But that aside.. there have been some things I’ve noticed..

* I still walk like I’m fat. I feel like I still waddle around.
* I still position myself in a chair like I used to (granted, I can totally cross my legs now, so that is different)
* I still assume the same distance/personal space that I needed before.
* I forgot until a few weeks ago when Iris reminded me, that hey, I could put my hair up now! I never really did it before because I always hid my extra face with all my curly hair.
* And sometimes, forgive me if this comes across as vain because it’s not supposed to, but there have been a few times that I see myself, walking past a mirror, and I do a double-take. That wasn’t me. I still have a mental pic of myself as the fat girl I was last year.

Adam gave me a hug this morning and while he was hugging me and being silly he began to lift me off the ground. I freaked out. Not upset/yelling freak out, but more along the lines of freaking out that he was going to hurt his back. He assured me he wasn’t, but it totally made me self conscious.

It’s all in my mind. I know this.. it’s all part of the process. I was so big for so long and so it will take some time to get used to the little things.

These are the results of a week-long baking project and if I say so myself – a mighty fine result!

What are they about? So there’s this bar downtown called singlebarrel – a totally chill bar that makes drinks the old fashioned way – with passion and time. I have yet to meet a drink there I didn’t like. Not only is the atmosphere relaxing and the drinks amazing, but the people there are awesome as well. Cache, Joe, and Raymond are super nice and always greet you with a smile. The place is addicting, people.

Ok so a friend of ours said she wanted to hang at SB for her birthday (yesterday) – and what goes well with birthdays? CUPCAKES! I’ve been away from the cupcake-baking world for awhile and after watching an episode of Cupcake Wars I got all jazzed up again about them.

So the mix of the two, singlebarrel and our friend’s bday evolved into this cupcake idea. I would take the cocktail menu and create candy pieces detailing each drink. From there, the cupcakes took shape. I found a Martha Stewart chocolate cupcake recipe and a chocolate ganache recipe. Topped off with a Paula Deen carmel frosting recipe and I was set.

Now, I have never ever ever did the candy art thing. This was a big challenge for me; so many colors and small details!

Monday of this week, I finalized the illustrations I would be piping the candy over (drawing under wax paper). Here is an example of one of the drinks, and Old Fashioned with their signature ice ball:

Tuesday I had a bunch of vanilla candy and dyed different batches for each element of the drinks and began to work on it. I hoped my plan would work… but wouldn’t spy on them until a few days later (they sat in the fridge all week.)

When I finally took a peek at the flat side of the candy cocktails I was super pleased. Each detail stood out as I expected! Now, granted, my lines are a bit wonky, but hey – first try! I think I did pretty well.

Here’s the finished Old Fashioned. Oh and I also did their “sb” type logo as another decoration.

These were by far the most decorated/polished set of cupcakes I’ve done and I am a new fan of candy art! We took them to the bar last night for our friend’s birthday and everyone really enjoyed them. It was fun to test the owners on their own menu – a little guessing game about the drinks. The cupcakes tasted pretty damn awesome too.

Peter Pan play in SF with Al & Shannon

Banksy Photohunt in SF with Jessica

Maker Faire #5!

Short trip to Tahoe

And some misc shots…

June post… maybe sometime in August? (I kid! I kid!)

On Saturday I participated in the Mermaid Series 5k run/walk. My friend Shannon did the 10k version (and she totally rocked it!!)

The days coming up to the event, I wasn’t nervous at all; I thought for sure I’d be nervous AT the event – but I wasn’t. It was pretty laid back. Adam and I got there early and met up with Al and Shannon and chatted as we waited for the start time. I had made sure to bring my iPod with me, something that apparently isn’t always acceptable for run/marathon-esque events. I looked around and saw other people with iPods and headphones and thought to hell with it, I’m taking mine. I use it when I run on the treadmill at home and it often gives me that boost of energy when a certain song begins to play.

Fifteen minutes after the half-marathoners have started, us 5k-ers got ready to go. Ok, annoying moment here. I was standing on the left-hand side of the path; mostly because I told Adam I would and he was instructed to take photos as I started my run. However, in front of me (between me and the starting line) the Mermaid people had stacked packages of water bottles along the side– but at least 3-4 deep! So basically anyone around me and behind me had to run around the water. Lame. Why couldn’t they have lined it up against the side? Pfft. Also bigger annoyance.. there was a group of people who had a bunch of kids with them – which is great, I’m all for that.. but they all decided to cut in front of the 5k group. There were a lot of people mumbling about how they were planning to start running and now would be slowed down – because yea, most of the kids didn’t totally run at the beginning. It’s one thing to go to the side, but to take up an entire 2 “rows”.. pfft to that. But whatever, the hardcore people were in the front so I’m sure it worked out for them in the end.

The run started and once I was able to break away I started to jog. I jogged for as long as I could and then walked a little bit. I kept this up as much as I could; pushing myself just a little bit more. 3.5 miles wasn’t much, I’d tell myself. I had checked the map prior to attending the event and was familiar with where I’d be turning around and had a good idea how much further it would be. That helped, and the music. I listened to my favorites as I ran. If I got tired and found myself walking, I’d power walk, then switch to a new song – one that would always pump me up, and would take off again.

When we got to the turn around we were given a cup of water and I slowly sipped it, a few sips, as I walked around the marker. I don’t think you’re supposed to gulp a bunch of water while running but what do I know. Well I’ll tell you what I do know, I can’t gulp a bunch of water. That would have been bad. It’s a stomach no-no. So I sipped enough to make me feel better and then tossed the cup. I felt horrible for doing that. LITTERBUG!! But it was what we were supposed to do. heh.

On my way back I ran past Shannon, waved and smiled and I think I missed a high-five but I didn’t know we were going to high-five! I missed the memo on that one. I continued my running and walking; every now and then someone I just passed would pass me. Oh no they didn’t! I’d use those people as mini-goals– must get past them! When the finish line was in sight I change my iPod to play my little anthem, Break My Stride. A mix of that song, the silliness I associate with it, my adrenaline hitting me as I knew I was about to finish my first 5k, thinking about everything I’ve been doing the last 6 months, the new me and what I have to look forward to– all of that, I almost had a few tears in my eyes as I ran over the finish line.

Someone gave me a water bottle and a little necklace for finishing the race. I held my chest because I swear my heart was going to jump out. I walked around and calmed myself down a bit and wandered around to Adam and Al (who, by the way were cheering me on as I ran past them). I checked out some of the booths and one of them was for a massage place and they were giving out free 5 minute massages to runners. SIGN ME UP. I’d never had a massage before (body image issues) and thought hell, if I had ever deserved one now was the time. Plus, um, FREE?

The massage was awesome. I told Adam I found yet another thing to spend money on (haha).

So we waited for awhile and saw Shannon running in to the finish! She ran the whole 10k, I’m so proud of her!

He had planned the trip in secret (well, I knew we were going somewhere, just didn’t have details) and obviously had other things planned as well.

We arrived at our Mill Valley Inn room; fireplace in the room, lovely furniture throughout. I immediately pulled my camera out and started to snap photos. Adam checked out the rest of the room as well.

At one point I had my laptop out and was sitting on the bed- we were trying to decide where to go for dinner. I like to check menus before heading out now because it gives me more of a chance to find something I can/want to eat. So while we were searching there was something I had to get out of my bag. I don’t remember what it was really. So I get up and head to my bag across the room. Adam then follows me and he says, “Well, before you do that, I have something to ask you.” I turn around and he’s standing there with a box.. and he opens the box.. and hey is that a ring?!

He was nervous and it was super cute. I later asked him why would he be nervous after so many years but he said he didn’t know, it’s just one of those things. So after some typical disbelief/shock/surprise kind of responses (like “really? are you sure??” haha, go me) I said yes.

So I’m engaged now!! The planning has begun.. and as things progress I’ll post some fun updates here too.. but for now it’s about securing some details and saving money.

The first idea I had was to do something stitchy. I’ve been meaning to get back into stitching (embroidery or cross-stitch) and tonight I thought I’d get started. This specific idea (stitching on coffee sleeves) is by no means something new; I probably got the idea from some crafty site. Thank you random crafty site and the many other people who’ve done this before.

I just sketched a very simple design I’ve seen about a bazillion times (in books or online) and went at it. This is what I came up with:

This was nice practice for back-stitching and french knots. I’ll try out other stitching styles my embroidery book (Doodle Stitching by Aimee Ray) covers on other sleeves.

Bootcamp
Three days a week for four weeks. Adam and I would be out the door at at a park in Willow Glen by 6am. Mondays and Wednesdays we’d do an assortment of workouts; crunches, weight training, lunges, running, stretches.. blah blah blah. The first week was the “easy week” – which we TOTALLY needed because we were both horribly sore from our ski-trip weekend. Fridays were held at Communication Hill in San Jose, stairs that go up a hill (great view in the morning by the way).

As Adam put it, we learned very inefficient ways to get up the stairs. It was good but painful at the same time. The great thing about bootcamp was how I felt after. Minus the body aches, I felt pretty good – very energized for the rest of the day. I’m not sure yet if we’ll go back, maybe later in the fall or when we’re ready for something different.

The next thing on my agenda is SWIMMING! I’ve already gone to the YMCA but I believe our apt has started to heat our pool so I’ll probably just start using that one. Won’t have to spend extra cash and it’s obviously much more convenient for me.

Birthdaypalooza
Awhile back I said I was going to have an Alice in Wonderland theme for my 30th and dammit I DID. I spent a good part of the month shopping (yay!) for a dress that seemed Alice-y enough. I was originally going with a simple dress from Old Navy, pairing it with some funky striped knee-high socks and a short cardigan and a black petticoat. Well, it didn’t work. The dress I bought was now a size too large and the black petticoat was too short. The socks didn’t QUITE go with the dress either. B L A H. I bought a white petticoat, a longer one, but it didn’t work with the Old Navy dress (it wasn’t cut properly for one, not a shocker really.) So I was determined, the day before my party, that I’d look at every single damn dress at the mall until I found something better.

So as I walked into Macy’s I spotted a cute little spring-y shirtdress, blue that fades into a white. I looked on the rack and found one which technically wasn’t my size. I really needed one size larger, but I decided I’d try it on anyway. I grabbed it and walked around the other dresses… and found that someone had put the blue dress on a different rack – and it was the size I was looking for!! I tried it on.. it fit.. and I totally felt appropriately girly! When I got home I tried it on with my white petticoat and it was a perfect fit. I got normal white tights to pair with my cheapie Payless Alice shoes and BAM! I was good to go.

Little tangent on this shopping thing – Adam’s been quite the trooper but for the most part I’ve been shopping alone. Sometimes it’s fun but I am really lacking the shopping experience thing with another girl. I never did the shopping thing when I was a teen and when I was in college it was all about t-shirts, hoodies, and jeans.. and getting fatter and losing more and more interest in shopping. But now, I’m all about shopping. I want to just try things on out of curiosity, walk into stores I never thought I’d shop at just to SEE what they have and not feel like the people working there are looking at me thinking “Oh no, she can’t wear this stuff, why is she here?” It’s a new experience for me – I’ve gained a shitload of confidence in the last few months in regards to how I look/what I wear and being able to share the fun would be nice. Anyway.. to the point – I need some shopping buddies. Tangent done.

So here are photos from my party! Thanks to everyone that made it out – I really appreciated it and had a lot of fun!

Goals Update
Costume party for my 30th birthday – CHECK!
Photo trip/project each month – um… ok so that one is oops for the month of March.

When it comes to photos I’ve been trying to take more; whether it’s with my new awesome phone (Motorola Droid- some pics here) or just with my standard DSLR. We went to the Silicon Valley Roller Girls derby bout at the beginning of the month and I’ve been snapping photos of almost every Pager Flakes hockey game we go to. Now that the weather is better, I’m hoping to get out more on the weekends and weeknights as various events start happening in San Jose.

New Goals!
Run/Walk a 5k – This is not a new goal as I announced it awhile back that I signed up for one. It’s in a few weeks and I need to up my treadmill use so I can actually run a little bit of this Run/Walk. I’m not stressing about it though, I’ll tackle it at a comfortable pace and just feel good that I accomplished it.
Swimming – April will be the month I dive (har har) back into swimming. Maybe to quantify it, I should say something like.. at least twice a week? Let’s just start with that.
Scrapbooking – Whaaat? YEAH. So I love to scrapbook; cutting up papers, matching colors with little doodad embellishments.. I even hit up the expo the other day as a birthday gift from Adam. But I haven’t sat down to scrapbook since well before Thanksgiving. It happens every year like this. Once the holidays hit, I’m under the gift-buying pressure and time flies. It’s not until March that I pick back up where I left off. I just need to find the time to get back into it and get some books done.

And of course, if I can tackle any of the other random goals on my list that’d be great too!

For now, this second, my next goal is to get some sleep. Hopefully it won’t be another month until my next post.

Awhile back our friend Shannon brought up a top secret birthday trip for her husband, Al and invited us. I had been talking a lot about wanting to learn to ski and it just worked out perfectly. Except that top secret part. I wanted so badly to blog or tweet or Facebook (verb?) about it but I didn’t/couldn’t.

However, after arriving at Al and Shannon’s house at 5am on Friday, that top secret embargo was lifted! I WAS GOING TO LEARN TO SKI THAT DAY!!

We went straight to the resort and Adam and I got our ski lessons rental set up and went to wait in the lesson area while everyone else went off to snowboard or ski.

The lessons were fun – there was a group of maybe eight of us (skiing, Adam did snowboarding) and our instructor, Weston. We did some stretches, learned how to snow-plow, stop, turn, walk up a tiny “hill” sideways and fall and get up.

Let me be a little more clear however.

• I learned how to snow-plow and stop after several tries.. my pizza wedge wasn’t wedgie enough sometimes.
• Turning was actually rather easy for me, compared to stopping. When it was my turn to go between Weston’s poles he put into the snow (maybe five feet away from each other) he decided to “make it harder” and put them only two feet apart. This prompted me to shout “You’re picking on me!” and he said “No, just making it more challenging!” and I then reminded him I hadn’t even been able to do the easy one. So I said OK, so I just go straight through the poles. He said if I did that (as opposed to turning between them) then he’d make it even harder for everyone else. So I looked at the group and apologized in advance.
• Walking up a hill: I was angling my skis the wrong way and was literally battling with the nothing-hills I was trying to shimmy up. At one point my back was to the instructor, who was in the middle of teaching about falling, and he said to me “Jen, I’d like you to see this!” to which I turned around and said “I would too!” (and everyone had a nice chuckle).
• Falling and getting up. Ah yea did you just read the last bullet point? I didn’t get to pretend-fall or practice getting up but I just took mental notes when he lectured. I got to put it to the test later on.. three times.

When it was time to hit the bunny hill, the instructor chose to ride with me and two other girls in the class. Both of which had fallen a lot during the lessons and were rather slow. Why was I in this group? Cause I was so damn slow at walking up the hill. (At first, then someone gave me pointers and I magically flew up the hill each time. So there.) But I was happy, I wanted all the help I could get.

So from left to right in the lift line: Weston, Chick1, Me, Chick2. We’re in line, waiting for the lift so we can sit down… and Chick2 is ready to sit on the railing, not so much the seat. So I grabbed her sleeve and basically pulled her into her seat. Up we go.. and once we’re at the highest point I decide to announce that I’m terribly nervous about this and really trying not freak out. HELLO- THERE ARE NO HARNESSES UP THERE.

Time to get off the damn lift… I get into position… and swoooplunk. I fall. I fall because Chick1 and Chick2 have fallen as well. Weston has to help me up because I’m a goobered mess on the snow now.

Then we do some skiing.. in chunks.. until I fall again. The chicks and I are slow; and I have only fallen once since the lift at this point. I run through all the options Weston taught us and after trying a few, I just take my skis off and get up. So much easier that way. Snap snap I’m back into them and make my way down to the group. After awhile I made it all the way down to the bottom and Weston meets up with me to give me his peptalk I’m sure he tells everyone. Regardless, it’s a nice gesture and I even share the reason why I’m out there learning to ski (all the while trying not to cry – not because I’m sad but because I was so proud of myself for accomplishing my goal.)

Oh I haven’t mentioned one this yet.. the pain. Just because I’ve lost a ton of weight doesn’t mean I’m in the best shape yet (I have lots to go!!) but I’m better than where I was 5+ months ago. However, my muscles are sooo not in shape yet; my calves and thighs were BURNING and shaking at this point. Thankfully it was time for a break and to meet up with everyone else.

After lunch everyone hit the bunny hill with us. This time, with me riding with Al and Shannon I didn’t fall off the lift! Totally smooth right off the thing. Take that Snow Lift Thingie! In yo face!

I followed Shannon as we criss-crossed the hill, taking numerous breaks because if I didn’t I think my thighs were going to detach themselves and run away. Or simply explode. That would have been messy.

After struggling a bit more down the hill, all the while still enjoying myself and speeding up here and there, I found myself getting really tired. It was starting to snow at an angle and my goggles were fogging up. I was hitting my threshold, my friends. And I was maybe.. if being generous, halfway down the damn bunny hill.

Al stopped by and gave me a great peptalk and told me that it was totally ok if I needed to just walk down the hill; others with plenty of years of experience do it all the time when it is needed. That option made me get a little emotional; I didn’t want to walk down the hill. I wanted to ski! That was what I was here for. But at the same time, my calves and thighs hurt so bad I was shaking. So Shannon unsnapped my boots so I could walk easier and I grabbed my gear and down I went. Adam, by the way, made it to the bottom on his snowboard. He’s always the trooper! I’m so proud of him too for learning to snowboard.

On Saturday, after a long debate with myself, I decided not to ski. The reasons were a mixture of being really sore from Friday’s adventures, the fact that rental+lift was $100, and that I was frankly concerned that I’d only make it down the hill once. Once for $100 just didn’t seem like a good thing. I also considered the fact that tomorrow (Monday) Adam and I are starting our boot camp workouts.

I think I made a good decision; instead of skiing I watched Adam snowboard and people watched for a few hours. I love all the wild outfits people were wearing and I’d also watch how people were skiing, turning their skis at an angle to stop, etc. Adam and Shannon were done around noon so we spent the rest of the time together, walking around in the snow (as it was snowing!) and I even contemplated the Tube Hill.. but again it wasn’t worth the money+time.

Here are photos from our trip:

So my friends, what is my final opinion and the outcome of this trip? — Skiing is totally fun and I plan to do it again; I’d also like to take a snowboarding lesson as well just to see what it is like. Who knows, maybe I’ll like that more!

I’m just so proud of myself that I did this; it’s all part of the new me – trying things I’ve always wanted to do but was limited because of my weight.

So now that “Learn to ski” is being crossed off my Goals of 2010 list (on the left of this page) I decided to add a new one to the list. This summer I want to LEARN TO SURF.

Am I supposed to be freaking out? That’s what people do, right? I mean, I won’t be able to go around saying “I’m in my twenties!” anymore, because you know I do that all the time.

What to do, what to do..
The month is going to be really busy and I’m actually pretty exhausted just thinking about it.

On Monday Adam and I will be starting up a month-long (three days a week for four weeks) program at boot camp! Working out at 6am Monday, Wednesday and Friday. That alone is going to wipe me out. Add on top of that, swimming at least once a week, maybe more toward the end of the month. Plus treadmill running program and I *might* attempt to start up The Shread.. but I’m not sure if I have the guts to do so just yet. Maybe save that for April.

That’s just the working out that is planned. I’m also trying to plan my birthday party itself and find all the appropriate pieces for my Alice in Wonderland “inspired” outfit. I’m really quite excited over it and hope that everyone that attends will attempt to dress up with a ‘hint’ of Alice In Wonderland at least! But there is still a lot of planning to do.. augh.

*There’s a big chance I’m counting that wrong. You don’t want to know what kind of grades I got in my math classes, ok?