And so it begins.....

So I've decided that I need to get my crap together and start getting in shape for the wedding next year. I have P90X and will be doing the XBox One Fitness videos as well. Along with that I've been doing a low carb diet for about 2 weeks know without exercise and have seen very little progress.....which suuuuuuucks!!! I am excited about starting all this though b/c the dresses that I have my eye on for the wedding aren't very forgiving.

Well that's all I've got so far but I'll keep updating as I go!!

Oh yeah....my beginning stats......

184lbs
Bust: 43in
Waist: 33in
Hips: 45in

.......yeesh!

~A

Wedding Planning

So, Mr. C and I have been engaged since March 10, 2013. We initially decided that we weren't going to plan anything right away and work towards 2015 as the year we were going to get married. Well, now its the middle of 2014 and we don't really have anything planned!!

I've gone and tried on wedding dresses a handful of times but I can't buy anything yet unfortunately. Since I am not working at all right now, we don't have a whole lot of extra money coming in to cover the costs of a wedding.

We have decided that we are going to have it on the farm I grew up on back in Illinois which is really cool! Cool and cheap! lol! We've also made the decision to put more into our honeymoon than the actual wedding (while still keeping the wedding super fun!) Our goal is to have a slightly  more formal backyard barbeque with strings of light above the reception area. I know how I want it all to look, yet haven't bought anything to speak of.

As I go through the wedding planning process, I will be posting on here in hopes of helping others planning their wedding as well!

I'm hoping to put in some DIY, tips, and just general ideas and I look forward to it!

~a

Happy New Year! (.....a few days late)

Hello! How was everyone's holiday? Ours was very busy. Probably more busy this year than in any years past. We spent Christmas at home here in Nebraska which was nice actually. Being able to spend the day opening presents and not having anywhere to go was a good change of pace. A few days after Christmas we started the oh-so-lovely process of packing up the small child and our 2 dogs into the truck for the 7 1/2 hour drive to Illinois to see our friends and family for New Years. In case you're wondering, the drive from Nebraska to Illinois is pretty much everything but exciting. The dogs do well in the backseat of the truck which makes it more tolerable.

New Years, unfortunately, wasn't as fun as we had hoped for. It basically consisted of Anthony and I hanging out at his best friend's house under one other couple came over. Once the ball dropped, we all went home...because we're all old and can't hang. We were home by 12:15...lame. Maddy got to spend the night with her best friend though which was the highlight of her trip. I love being able to surprise her with a fun night like that.

We've been home since the 2nd and are just now getting back into the groove of things. And we were just in time to miss all of the horribly cold weather back in IL. Now don't get me wrong, NE is wicked cold too (-24 with wind chill) and Maddy had an extra day of Christmas vacation because of the cold but back in IL it was getting down to -40 with wind chill. So cold, windy and so much snow that they shut down at least 7 major roads. Some counties even made it illegal to be on the roads yesterday (Jan 6) and were giving out tickets to anyone other than emergency and law enforcement vehicles. How crazy is that!?

It has since gotten a bit warmer here and Maddy is in school today and Anthony has started back into his routine for work. I still worry about him though because of the amount of time he spends on the road.

Anthony and I have made resolutions to get healthier and get down to our ideal weight. I have decided to change the way I eat and cut out all processed food opting to stick with clean, whole foods. Anthony has decided to do lower carb high protein eating without doing full blown Atkins. Since we are getting married in the next year we both decided it was time, so we'll see how it all goes. We're on day 2!

I believe that will be it for today. Part of my resolution will be to keep this blog up more frequently so that's what I'm going to try to do!

Have a great day!

~Ashleigh

UPDATE!

So I have a bunch to catch up on since the last time I posted anything here.

Firstly, Anthony got a new job with General Electric as a Regional Finance Manager for their Sam's Club portfolio which is awesome!! It was a long process to actually get the job but he did and its great! Part of him taking the job meant he would be in charge of the Midwest market. This meant we had to move. Initially we thought he would go by himself so Maddy and I could stay in Arizona and so she could finish out her 3rd grade year...but then we decided that since GE would be paying for us to move, we might as well all go at once. Since this was happening in October and Maddy was only 2 months into her 3rd grade year, we didn't see it as a big deal. Fast forward to now, and we made the move to Nebraska!! Never thought I'd live here, lol, never had a reason to! But I love it. The town we live in is a small farming community with the cutest downtown ever! And we are very close to Omaha. Only about 20 minutes which is great! Huge change from Arizona because we were 1 1/2 hours from a major city out there.

We still own our house out there and are renting it out and we are currently renting in NE as well. On a few of our trips to Omaha we have looked around at some neighborhoods and houses for sale.

If you can't tell, we gave up on the juice fast. :-) I don't know if we'll revisit it or not.

Lastly, today is my birthday!!! Yay!!! I'm 28!

2 years until the big 3-0! Ahhh! Where did the time go!?

Well that's all for today. Have a great one!

~Ashleigh

P90X!!!

So Anthony and I are starting P90X tomorrow and I'm nervous! I know I won't be able to do it all 100% at first. We got the mat, resistance bands and push up grips so were good to go! I took before pics but I don want to post them until I have an "in progress" photo to compare to.

Starting weight is 162 though. Ugh. Hopefully we anger that down to 130 ish!!

Wish me luck! I'll post more tomorrow after the work out!

And so it begins.....Day 1 of Juice Fast

So the last "fast" I did a few weeks ago did not go well. I think I had a bug hiding somewhere in my body and doing the fast just brought it out with a vengeance. So I had to stop. I was miserable and missed 3 days of work. Then our little one got sick and missed school. That was a rough week. I still chose to juice almost everyday in the morning b/c I knew I would restart the fast again eventually and wanted to already be accustomed to the juice. 

So today is going to be the first day of my restart. My weight right now is 154. I'm hoping that like in the movie Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead I can get rid of this weird itchiness that I seem to get no matter where I live or what the weather is like. Speaking of Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead, Anthony and I finally watched the whole thing last night and thats when we decided to restart the fast today. It's a good thing we stocked up on fruits and veggies on our last grocery shopping trip! I'm also hoping that next week when we order a basket from our local co op they'll be lots of new stuff to try. 

Started out today with the juice below

1 orange

1/2 apple

3 romaine leaves 

4 stacks of spinach (sandwiched between the romaine leaves) 

4 carrots 

1/4 of a lemon

I think its good. It's not anything out of the ordinary that I had been juicing previously. 

So hopefully we'll be more successful in this next fast. Our goal would ideally be 60 days so we'll see. I know that getting past the first week will probably be the hardest. 

Maybe as the fast progresses I'll put up some comparison pics if I can even bring myself to take them right now lol!

Well here goes nothing!!!

Thanks to whoever ends up reading this!