Some cake photos (or at least I'm trying to upload them.)


Argh!! I don't know how to fix this. I wanted to upload a picture of Collin's cake too. I started with flickr.com and for some reason it's not working for me at all!! I don't know what I'm doing wrong. So I tried photobucket and now it's too big. I tried resizing--no help. This is so frustrating, so any input would be appreciated.

Okay, now to write about how life is going. Tomorrow my baby turns 2. Yikes! Lot's of emoticons for that one. I can't believe it's been 2 years already and what a busy 2 years, full of lots of changes.
We celebrated his birthday by going to Chuck E. Cheese's. He was so excited. He kept saying, "Juh-E-Jeez". So cute.
I made a basketball cake, if you can tell by the above picture. It turned out cute. But I learned a lesson here.
If you ever want to make a sports ball cake of any kind, you can do this simply by making a layer cake. You don't have to do the stupid thing that I did. I did a search on the internet to find out how to make a basketball cake. And I found 2 places that said to use an oven-proof bowl to make it into a half-ball shape.
So I used my pampered chef glass bowl. Really, there is nothing special about this shape for this kind of cake. It was more work, was awkward to cut, and took forever to bake. And I kept thinking as I was frosting it that a round layer cake would have still looked like a basketball just fine.
Oh well. It was cute and it tasted really good. I made that extremely fattening frosting like I did before and it was fantastic!!
The boys were so tired on the way home. Carter kept saying "I wan Ju-E-Jeez." Over and Over. Then they had to play with one of his new toys before I could get them to go to bed.
Now I've spent over an hour trying to figure out these stupid pictures. That's frustrating.

Anyway, I wanted to talk about how I'm doing with food.
I had 2 challenges this weekend: the car cruise in at Steak-n-Shake and the b-day party today. So I planned accordingly and did better than I would have normally.
I ordered a strawberry yogurt shake and shared it with Carter. He drank more than half of it. So I figured a .40 portion. That's awesome!
I ate half of a cup of chili and had an apple walnut chicken salad with NO dressing (with the fruit and stuff you don't need it.) I did not have one french fry!! NOT ONE!!
Now I actually logged yesterday (I haven't done that in a while) and while I was over 1500 cals (my personal set target) it was still much lower than it would have been, say, last week when I wasn't trying at all.
Smaller portions is my first step here.
In the evening I planned to have strawberries and coolwhip for my evening snack. I made the frosting and frosted the cake. I licked the frosting a few times. So I skipped my evening snack and did fine!

Today I reduced portions as well. Tonight I had a piece of cake at the party, along with pizza and a coke. But I'm done eating for the night. Before I would have eaten icecream in the late evening.
I also didn't have any chips today at all, even though we grilled for lunch. I made oven-roasted potatoes instead.

So while not perfect. I'm making improvements.
And I am continuing the positive talk about how I can do this. I think that is making the biggest difference.
And I feel determined to do this and be successful. Not an anxious desperation like last year at this time. Not really calm either, like I would like it to be. I would like to make healthy choices out of peace and a love for myself instead of from a place of fear.
But maybe that comes as I go along??
As I type this, I have the program "I can make you thin" on tv right now. It's on TLC. Has anyone heard of this?? My sister told me about it and wanted my opinion. It seems goofy and the audience's responses seem scripted. No hesitations at all and their responses are a little too enthusiastic.
But the ideas are interesting. I'm taping it and will watch it more closely later.
Okay, that's all for now.

Edited to add: I just love my new profile photo or whatever you call it. I just took it today at Carter's b-day party and it makes me smile to look at. So much better than that orange camping picture where you couldn't even see my face!