Diet Plan/Game

Everyone in my household is always trying to diet cut back on eating so much. We are going on vacation in a month and would love to get down a size. We have found that breads and sweets are our weakness. After different plans and ideas that have never worked, we have come up with a new plan that we hope will be fun like a game.

The first idea was to cut out ALL breads, pastas and sweets. That's seemed a little drastic all at once for everyone. We figured we would not last long doing that so we started with just saying NO SWEETS.

Here's the plan...If either of us eat something sweet, we have to put a dollar in the jar. At the end of 30 days, the one that has lost the most pounds, gets to keep all the money in the jar. I'm hoping this works. My daughter was all into the idea once money was involved. ha, ha.
However, my personal plan is still not to eat any rice or pasta and only eat healthy breads but still lighten up on the intake.
This is pretty much how my meals have looked so far.

Breakfast-English muffin and southwestern omelet
(OK, so  may need to cut out so much butter too. ha)

Dinner-Homemade chicken salad in a romaine lettuce wrap with tomatoes.

We have been making trips to the farmers market for a healthier choice. We will be doing a lot of veggi grilling and any meats we want!

Note: There are some sweets we consider healthy, such as breakfast bars, honey, jello, or sugar free desserts.

Wish us luck and check back next month for an update on our success.

Update: Its a month later. This didnt work to well for us. I only lost 2 pounds, my daughter lost 1 pound. My husband did not loose any pounds and hes the one that stayed away from the sweets the most! There was 23 dollars collected. Guess i'll try something else.

Sea Shore Treasures

When people are walking on the beach, most of them have a handful of tiny sea shells and will look so diligently for the perfect one to pick up and keep. I always wonder what they do with them or what particular shape and kind they are actually looking for.

I love finding things on the beach too, but I'm not that hard of a "looker". I usually have to stumble on something to see it. We go to the beach quite often since we only live 4 hours away and have a camper.
Here are a few things found while me and family have took our daily walks on the beach. Enjoy.

 We found blackberries on the sand dunes.
I'm sure they don't tastes as good as the ones in my area.


 I have found a total of about 15 sand dollars.
 Makes me feel rich. ha ha.

 We found this in a tide pool.
When I picked it up, it had a creature inside and it spit water on me
so I put it down, snapped a picture, and left it alone.

 Bottle washed up on the beach.
There was nothing in it except for maybe memories of someones crazy night  before. haha.

Now this was found on our walk far away from where people are. We took it in and opened it up. We could tell it was not old. It contained several little hand written letters of what
appeared to be from children that lost their mom in a tragic accident
and one note asked if anyone found this bottle to please put it back to sea.
So, later that night, my husband tossed it back out to sea as far as he could throw.

We have found other things but I didn't have my camera with me. Like the time my husband found a live starfish. And we had a sand crab come up from a hole between our beach chairs once and spent the day with us in the sun. yuk, and the Jelly fish.  I could go on but without pictures, its no fun.

What are some interesting things you have found on the shore? And if anyone knows what people are really looking for out there, please share it.