So I improvised and you can too!

Gooood morning all!  I'm in too good a mood today.  Hmm can you really be in too good a mood.  Eh maybe not.  I just know I feel good!  It's raining outside, but that hasn't dampened my spirits any.  I don't know why, but I'll take it.

I think it's endorphins.  I've finished my workout for the day, so that is part of it I think.  You can see my stats below.

Today's post is a frugal kind of post (I love those), and one that over laps with healthy eating and weight loss.

A little back story, Dh and I have discovered a new treat where we take whole milk vanilla Greek yogurt and top it with a little(like a tsp) choc syrup or use it to top a cup of thawed sweet cherries.  Something about the thickness reminds me of cheese cake.  I LOVE CHEESE CAKE!  So, the other day at Aldi, I had it on my list to pick up, as we were out out.  Guess what!  They were too!  Out that is.  Apparently we aren't the only ones that love the whole milk Greek yogurt.  Bummer.

But!  I'm sly I tell you!  Clever, clever girl!  They did have the regular whole milk vanilla yogurt.  Plus it was on sale!  So in the buggy went 4 cartons, 32 oz each.  I normally pay 2.89 for this when I buy it, but it was on sale for 2.28.  Home we went.

Fast forward to this morning.  I took a small sized glass mixing bowl.  It doesn't have to be glass, but that's what I used.  I placed a mesh strainer in the bowl and laid a dampened coffee filter in it.  I took an entire carton of the yogurt and dumped it carefully into the strainer, making sure I stayed on the filter.  I covered the lot, and waited about 2 hours.  Over that two hours, the whey strained into the bowl leaving Greek yogurt in the strainer.  When all was said and done, I ended up with 6.75 oz of whey.  NO I DIDN'T THROW IT AWAY!  We save that stuff.  It's nutrition gold!  You can use it to soak grains like your oatmeal over night.  You can add it to your overnight soaking water for dried beans before cooking (it makes them easier to digest so less...ahem...noise).  You can soak your flours before making bread, add it to batters, add it to smoothies in place of milk.  See what I mean? So that whey is still usable.  But even if it wasn't, by my calculation I actually saved a few cents.  If I don't factor in the sale price, and just use the normal price for comparison; that 6.75 oz is about 20% of the volume of the original yogurt.  I took 20% of $2.89= .58.  I added that again to the 2.89 purchase price for a total price of $3.47.  I think the price I would have paid for the original Greek yogurt I was looking for was $3.89.  So I saved a little bit.  And really I did not much more than let time pass.  Pretty good if I do say so myself!

***Edited to add- I actually prefer this yogurt to the store bought.  It's creamier and much more like cheese cake.

Heart rate limit is 124- went over some and had to adjust periodically.  Max heart rate 127.  Fat burning range for me is 115-118.

Grace Wins by Matthew West- 2.8 speed- 0 first minute then-5 incline
Oxygen by Lincoln Brewster- 3 speed- 5 incline
Overcomer by Mandesa- 3 speed- 5 incline
Feel It by Toby Mac- 3 speed- 5 incline-down to 4 at end
More by Usher- 3.3 speed- 4 incline -down to 3
Move by Toby Mac- 3 speed- 4 incline
Down to the River by Jordan Feliz- 3.3 speed- 4 incline- 2.5
Every good thing by The Afters- 3.3 speed 2.5 speed
Still haven't found by U2- 2.7 speed- 6.5 incline- to 5.5 last minute no incline as I cool down

Made some changes

Been quiet on here...too quiet.  It's me own fault!  I have been torn lately as to what I wanted this blog to cover.  I started out as Frugal Maven in my last blog, and really didn't change that once I started this blog.  In other words, I'm still frugal.  That's one of my main things, and something I didn't give up once I went to healthy eating.  You can see it in some of my past posts.  When you're on a tight budget is when most of us throw in the healthy eating towel.  These two blogs are still interchangeable.  I started realizing that I can't ONLY focus on one thing.  Things in life over lap.  Life overlaps.

So I have incorporated my old blog posts into my new blog and will begin to write about all things in my sphere.  For you that means you can easily look aaaaaalllllll the way back as far as 2010 and see all my past posts.  I'm also in the process of labeling them so you can find each category easily: Frugality, Healthy eating, Daily living, etc.  I've also been adding recipes to my recipe pages,as well as some of the old tutorials I had on my old blog.  New stuff will also be appearing if I have my way.

As for me, it's been a rough few past months, which threw me into a bit of a tail spin.  This Past Christmas, while joyful in some ways, ended up being an "off the wagon" derail of sorts.  I ate myself sick, and I do mean sick.  My body, after months of healthy eating, I think, couldn't tolerate the amount of sugar it was taking in.  I was physically sick, and that made me a little....well panicky.  I faced the music on Christmas Eve and was up 10 lbs over the past 4 months since the heart attack.  I was praying about it and wondering where my mojo went.  I used to could stare down a cheese cake and not blink.  I could have whatever in the house and it not phase me.  During the course of my prayer I realized two things; actually, I believe God revealed these two things to me.  1) I was still living with, and fearful of another attack.  2)  I was convicted that I had just celebrated the birth of Christ by abusing my body; which God says is the temple of the Holy Spirit.

Needless to say, I never want to treat myself like that again.  I also realize that good health is the one thing on earth that can keep another attack away.

So!  Happy to say I have been back on track.  No hanging on by a thread:  It's good.  I'm down 5 lbs since Monday.  I finished cardiac rehab and am doing this on my own.  I have a heart monitor and I'm not afraid to use it!  In fact, I just finished my workout for the day.

I'm wanting to see my progress over time and so, to save on paper, I'm going to put the stats on here.  You'll see my music list that I walk to, and beside each one will be the speed and incline I use on the tread mill to keep my heart between 114-124.  As time progresses, I'm looking forward to seeing those numbers go up; higher incline.  The speed will remain the same,as it goes with the beat of the music.


Grace Wins by Matthew West- 2.8 speed- 0 first minute then-5 incline
Oxygen by Lincoln Brewster- 3 speed- 5 incline
Overcomer by Mandesa- 3 speed- 5 incline
Feel It by Toby Mac- 3 speed- 5 incline-down to 4 at end
More by Usher- 3.3 speed- 4 incline -down to 2.5
Move by Toby Mac- 3 speed- 4 incline
Down to the River by Jordan Feliz- 3.3 speed- 4 incline- 2.5
Every good thing by The Afters- 3.3 speed 2.5 speed
Still haven't found by U2- 2.7 speed- 6.5 incline- last minute no incline as I cool down

No weights today

Thoughts of long ago.

This is a post from my old blog three years ago.  It's still relevant today.  My Dad has since passed, making this bitter sweet, but I want to share.  Other things are changing again. Dear daughter and her family will be moving out of state soon.  A lot has changed this year, and who know what the next year holds. 

Thanks for reading


Christmas Eve, makes me remember when I was a child and December 24th would arrive.  I think Christmas Eve has always been my favorite.  Don't get me wrong.  Presents have always been great so Christmas Morning was the ultimate, but Christmas Morning was the last day.  Once the gifts were unwrapped, the anticipation was over.  Christmas Eve, however, was the height of anticipation.  There was electricity in the air!  As a child I felt like Christmas Day would never come and Christmas Eve seemed to last forever.  But it was fun.  We always got a gift on Christmas Eve.  Some little something to take the edge off so to speak.  Ironically the one gift I remember the best from a childhood Christmas Eve was the one I received in bed because I had the stomach flu.  Stomach flu had gone thru just about everyone and I was one of the last on the roster.  I had recovered by Christmas Day, but was still shaky.  Anyway, I got a Charlie Brown...how would you say?  It was like a magnetic board, but it wasn't magnetic.  It was slick and it had little slick Charlie Brown Characters you could attach in any way you wanted in order to create a scene.  Not a big elaborate gift, but it did the trick.

Christmas Eve was the best after bed time.  The one time of year children will willingly go to bed and try to sleep.  In order to keep us 5 kids in line, Christmas Eve was the time all the kids slept in the same room with our oldest sister watching us.  We had electric candles in the window and my mom would have multiple colors of lights in them.  We got to leave the candles on and the result was surreal.  There was little to no sleep....for us or our parents.  My poor parents were up just about the whole night getting everything out.  I (We, Daddy I wasn't the only one regardless of what they say) was up the whole night worrying my parents were still going to be awake and Santa wouldn't stop (Bad parents!  lol), or sneaking out to the hall to peer into the darkness (again Daddy I wasn't the only one) in the hopes we could see something after our parents turned the lights off and went to bed.  Needless to say 5 am was a perfectly logical time to drag my sister and subsequently our parents out of the bed to start Christmas Day.

As the years have passed my Christmases have changed.  No longer a child myself, I would see Christmas through the eyes of my children.   Wide eyed wonder at the lights, Santa, the presents, etc.  Now my Children are adults themselves.  My daughter and her husband have the joy of seeing Christmas in their children's eyes.  Christmas has changed for us again.  Now it is really more of a spiritual celebration.  I still love the giving and receiving of gifts, but my focus turns more toward why we give those gifts.

This year, as I laid out the Nativity, it just so happened O Holy Night was playing on Pandora.  The Nativity ended up being laid out with tears. I couldn't help but Praise God for this precious gift.  Over 2000 years ago, on another Christmas Eve, the world held its breath in anticipation of the child to be born on Christmas Day.  I guess anticipation has always been a major part of Christmas, only the first Christmas never ended with the coming of Christmas day.  Instead it became the beginning of everything.