*D✖3*

    About 2 months ago, I started aiming for eating a salad everyday. At least one salad a day. I started taking salad for lunch at work instead of buying something or bringing a full meal. If I skipped a salad at lunch time then I'd prepare a side salad with my dinner. I started doing this to help me reach my correct amount of vegetable servings a day. Often, I'd say I'm going to make my vegetables but instead I'd finish cooking and not want to wait for my vegetables to finish or I forgot to take them out earlier and get them prepared. For younger adults it's recommended that you get approximately 2.5 cups of vegetable servings. So my salads were coming in handy and making it easier to get these servings and I was getting full faster and wouldn't end up even eating all my food on my plate. This was working so well for me that I even started recommended my friends try this with me. Every time we had a salad, we send each other pictures and keep each other encour

    So many mothers are doing wonderous things in the work world. Women are breaking through barriers and in top positions in many occupations. Being at home with children are becoming stories of the past for many. It reeks of boredom and domestication in the minds of some. For me, it's the epitome of a selfless sacrifice. When a mother comes out of work to care for her kids it's a huge life decision. It's a responsibility that's unyielding. In some cases it's necessary due to the outrageous increasing  cost of childcare. There's a million opinions on this and many mothers can feel discouraged while others thrive by tending to household duties. I have personally been on both sides of this for awhile. I've had times where I stay at home with my children and other times I'm back in school or the workforce. Really, it depends on what works best for my family at the time or what I'm working towards for that moment. Honestly, that's all anyone can do

        I try to not  overuse technology even though it's a huge part of everyday life. I have Alexa enabled on a few of my devices, but I just recently started using her. I use her to make funny announcements to my kids, set reminders, and timers. The other day I realized how useful Alexa could be to my workouts outside of just merely timing. A lot of people may have already known this, but I literally just found out that Alexa can walk you through workouts and coach you. It was the most amazing thing to me( I guess I'm showing my millennial tendecies.)  I had her walk me through a quick 6 minute stretch regimen at the start of my workout. I usually aim for a 30-45 minute high intensity workout.So I utilized a few workouts on Alexa's workout menu. The workouts are cut down to about 5-8 min workouts so I just combined them until I got to my full time. I liked the workouts from Alexa because each workout had a set time you perform an exercise before it moves you to the next.

    If you're not really into YouTuber world then maybe you never heard of Derrick Jaxn. He's a youtuber that does relationship advice/dating advice for women mostly. He kept his private life very private and didn't talk about being married or about any of his personal information like some public Youtubers do or don't. A lot of people have been entertained by an affair being exposed by one of his mistresses. Of course, it was followed by a stream of internet memes and humiliation jokes. Derrick and his wife publicly addressed the affair situation and people went on to bash his wife for her appearence. They laughed and talked down on her for choosing to stay and work on her marriage to her spouse. People felt like she wasn't looking great enough to come on the internet. Some people were accusing Derrick of being abusive and forcing his wife to do a video. The internet the last few days has been in an opinated frenzy. This situation was on talk shows, radio shows, an

    Being a mom is a job never done! It's a joy, it's pain, it's responsibility, accountability, sacrificial, tough, and rewarding. There's an unmeasurable amount of stress and pressure on modern day mothers. There's this unrealistic belief that you can be dedicated to your spouse, career, children, and your own self interest. I'm not saying you can't do all these things, but I am saying all these things are not done with the same care that you may wish. Something has to take a backseat to something else and get less of you. We're only humans and it's not possible for us to pay everything attention at one time effectively. This is a reality some many people don't like to face. We keep seeing it pushed on tv, the mom of 3 that got her graduate degree, she's married, she has time for her girlfriends, she's super fit, etc. I haven't seen this in real life yet. I've seen women upset over gaining weight during a pregnancy, determined t

    Air Fryers have been making a name for themselves the last few years. I was blessed enough to get one for Christmas a few years ago. I don't use it as much as I should. However, recently I've been using it like crazy while we're in the process of replacing our stove. It's a really quick way to make your food and it's literally a lot less greasy than cooking certain foods the traditional way in a frying pan or deep fryer. I use it to sometimes even short cut waiting on my microwave to cook certain things. Here's a few things I like to use it for :   Fish: This has to be my favorite thing to cook in my air fryer! It is so easy to season and throw in there on the fish setting. I usually up the timer because my spouse likes his fish a bit crunchy, but fish is really good to make in the air fryer. It works if you use breader or if you just want to put it in without breader. It still has a good crunchy texture and it's not dripping with grease. The downside wo

     Some of my recent blogs have been very rant heavy. However, today we're going to be on a more productive note! I have always heard about people creating vision boards. I even have always planned to sit down with my friends and create one. This plan has always gotten pushed to the back of my plans. Lack of time from work schedules and lack of time to make a trip to the craft store hasn't helped me not continue my pattern of procrastination. Yesterday, I had some extra time on my hands so I decided to make a digital vision board. I made it on Prezi, which is a site where you can make presentations. It's not too different from PowerPoints or Google Slides, just different layouts. Anyway, I just thought it would be a good time to release some of my thoughts and goals and lay them out before my eyes in a creative way that's therapeutic. In case you don't know what a vision board is or why they are significant, I found some interesting information of them. A vision b

    It's been a few days since I posted due to a couple of work days I picked up. I've decided I want to switch directions in my career path so I'm adamantly working in order to prepare for school. However, this post isn't about my change of heart with my career, but instead it's about a few issues I've encountered with blending my family. I'm weary of the subject because it seems nearly impossible to break the stigma behind step parenting. It's been a huge challenge that I'm still trying to overcome. I have a good relationship with my step kids, and my husband and I have had a success at all our children being very close knit. The difficulty comes from outsiders lack of understanding of the step parenting role. Showing up with my spouse at a teacher conference doesn't equate to I'm here because "I want to be seen as my stepchildren biological parent." Taking them to the doctor office due to my spouse having a work schedule conflict

    As a married person, it's rare to hear positive affirmations surrounding marriage. Whether you're looking at tv, your social media feed, YouTube, or even listening to co- workers you're destined to hear negative speech regarding the institution of marriage. The reasons vary for these bias ideas, but I wish people would consider a few factors before filling your ears with non-sense that may only apply to them or people they knew. Everyone's relationship is unique to their personalities and beliefs. People marry for different reasons and start or never start families based on what's best for them. People marriages also end for different factors. If you had a bad marriage, it doesn't mean someone else will.  However, this is the real world and rationality is usually not a favorable trait amongst us humans. Anyway, here's a general list of 6 things that I hate hearing about marriage. 1.) All People Cheat- Until the whole world allows this study to be conduct

   The last few months, I've been still dealing with virtual learning. That hasn't been too bad because I've always said eventually I'd homeschool so I've used this as a trial period. I've always stocked up on learning materials and spent a great deal of my downtime on educating my kids. However, I guess I've expected for their formal school years to be equivalent to mine and I've been highly disappointed.  I'm wearing thin with the curriculum of the public school system. I'm tremendously grateful to all the educational professionals that teach children for a living and deal with the ever changing budget cuts. I'm also grateful to the board members that relentlessly tackle difficult decisions relating to children and their parents. This gratefulness doesn't surpass my frustration with the curriculum. Some of the topics are raced over and no homework is assigned nightly. When I was a kid, homework was what helped reinforce the lesson learn

Hi March! It's almost Spring time and that's great news! I'm a bit tired of so much cold weather and I'm looking forward to Spring! This month I'd like to continue executing my 2021 plans and adding new ones. Here's a few of them:  1.) I've been having a decluttering challenge in my home the last few months and it's been going quite well. With my kids constantly growing, there's is always something that we don't need anymore. Plus, getting rid of things and being organize is suppose to help with your natural Zen.  2.)  I have to update my music playlists! I have to be in the mood to listen to music. However, I know listening to music is a great way to help with mood management. I always need something to lift my mood because it's easy for me to have a dampened spirit sometimes.  3.) I've forced myself to eat salad as a quick way to get the correct servings of vegetables and honestly it's not so bad! I've been incorporating a salad