Looking for Beautiful Things

Today I did something I have never done before. I sat on the couch with a copy of InStyle magazine. A magazine that those who know me personally would never catch me reading, EVER. But here I am, with a full year free subscription to this style mag courtesy of my boss' wife without her knowledge. You see, my boss told me to pay for his wife's subscriptions to House Beautiful and InStyle Magazine. He gave me the renewal form and told me to make a check and mail it out, just like I do with all his bills. I noticed that both magazines had a "Holiday Special. Renew Today and get two subscriptions for the price of one. One for you and one for a friend. Just fill out your friend's information and we will send them a gift subscription at no extra cost to you." Perfect. I second guessed myself for a few seconds and proceeded to give myself a free gift on her behalf.

I Love Magazines. I have tons of magazines in my home. Waiting to be read or weeded out. I subscribe to Oprah, and Parents and Family Circle, Latina, Us Weekly, etc. and most of them I got for free. I only pay for Oprah magazine as she is an inspiration and role model for me. But InStyle magazine is not one to catch my attention normally. I am not into fashion and mostly wear jeans, black sneakers or boots, and a plain shirt that I buy in every color of the rainbow so as to give the impression that I wear something different every day, even though is the same exact thing just in a different color. So why InStyle? First of all it was free and second of all I remembered the words of my boss saying "My wife is into fashion, she is always wearing whatever is in Style" and a vision of his wife came into my head and how beautiful she is and how it would be nice if I looked as beautiful and fashionable as her.

Today I opened my mailbox and saw my first issue of InStyle magazine, and this magazine is HUGE. It's 500 pages of mostly pictures. As I stared at the cover and felt the weight in my arms I remembered something I read in a book about how surrounding yourself with beautiful things attracts beautiful things to you. So I carried the mag home sat in the couch and went on a scavenger hunt for beautiful things. I remembered the pile of about 100 magazines I have hidden under a table and how I have vowed to weed through them only tearing out the articles I'm interested in and recycling the rest, and thought that if only I weeded out the magazine as soon as I looked at it the first time, I would have no need to go back and check it a second time saving me the hassle. So I did, I tore out through the magazine pulling out only the pictures of things that I thought were beautiful so I can make my own beautiful things book and attract all things beautiful to myself back.

Are there any quirky things you do to make yourself feel more pretty?

Dealing with Clutter: Sense of Security

For the most part of my life I have lived with clutter. I remember growing up and having one room of the house to be the "cachibache" room. In there we threw everything we didn't use often. And when I say threw, I mean literally threw. That room was a mess. Random stuff piled over everything. Now that I think about it, it was basically a storage room but with no organization what so ever. We moved fairly often and this messy room of stuff would get packed over and over and over, unused, unchecked. Only on the rare occasion when we would have a flood would we weed through the stuff, and mourn the once forgotten stuff we had not seen since our last move.
And here I am now as an adult finding myself with the same problem, except here in NYC, we don't have the luxury of an extra room unless we rent a storage space. So all my "cachibaches" are spread around all over the house creating a chaotic mess. I always blamed it on being tired to clean, on not having enough space, or a good shredder (you know, identity theft and all). The girls are too little, they need my attention, I can't possibly spend the day cleaning. But these are all excuses, like the one I have used the most often "we are going to move soon anyway so why bother". But soon has been five years and we are still at the same house, and this takes me to another thing, sense of security. What I have come to learn is that throughout my life I've moved so much and my situation has been so random that I lost the sense of security that I should have had since I was a child and with this I developed and attitude of indifference. I never considered anything to have the ability to be mine long term, so I never found the need to care and keep anything in nice condition, because to me there was no point in making an effort for temporary things. But even life is temporary, why not make it the best, right? So now as I find myself weeding through clutter, getting rid of stuff, one room at a time. I propose to make my soroundings nice, and with this my family gets happy in return too.

Five Pounds at a Time

I usually don't gain weight. I stay on the same weight no matter what I eat, or whether I exercise or not. I always stay within five pounds of my weight. Some might say I'm lucky. I know I am blessed. But there were two times in my life when I did gain weight, well, three actually, and two of them were the birth of my two daughters and the third one was when I was suffering from depression caused by hypothyroidism. Ever since I started taking my thyroid medicine I have stayed pretty much at the same weight I was after my 3 weight gains. I have struggled with the thought of having to loose 40 lbs. It seems like such a large number. After battling with IBS in college I was able to get accustomed to the kinds of foods that I can safely eat and I try to stick to that. I don't like to diet, and I don't exercise too much and I drink a lot of Cola.

About a month ago I went to the doctor to get a refill on my thyroid medicine. The nurse took my blood pressure and asked me to step on the scale. I closed my eyes and told the nurse, "This is the most painful part of the doctor's visit" With my eyes still closed the nurse said out loud. "175 lbs." I opened my eyes in shock and smiled. "I lost weight!" I exclaimed. I couldn't believe it. I had not done anything different, or so I thought. That day I decided I would start a weight loss goal of 5 lbs a month. 40 lbs seems like such an impossible goal, but 5 lbs seems so doable. So I decided to give it a try.

A couple of weeks passed by and my daughters decided they wanted to weigh themselves. A friend of them was visiting and they all have fun measuring how tall they are against my kitchen wall, and comparing their weights as means to see who was bigger. I decide to play along and to my surprise I saw a 165 on my scale. I couldn't believe it, I hadn't even started doing anything to loose weight. Maybe it's because I've been drinking more coffee or eating smaller lunches, or maybe even since I have been bringing left overs to lunch instead of eating out, maybe it's because I haven't been eating as much late at night. But no matter what it was it worked. I must admit that seeing this new success sent me into a weird panic. Since Thursday I have eaten take out every day and I just weight myself and was 170lbs. The good news is that I am still weighing less than when I started. So today I start again. 5 lbs goal for the month of February. I will try to cook more, eat less take out and see how it goes.


If you are looking to loose some weight too, I encourage you to take on smaller goals. Five Pounds at a time is something that is doable. If we set a doable goal, when we reach it we feel good about ourselves and it encourages us to do even better . We can do it! So who's with me?