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SSS: Measuring Happiness

My Favorite Post This Week

I was visiting the new SITS Girls Forum and was enjoying a forum post about everyone’s favorite posts for January when I came upon Designer Wife’s great post: Measuring Happiness. She talked about a great quote for Kant:

Kant said that we require three things by which to measure happiness: someone to love, something we like to do, and something to look forward to.

Lindsey then decided to use Kant’s philosophy to put her happiness into perspective and I loved this and wanted to do it also!

1. Someone to Love:

God, my husband, and my children!

2. Something we like to do:

Graphic Design – Working on my business has been so great! I love that I’m doing something that I enjoy so much!
Blogging – I’ve really been enjoying blogging more this year now that I’ve let go of the thought that every post has to be perfect. Perfection is stressful!
Faith – (I’m stealing this one from Lindsey) The last year has been a big year for me growing closer to God and that of course has brought so much happiness in my life. I’ve been enjoying our new church soo much. I have loved getting involved with the women’s ministries and making really amazing friends.

3. Something to Look Forward to

Starting to work on losing weight! I’m really excited about this next step in my life and making the changes to make myself happier with me.

How SUPER SURFING SUNDAY Works

If you would like to join in it’s not that hard at all:

1. Pick one favorite post that you read this week. Link them up and maybe talk about why you liked there post so much.

2. Link to Pepper Scraps with this button:

3. Leave the link to your post in the comments.

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The New Addition to our Home

This week we made a big purchase at Ikea: New Wardrobes. One for me and one for the hubby.

Look at that shoe storage, I’ve never had shoe storage before!

Eek! I’m so excited!

Click the pic for the full view:

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Project 52: Love

The plan for this weeks P52 Self Portrait didn’t go as I hoped. The plan was to take a picture of me and my hubby because I have a photo frame that I want to put a photo of us in (It says love) but I realized we have no photos of us.

We were going to take the photo on Valentine’s Day when we left for our date night, but my MIL was over 40 minutes late so all the light was gone by the time I got to take the photo. I finally got one that didn’t look silly as far as the pose goes and wasn’t horribly blurry from the lack of light. But the photo was way to “warm”, I should have used my white balance like Lynda had just written about. But I was in a hurry and the boys were running circles around us.

I tried editing it and I thought I got it, but when I got it uploaded on flickr I realized it’s a little “cold” now. But I give up! This is this weeks photo, Love …

I know it’s okay, but not very spectacular. Maybe next week I will do better!

Join Project 52: Self Portraits

Lynda (from Daily Window) and I are putting up a new linky every Monday and inviting you to participate in this project with us. This week you will find the linky at Daily Window (and her photo turned out much nicer than mine this week!). Each week has a new theme (though this is just a suggestion not a requirement). This is the schedule for February:

1/31: Silly Faces
2/7: Reflections
2/14: Love (this week)
2/21: Favorite Feature

You have a full week to link up with us. There are only two rules:

You should share a recently taken self-portrait
The link should be the absolute URL of your photo or entry, not a link to your homepage. Links to Flickr pages are fine!

If you want to use the Project 52 badge feel free and grab it and use it on your post. You don’t have to do every week with us you can post just once even and you don’t have to follow the weekly theme either. We just hope that you will join us for some fun.

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Making a Weighty Decision

I’ve been debating if I should blog about this new step in my life. The fact is it is going to be a new part in my life and going to change my life forever. There is no reason not to share it.

Last November after talking to TJ for a long while we decided to start looking into weight loss surgery for me. We have a lot of money in our Health Savings Account, so it wouldn’t be a detriment to our income and so I started considering it.

My First Diet

I have been overweight since third grade. I also just have a larger frame (big boned really is true). But I definitely have extra padding too.

In middle school I made a mad dash to try and loose weight. I pretty much starved myself. I would drink a carnation breakfast drink (usually one spoonful in a glass of milk) for breakfast. I would have baked french fries with ranch for lunch, sharing them with my table (I know healthy choice right, I was 12), and I would pick at my dinner which I was required to eat because my step father made me. When I got down to 140lbs (still 10lbs overweight) my mom took me to Disneyland for the first time.

But Not My Last

After that first diet I still continued to gain weight consistently. Through high school, as hard as I tried not to, through college, and into my marriage. I was at least lucky enough to gain very little at my pregnancies, but after a year after Zarek’s birth I started gaining again. I’m on a new medication and I think that this made the weight gain even worse last year, gaining 50lbs in 6 months.

I’m now at my heaviest I’ve ever been and even now I cannot share the number, yet. I’ve tried diets and diets and diets, with no true success. I can lose 7lbs consistently each time I diet to only turn around and gain even more.

My Last Attempt

I’m down to my last attempt to try and turn my body around. I’ve been praying about this and thinking about it for months.

I also considered trying a treatment that dealt with injections. But after a little reading I decided this was not for me. There was too much worries about hormone issues (and I may want one more baby someday in the future) and I try not to mess with my hormones too much. Plus it sounds like once you are done with the shots it’s really hard to maintain the diet loss.

After researching that option I started researching the Lap Band. This is the direction I believe I will be going with.

To Be Continued

Next week I will be talking more about this so if you would like to see where this leads me I hope you will subscribe to my feed. If you have questions feel free and ask them in the comments.

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P52: Silly Faces

I’m soo excited! As I have mentioned I have decided to do Project 52: Self Portraits with Lynda from DailyWindow.

What’s interesting is that we both are a little hesitant about taking pictures of ourselves. Ironically, and even Lynda doesn’t know this, but we both are hoping to lose weight this year and are hoping this project to watch the changes!

If you want to join in but your own pictures are not your favorite and you are afraid to share them don’t let that stop you! Let’s get past this fear together!

This is the beginning of what I think may be a really fun project and I can’t wait to see the outcome.

Join in the Fun!

Every Monday Lynda or I will be hosting a link up on our site. I hope you will join in the fun and really challenge yourselves. To help you along the way we will be having weekly themes to help you in your creativity!

Here’s what’s coming up for February:

1/31: Silly Faces
2/7: Reflections
2/14: Love
2/21: Favorite Feature

You’ll have a full week to link up with us. There are only two rules:

You should share a recently taken self-portrait
The link should be the absolute URL of your photo or entry, not a link to your homepage.

I have made up a cute little graphic you can use to link up if you wish. You don’t have to do every week but if you have a great photo you want to share we hope you will jump in and link up.

Silly Faces

This week’s challenge is Silly Faces. I had so much fun with my boys taking photos I couldn’t just choose one so I did a collage. What is fun about these photos is seeing Zane stick his tongue out because he used to not be able to. And to watch Zarek stick his tongue out as this is something new and fun to him. If you want to see all the photos click the image and you can see them on flickr.

Now don’t forget to visit Lynda and link up your own pictures!

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Project 52 – self portraits

I was browsing DigitalWoe.com and was reading about lynda doing Project 52. I was ready to jump in, so I contact lovely Lynda and we are going to challenge each other to take 52 self portraits this year. Are you up to the challenge? I am.

This week I took some of my first photos of myself in months. I played with some editing in Photoshop (for the first time) and I’m pretty happy with the outcome!

Now you may be hesitating thinking that you hate photos of yourself but stop right there and read my post about Looking Beyond the Photo. I have more than enough excuses why to not do this (one being gaining 50 lbs this year) but I have one (okay two) reason to do it, my boys.

Lynda will be putting up the linky later today with this weeks challenge!

Hi I am Pepper, yep that’s my real name, it’s on my birth certificate. I’m an old school blogger going back to her roots. In 1999 I wrote out my feelings and shared my silly random thoughts.

Well I’m back! This is me sharing the real me, hoping that it shows you that hey you aren’t alone in those weird, funny, hard moments in life. I’m putting the pieces of life back together after divorce, emotional abuse and starting out on a new adventure. Want to join me?

More about Pepper >>

My Weight Loss Story >>