Diet, Day 7: Nestles makes the very best.....

....cho-o-o-o-o-o-o-colate.

Have I mentioned that this medically supervised 420 calorie/day liquid program I am on, Optifast, is made by Nestle????

HOLY BUTTERFINGER BAR HAAGEN DAZS ICE CREAM, Batman!

That is just SO WRONG! I mean, good strategic product acquisition on Nestle’s part (they acquired the product from Novartis), but for CRYIN’ IN A BUCKET! They getcha goin’ up and they getcha comin’ down.

(and just HOW MANY Butterfinger Bars and Haagen Dazs ice creams have I eaten, you may ask? Let me count the dimples on my thighs.....)

I was gonna post over the weekend, truly I was. But when I woke up Saturday morning, I thought, as I do each morning, DAY 4! I CAN DO THIS! YES I CAN!

And then I thought.....oh.....uh oh......today is the Fourth of July. My favorite holiday. Family, friends, grilling franks and burgers on the barbie....

Well THAT was poor planning on my part!

And then the voices in my head started singing, "Oh I wish I were an Oscar Meyer Wiener..." over and over and over. And over. And over. All. Day. Long. The voices in my head...

Of course, I didn't really want to BE an Oscar Meyer Wiener. I wanted to EAT an Oscar Meyer Wiener. Or ANY wiener. And cheeseburger. And potato chips. And strawberry shortcake. With real whipped cream. And ice-cold beer to wash it all down.

But I was good. I didn't eat (or drink) any "bad" stuff. I DID make one wee substitution. I ate one boiled egg (70 calories, negligible carbs) for one of my 80 calorie shakes. Let me tell you, no thirty dollar filet mignon ever tasted as good as that egg!

On the plus side, I probably burned several thousand calories reaching up thousands of times to wipe the drool off my face as I smelled those tasty favorites grillin' all day.

*****

Baby love! I captured these photos yesterday afternoon. That is Little Doe and two sweet babies. The larger fawn belongs to Big Doe, who was lounging in the shade about a half acre away.

I guess it was Little Doe's day to watch the kids.



Until next time, I'll be at the easel chanting: I CAN DO THIS! YES I CAN! Just loud enough to drown out the voices in my head.

Ronda
www.antiquecottagerose.com

Diet, Day 3: Things that make me go Wii

I got thru Days 1 and 2 of the medically supervised 420 calorie/day liquid diet with only a modicum of shouting, pouting, kicking and throwing things. Now might be a good time to give up my daily addiction to Gordon Ramsey shows on BBC.....

Medically Supervised 420 calorie/day Liquid Diet - if I were texting or tweeting, I suppose I would have to write MS4CDLD. Sounds kind of Star Warish. As well it should. This IS war! The War on Weight.

Our local paper, the Columbus Dispatch, reported yesterday that Ohio is the tenth fattest state in the Union. HOLY POTATO CHIPS! Well, I’m doing my part. By the time I’m done, the Buckeye State should drop to fifteenth or twentieth......

My husband gave me a Wii for my birthday last week in anticipation of my weight loss program. Dr. Misogyny doesn’t want you doing anything too heavy during the first couple weeks of the 420 calories-a-day plan, but I have to do SOMETHING in the morning.

I can’t just sit around on my arse. That seems counter-intuitive to a weight loss plan, does it not? I don't even sit to paint! I stand in front of the easel all day. In the morning, I usually do a nice step workout on my garage steps, which are quite tall, followed by a quick “run” on the mini-rebounder. And I love to boogie around to 70s disco music and work up a good sweat. But for now, I’ll content myself with the Wii.

If you’ve not tried it, let me assure you the boxing game is a SUPERB way to work out one’s high dudgeon over being denied the pleasure of incessantly stuff food in one’s face. BAM. BOOM. KAPOW. Just make sure the only person you’re punching is your VIRTUAL boxing partner!!!

This is mii. You get to design your own self. Note the PINK shorts. Alas, they don't let you choose your boxing glove color, else they'd be pink, too.


BAM BOOM KAPOW! I always win. ALWAYS. And by the way, Wii boxing burns an impressive 125 calories per half hour of play!

On the home front, Baby Love continues in full blossom. These were taken at our feeders yesterday morning.




Until next time, I'll be at the easel or pounding the Wii.

Ronda
www.antiquecottagerose.com

Diet: Day 1; new babies, and some done!

So, I packed on a few pounds last fall. I call it my "sad weight", not because it's sad that I put it on, altho it is, but because I was sad leaving Michigan, so I drowned my sorrow in food. (Now you know why the person who updated her blog photo every month stopped doing so in November!!)

OK, Self Pity Button OFF. It's time to be gone with the weight! So I decided to do a medically supervised liquid diet, Optifast.

I get to the physician's office last night, and he suggests that I try the very low calorie plan. The standard plan is 800 calories a day, not too bad. The very low calorie plan is a whopping FOUR HUNDRED AND TWENTY, yes, that's 420, calories a day. The difference between the two is that the low plan has far fewer carbs, and he doesn't believe women need the carbs. OH JOY! I have duly renamed him Dr. Misogyny.

Anyway, today is Day 1, and I dutifully mixed my tasty shake up at 8:00 this morning. Really, it's not too bad, and it thickens up like a real milk shake. I can do this, yes I can! Altho I suspect that once I'm done with this plan, I will never ever ever EVER again in my whole life want a chocolate or vanilla shake....

Next shake at 11:00 (a mere 10,800 seconds after the first). In the meantime, I've gotten two emails so far this morning, and I really could not make this stuff up:

1. from amazon.com: Martha Stewart's new cupcake book!

2. from bd's Mongolian BBQ (our favorite restaurant): price rollback this weekend!

How many seconds til my next shake?

Oh, and the kitties are demonstrating the proper way to exercise on my mini-rebounder, exercise being an important component of any diet......



*****

To further remove myself from kitchen and fridge, and to more fully enjoy our beautiful outdoors here, I've moved the studio out to the screened porch for the summer. Beauteous! Is it as marvy as painting on the beach in Michigan? Well, probably not, but I figure if I put a sandbox in front of the easel to stand in while I'm painting, I can probably convince myself it's even BETTER than painting on the beach because I don't have to contend with sun and insects! (I am very good at deceiving myself. Self-deception is good! This is an excellent coping skill.)

*****
By means of further self-deception, I generally do not like to use the word DIEt. I prefer to use the word LIVE-it. Whatever works!

*****

When one is not stuffing food in one's face every five seconds, one suddenly has even MORE time to paint! So I suspect I'll get lots of the UFO's sitting around the studio finished at last. Here are two I finished last week.

Both are Royal Albert, from my personal collection. The first is Camille, and the second, Old English Roses. I go through teacup phases from time to time, and I'm certainly on a tea tear right now!



*****

As you've seen from previous photos on the blog, we have lots of deer around us. We were blessed this spring with a new arrival! Two, actually. There are two does in our woods, creatively named Little Doe and Big Doe, and each has their own sweet little Bambi! This is Little Doe and her sweet baby. Big Doe is much more skittish than Little Doe, so I don't have any photos of she and her baby yet.



It is HILARIOUS to watch them romp around the yard! You know how if you have a house that has circulation clear around the core of the house, toddlers will race endlessly around the circle? The baby deer do the same thing, running through our yard, into the woods, out into the neighbors' yard, back through the woods and into our yard, just scampering their fool heads off! Unfortunately, I've not yet been able to capture them in one photo, but it is a real joy to watch.




*****

Until next time, I'll be at the easel working on my pink patriotic window, feverishly counting the seconds until my next yummy diet, er, live-it, shake..................

Ronda
www.antiquecottagerose.com

An art show, a birthday, an anniversary and LOTS DONE!

Today is the day that my parents fall down on their knees and give passionate thanks to the Good Lord Above for the joyful circumstance of my birth.

My Dad will call later today and in his annual bellicose way, holler, “X number of years ago, you were a pain in your mother’s a$s, and you’ve been nothing but a pain in the a$s ever since!” As you might well imagine, I treasure those annual calls.

For those of you who adore algebra, x = 29. Well, umm, OK, so yes, I’ve been 29 for awhile now, but you can still count the number of decades that I have been 29 on one hand, so at least that’s something.

Well under half a hand, actually.

Just sayin’.

The art show and artist studio tour in Port Austin, Michigan this past weekend were a BLAST! Gorgeous weather, meeting up with old friends and neighbors, and new ones, too, a perfect weekend.

My first sale of the weekend was actually to a GUY! I've had male customers over the years, but it always surprises me. I guess that's kinda sexist -- men can love roses, too, and if you think about it a bit, some of the most famous rosarians have been men!

Just WAIT til you see the shop, The Haven Antiques and Gifts, and summer house where the show was. Just so gorgeous, cottage charming, romantic, divine, sublime, wonderful! Owners Helen and Angie are two of the most amazingly creative and energetic women you'll ever meet. I’ll be posting photos in a bit.

As well, Jack and I had a wonderful, romantic 10th wedding anniversary weekend away in May to our favorite bed & breakfast, Whispering Pines in Dellroy, Ohio. Just WAIT til I post the photos! AND! They let me raid their barn, from which I hauled away quite a stash of amazing arch windows from their beautiful Victorian home. Not to mention the gothic arch church window I found at an antique shop in New Philadelphia! Photos soon!

In the meantime, these goodies are done and eagerly awaiting new homes. They're posed prettily in Our Cottage Garden - stop by for a visit!

This one is a shelf built of upcycled salvage materials.

This next one's a Royal Halsey tea cup from my personal collection.

I love doing these illustration-style windows! Entirely reverse-painted, they're a bit of a challenge, but I love the look.

This next one is the center section of a 3-part gothic arch salvaged from a historic home in Bexley, Ohio.

This leaded glass window is from a stunning 1927 brick four-square in Upper Arlington, Ohio. It had one cracked pane. Replacing panes in a leaded glass window is expensive, so we don't. Especially since we have a double closet filled stem to stern and top to bottom with boxes of chippy old rose china! Problem solved.


I found this long plank clad in chippy old green paint in the top of my garage when we moved in last fall! The house is a mid-century ranch that has been thoroughly modernized, so no clue remains as to what it might have once been a part of.


OK, I can't stand it -- here's a sneak peek at that gothic church window!! Of course, I'm having the glass replaced -- each pane in this one is a different kind and color and print and texture of glass, so I had clear glass put in it.


Until next time, I'll be at the easel! Two gorgeous cherub windows are in the works, more plinths, a darling little canvas -- the creative well overfloweth!

Ronda
www.antiquecottagerose.com

Cast Iron Arch Eyebrow Window - Done!

This is one fabulous wee window! At 31" x 9-1/2", it's that wonderful yard long style so perfect for the romantic cottage home.

A sweet spray of vintage pink roses, bug bites, dew drops and thorns, and it's a bit of pinky pink heaven!

This one's a shelf or mantle sitter and lean it against the wall, or sit it on a pair of wall-mounted corbels -- there was just no good way to attach hanging apparatus to rusty, crusty, shabby old cast iron.

This one is available on eBay!





Until next time, I'll still be at the easel painting my fingers off!

Ronda
www.antiquecottagerose.com

Lady Carlyle Tea Cup architectural painting - Done!

I love this pattern! This particular cup is actually chipped on the other side and is thus in my pile of china for mosaics, but until Jack or I gets around to using it, it is perfect to paint.

The plinth block, reminiscent of a crown, came from a home in Victorian Village, a hip neighborhood of grand Victorian homes here in Central Ohio. It was, as is often the case, remodeled into a sleek and ultra-modern affair, so off with the fancy plinths! So much the better for me -- I got a bunch of them!

More photos and purchase details available in Our Cottage Garden.



Until next time, I'll be at the easel painting more teacups from my collection!

Ronda
www.antiquecottagerose.com

Vintage Hollyhock Cottage Window - Done!

I love the breezy vintage cottage feel of this one! Hollyhocks and roses, sailboats, a sweet clapboard cottage and blooming arbor just feel so much like the perfect June day!

Rusty crusty cast iron latch and shabby ol' hinges add so much cottage charm.

More photos and purchase details available in Our Cottage Garden.




Until next time, I'll be at the easel painting my fingers off!

Ronda
www.antiquecottagerose.com