Baby Blankets Galore!

This February, Ashley, Cami, and I had lots of fun making baby blankets! My two sisters and my sister-in-law recently had babies! Being the non-sewer that I am, I decided if ever there was a time to celebrate and give sewing another try, now was that time! Ashley and Cami love to sew, so they were thrilled by the idea. It was a rewarding experience working on this project with my two oldest daughters.

These are the blankets we made for Makinlee, Gilbert, and Rodney.

And we didn't stop there! The sewing continued. We signed up for Disney's Give a Day, Get a Disney Day and the service we chose was to donate blankets to the Linus Foundation. My first thought was to make the easy no-sew fleece blankets. But fleece was more expensive than flannel and we would have had to donate 2 fleece blanets for each person instead of just the 1 flannel blanket. So we sewed some more, 8 more. (Make that 9, we gave one as a gift to Marye Eby for her little Porter.) They turned out super cute, even if I do say so myself.

Here are the 8 baby blankets we donated for our day at Disney Land!

Thank you, Ashley and Cami for all of your help sewing. Perhaps we should find another project to work on together!

February Focus (or my goals part 2)

Another one of my New Years Goals is to take better care of my body.

Heavenly Father has blessed me with a wonderful body but I am sorry to say I have abused it for years, although not intentionally. In the March 2008, General Young Women's Conference Sister Dalton,then a counselor in the YW's General Presidency (now the President), spoke about the importance of taking care of our bodies. She said most, if not all of Satan's attacks are directed at our bodies. He wants to get us addicted and cause us to defile our bodies. I hadn't really thought about that but I see that it is true. I don't smoke, drink or use drugs but I have given in to the temptations of overeating, eating the wrong kinds of foods, and neglecting to exercise regularly. This has impacted how I feel about myself and how others see me and therefore has affected my service to my family, others, and Heavenly Father. Satan is sly. Overeating doesn't seem so bad and yet it hurts my temple, the house of my spirit. I am going to stop letting Satan get me on this one! I am going to repent and ask Heavenly Father to help me change! I am going to take care of the precious gift Heavenly Father has given me: my body and become a better instrument in His hands!

My plan is tow fold:

1) Fully live the Word of Wisdom-not just the "don'ts" but the "dos" too!

That means whole grains for me- no more of the empty calorie white stuff, LOTS of veggies and fruits, and meat sparingly.

Along with the white flour and rice, I'm cutting out refined sugars, too.

And I'm saying goodbye again to soda! :-( (Giving up caffeine- free Diet Coke just may be the hardest thing I do! Is it really that bad for me? Mostly I want to give it up cause it's seems like such a waste of $$$$. I'm tired of contributing to the Coca Cola Company.)

2)Exercise daily

I want to walk /run 1000 miles in 2010!

Lofty I know, especially since I only managed to walk 12 miles in all of January-it was too cold - that is my lame excuse!

February I really need to get my act together and pound some pavement! (I figure I'm going to need to log 4 miles most days to reach my goal.)

I want to run a 5k, I'm thinking the Running With Angels 5k . I read Pamela Hansen's book by the same title several years ago and loved it! Now I want to follow her example.

And I want to master Jillian Michael's 30 Day Shred! I tried it for the first time this morning and I could hardly do level 1! It was only a 20 minute workout, that was even cut a little short because Faith pushed a button. I was all too happy letting her skip me to the cool down! It was a challenge! Josh did it last night and warned me that it was hard (of course he used 15 lb. weights and the weights I used were only 3lbs). I've got a long ways to go to master all three levels of this video workout but I can imagine how much better I'll look and feel when I do!

I've had a lot of fun eating more healthy during January. I've tried some new foods like tofu, sweet potato soup, flax seed, and brussel sprouts. I've made bread with a mixture of whole grains . Who knew I could and should make bread with other grains besides wheat? I've grown and eaten bean and radish sprouts and I now feel a sense of accomplishment when I eat a serving of spinach for breakfast either blended in my berry smoothie or scrambled in my eggs. I've never been good at eating my green leafy vegetables before.

My focus for February is to continue the healthy eating while eliminating the unhealthy. I told the kids and Vaughn I was going the whole month without sugar or soda. The kids will hold me to it! Thankfully February is the shortest month! I'm also tackling my lack of exercise problem! I've got to start logging the miles, training for my 5k, and making some progress in my fitness with Jillian.

Here's to a healthy month of February!