Anyone who knows me well knows I’m definitely NOT a morning person.  I freely confess my night owl ways.  Accordingly, I’ve pretty much always worked out in the late afternoon or evening.  The only exceptions are pretty much on the weekends or when I’m on vacation and fit in morning workouts.

Earlier this week, Carla (a.k.a. the amazing MizFit) blogged an easy 4-step plan for becoming a morning exerciser.  I admit, I was intrigued.  Here’s the basics of her plan (check her website for full details if you’re interested in giving it a try!):

1. Make the decision and tell your accountability partners (AKA friends & family).
2. Plan and practice your workout routine.
3. Wake up and dont workout!
4. Go go go!

I know that I generally feel much better on the days when I’m able to workout in the morning.  I have more energy, my calorie burn throughout the day is higher, and I just generally seem to feel more peaceful and serene (thank you, endorphins!).

After I finished reading her post and watching her video that day, I tweeted about it mentioning I was tempted to try it despite my night owl ways.  Well, my Weight Watchers buddy Ginger called me on it!   We made a pact to give this a try together.

We pretty much covered step 1 by committing to each other to do this together.  Since I also consider all of you, my amazing readers, my accountability partners as well, I’m sharing it here, too.  As for step 2, Ginger and I committed to getting out of bed five minutes earlier every day this week and to check in with each other during to week to make sure we’re following through.  So far, so good! We’ll hit step  3 next week which means getting up 20 minutes earlier every day, but not working out.  For me, that means getting up at 5:25am.  (O.M.G. )  Doing this will be for just getting our bodies used to getting up earlier.  The following week will be step 4 which means the 5:15am torture morning workouts start.  I’ll keep you all posted on how it goes!

Woo Hoo!  As difficult as it is to believe, it’s time to start thinking about FitBloggin’ again!  Roni announced on the FitBloggin’ site yesterday that registration will open up next Wednesday, January 11.  The hotel is already accepting reservations, so I knocked that out yesterday.   Yeah, I may or may not be a little bit excited about this.   I had SUCH an amazing time last year that I knew it was definitely something I wanted to attend again this year.  Is it September yet?!

The assignment for today’s 30 Day Blog Challenge is to post a photo of an animal you’d like to raise as a pet.  This is an easy one for me.  I would *love* to have a bunny, especially a Mini Lop! I mean, seriously, how cute is that?!!

Until next time …

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I haven’t gotten around to uploading and posting pics of my vacation … yet. I will get to it eventually. I promise. In the meantime, until that actually happens, I wanted to share another vacation-related pic.

During the whole Michigan road trip extravaganza, one of the stops we made was in Holland, MI. There was a little fair trade store there called The Bridge that had the cutest stuff. As soon as I saw this little set of whitewashed terra cotta bunnies, I knew I had to have them. Aren’t they just adorable?!!

They are made in Bangladesh and are distributed by Ten Thousand Villages. They came in a little jute bag which I plan to put to use in the future in an exchange or as perhaps a little gift bag. I know it’s difficult to tell what size they are from the photo, so I took another photo which included a US quarter for scale. You can see that photo here if you are interested.

If any of the other bunny lovers out there are interested, the set is available via the TTV website. Here is the direct link to the bunny set.

I also picked up this Inspirational Paperweight they had in the store. These are made in India and are also distributed by Ten Thousand Villages. I got the word Strength as a reminder to myself that I AM a strong woman and can do anything to which I set my mind.

They sold them individually at the store, but they are available as a set via the TTV website at this direct link. The set includes stones with the following six words: joy, strength, hope, wisdom, love and peace.

In stitching news, I do have a finish but can’t share the photo yet. It’s for the summer round of the Fair & Square exchange. I still need to stitch the second square with my name before I can mail it off to April. Once that’s done and she receives it, I’ll post a pic.

Lastly, I’m doing pretty well getting myself back on track at Weight Watchers following my vacation. I went several weeks without going to a meeting and it definitely showed when I got back home. I picked myself up, dusted myself off, and got myself back on track though. At my weigh in on Sunday, I was down 4 pounds.

Lastly, as I know many of you are aware based on the emails I’ve received, I’m still having issues with my online photo albums. I did manage to get about 90+% of the photos restored, but there is still clearly some sort of corruption going on with the database. Rather than continuing to try and troubleshoot the problem, I decided this is definitely the time to take advantage of moving everything over to my thedailymel.com domain as I’d been planning to do anyway. It’s definitely going to take some time, so the old albums won’t be going anywhere anytime soon. From this point forward though, all the photos I upload in the future will be going into the new albums. Here is the link for that:

http://www.thedailymel.com/pics

Oh, and this would be the perfect time to remind others to do as I say and not as I do. Back up your files … OFTEN! My last backup of my photo albums was late February of this year. Accordingly, all of the photos I had uploaded since that time had to be recreated. Please don’t make my same mistake. kthx!

I guess that’s it for now. Until next time …

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Yes, I was giddy when I opened my mailbox today and realized that I was the recipient of a RAK (Random Act of Kindness). Knowing my love of bunnies, my BSF (best stitching friend) Darla RAK’d me with an absolutely adorable bunny chart. It’s called “If I Can’t Stitch” by The Sunflower Seed. Here’s a pic from their website:

It looks like it should be a fairly quick stitch, too. I just need to figure out how to work it into my rotation. Yes, I know I just use a screaming rotation, but I still have to figure out time to work on everything at some point.

I have a couple of other pics I need to share, but that will have to wait until tomorrow or Friday. The rest of tonight will be spent stitching and watching a couple of shows off my DVR (Top Chef Masters and So You Think You Can Dance).

Speaking of DVR … only 4 more days until the new season of True Blood starts on HBO. Yes, it’s definitely going on my DVR schedule. I’ll be out of town on vacation for three consecutive Sundays after the season premiere, so I’ll have lots of catching up to do when I get back home.

Until next time …

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