Bargain Shopping

...but on the brightside, I'm closing on my house in approximately 4 hours. Hallelujah! (There you go Club Sara!)

No really. I could not be happier to get this in the books. I'm sort of sad that I will not physically be there to close on the house since I am wrapping up my LAST DAY IN MEMPHIS!!! My Mom and Dad have been pretty stellar through this whole process and Mom has offered to go and close on behalf of myself and my good ol' Dad because I didn't want him to cancel his golf tournament. Some things are just that important! I feel so blessed that they helped me through this since I do not have a job in Nashville yet and had to have a cosignor. In return, if my brother ever needs a cosignor, I have offered to step in and rid my parents of having to go through this hellacious process again. That is, of course, assuming I get a job by the time he is purchasing anything significant.

Anywho, here is the idea I've been waiting to post about until I know I have a home. See, my roomie JED and I were discussing clothing the other evening and decided we had far too many nice articles of clothing to just give them away. Well I thought a little about this and decided it would be sorta fun to have a little consignment store in the basement. At least for a little bit. I'm a large fan of my basement. Here's a snapshot of the Fisher's (previous owners) setup.
Man cave, no doubt. I'm thinking it just might work. The only problem I have with consigning items in the basement is controlling the random folk that just might stroll into the basement. I'm thinking an invitation only, bring a friend sort of thing would be best. More like an event. Think "Confessions of a Shopaholic." You know the scene with that big open room and all those goodies and people fighting for things. Yeah, our stuff is that cool! Bargain Basement. Watch out.

GTL7DFL Days 4

Day 4: Not only is today day 4 of this biz but it is also my last day of work, living in Memphis and hopefully the day I'll FINALLY close on my new humble abode. Yesterday, I ate well and the felt good about the GTL7DFL since it was really the only day I had done it correctly. And then I got off work. I met the Auntie for drinks before our painting class and I ordered sliders and fries. Good call, Carolyn. Then we get to the class and low and behold Kloker has so graciously provided us all with a Chickfila Nugget tray. During our book club meetings, it never fails that the nugget tray positions itself directly in front of me and draws my hand to it like a magnet. I end up consuming at least 5 servings of these nuggets. Well, last night the nugget tray was positioned across the room but that didn't stop me from eating my share from last night as well as my share from the book club meeting I missed on Tuesday. The point I'm getting to here is that I woke up around 3am and puked my guts up. I took that as a sign from the cleanse gods that when they say avoid fried foods, they aren't kidding! Good news - weighed this morning and lost another pound! 3lbs total and I will say that a large bulk of it has to be water weight. (Try this and you'll get my drift) Another important thing to note is the GTL7DFL suggests you exercise an hour a day. Any normal week I would be doing this already except this week is far from normal and my gym membership has expired. I'm hoping to make up for it this weekend during the big move!!! (Fingers and toes still crossed...)

GTL7DFL Days 2 and 3

Day 2: Worst day of my life. Nothing to do with the GNC Total Lean 7 Day Fast Loss.

Day 3, 11am: At my desk and just now beginning my day of Fast Loss. Currently drinking a Vanilla Bean Total Lean shake which I have really become a fan of. I've lost two pounds thus far though I wouldn't say it's due to the GTL7DFL as much as it is due to being under CRAZY amounts of stress. I have been traversing the state like a mad woman the last two days and so it has been very hard for me to eat the blueberries and strawberries and tuna wraps which are not served out of drive thru windows. I've done my best, kinda. Recap of days - Day 1 night I got a bit off course after moving furniture with my bro, father and friend of the bros. We hit up the ol' Sonic which has absolutely NOTHING guilt-free on its menu. I went with the Grilled Chicken Wrap and (wait for it....) cheese fries. Day 2 began well with my shake and yogart parfait from McDonald's for a snack. When I arrived home, we had ZERO food in our house (my mother is clearly more concerned with her campaign than feeding our bellies) so me and the Mom met for lunch at Sister's. I thought this would be okay since I could get the veggies it tells me to eat. Low and behold, I end up with Meatloaf, Green Beans, White Beans (I was really feel the legumes), and Mashed Potatoes. Toss in a piece of cornbread and a roll and you have a whopping million calories. Oops! For dinner I had a small chicken salad of some sort and a sammie from Quiznos. Not bad at all. LOTS of food for only $5!! And I ate it all... So as you can see, I've really done well with this whole experiment. Luckily I have 4 days left!

Side note: if you add a little more water than the directions tell you on the side of the Pre-Diet Cleanse, it sort of tastes like sour lemonade which is a heck of a lot better than what it was before!

GNC Total Lean 7 Day Fast Loss

Day 1, 9am: So I might or might not have gotten myself in over my head with this 7 day fast loss deal. First, I go to GNC to scope it out and the box is HUGE and sort of heavy. I'm not sure what I was expecting but they were not at all concerned about space when they designed that box. Whew! I took it home and tried to make a plan in my head on how I was going to make this happen. So far this morning, I have had a Vanilla Bean Total Lean shake and I am about to drink my Total Lean Pre-Diet Cleanse. This cleanse is the part I am a bit afraid of drinking. It is "citrus" flavored and not many citrus flavors make me happy so the fact that GNC couldn't just call it orange or lime or grapefruit doesn't excite me too much. I'll update later....

The Beach Bod

Tomorrow I will begin a 7 day detox before going to the beach next week. As I researched exactly what I wanted to do, my fellow blogger friend G-Train told me another fellow blogger friend CAtk and her husband are giving the Sacred Heart detox a whirl before they vacate the city as well. I'm interested in the Sacred Heart Soup Diet after checking it out but this is moving week for this kid (yippee!!) and I don't believe it will be a good time to for me to try that one. I am going to give this one a go, assuming GNC has it in stock when I leave work today. I am a fan of the GNC brand products and just recently ran out of the GNC beBUFF protein shake and beHOT exercise enhancing viatmins. I'm pretty excited about seeing what kind of results this next experiment produces. My gym membership is expired so I'll probably be forced to run this week instead of going to the gym *yuck* but that could be beneficial as long as my old woman knees can take the pounding. Some people who used these products lost 10 pounds in one week!!! I will try to update as the week progresses. Maybe I'll be a shrimp eating shrimp at the beach next week!

Countdown

Margarita Thursdays will begin in 23 days. Today I decided I would no longer be participating in Margarita Thursdays. This is not to say I will not be enjoying a beverage on my back patio with Nashville's finest BUT I am ex-naying the margaritas. A friend informed me on Cinco de Mayo (while I was being a good little girl and enjoying time at the gym as opposed to fighting the crowd at the local Mexcian restaurant) that just one margarita can contain up to 1,500 calories!!!!!! Now I have never been one to calorie count and quite frankly it drives me bananas to hear folks talk about keeping track of every ounce of dietary supplement that enters their body every second of every day. But 1,500 calories is a crap load of calories! I think back to college. Close to every weekend was spent at Chili's for 2 for 1 Margaritas. This means me and my people drank at least 2 Margaritas each AND ate a meal from the restaurant. That is close to a whole work week worth (4 w's in a row, look out!) of calories in ONE SITTING! After those years, I am suprised I do not weigh 1,500 lbs!!

Back on track - I have decided that I will have to indulge in Whiskey Thursdays. Or maybe wine but I suspect my wine cooler will remain empty until I become employed and can afford to stock it. (Unless this really cool Auntie of mine who sometimes reads my blog wants to give me a hand in boosting the supply.... :-) ) So there, Whiskey Thursdays it will be. Or maybe Vodka. This two makes me think back to the days at Crawdaddy's. Thursday = half price top shelf Whiskey. Friday = half price Grey Goose. Those were the days....

The countdown continues. Name of occasion subject to change.

Entrepreneurial Endeavors

The last post originally began by me contemplating my job hunt and spun out of control into ribbons and such. As of late, I have been thinking about jobs I would actually enjoy going to on a daily basis. As a kid, I had a strange obsession with being either a bank teller or a travel agent. At daycare, we used to build teller windows out of wooden blocks and use Monopoly money to give the "customers." Perhaps I found that fun? Not quite sure where the travel agent aspect came from. I mean our travel agent was cool and all but I don't believe I had a reason to pursue her career.

Currently, I would like to open a butcher shop or a fish market type place where one could come in and get the fixings for a good meal out in the beautiful weather or in their gourmet kitchen. Maybe it is the weather causing this thinking or the fact that I have been deprived from a grill for the last two years (one of the 2 things I will be purchasing for my new house.) Another idea is opening a restaurant in Nashville called Humdingers. This restaurant opened in Memphis next door to my work in the Fall of 2009. It is a huge hit and a relatively healthy alternative to most restaurants of its kind. It reminds me a lot of Bonefish with lunch prices. I am obsessed and will miss it dearly!

Something still draws me back to The Sugar Plum Tree, however. Maybe I could open some kind of store and just name it The Sugar Plum Tree. I'm not too keen on children so I don't know that I could go the same route as Mom and Nan did but I'm sure I could think of something. Wine? Denim? Food? Pretty much my three necessities. I should probably just stick to the financial world and keep my dreams to myself.... but on the brightside, if all else fails I could open The Sugar Plum Tree and sell dress made of Monopoly money! Two birds, one stone.

Childhood Memories...

I used to joke around that I wanted to reopen The Sugar Plum Tree in Dickson with my Mom like she and her Mom opened and ran during my childhood. You better believe I was the kid everyone wanted to be friends with and more importantly, to attend their birthday parties. Hello Kitty all around. All of this also applied to my sweet lil' cousin, Master Christy (she asked us on twitter to "just call her" that so I'm going with it.) The best part about it for us happened to be Christmas. Nothing better than opening gifts at Nan and Granddaddy's and getting the same outfit as Master Christy (MC, for short) and her older sister, Muffin, only in different colors. What made this even more rad was the fact that MC and I always attended the same elementary school and were even in the same class once, not to mention the best of buddies. I suppose our mother's called one another daily to ensure we didn't arrive looking like two peas in a pod. Needless to say, I yearned for Limited Too.

I have two memorable outfits from first grade. (They might even be worth me trying to dig up some pictures!) On Halloween, I had an orange painted Halloween sweatshirt with striped leggings from none other than The Sugar Plum Tree. I was actually pretty proud of my getup for this festive holiday. MC and I were in the same class this year so the mother's must have coordinated us wearing different outfits on this particular day. Mom didn't, however, remember the other key individual who happened to purchase this same outfit. MY TEACHER! Yep, me and Mrs. Chandler, the Bobbsey twins. Mortifying! Almost as mortifying as the other outfit. Yellow sweatshirt with ribbons flowing off the sleeves, all of which were the boldest colors on the color wheel. Striped leggings to accent. I looked like Big Bird on acid.

So this blog took a total turn from what it originally began as..... but on the brighside, everyone appreciates a good flashback now and again I suppose.

That Time of the Year Again, Ladies Part 2

So I broke down and bought my REAL favorite suit of the season. Lord knows it probably won't fit. I'll report back. Happy sunning! :-)

UPDATE: Carolyn 1, Victoria's Secret 0. Take that Vicky.