was because I was reducing my carb intake, but it was really because I had some kind of bug plus a mixture of a medicine I was taking and other things.

The holidays flew by and we enjoyed lots of time with my in-laws.
The Ladies
The Gents
Me and My booboo
He looked smokin'
A part of my gift! I also got a scarf, a candle, and tea!
this is my Christmas tree, I love all the cards :)


and I finally made an artichoke! I don't know if I cooked it enough though, the goop in the leaves is it supposed to be crunchy? So here are my instructions

Step 1) ooh and ahh over the pretty artichokes

Step 2) Attack the ArtichokesStep 3) boil a couple inches of water with lemon juice, garlic, and bay leaves


Step 4) Make a contraption so the artichokes steam (I had a picture of the inside but I'm too lazy to try and re-upload that)Make sure the towel you put over the lid is damp! I put it on dry and you should have seen that thing light up like dynamite!
Step 4) Make your dips. I've heard butter is good, and alos mayo with balsamic vinager but there is no way in hell that I'm eating mayo...soo.. This dressing is okay, I'm not into dressing that much. Butter is off limits, so bacon ranch it is.

I liked it!
This yogurt was also yummy, it's from yesterday. Plain nonfat yogurt with orange segments and a tablespoon of flax meal.

Plus today I dyed Nana's hair, and it's pretty cool looking like a burgundy color.

I read all of East of Eden, and The Help. Both are highly recommended so pick up a copy.

My new years resolutions are to:

Lose some more weight, stick with this diet (I've lost five pounds since Christmas!)
Stay honest with myself and others
work out 4 times a week
Go to the Dr. if I'm sick (Marc added this one, haha)
Get at least a B in my classes
Not intentionally skipping class this semester
Save 200 dollars a month

I have high expectations!

Todays food list:
Hot water with Lemon
grilled chicken over lettuce, shaved carrots, and cherry tomatoes
Plain nonfat yogurt with half a green apple sprinkled liberally with cinnamon (holy yum)
Two egg omelet with mushrooms, spinach and a tablespoon of feta, dill and cayenne on top
chicken pesto vegetable soup
glass of 1% milk with vanilla extract YUMMYUMYUMMYUMMMYY! I can't wait too go home and drink this up! Maybe after my work out and shower so I can feel extra awesome!


One of my favorite looks since I've blogged last
My hair was up in a bun!

Well I think that's about caught you up, hopefully you are doing well!

Don't forget to subscribe to my blog, so I can feel special! K thanks bye!

Still

Don't lose faith in my guys, I'm just still sick. When is this going to end? :(

crash

no blog today top three reasons...

1) final exams today
2) still sick as heck
3) things I wanted to say can wait until tomorrow.

Glad tomorrow is my day off.

Can I throw up now?

I feel WAY nauseas. I'm on antibiotics and they are kicking my butt! Mix that with the accelerate (or shall we say detox) section of the 17 day diet and you've got one sick Chetney.

Wahhh, I don't feel good :(

So this finally came in the mail

which I am really excited about but its tough! Basically I eat lots of veggies, lots of lean protein, 2 fruits before 2pm and 2 probiotics (plain yogurt, Kefir, kimchi, or sauerkraut).

So that rules out red meat, sugar, carbs that aren't from fruit and veggies, and of course junkie junk junk. I'm determined though! After 17 days I should have sped up my weight loss to 10-12 pounds and go from there. With the program you do at least 17 minutes of exercise as well which I bought their exercise DVD as a companion to the book and it was actually pretty interesting as far as exercise DVD's go. My plan is that if I can do other activities for at least 17 minutes than I wont do the DVD but if I run low on time or motivation I'll do it. I'll keep you updated though because I know this is going to pretty much suck for the next 17-34 days haha!

For breakfast I had an egg and 1 cup of grapes with a glass of green tea.
Lunch was a huge salad with ground turkey, an ounce of reduced fat cheese, a tomato, a bunch of green onions (which I ended up not eating so much of-very strong), and some salsa. Plus 6 oz of plain nonfat yogurt.


For dinner I had a egg over easy, spinach, a cup of boiled carrots, and some more ground turkey.

When I get home I'll have some more plain yogurt.

So this is way strict but it will jump start my weight loss, and change my taste buds.

All I want to do right now is throw up, or punch someone.

It doesn't help that this is in my face.


Here's a kinda fuzzy picture of my new hair! Forgive the cell phone blur!



BLEGH, I really might have to puke now.

Frankie.

I forgot to explain why I didn't blog on Thursday.

Thursday was very sad, and very shocking (this is hard to write about because I imagine what happened over and over again)

Around 5-6am that morning I remember Frankie purring up to Marc and Marc was petting him. Frankie out of nowhere attacked Marc's arm and in a sleepy/angered state he put the cat in the other part of the basement.

Around 7am in the morning we both woke up to a loud banging on the door connecting our part of the basement to where we go up the stairs to Nana's house. Marc yelled out, upset that sleep was disturbed (this wasn't the first time it had happened). He opened the door and pretty much screamed OH MY GOD!! In a very distressed voice, it scared me to death. I immediately thought Frankie got to her face, maybe even her eye (I have no idea how I thought of Frankie so quickly) I fell out of bed to see Nana in the doorway, crying and covered in blood.

Her arm was viciously torn up. She said that she picked him up, and he bit and scratched her. I called all of our relatives to figure out what to do, we knew that this wasn't life threatening, yet it was dangerous because cat bites can become infected very quickly if not treated correctly. I had to go to school, so Linda came and took Marc and Nana to the ER.

I fortunately got out of school early because it was just a review day for the final exam and no one had any questions. So I went to the hospital and stayed while they were taking care of her wounds. She didn't get stitches because this infection can get infected so it needs to stay open. She thankfully, liked the attention at the hospital and was tough!

The cat had to be taken to animal services and euthanized. It's sad because I know this cat could have been so loving and great but because it was treated badly before we took him in he was mean and semi-wild. I'll really miss Franek.

Nana is doing well we keep checking her cuts and everything seems okay.

Glad that day is over with though, it was terrible.

My weekend in a nutshell!

So sometimes it is hard for me to blog Friday and Saturday because those are my off work days, and I try hard to stay FAR FAR away from the computer. This weekend though seemed to last through Sunday!

So let's recap the weekend shall we!?!

On Friday I woke up early and went to get my hair done at this lovely shop...



Such a teeny weeny picture but just trust me when I tell you it was SOOO nice to get pampered!
I chose a dark color and got a nice thinning haircut, i have a lot of hair so it took a long time. Since I went dark though I wont have to go back until February! Sorry i don't have a picture at the moment, I forgot my scan disk, and my phone at home!

After some errand running, Marc, Alice, and myself went to my sister in laws new house to celebrate her birthday! Her house is really awesome, I snagged some pictures off the Internet!





They have it a lot nicer inside though, the downstairs is a formal dining room, and they are decorating now! I'm happy for them, and it made me excited to eventually own my own house!

The kind of house I want looks a lot like this...



with this inside...

and the kind Marc wants looks like this...


with this inside...


Minus the deer heads. Let's just say that he can have the garage to do whatever he wants with and I get the rest to decorate (he actually mentioned this to me! YES)

Anyway, we had a great time and Andrea's!

On Saturday, we spent lots of time hanging out with Nana and went out to go Christmas shopping!

Off our list:
Uncle Tom
Ciocia Linda
Aleksa
Marcus
Tim
Rayel
Dad
Arleen
Mom
Gordon


YES! We got most of it done, I just have to buy a few more things for Marc and I'm done! I'm not going to say what I got anybody in case they read my blog, especially Marc, he's sneaky!

There is also a cool story that went along with one of his presents but my lips are sealed until Christmas!

After shopping we went to Red Robin for dinner, and were going to go see Wall Street at the Budget cinema, but winter weather warnings were all over the place so we decided to go home before it hit (it never really hit us, but a couple hours north of us got 8-12 inches!).

Instead, we cleaned the apartment for an hour and a half (we timed it so it wouldn't be daunting once we started, we could stop at that time).

Then we finished up our night with the movie Fast Times at Ridgemont High.

It was cute!

Okay now on to Sunday,

Marc had to work at noon so he left early to shovel and salt the walkway. I got to enjoy some alone time and wrap the presents! They will be shown on a later post, but I used lots of stickers, and ribbons, and fabric flowers!

Today I had to visit the doctor for that dreaded time of the year.


TMI sorry.

Of course a resident went past me when I was googling "Pap smear cartoon" LOL! Thankfully Strict search was on!!!! HAHA!

The rest of the day was spent being lazy! I did end up NOT following my diet today, which is terrible but at least I am admitting it! I had delivery...

3 slices of potato topper pizza and some topperstix. I just need to go grocery shopping and I DONT WANNA!

I also have ordered some pictures to put in my christmas cards tomorrow, they MUST GO OUT TOMORROW, EVEN THOUGH I HAVE NO TIME AND MY LIFE IS CRAZY! Plus I need to ship out gifts tomorrow, this just has to happen.

I also have my english final tomorrow. Awesome.

Well I think this is long enough for now, sorry for slacking, and I apoloize to myself for slipping up BUT tomorrow is a new day!

I am BEOWOLF!

Marc always says that out of nowhere he'll scream I AM BEOWOLF! LOL!

I didn't blog yesterday because I was WAY too busy chatting it up with my awesome sissy. We have decided that during my spring break from school that Marc and I will go and visit her and Tim and while we are there *DRUMROLL PLEASE* we are going to run our first race ever! TOGETHER! We are going to do a 5k. I'm a little worried since I can't run outside BUT I'm getting an awesome treadmill that I'll train on.

We are following this schedule.

In weight loss news, I've lost 2.4 pounds this week...yay!

I also did this Yoga program which was actually really informative, it had half an hour of meditation in the beginning and then went into the yoga. This one was very much for inner peace and self awareness more than weight loss. I liked it just for the educational benefits, but now that I know the way to breath, relax, and meditate correctly I can move on to harder moves and a faster pace workout. Here's the Youtube link.

I did my projects for history class yesterday and was really proud of myself! I still have to do an essay tonight for english class but I know I can get it done fairly easily. I'm going to start writing at 8 and hopefully be finished by 10. It's the first (and last in this class) essay with the MLA formatting and work cited page.

So now that I've lost that 2.4 pounds I'm in a new category of weight loss, I'm down a decade if you know what I mean and it feels great! It's amazing how confident it can make you feel! Here I am yesterday before my oral exam for history. I still have a ways to go, but I know I can do it!

That's my natural wave to my hair, I hate it, which is why you will normally see it curled or straightened. I left it this way because I had no time left! Plus the lights in my house are florescent so that's why I look all weirdly yellow (including my hair color lol)

For Lunch today I made my favorite standby: Bok Choy with Bacon, but this time I added a couple of slices of rye bread! This bread is so good (I buy it from the mexican grocery store) that I don't have to put anything on it for it to taste good! Just toast it and enjoy YUM!





For dinner I was going to make porkchops, green beans, and mashed potatoes but I ran out of time, so I decided to have....


I got their Veggie sub without Mayonaisse. I love this one because it has avocado in it, perfect to get my healthy fat in for the day! On the side I had a serving of their Thinny Chips, (It's just reduced fat) and a diet coke.


now I must get to work on my persuasive essay, I hate to have to but it's a must. Let's see how long it takes me to finish!

Chicken Fried Brain.

My brain has been dipped in batter and fried to a crisp...I just finished my oral presentation due tomorrow so I need a smarty pants break.

I had a great day today! Granted I stayed in bed until 11:30, I managed to stay within my spark-points budget, clean the house, and do some yoga!

I am so excited to have found this lady on youtube! She is a yoga instructor in Arizona who very nicely added some yoga on Youtube for free! I had a lot of fun and look forward to doing more soon! I did the exercises by the fire so I got nice and sweaty too! I think people would be surprised at how difficult Yoga is if you are really doing the movements correctly! The muscles BURN but burns sooo good! haha! Think you might be interested? Check out her video, this one is only 13 minutes long, at 7:18 I screamed because my leg muscle was hurting so bad!



After the workout I felt so good, but a little shaky. My body is soo not used to this!

We got lights to put on the tree! I put it on the floor instead of on that table because it really didn't need to be up there and I thought it looked stupid haha!

During the day..


At night...



So I'm really proud of myself for eating good the last couple of days. IT's surprising what you can eat without it being bad for you!

For lunch today I had
1 cup of Progresso light clam chowder
a breadstick
and two cups of salad (boring salad I know but lettuce can get to be expensive so I went with iceburg)


It was really good and I felt like I was cheating! Let's see what the 17 day diet brings ut I'm up for it!

For dinner I made a chocolate peanut butter protein shake and totally spilled it everywhere. AWESOME! It was really good though and filling, which usually doesn't work for me because it isn't something to chew on! Must be that PB.





Chocolate PB protein shake:
1 scoop rich chocolate whey protein powder
2 tbsp Smart Balance Peanut Butter
2 tsp granulated sugar
1 cup 1% milk
Hot water to melt PB
Blend
This is 500 calories so be careful with it! It's a meal REPLACEMENT, not a snack! Plus it must be a kitchen decoration.

Well I'm off to Sparkpeople to make up my food list for tomorrow, and then on to Youtube to drown out the rest of my workday.

HAVE A GOOD DAY!

Deck the halls..

Fa la la la la la fahrvegnugen!

Can you say BAHUMBUG?

That is my husband at the moment. I love him OH SO MUCH, BUT HOT DAMN HE PISSED ME OFF YESTERDAY!

I was going to write about it last night but I just was so upset I felt like I shouldn't blow off steam yet. We were arguing about the Christmas tree. Yes, what is supposed to be a joyous event turned out to be ugly.

I'm not going to get into it but I can say that the tree is up and Marc bought lights for it today, so maybe I can light it tonight!








My Ciocia Linda and I were trying to convice Nana to use the no rinse shampoo. That stuff works good it's just weird not washing your hair out and it's a little like you left a bit of conditioner in your hair...here is me trying to show you the outcome..The lighting was terrible, and my camera really sucks too.


and here is Marc craving attention (he thinks its weird that I take pictures of myself lol).



In other news, I just finished writing two essays for my (hopefully) final test in History class! IF I pass this and get an A than I wont have to take the final exam YES YES PLEASE!
I'll let you know how it turns out!