Friday Donut Day!!

Okay friends, I am trying something new. I have decided that every Friday will be Friday Donut Day.

What is Friday Donut Day, you ask?? Is it about eating Donuts? ABSOLUTELY!!! :) I LOVE donuts, they just make me happy. Don't they make you happy? Just thinking about a warm, fluffy, gooey, sugary donut relaxes my body! (yes I know... I have a serious problem!! But I just can't help myself)

Anyways... back to my post.. I have decided that every Friday I will pick a family, or an organization to dedicate a donut to! Donuts just brighten your day! They put smiles on peoples faces! For a few seconds you can step out of the chaos of the world and smile and enjoy something. I usually end up eating a donut once a week anyways, so why not try and eat one for a good cause, other than just because they are awesome!

So, here's the scoop.... I will find a family that is going thought hard times, or an organization that is maybe doing some type of fundraiser, and I will give them a shout out on my blog every Friday. I will post about any type of go fund me account, or ways to donate to their cause.

My first family I am dedicating a donut to is the Rinn family.

This first family means a lot to me. We lived by them for about 8 years & I love this family. Brett and Heather are amazing people, and are the wonderful parents to 4 amazing kids. I have really gotten to know Heather through church and we have become close friends. This family is so nice & they really will do anything for anyone. They spend most of their time out and about in their neighborhood doing things for others and constantly serving everyone!!

Brett has recently been diagnosed with Liver Cancer and he needs a liver transplant. He will be receiving chemo & radiation treatments until he receives a new liver. This has been a major blow to them, but they are handling it so well. Brett is always smiling and always can find a reason to laugh and be positive.

They have a go fund me account if you would like to donate. Here is the link. If you are able at all to donate, even just a little I know it would be much deserved and appreciated!

Healthier General Tso's Chicken

This weeks recipe is a healthier version of General Tso's Chicken. Here is the link for the recipe.  This one was another one that I really didn't have to fight anyone to eat. My youngest just announced that he wasn't hungry at all, so he wasn't eating. He's the picky one & so I'm not sure how this recipe will go over with picky eaters because he wasn't interested in eating at all. But my girls both loved it & ate it without complaint. The hubbie and I really liked it too. This one will definitely be put in the book of recipes to have more often. I cooked up a pan of brown rice to go with it. I cook my brown rice in the pressure cooker & it cooks it a lot faster. Here is the post about how I pressure cook my brown rice.

I love Chinese food, so I was really excited when I found this recipe. I love finding healthy versions of my favorite foods.  I will say that with this recipe had a few things in it that I have never used or cooked with, like Rice wine vinegar, Hoisin sauce, and fresh ginger. Maybe I'm just not that experienced of a cook, but I was a little hesitant to make this recipe because of those few things I had never used. But I am happy to announce that I was able to find everything for the recipe at the store really fast and with no problems.

I have never cooked with fresh ginger, ever. So I was a little unsure what to do with it.  I just googled it when I got home and it was pretty easy to figure out! :) I peeled it with my regular vegetable peeler, chopped it up and I was good to go. The recipe didn't specify a certain amount of ginger to use, so I just cut off a chunk, called it good, and hoped for the best.

This is the stuff I used. It was kinda fun cooking with fresh ginger, I think I'll use it a lot more in the future.

Anyways, I was reading through the recipe and it says that it's only 25 minutes with prep and cook time! Yeah... not really!! :) I was soooo hoping that would be true! This took me about an hour to make. I picked a day that I didn't have anything going on after the kids got home from school, just in case it took way longer than it was supposed to.  I'm glad I had a low key night to do this on. It just seemed like it was a lot more work than I was expecting it to be.  Maybe the more I make it, the faster I will get at throwing it together. But right now, this one is not one that can just be thrown together.

This also took longer to cook than the recipe said. It took almost double the amount of time to cook & we ended up having to put the oven on broil to get it to brown & crisp up a little.

Even though this recipe was a little high maintenance, I still really liked it. I will definitely make it again. Just on a night when I don't have a bunch of other things going on. :)

Pressure cook Brown Rice

How to cook brown rice in your pressure cooker. I love my pressure cooker! It cooks things so fast & perfectly! I love it almost as much as I love my crockpot! :) It's pretty easy & fast to cook rice this way.

Here is a picture of the pressure cooker I have & use. It's a Presto 8-quart stainless steel pressure cooker.

So this is what I do for my brown rice. I do 2 cups of regular brown rice (the non-minute rice) and 6 cups of water. Then I set it on the stove and get it up to boiling, so that the weight at the top is rocking. Then I cook it for 18 minutes on medium heat. Take it off the heat, and let it cool down & let all the pressure out. Make sure all the pressure is let out before you take the lid off. This pressure cooker & most of the newer ones have a mechanism in the handle that won't let you open it if there is still pressure inside. But just be careful. Then you have amazing soft, sticky, brown rice.

Crockpot Mexican Chicken

This weeks recipe is Crockpot Mexican Chicken.  Easiest recipe in the world. Perfect for crazy busy days when you don't really even have time to get stuff in the crockpot first thing in the morning.

I have been doing chicken like this for a while, really without a recipe. But for people who need a recipe, I found this link on Pinterest for you. This recipe was perfect for the crazy busy week I had. I literally threw the chicken in the crockpot straight out of the freezer, dumped a jar of salsa & 1/4 cup of taco seasoning. Turned the crockpot on for 6 hours, and I was good to go!  Once it's done,  just shred it up and top it on top of whatever you want. In this particular picture I have a corn tortilla, lettuce, chicken, greek yogurt and avocado.

This recipe is very versatile, and can go on top of several different things, and can be used for dinner or lunch. I will make this for dinner, but it can be used as leftovers for another dinner, or several different lunch ideas for the next few days.

 Also, I make my own taco seasoning, so here is that recipe for anyone who is interested. For this recipe, I change it a little. I actually do 3 batches of this recipe at one time and then put it into a huge jar. I only do about 1/2 tsp of salt per batch, and on one of the batches I only do about 1/2 the chili powder. I have found that if I do all the chili powder for each batch, then it's a little too spicy for my kids. I also only do about 1 1/2 tsp. of the red pepper flakes per batch. But go ahead and mess around with it a little bit and see what works for your family.

My kids love this recipe. It's so versatile that you can usually find something to put it on that everyone will eat. Some had it on corn tortillas, whole wheat tortillas, corn chips, taco shells, lettuce (for a mexican type salad), ect. So this is another recipe that I usually don't have to fight anyone to eat.

My "paint strip" block.

So... I have posted several times, and I realized that I haven't posted anything about sewing? How can this be the "Sew Fit" blog with out any sewing going on? Part of the problem has been that there hasn't been time for sewing. You know how you have phases in your life, where sometimes you just have time to be crafty & creative, and sew amazing things, and then there are times when you can't even get the normal, every day things done let alone anything extra. So life right now is just one of those phases where I am bearly keeping my head above water with trying to get the bare minimum done. So not a lot of sewing is going on right now.

But I have joined a quilt guild, thanks to my mom. YAY!! :) So once a month we go to quilt guild and learn awesome things, and I get inspired and excited about making quilts. This past month the President of our quilt guild brought in a bunch of paint strip samples and had us all pick one out of a bag. Then we were challenged to go home and find fabrics that matched the different colors on our strip, and make a block out of it to bring in and show to everyone.

This was the strip I picked....

It worked out well for me because my Husband loves blues, and the more blue something is, the more he likes it. So I knew he would be happy with whatever I made.

Here are my fabric choices. I love being able to take cuts of fabric like this and make them into something awesome!! And of course I had to pick something with polkadots!! I am absolutely addicted to polkadots.... I have no desire to seek therapy for this addiction!!

I hopped on the internet and started browsing through websites, looking for a free quilt block pattern to make with my colors. My mom told me about this site called quilterscache.com. It has tons of free quilt block patterns. So after browsing around for a while, I came across this pattern. It's called The Card Trick.   It looked so fun, and it was actually really easy to figure out. This is how my block turned out.

(this is me showing my block at my quilt guild meeting)

I was so excited to see it all come together. The great thing is, is that I didn't have to un-pick ANYTHING while making this block. (virtual knuckles!)  I think this is one of the only times I've been able to sit down to a pattern for the first time, and not totally screw it up!! This either means that I am getting better at quilting, or this pattern is crazy easy. Either way, it was a huge quilting confidence boost!!

Oh, and the best part of all is that my husband LOVED this block, and he actually asked me to go and buy more fabric so I can make more of these, and make it into a quilt. What?!?! I know right... total quilters paradise when your husband is actually requesting that you spend $ on fabric!! "Um... yes, ablsoutely, I would love to go and buy more fabric, and ignore all the house work to make you a new quilt!" :)

Maybe one day, in a year or two, I will get this quilt finished and I can post about the actual finished product! :)

Honey Salmon

This weeks clean recipe is Honey Salmon. I actually didn't have Salmon, but I had Halibut, so I just used that and it tasted amazing! Here is the link for that recipe.

(yes this is a paper plate we are eating off of... this is what happens when I don't have time to do my dishes for a few days! No judging!!! )

It literally takes 10 minutes to make. The whole meal took less than 15 minutes to throw together. While the Halibut was baking, I threw a bag of Edamame into the microwave for a few minutes, and chopped up some Strawberries. This was a big hit with everyone, except my extremely picky 5 year old!

This was the sad / mad face he had after eating the 2 tiny bites I made him eat. Don't you just feel so bad for him? He was downing a whole glass of water to help him swallow. I'm not even sure he chewed any of it. But, he ate what he was supposed to without his tantrum lasting more than a few minutes, and to his surprise, he didn't die. So, I call that a success with this kid! :)

I will definitely be making this one more often. My husband & my parents go fishing in Alaska usually once a year, so we always have an abundance of fish and I am always looking for good recipes.

Quinoa stuffed Bell Peppers

This weeks clean recipe is Quinoa stuffed Bell Peppers. Here is the link to this recipe. 

They were pretty easy, and really good. What was nice about this recipe is that I was able to get all of the filling made and mixed together earlier in the day, so that when I got home from the 10 & 11 year old girls activity for church that I was in charge of, I just threw the stuffing into the peppers, topped it with some cheese, and stuck them in the oven. So even though it wasn't a crock pot recipe, it was still pretty fast to throw together.

My husband and I loved them. My kids loved the fact that the peppers acted like bowls, but none of them ate the actual peppers. They at the stuffing just fine & liked it, but they didn't touch their peppers. I didn't mind too much, because there is a lot of healthy stuff in the stuffing, do I didn't fight them to eat their peppers. And, here is another fast recipe that my kids didn't fight me to eat, YAY!!

We also had a few left over, so I was able to have them for lunches during the week!! Bonus!! I do not like trying to figure out what is for lunch, and I do not like having to dirty up a bunch of dishes to make something for lunch.  So this was a perfect recipe for the beginning of the week. :)

My last week on the 21 Day Fix Extreme program

Okay everyone, I have finished the 21 Day Fix Extreme program. YAY!!! I did it!! I wasn't perfect at it, but I think I did pretty good!

This past week everything has seemed a little easier. I felt really good during all my workouts, I even missed a workout one day and I was able to double up the next day and not feel too fatigued. So I have definitely been able to feel myself getting stronger. I enjoyed the workouts more this last week as well. I will admit that I'm still not sure if I enjoyed them this week because I knew I never had to do them ever again after this if I didn't want to, or if it was because I was getting better at them... hahaha... but either way, working out this week didn't feel like something I had to talk myself into. (yes some days, I still have to talk myself into working out in the morning!)

I also noticed that I didn't feel like I needed to measure everything I was eating with the containers as much. I felt like I had a good enough sense of serving sizes by now & so I didn't use the containers as much as I had been using them. This was nice. I'm not the type of person who likes measuring my food, or counting calories, or points, or anything like that. I'm lazy I guess, but having to do any of that extra stuff just makes me feel like being healthy is too hard or complicated. I'm all about simplicity! I'm busy... I don't know about any of you, but I have a lot going on & adding that extra burden of counting & calories and measuring stuff, just takes up too much time if you have to do it long term.

I will admit to falling a little off the wagon as of Friday! My husband was getting ready to go out of town for a few weeks, and I was getting ready that day to head off to a retreat for work. So, I did have a donut on Friday morning with my husband, and I drank a Diet Coke on my way to the retreat. And, although I didn't go crazy on my retreat, I stuck pretty close to clean eating, I didn't take my containers or really keep track of how many of what colors I was eating. I just wanted to relax and enjoy myself with out having to focus on my eating. Sometimes you just need to throw all of that planning into the wind and enjoy life. That doesn't mean you have to go out and eat all of your favorite junk foods just because you are taking a break from your meal planner, but it is nice to not have to think so much about what you are eating all of the time.

Okay, now onto my thoughts on the program as a whole. It was a lot of work at first as far as planning my meals out. It took a little while to get the hang of it. I also had a hard time sticking 100% to the nutritional plan. I'm like a rebellious teenager or something when it comes to stuff like this. If someone is telling me I can't have something, then that is all I want! So having a list of specific food I could eat, just made me REALLY want to eat all the other foods that aren't on the list! :) Heaven help me if my life ever depended on eating healthy 100% of the time. If it was a choice between eating healthy all the time or die, I think I would end up dead pretty fast! :) But really other than that I enjoyed this program. I really did learn a ton!! And if you think about it, if something isn't challenging, are we really learning anything? So, having to suffer through planning out my first week of meals, really was worth it. I gained a lot of knowledge from this program.

I learned a lot more about portion control than I expected to, and I love that! This program really taught me how to fuel my body. It taught me to go a little beyond just healthy, clean eating, and made me think about getting in a good variety of all of the different food groups.

I also LOVE the workouts!! (with the exception of the Yoga! But, that is just me. It's an excellent workout, I just don't like Yoga at all....) The workouts really push my body, but they are only 30 minutes a day. To be able to get an awesome workout in, in only 30 minutes is the greatest feeling in the world. :) I can never wake up earlier enough, or have the attention span for hour long workouts.

Here are my Before and After pics.

I am really pleased with these. You can definitely see some major definition. My stomach isn't perfect at all by any means, but what can you expect from someone who hasn't worked her stomach out in 10 years and has had 3 C-sections!?!? And check out my bicep!! Look, there is a definite muscle line there along my right arm! :) Sorry, I could not get a back picture for comparison, I have no one around right now to take my pics for me so you will just have to settle for the front and side views. 

As far as pounds and inches go, I am down a total of 3.5 lbs, and 3.5 inches. :) 

I think that I will actually do this program every few months to help me stay on track with my eating and portion control. And.... I think I will actually do the workouts more often. I can really feel myself gaining some good muscle with these workouts. And based off my pictures, you can see the results as well.

So at the end of the day, I am a big fan of the 21 Day Fix Extreme, and I am glad I tried it!! :)

Clean Chicken Parmesan

Okay friends, it's clean recipe Tuesday again. This weeks recipe is Clean Chicken Parmesan! Here is the link to the recipe!

Okay, this meal was a HUGE hit!!! It was easy to cook, and my family all scarfed it down! The best of both worlds... I didn't have a huge mess in the kitchen & I didn't have to fight with any of my "littles" to eat! :) Literally in the middle of dinner, my family was actually talking about how they were excited to eat the leftovers again the next day for dinner.... I had to break the unhappy news that I didn't make enough for leftovers. So, there is a real possibility that I am making this meal all over again one day this week. That is how much people loved this meal.

Here is the picture I took. It actually turned out kinda pretty! I am not one of those people who makes "pretty" food. It always looks terrible, but usually tastes pretty good. So to make a fast, easy meal that actually looked like the picture on the blog, was a total bonus! :)

I followed the instructions on the blog to make my own whole wheat bread crumbs since I couldn't find any at the store. It was easier & faster than I thought it would be. I think I'll make my own bread crumbs at home from now on.  I also looked for a marinara sauce that had the lowest amount of sugar, to keep it as clean as possible. 

My second week on The 21 Day Fix.

Okay this week, in some ways, went a little better than last week. In other ways, not so great. I have been sick most of the week! (major sad face) I hate being sick. I'm not sure if it's allergies or what, but it has taken over my body, particularly my face. Note the scary picture below! I have missed 2 workouts this week. Ahhhh, I'm so annoyed. I hate being sick & I hate missing workouts. But whatever it is that I still have, has been so crazy. There have been some days where my eyes were so puffy & watery, I could hardly keep them open. Seriously, check out this awful picture of myself... this is proof that I was dying!!

Could you have worked out looking like this? It is impossible to workout with "quasimodo face" going on!! Believe me, I felt exactly how I looked too!  (p.s. - I hope this picture is making you laugh until you pee your pants, because I look pretty freaking hilarious! My poor husband, he's had to wake up to this at least 3 days this week! And he still loves me....he's a saint!!)

Other than being sick though, I had a lot of successes this week. First of all I did a lot better at sticking to the nutritional plan. I did cheat one night & I had a piece of birthday cake. But I found that it was easier to stick to the strict plan this week. I actually passed up donuts with my family the other day. That is huge... we were all in the car & everyone ordered a donut except for me! I stuck to my plan of no donuts during this challenge, and that actually feels better than being able to scarf down a donut! :)

Another major thing I have noticed is that I am not nearly as sore as I was last week. I was worried for this week because of how sore I already was, but I have felt a lot better and stronger this week. I know I just mentioned that I missed 2 workouts, so you are probably thinking that I wasn't sore because I slacked off all week. But I didn't miss my first workout until Thursday & I was noticing before then how much better I was feeling after my workouts that week. It is a huge confidence boost when you can do hard things, and do them easier than you could the last time you tried them. That is awesome progress to see yourself making.

On the days I wasn't looking and feeling like "quasimodo", I pushed it pretty hard and had some excellent workouts! This is proof that I didn't slack off all week either. Look at all that sweat! (can't you just hear Justin singing "I'm bringing Sexy back" in the background when you look at this picture) :)

We also had a new addition to our family this week. We added a puppy to our family!!  World, allow me to introduce.... Lucy!!

Lucy is an 8 month old, Lab mix. She is only about 40 lbs, so she's not ginormous! She is actually pretty calm, which is nice. She is already house broke, crate trained, and knows a few of the basic commands. My kids are in heaven!! They are so excited.

So far she has been really easy to have around and fits in great with our family. It just feels natural to have her with us.

This week hasn't gone how I had planned it out at all. I have been sick. The kids had a day off of school that I completely forgot about until the day before, and we picked up a Dog that we weren't exactly planning on picking up this week. But, I survived and I stuck to this challenge pretty good. Life happens, and it's usually not how we expect or plan it. But you can stick to your health goals and plans, even if Life is changing everything. Sometimes, you might not make it 100 %, like missing 2 workouts, but I just kept going.  Missing 2 workouts didn't have to throw me off of my nutritional plan, and I didn't let it. Last week, sucking at my nutritional plan, didn't have to throw me off of sticking to my workout schedule, and I didn't let it either.

I just hopped on the scale and I have lost another 1.5 lbs. Not too bad for being sick, missing workouts, and my body being all out of wack.

Just do your best and keep moving forward. No matter how many backward steps you take, or that you think you are taking, you can always be moving forward if you are determined enough.

2 weeks down, 1 more week to go baby!! Lets see if I can actually have a week where I eat exactly how I'm supposed to, and get all my workout in! :) I got this!! :)