Flying Spaghetti Monster, with a side of hot dogs.

I love Facebook and all of my random friends. Today I saw a picture of a hot dog with spaghetti dangling out of it, and all I could think was...OMG what is that and how can I crate it?!?! Hailey LOVES hot dogs and pasta, and while I realize this isn't a healthy diet for a toddler, anyone who has a toddler knows that whatever you can get them to eat is a good thing!

The fact that I am on kid #3 and never realized this was out there makes me appreciate the internet even more. With all the information in the world that is out there it's impossible to learn everything in a lifetime. We all know this. The internet makes it easier for us to find things like this. Things that make you face palm your forehead and say, "Why didn't I think of that?"

The recipe for this is simple. Take a hot dog, cut it into evenly sized pieces. Then take your spaghetti (I used normal spaghetti, not thin, not angel hair), break it in half and stick it in the hot dogs in all kinds of funky shapes. Ethan did his in the shape of a body, head, arms, legs. Hannah did the end pieces and made them look like a squid. We seriously had fun with this project.

Before Shot:


Boil your spaghetti hot dog monstrosities for the cooking time it says for your pasta of choice. My older kids sampled them and said that the parts of pasta that were embedded into the hot dogs were still crunchy. They ate them anyway.

Hailey, who is 22 months was fixated on removing the pasta from her hot dogs.



She mostly just ate the pasta, and ignored the hot dogs.



Either way, it was a fun thing for the whole family and something I will definitely do again in the near future.

If you have other ideas for fun kid foods that I may not know about (other than ants on a log...) please share them!

My New Scentsy Warmer: Disco Zombie Approved

Ever have one of those days where you wake up and realize your house kind of...stinks? Instead of cleaning over the weekend I spent the whole time keeping the kids busy and doing tons of fun things. Friday night we had pizza and did some Dance Central 2, Saturday I made cinnamon rolls, eggs, and strawberries for breakfast and then we rushed off to Ethan's football game. After the game there was McDonald's, walks to the park, chicken wing night, etc. Then Sunday we spent the whole day in Gainesville at the Medieval Faire. So we were non stop busy.

Sometimes your house is going to get smelly. Maybe I shouldn't have tossed that "special" diaper Hailey made me directly into the kitchen trash. Perhaps the kitty litter hasn't been changed in too long, and sure the dog could use a bath. So I was really THRILLED when my Scentsy warmer arrived on Monday. Bye bye smelly house!

I've seen Scentsy stuff around for years now on tables being sold at various events. I know of a few of my friends that have sold them before too, but I always assumed they were too expensive. Near the holidays I was trying to think of creative gift ideas for my Mom and Sister and also liked the benefit of helping out a fellow Mommy from my pregnancy group with Hailey. So I checked them out and was surprised at how affordable they are.

I got the cutest most "Jen" warmer and I hope she is loving it, and another one for my Mom that I know she is using because it is always on the countertop in her kitchen.

But I had yet to purchase one for myself. My friend was trying to reach a sales goal for January and only needed like $40 to reach it, so I simply HAD to purchase one for myself right? :)

I ended up getting the adorable bandanna FULL SIZE warmer for only $24 (gotta love the clearance section), plus 3 packs of scented wax that smell AMAZING for only $13, and to get it to $40 I got a little scented car air freshener too.

Considering the lingering scents that were already in my house I thought that I needed two blocks of the scented waxy to really make the house smell fresh again. (I had cleaned and opened the windows earlier so most of the yuck was out) Those of you that have been to our house know that it is large and very open, so that all the rooms flow together. So I was amazed when the scent filled the house instantly and I had to turn the warmer off because it was almost TOO strong! Next time I'm just using one chunk of scented wax.

It's now Wednesday and we've fired up the warmer a few times and there is still stuff in there. I'm amazed at how long it lasts. I used to be in love with my little glade warmer, that has scented wax too that barely lasts for a couple hours. I spent WAY more money on scents and stuff for that and it never worked this well.

One of my favorite parts about the warmer is the light that it gives off. It reminded me of disco lights so that's how my Plants Vs. Zombies Disco Zombie ended up near it, dancing his little undead heart out. Also that now makes this blog gaming related. Ta-dah!

If you are interested in buying or just checking out Scentsy stuffs please click HERE. The link is for my "online party" and if you buy enough stuff I may get free yummy smelling things. Also, you help out my friend who has an adorable little girl she is raising.

I think they're having a great sale right now too, and the stuff I got is even cheaper...figures :) Check out the "Quiver" scent, it's amazing!

Healthy Recipes - Chicken Corn Crock Pot Chili

I started going to the gym at the end of January. We have since gotten in the habit of stopping at a restaurant on our way home because it's usually close to 6pm and I don't want to go home and cook and clean in order to prepare a meal. I have been making healthy choices and going online to my favorite restaurants like Panera Bread (YUM) and planning out what I can eat before I go so that I know how many calories I'm getting. Chick-Fil-A even has a meal calculator you can use, through this I learned that you can actually ask for no butter on your chicken sandwich, saving you 30 calories. I also learned that I do not like their diet lemonade very much. So when we went on Tuesday night I got a half diet/half regular lemonade along with my grilled chicken salad and my meal was 405 calories.

So for Thursday night's gym trip I planned on stopping at Chili's. We haven't been in a while and I LOVE their food. However, I wasn't sure if I could resist the temptation of my favorite treats there. We usually get their yummy Texas Cheese Fries (half order is 1035 calories) and their Crispy Chicken Tacos (1200 calories). After searching the rest of their nutritional info online I really didn't see anything that would work for me, and I knew I wasn't strong enough to resist the lure of cheesy fries dipped in ranch dressing.

Instead of going to Chili's I started searching online for a healthy crock pot recipe that I could fix and have waiting for us when we got home from the gym. The first recipe I found while searching "Healthy Crock Pot Recipes" was a Chicken and Corn Chili on www.recipe.com. The recipe is low-calorie and VERY low-fat as well. Double win!!

Here's what I put into my chili, I tried to buy things that were reduced sodium or no salt added. The College Inn brand broth actually had less sodium than a brand that had "reduced sodium" on the label. We also have a brand of salt that has less salt...lol.



I had some zucchini that needed to be used so I substituted that for the green pepper. That way I kept the green color in there.

My Recipe:
1 Medium Sweet Onion, chopped
1 Pound Boneless, Skinless, Chicken Breast Fillets (they were on sale cheaper than regular boobies, and have all the fat already trimmed off of them)
2 Cups College Inn, Light & Fat Free Chicken Broth
2 Cups of Zucchini, chopped (instead of 1 Green Pepper)
1 Jalapeno chili, seeded and chopped
1 3/4 Tsp Ground Cumin
1/2 Tsp Cayenne Pepper
3/4 Tsp Reduced Sodium Salt
1 can Petite Cut, no salt added, diced tomatoes, drained
1 1/2 cups frozen corn, thawed
1 can Reduced Sodium Black Beans, drained and rinsed
1 can cannellini beans, drained and rinsed

Topped the soup off with a little Mexican shredded cheese and fat free sour cream

The original recipe called for 2 cans of the cannellini beans, which are white pinto beans. I did half and half black and white just to shake up the color a little bit.

The recipe was pretty darned easy to make. I just tossed in all the fresh chopped veggies, chicken, broth, 1/4 tsp of the cayenne and salt, and 1 1/2 tsp of the cumin and cranked it up to high. Because I used the thin chicken fillets, I was able to pull the chicken out after 2 hours and shred it and toss it back in there as opposed to waiting 4 hours with regular chicken boobies.

Along with the shredded chicken I tossed in all the other crap :) The original recipe calls for cornmeal, but I forgot all about that and didn't add it. I turned the crock pot down to Low and it was on that setting for about 3 1/2 more hours for a total cooking time of 5 1/2 hours. I think it's supposed to cook longer but it turned out great.

I used MyFitnessPal to create a recipe for this and set the servings quantity to 6 because I didn't know how much it would make. Based on 6 servings here are the nutritional facts for what I made:

Calories: 234
Total Fat: 1.9g
No saturated or trans fat
Cholesterol: 33.3 mg
Sodium: 990mg
Carbs: 31.9
Dietary Fiber: 8.5g
Sugars: 6.9g
Also has a good amount of protien, vitamin A and C, calcium ,and Iron.

Because I served mine on a yummy pile of Rotini Garden Pasta, which gives you some of your daily serving of veggies, we didn't use very much in a "serving". I only put 3/4 a cup of the chili in my bowl. Hailey had some (she LOVED IT), and Hannah went back for seconds. After all that we still had enough to fill a 7 cup Tupperware container completely full.

So I would go as far as to say that the recipe really makes more like 10 servings, especially since I added 2 full cups of zucchini. This greatly reduces the amount of calories and sodium per serving. So when you make your batch, just make sure to calculate everything properly. I still logged my serving as the one listed above, I figure if it is less calories that's a WIN for me because I was full after eating mine.

I did top it with a pinch of Mexican shredded cheese and a dollop of fat free sour cream. We added a little salt to taste because the recipe really doesn't have much salt in it. Other than that it was wonderful! I personally would have added more fire to the chili, but because I was feeding it to the kids I left it pretty mild. It still had a nice mild burn to it and although my picture doesn't do it justice, it was very colorful.

We served a Dole Southwestern Salad with it which was DELICIOUS!! Normally we'd have a hunk of bread covered in butter with our chili, but the salad was a healthier and much more yummy choice. Hannah couldn't stop raving about the salad! I'm definitely going back to get more while they are buy one get one free at Winn-Dixie.

If you have any low calorie crock pot recipes you have tried and love PLEASE share them with me. If I can make something like this that the kids will enjoy it will make gym nights much easier. I think we will still go once a week out to eat somewhere healthy, but since I'm trying to go to the gym every other day we definitely need to have more crock pot recipes on hand. Luckily since this made SO MUCH, I plan to whip out the shrinky wrap your food machine and freeze some servings for future dinners, we should be able to easily get 3 more meals out of that batch.

Weight Loss - Month 1 Summary and Progress

Like most people, I have started off many new years with the intention of losing weight. I have yet to ever stick to my goals and have any success whatsoever. This year IS my year, I started thinking about this a couple months before January and when the year started I sat down and spent a considerable amount of time creating a journal to help me track my goals.

In my journal I am tracking my "Ultimate Goal" which is to have lost 36 pounds by my Birthday on May 6th. Each month in my journal takes up just one single page. I do not obsess over my journal, instead it is there for me to log my weight once per week so that I can see if I am tracking for my goal, or if I need to push myself a little harder during the next week. I also have set a slightly higher goal for the month, one that will make me push myself just a little harder and if this goal is attained each month I get an extra reward.

For January my goals for fitness were simple: Exercise 3x a week.

My diet goals:
1.) Track ALL food intake using MyFitnessPal
2.) Reach my 1200 calorie goal each day
3.) Take a multivitamin each day

Weight loss needed to reach my "Ultimate Goal" : 8.48 pounds

Actual weight lost: 9.2 pounds

MyFitnessPal - Free Calorie Counter

My reward for reaching my goals and attaining the proper weight loss to reach my "Ultimate Goal" this month was a new pair of shoes and a workout outfit. If you remember my "Poo shoe" story from my first day going to the gym you know I already purchased my shoes, they're wonderful and comfortable and do not make my toes go numb like my other pair of shoes did...lol.

My "Pushing myself" goal was to lose 10 pounds, which I did not. I'm definitely not dissapointed in myself at all. During the month of January I battled the flu, the stress of my husband leaving to go back to Japan, the stress of being home alone with the kids, and the evil demon that is BROWNIES.

I have to also take into account the fact that I didn't get started on my month until January 5th, which did affect how much time I had to reach my goals this month.

But I lost 9 pounds. 9 pounds!!! I also have lost 2.5 inches off my waist, which is my most problematic area. I am hoping that I don't look 6 months pregnant when I relax my belly in the near future...lol. I burned over 6000 calories last month by walking with the kids, playing Dance Central 2, and during the last part of the month getting a gym membership and going every other day so far for a total of 5 trips.

I've added many new friends on MyFitnessPal, which is a FREE service for those of you who are trying to reach health and fitness goals. We are all cheering each other on, and the constant contact with my friend Kelly Brown is really helping us both out as we talk about our food, exercise, and our shame when we cheat :)

Also helping me out is my memo board I have at eye level when I sit down at my computer desk. This was the suggestion of another wonderful friend and I currently have notes with my weekly goal, and where I started the month at. My FAVORITE note on the board is the one that says where I will be at the end of the month if I reach my goal. Just seeing that number will motivate me each day.

At the end of February if I meet my goals I will be at a weight I have not seen since before I got pregnant with Hailey. I'll be able to retire my jeans, which are already getting loose, and pull out the brand new pairs of jeans and cute shirts I had purchased to wear to PAX Prime that year I came home thinking I had the PAX flu and ended up with an adorable new addition to the family instead.

If you are my friend on facebook you probably have noticed that I am posting a lot of stuff about diet, food, etc. I have quite a few friends that are also working towards fitness goals and I find that posting my frustrations, or fun new foods I find that work for me, and boasting about my success at the gym, really helps keep me motivated. So I hope that everyone understands that and isn't bothered by it too much.

Feel free to cheer me on and post some motivational comments on this blog. I really did work hard this month and I know that I'll have to work even harder this month to keep the momentum going. I'd love to hear your stories about your weight loss, past or present, any tips you have, favorite low calorie foods, snacks, drinks, fitness tips,ANYTHING you think will help.

If you don't feel comfortable posting your comments below (or don't know how to...lol) Email me at Jaxboxchick@gmail.com and your words will just be for me.

Thank you to everyone who is supporting me through this!

Push it Real Good!

I'm still going strong with the weekly Dance Central Challenges. The week 3 challenge has been posted and you can find all the details at The Married Gamers in Kelly's most recent blog. I will admit that I have yet to attempt the challenge. It seems pretty hard, if anyone else is out there reading this and wants to try it with me, I could really use some more cheerleaders or people doing it to motivate me. Kelly and I plan to attempt it tomorrow, but we'll see.

I did do amazing things today. I had everything ready to go get my gym membership this morning. Coffee pot was full when I woke up, clothes were laid out, Hailey's diaper bag was packed. The only thing I forgot to do was poop check my gym shoes. I had barely gotten out of the neighborhood when I smelled something not quite right. At first I tried to pass it off as manure, they are redoing all the flower beds in our neighborhood and I figured that was where the smell was coming from. After a while I realized the poo was coming from my shoe. There was NO WAY I was turning around and going back home.

So, I tossed the poo shoes into the back of the van, and stopped at Dick's Sporting Goods on the way to the gym. There's me with a baby on my hip, strolling into the store in socks. I got some new shoes that are WAY more comfortable than the old ones I've had for years and was on my way to the gym. Things were going well, Hailey strolled into the Kid Zone without a care in the world. I took my tour, and was getting ready to complete my paperwork when the crazy people in the Kid Zone at Lifestyle Family Fitness center decided it was time to vacuum. To make a long story short, Hailey didn't like that very much. I finished my paperwork while standing up and bouncing Hailey to calm her and didn't get my workout in.

No way was I quitting there. I waited for Hannah to get home from school, she was late...lollygagging around with her friends (which she is now on restriction for the rest of the week for) and we immediately hopped in the van and headed back out to the gym...again...for the second time in one day. Hailey was hesitant and apparently fussed the whole time, but her sister was there with her and she was fine. I got in a great workout and felt so amazing and proud of myself. We got sushi on the way home and I still had calories left for the day on MyFitnessPal. WOOHOO!

I was still on a rush from my workout after dinner so I fired up Dance Central 2 on the Kinect and did "Can't Get You Out of My Head" thirteen times and issued the challenge to Kelly Brown. Hannah stuck with me for three times on the song and then quit and told me I was crazy. Hey...I don't waste motivation, it comes so rarely for me.

I'm loving these Dance Central challenges and hope they keep them going past this month. If not, we will have to start getting creative with new challenges and maybe even incorporate some other games into the mix.

I was supposed to write today for The Married Gamers, but I used all my motivation working out so tomorrow I must, I must, I must. But right now I'm enjoying the glass of wine I earned today (and I'm still under my 1200 calories for the day)

I did play the Resident Evil: Revelations demo on Nintendo 3DS today, well partially...it freaked me out and I quit for fear of having bad dreams...lol. But I will get that done and write a little something about it this week...I promise...no really, I mean it this time...lol.

My neck, my back...

Yesterday I finally got started on the Dance Central challenge for week 2. If you want details on how you can participate in this challenge check out the article on The Married Gamers. Kelly Brown is the one who is writing about and participating in this challenge and we have been challenging each other and cheering each other on. This week we are supposed to dance the same song THIRTEEN times in a row! And while I don't completely blame Kelly Brown for the fact that my back is screaming at me today, I do like how gaming can help friends accomplish their fitness goals even if they are on opposite coasts. I see what you did there Dance Central, I'm so on to you!

I selected Cascada's Evacuate The Dance Floor for my torture yesterday. I figured since it was a one bar song on difficulty that it would be easy, so I did the challenge on the "hard" setting. What I did not anticipate was that that one evil move (can't remember the name) would have me sweating and dying. After the first song I immediately changed clothes. You really do need to wear comfortable workout-style clothing when doing this. You don't want to be hitching up your pants or trying to recover your bra strap while focusing on the moves. So I paused and tossed on some yoga pants, sports bra, and a shirt I didn't mind stinking up with sweat...and yes...I got sweaty.

My first playthrough was pathetic, only scoring 175K. However, by the 6th time I was getting the moves down a little better and found my score had gradually progressed to a mildly impressive 488K. Practice makes perfect right? It never went higher...lol. The score started dropping as I got exhausted. The "freestyle" breaks were spent catching my breath and dashing to chug water. The only thing that got me through was knowing that Kelly did her song 13 times in a row, and if she could do it then I could do it and I was NOT giving up. I gave it one final push on the 13th and last time and got 4 stars and 444K. Not great, but much better than my first attempt.

What throws me for a loop is the way they track how many calories you burn. I worked out for 25 minutes. I'm sweating and panting, and had to pop some aspirin last night because my back was so sore and they're telling me I only burned 125 calories?!?!? OH hellz no!

So I hopped on my iPad to the myfitnesspal app that I love and adore and have been using daily and did a search for general aerobics. 25 minutes is 221 calories on there and that sounded better to me so that's what I logged for my cardio for the day on my diary.

I will do my challenge again today. Kelly said the Lady GaGa song Marry The Night is a great arm work-out and that she was able to do it on Medium, so I'm going to try to one-up her and do it on hard.

I need some help picking my song for Friday though. I'll give you all three choices (in order of increasing difficulty) and let you guys pick, just leave it in the comments section:

Sandstorm - Darude

I Know You Want Me - Pitbull

Fire Burning - Sean Kingston

You have until noon tomorrow (Friday) to cast your vote!

And finally I want to add a little blurb about MyFitnessPal (yes again). I made some chili yesterday in the slow cooker and finally took advantage of the feature on MyFitnessPal that allows you to figure out your calories for a recipe you create. All I had to do was scan the things I used in my recipe. So using my iPhone, I scanned the lean ground beef, canned tomatoes, tomato sauce, seasoning, etc and it gave me not only accurate calories to log per serving, but the proper nutritional value for my batch of chili. I found this super helpful and look forward to using this feature more in the future.

I still find the iPhone easier to use for scanning. I can never remember where my camera is on the back of my iPad...lol. But I still like the layout of the iPad a little better for other things. If any of you are using or want to start using the app make sure to add me "Jaxboxchick" and we can cheer each other on.

Coffee - What's your flavor?

One thing I know gamer's and writers can't live without is their caffeine. Some go for coffee and others chug those crazy energy drinks that I still believe will kill everyone one day. I'm sure there are the odd few out there that go without caffeine entirely. Heck, there are even strange people out there that don't eat meat! I can safely say that after not feeling well the last few days, and having gone without coffee, I am a caffeine-a-holic.

However, after all these years of chugging the stuff I have yet to find that perfect flavor. I'm trying to cut back on calories, so cutting out the delicious, sugary, wonderful flavored creamers was an obvious thing to cancel out completely. The sugar-free creamers taste like...well...sugar-free creamers. So I'm trying different flavored coffee's in the hopes that I can find something OTHER than French Vanilla that I like.

I found a few bags of Dunkin' Donuts Mocha Mint on the clearance rack at Target yesterday. $4.74 (plus 5% off for Target Red Card holders!) seemed like a great price for Dunkin' coffee, and the flavor sounded yummy so I gave it a spin this morning. It smelled wonderful in the bag, it tasted...eh...after brewing. I even added a little cream and sugar (yes I know that's counter productive) and it still didn't do it for me. It was low on flavor and had too much of a bite to it for my liking. Usually I LOVE their coffee, and adore their French Vanilla flavor, so I was surprised this one was so disappointing.

So, my question of the day to my gamers, writers, non-gamers, coffee lovers, vegetarians, and whomever else is reading this...what's your favorite flavor? And what's the worst flavor you've ever come across?