Tina The Storyteller

Oh, yesterday, I saw a great big coupon come into my mailbox. And it was for something that I wanted. It was 20 percent off for one of my favorite dress companies. They were even offering free shipping on orders of 99 dollars or more. Which should have been a sweet deal, because these dresses run about 99 dollars. But when you add in the coupon, it took two dresses to get to 99 and then it was terribly expensive. So when I added in shipping to my 20 percent off dress, I was only saving about 10 bucks. Not such a great deal. And then I went looking on other sites for a Christmas dress. Well, guess what, all the dresses that are out right now are short and sleeveless. I then remembered that I have two such dresses in my closet. I tried them on, they both fit. One is made of a heavy linen, the other is a sateen type fabric. I figure if not body else is wearing clothes that are supposed to keep you warm during winter, then I can do it, too. I saved myself over a hundred dollars! Now that...

Sorry, I don't have a recipe for you today. I wanted to share with you some thoughts I've had on eating out in a low carb kind of way. First thought, make sure you don't go to the same kind of restaurant too often. I went out to tea and to another spot popular with ladies and ended up consuming at least three pounds of sandwich salads in a week. I'm done with chicken salad for awhile. Second thought, don't be afraid to ask. I often order hamburgers without the bun and then substitute the side or just let my family eat the fries. Sometimes we swap sides depending on where we are. Also if the dish comes with two sides, sometimes I just double up on the low carb side that I've decided on. Third, salads are your friends. Especially, side salads, not so much the ones they offer for meals, those often are loaded with carbs. Fourth, I always ask my family to pick out a bite for me. What is this, you say. Well, if we're having burgers, after I've finished my me...

We've been reading the Bible this year, using The One Year Bible plan. I have the study Bible version, but I mainly use the app YouVersion. It keeps track of The One Year Bible and I just get to read and click through and not have to find my place or book! I love it. We read the Bible in 90 days last year. This is a bit more laid back and quite honestly, it's more enjoyable to read the psalms twice through stretched over a year than to read them all at once in the span of a week. They can get old pretty fast with you read them in a week. I'm sharing it with you because it's not to late to start reading the Bible on a daily basis. You might not finish by the end of the year, but any amount of reading we do of the scripture is going to be beneficial to our lives. So either go out and download the app or buy the book and start reading! Okay? Good.

I've recently discovered one of those statements that ranks right up there with "How are you?" in regards to how people use it to not say anything while acknowledging someone's existence. You can probably guess it based on my blog post title, yup "You've lost weight" Much like "How are you?", "You've lost weight" isn't really expecting a reply and quite honestly, it's the conversational equivalent to "The sky is blue." Why do we say these things to each other? I haven't figured that one out yet, but I do want to rant for just a little while. I want to give you some visuals to go along with this, okay? If not, just go ahead and go back to your Saturday routine and enjoy your day. PS don't be alarmed if you decide to look at the following pictures, I used to be fat, really fat. In fact, I still am. I'm waiting for the day that the Wii stops telling me I'm obeast. You'll have to click through...

You know what? Halloween was tough on me. I love little snack size bars of candy. I ate some, every day for about a week. I think I'm done with them now. But still, I thought for sure that I was going to end up in a pile of discarded wrappers, bemoaning the fact that I had gained ten pounds from eating miniature candies. It's tough stuff.  I wanted to weigh myself. I like to do that about once a week, sometimes twice depending on how many scales I run into in a week and who's around at the time. My official scale is our Wii Fit scale. I like it because it keeps track of not only my BMI, but it also keeps track of my weight, so that I can see them in a graph and see how far I've come. But I also like to jump on a scale at church about once a month to see how things are going on a traditional scale. But then there is a scale at the library (I asked why one time, they said that someone donated it and they just decided to put it outside the bathrooms on the youth lev...

I'm thankful for such a wonderful husband! He takes care of me and loves me and I couldn't ask any thing more of him than he already offers on his own. He rocks! Love you. SP! I'm thankful for trying new things. It's really made a difference in our daily lives, getting out and trying just one new thing has lead to so many positive interactions with the world. I'm thankful for my novel. Do you see my word count at the top over there -----> Well that means that for the past week, I've been getting up every morning before the sun and spending about an hour or so writing each day. My novel is not what I desire of it yet, but I also feel like the first 20,000 words of an unplanned work are trying to work their way into what the story is really about. I think I'm starting to get closer to what God desires Dear Diet to be about. I'm thankful for my little girl and the fact that as human as I think she is, she's still just a little girl. I love...

One of my favorite sandwiches growing up was a grilled cheese. As an adult, I enjoyed them even more. I would try different cheeses, different fats to fry them in. They are wonderful. But there is one major flaw for my low carb ways and that is the bread. Yes there is ,ow carb bread out there, but the ones I've tried aren't that much lower than regular bread and they taste funny. Well, today, I was craving some of that gooey cheesy goodness. And one of my friends taking a nutrition class had mentioned we should eat more warm foods in the winter to work with the seasons and the likes. So the prospect of eating a chunk of cold cheese was not appealing when what I wanted was some gooey cheesy melts goodness. Fortunately for me, my daughter ordered the flaming cheese at our local breakfast joint a few weeks back. It was so tasty, warm and gooey, but so melty that it really needed a dipping mechanism. I had a starting point though. I took a chunk of mild cheddar and cut off about a ...

Whirlybirds and Ordinary Times is a collection of stories from Katie Savage that are intimately related to the liturgical seasons of the Christian church. She does an excellent job of taking an ordinary story and showing the a deep theological connection to what occurs around us every year in the church. There are so many wonderful stories that it would be hard to pick just one to share. With the season of Advent coming up, I was put in the mood to prepare for that season with her stories about Saint Nicolas and our responses to giving. I was also challenged with her story of ordinary time about being nice. When trying to make new friends it can be really easy to be nice instead of being real. The book takes on a feel similar to Ann VosKamp, but more straight forward in her thought process. There are also some moments which we are allowed into Savage's thought process that remind me of a cleaned up Julie and Julia. Overall, the book is excellent, it has helped inspire me to ...

It's pretty early for a Saturday. The truth be told, I've been up for quite awhile already and it's not just because my cat hacked up a furball this morning while I was content to rest. You see, it's NaNoWriMo. You can click on the little widget on the top of the left sidebar to learn more. But the short of it is that it's National Novel Writing Month and I've accepted the challenge to write 50,000 words in 30 days. When I went to bed on October 31st, I had no concept of a fictional novel in my head. When I woke up early on the first and thought to myself, "Should I do this?", The first thing that came to mind was "Never be lazy." So I dragged myself out of bed and started writing. I got my word count for the day plus a bit more. I tried to add to the number later that day, but it just didn't happen. The next morning, got up and did it again. Same thing today. It's been kind of amazing to sit down and write for about an hour or so to ...

I'm thankful for God's goodness. He helps me out all the time. I am a serious basket case and God helps me with that, a LOT. I'm thankful for such an awesome husband. He took Hannah trick or treating last night, in the cold, in a new neighborhood, while I got to stay with our friends, drink coffee and hear stories and tell a few of my own. I'm thankful for the courage to do NaNoWrimo again. I thought it was 3000 words a day. Imagine my delight when after writing then signing up this morning I discovered, it was closer to 1700 a day! WooHOO. I'm thankful for my little girl, that goes on adventures with me. Yesterday, we went out to Greenfield Village in the rain. We didn't stay there very long, just went to her favorite house and then went in to the museum. Fun times. What are you thankful for?