diet fail, and weirdness with the inlaws

I have to admit, the diet thing went out the window a bit this past week, again. Weekdays it's not a problem to follow it, but the weekend gets tricky. On Saturday was my DB's fiancee's first wedding shower, and I tried to eat as little as possible. This weekend we also celebrated my birthday, since it's coming up in a few days - so we celebrated it twice: Saturday night after the shower, at DB's place, and then again Sunday evening with the inlaws.

So, despite counting my points during the week and trying to bank a few here and there, I gained about 2.5lbs. :( But it's ok, I've got this week to undo some of the damage done from the last two weeks.

... I've also been debating whether or not to blog about this, I really try not to vent in my blog, but sometimes I just can't help it.

There's this game that we play with my inlaws, the rare times that DH and I host dinner. It's called Let's Not Try Anything That Sabrina Makes, Because No Matter What It Is, We're Going To Think It's Awful. It's an easy game to play: whatever food I prepare, regardless of how plain-jane it is, we just don't eat it. We don't even try it. The real challenge is coming up with a new excuse as to why we won't eat it. Like if dinner's at 7pm, we claim we're still full from the meal we ate 9 hours ago. Granted, I'll admit that what I grew up eating from my own family is different than what the inlaws are used to eating - I come from a southern European family, where as they're Irish, so they're used to meat and potatoes whereas I'm used to garlicy foods, cheesey things, stuff drizzled in olive oil, etc. Think anything Italian or southern French or Mediterranean, really.

There was once where I had them over for DH's birthday. I actually had the nerve of making homemade burgers and homemade cupcakes for dinner. And, mind you, cupcakes from an instant mix, not even really from scratch. We still insisted on not eating what was served but rather raid the fridge to eat from there instead. Am I the only one who thinks that's insanely rude?!? But I bite my tongue, because these are my inlaws.

So this time, the only thing I made were some hors d'oevres. Chips, store bought dip, store bought antipesto stuff, and the only thing I really made was bocchini cheese wrapped in proscuitto drizzled with a little olive oil. What's great about bocchini is that it really doesn't have a flavour at all, and proscuitto (I used the smoked kind) tastes like bacon. Well, we were picky about that. Thank goodness that the bbq was prepackaged stuff from the grocery store and the cake was not homemade, otherwise half of our guests wouldn't've eaten it.

Sometimes it feels like I can't win for trying.

Happy Long Weekend!

Today's Victoria Day in Canada, so DH has the day off work. This weekend we had a lot going on - DB & SiL moved in to their new place, they got their keys last Friday, and had just a short move from Markham to Stouffville. DH & I helped out on Friday, slept over and helped out some more on Saturday with painting and around-the-house repairs.

We also went grocery shopping yesterday, and I finally saw the tomato plants out for sale! So, I bought a bunch - and by a bunch, I mean probably around 20+ plants. My bad: I didn't realize that some of the containers had 5 plants in them. Nevertheless, we should be having a gazillion tomatoes this summer! Plus, this is my first time attempting to grow cucumbers, so that should be fun!

The only downside with helping with the move on Friday/Saturday is we wound up eating a lot of fast food. I was sort of hoping that with all the work we were doing, it'd balance out, but no dice. I did gain 1.6 or so lbs. :( Although I did stick to my minimum points yesterday, so that (I think) may have counterbalanced some of the damage I did.

Today is a start of a new week though, so with any luck I'll break the 20lbs-lost mark next monday!

way more progress! :)

Dietwise, I had a very good week this past week! I'm down another 3lbs, which brings my total weight lost to 19.2 lbs!

I was a bit worried, because again last week I went out to eat. Restaurant eating always weirds me out, since I really can't accurately measure what I'm eating to really measure my points, and the particular restaurant I went to didn't have the nutritional info posted online so I could figure it out when I got home. :(

So, that makes a total of 3 out of the last 4 weeks where I've lost 3 lbs a week, which I know is higher than usual - average weight lost in a week on a diet should be 1 to 2 pounds. I am sticking within my points, and using up some of my banked points once in a while. I must admit, though, I'm greatful that my points range is in the 30 points range at this point, because I am finding that I am using them. I guess that's one of the lessons you learn with Weight Watchers, you slowly decrease down, and learn to substitute healthier portions and more low-point foods into your diet.

At this rate, though, I should hit my next goal of 25 lbs lost in no time!

falling a little out of love ...

Well, this is my vintage love summer top so far. I've got the torso of it about 2/3's or 3/4's done, and the sleeves each about half done.

Quite frankly, I'm a little annoyed with this whole top - I've started this back in March, and was hoping to make both a blue one and a black one to wear at my brother's wedding in August.

My first issue is with the yarn - I ordered a bunch of Knit Picks Cotlin yarn, and it's already starting to pill on me. :(

Secondly, the actual structure of the pattern is so weirdly written that parts of it was difficult to decode and follow. I'm a bit torn in complaining about a pattern too much, because I know how much work goes in to designing and writing one out, plus I can see on ravelry that this has been test knit a few times. But, on the other hand, despite this being test knit, and the designer claiming to have been published in magazines, I've found mistakes that hadn't been corrected - small ones, mind you, but still - and there are glaring parts of the pattern that are very hard to understand because it's so awkwardly written, and am surprised that none of the test knitters had pointed these out to correct it.

Because of those confusing, weirdly written parts, I've had to put knitting the top on hold for as much as 2 weeks at a time to get replies from the designer to help me understand what I'm knitting. I must admit, that the designer has made an effort to help, but there were times that even the math in her helping was wrong, and it took a lot of back-and-forth to even decode some of what she explained. But she was nonetheless helpful.

I can honestly say that despite my intention of knitting 2 of this top (and I have bought the yarn with the intention of knitting this twice) I'm absolutely not going to bother making it again. I think, if I do ever get around to finishing this top - and at this point, I guess I may as well - the black yarn I bought will be used towards a different top. I'm not sure if it'll get done before the wedding, but I'll try. I think, had I not paid for the pattern or had the yarn start pilling on me mid-knitting, then I would've frogged the whole thing and started over with a completely different design.

Overall I do think it'll turn out alright, I'm just not in love with this pattern any more. But it will make a unique enough top to wear this summer, for sure.

itty bitty bit of progress

I only lost 0.8lb this past week... almost a whole pound, but not quite there. Which is still a loss, nonetheless, so I'm ok with that. :)

The top I'm knitting for my brother's wedding this summer is making a small amount of progress, mainly because (despite my best efforts) I find the pattern to be confusing. There are fragments of the pattern that are just so weirdly worded that I've wound up frogging and reknitting parts of it at least twice. It has often been put on hold also because I had to wait for a reply for help from the designer. Now that I think I've got it figured out enough to finish it, I'm hoping to post progress pictures with my next post!

50% of xmas knitting done!

Well, I got half of my xmas knitting done! I got a bunch of Lion Brand Amazing yarn a few months ago for 99 cents a ball (Isn't that great?! It's normally $9.99 each!) so I used part of it to make these scarves for the inlaws. The thinking is, all I have to do now is make scarves for my brother, SiL, parents and grandmother.

The colours I used (in order, left to right) are Olympia, Aurura, Olympia again, Rainforest and Vineland. They're each just ribbed scarves - either in a K1, P1 rib, or K2, P2 rib, or in the case of the two mobius scarves, a k3, p3 rib. Very easy, and I knit until the entire skein was used up.