Cathy Zielske's Blog, page 224

Four years of delayed gratification is enough

I'm sorry. I could take the "I don't really need this" high road no longer.

The one tech gadget I have coveted above all, the one whose inherent sacredness knows no electronic peer, that one glorious piece of modern-day wizardry about which I wondered, "Is it better than sex?", is no longer in the Want or Need category.

It is now in the Own column.

Giving Dan a shiny new iPhone for Father's Day was like putting a superhuman excelerant on the technological fires of iDesire that have been festering like hot coals since January 2007 when this phone was first announced to the world.

I couldn't stand it another day.

Or rather, I chose not to stand it another day.

Here I am cradling it to my bosom.

I know. It's hard to see on account of the ampleness of that bodily region of mine.

I realize that things don't make you happy. (Okay, maybe I don't actually realize this.)

But look how great the Instagram shots are!

And now, Dan's box has a buddy!

I feel that four years of waiting to get this phone was long enough.

I apologize in advance to friends on Twitter for all the photos of my lunch that I will soon be posting. Every day. All the time.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go wait for it to ring.

Love, Cathy

 

 

 

 

 

Scrapbook mama like.

Remember my little story about that kid of mine who's going to start driving?

Well I combined that with a new set of hybrid page frames to save the story. And the results? Mama like.

SUPPLIES: Page Frames No. 03 (Cathy Zielske) • patterned paper "Blissful", tag (Authentique) • Archer font • white orange peel cardstock (Bazzill Basics)

These new page frames come in both 12 x 12 and 8.5 x 11. They come in fully layered PSD files for digital scrapbookers, PNG files, and PDFs for non-Photoshop users to print out and fill in with papers, photos and journaling.

For my page, I added a text box into the document, and changed the color of the "Memorable" title before printing it out onto white cardstock. I then printed and cropped photos and patterned paper to fit.

I made a page about Cole and baseball using the bonus photo collage file that comes with these packages. Here, I printed out the overlay onto kraft cardstock, then created a separate journaling block to print out and place onto the page. Lastly, I created a photo collage and printed it onto photo paper. In each package, there is a layered collage PSD file that is designed to fit into the upper frame areas.

SUPPLIES: Page Frames No. 03 (Cathy Zielske) • patterned paper "Promenade" (Authentique) • Univers font • kraft cardstock (Bazzill Basics)

The thing I like most about page frames is they feel a bit like a puzzle to be completed. That's always been one of my favorite things about creating layouts, figuring out how to piece it all together. You could also simply break them apart and just use the journaling and title bases to layer into your designs.

I will admit: I like the Aidan page more than the Cole page, purely from an aesthetic standpoint.

Shhh. Don't tell Cole. It's not personal. It's just design and color.

Move More Eat Less July 2011

Happy birthday, America, and welcome to another installment of the Move More Eat Less Better Chronicles, brought to you by me, Cathy the chub-fightin', scrapbook-lovin' Zielske.

While many of us are celebrating our nation's independence today, quite possibly with various fried potato chip food substances, it's the perfect time to talk about the last month in my own battle with the fried potato chip food substances.

Rather than pass an all-encompassing judgement of, "Oh, it's been a good month," or "Oh, it's been a bad month," I'll suffice to say simply it's been a month.

I haven't lost or gained significant poundage. I haven't made significant changes to my workout regime. I haven't found the elusive magic bullet to effective and sustainable weight loss and instant body image confidence.

What I have been doing this past month, however, is seeking.

When I want to know more about a subject, I immerse myself in everything I can find on it to make sure I have the latest and greatest information in my little noggin, in the hopes that I can a) achieve my goals and b) achieve my goals.

I've been focusing on learning about nutrition, and specifically, why the concept of diet deprivation isn't sustainable.

At least it doesn't appear to be for me personally.

When I started Weight Watchers in January 2010, I was a very good little diet soldier. On the old plan, I was given 22 points a day to start out, and you better believe I hit that mark nearly without fail every single bloody day.

I did what I always do when I'm on a serious diet: I passed on nearly every social situation involving food; I made low-fat dinners of a very repetitive nature much to the chagrin of my family; I chewed gum like a banshee to push through the cravings; I squeezed in 2 or 3 point snacks without ever considering they had 35 ingredients in them that most people can't even pronounce; I measured, counted and weighed every morsel that passed over my lips. In short: I pledged allegiance to the Points.

Then after hitting a 140 low mark in mid-October of last year, I started making muffins. A few here, a few there. I was, afterall, running four days a week. How could a few muffins hurt my progress?

Well, they did.

They invited in more sugar and removed a block or two from my solid foundation. They invited a little bit of culinary pleasure back into my world and they said to the vigilant dieter: my God, what are YOU still doing here?

So after a solid 10 months of dieting and seeing exactly the weight loss I'd hoped for, my body started to rebel. I don't want 22 points of food a day. Are you kidding me?

Apparently, my human evolutionary DNA didn't do well with constant deprivation.

Of course, the next several months saw some seriously out of control junk binges, and some moping around on the part of yours truly. The only thing that didn't slide was the exercise. I just kept on running.

Now, there are a few things different this month. I started taking a BodyPump class to get into the weight lifting side of things. I changed my breakfast foods completely (from bran cereal to eggs and sprouted grain toast with real butter) and the difference in how my hunger cravings are up until lunch? Night and day.

So here I am, at the same weight more or less that I was one year ago. And one year ago? Being in the lower 150s was a HUGE victory.

Here's my page for the month:

JOURNALING READS: I feel like I'm in a transition mode again. Sometimes I think that translates into saying "I'm not losing weight and I'm struggling again," or "I think I'll try this approach now." In the past month, I've let my militant Weight Watchers approach slide a little, and not just to each crap here and there, but to try and eat more to promote a healthier metabolism. I've been soaking up Dishing Up Nutrition podcasts, and I have to say these women make an awful lot of sense about dieting not really working. I have my own experience in losing 40 pounds with absolute diet vigilance, only to gain 15 back once I stopped living in that diet-minded deprivation mode. Food and what I do with food is kind of ruling my life right now. I need to be mindful because this is when I usually say, "I can't live like this," and throw in the towel. This is exactly why I am looking at different approaches to nutrition and health. I am finding that constant dieting and calorie counting lead to big binges and backfires. I'm tired of that pattern.

I'm also trying to wrap my head around the idea that maybe this is as good as it gets, that I'm not going to be thin like my sister-in-laws, or people who seem to not struggle with food and the like. I'm struggling with why that's not okay for me. There is absolutely a psychological component to this process that occasionally throws me for a loop. I'm 45 years old and I have to wonder how much more precious time I'm going to lose obsessing over something that in the larger scheme of life, just shouldn't matter this much. Again, a work in progress.

Suffice to say it's been a month. In July, I'm going to focus completely on balanced eating, and I'm going to keep on moving more. I'll check back with you in August to let you know how this particular approach goes.

How goes it with all of you who are striving for better fitness and health? By all means, share away!

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RECOMMENDED LISTENING: I've been listening to an extremely information podcast for the past few weeks called "Dishing Up Nutrition." The show is produced here in Minnesota by the founders of Nutritional Weight and Wellness, Inc. You can subscribe to it through iTunes for free. It's definitely shaken up my notion of diets and deprivation as a means to successful weight loss. Thanks to my friend Angela for pointing me to the show!

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Want to learn more about Move More Eat Less 2011? Click here to learn more about the concept.

I've also started a flickr group for Move More Eat Less. Feel free to start sharing your pages. You will find the group by clicking here.

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A NOTE TO THOSE WHO FOLLOW ME ON FACEBOOK: If you've noticed I'm not showing up in your feeds anymore, it's because I've migrated to posting on my public Facebook page. Click here to become part of my community on this new page. You can read my blog post about this change by clicking here. Thanks, and I hope to see you on the new page!

 

Summer in swing

Being outside.

Baseball games.

Smoothies and iPads.

Sleeveless shirts and iPads.

And summer flying by.

This has been a week of baseball tournaments, driver's ed, going here, and there, nursing sunburns and just enjoying time with my family.

Back next week with my monthly Move More Eat Less check in. Have a safe and relaxing holiday weekend.

 

In just over a week…

That baby girl of mine, Aidan? Yeah, well… she's going to start driving.

That's right. This girl, who I swear just blew out her first birthday candle, is going to climb behind the wheel of a 3,000 pound hunk of steel and make it go places on the open road.

It's not that I don't think she'll be great at it.

It's just that whole one more step toward her independence and one more step away from me thing.

Now I'm a little verklempt. Talk amongst yourselves. Thank you.

I think I feel a scrapbook page coming on. For sure.

As good as it gets?

This blog has hosted many a post on the old Battle of the Bulge front. I've been writing about it since I quit smoking in 2006 when the chub slowly but surely began to find its way onto my reluctant frame.

As I weighed myself last Saturday morning (remember, I only step on that thing once a week for checks and balances), and the number read "157," I thought to myself, "Maybe what I've got right now is as good as it gets."

There's a great Mumford & Sons song (oh heck, they're all great for that matter) called "Awake Your Soul" and a line jumped out at me that morning, as I sat working on my computer:

In these bodies we will live, in these bodies we will die
Where you invest your love, you invest your life

Common sense hit me right between the eyes, as much as I tried to dodge the shot: this body of mine, with it's dimples and muffin-topped midsection, is Ground Zero for my entire life experience. All the good. All the bad. All the ordinary. All the magical.

How does having a flat stomach really add or detract from an entire lifetime of experience?

Like many of you, I stuggle with figuring out how to be enough. Sometimes it seems the physical housing takes such a precedent and seems to erase some of the joy to be found in the simple act of living.

I fight against this nearly every day.

Some days, I'm inspired by a new book I'm reading on metabolism, or a health and nutrition podcast that really speaks to me. Some days, I return from a solid run, covered in sweat and catching my breath, and the size of my ass is the absolute least of my concerns.

Some days, I look in the mirror and there's a really cute 40-something lady looking back at me, and I think, "Oh, there you are."

There you are, with your glasses, and your grey hairs, and your wrinkles and the same outfit you had on yesterday. I know you. I'm so lucky to BE you.

I realize that there are also a lot of women out there for whom this isn't an issue. Somewhere along the line of their lives, they gained a sense of confidence and self-worth that had little if nothing to do with how they looked on the outside. If that is you, I both envy and admire you.

Me? I'm a work in progress, with the emphasis decidedly on progress.

 

 

Dan got an iPhone. In other news, hell freezes over.

Let me start by saying this: it really wasn't his idea.

Dan Zielske, my partner in crime since 1989, has never been one to warm to the latest and greatest technologies. He was perfectly happy using rabbit ears on a television, and it took a lot of arm twisting back in the day to convince him why a young, unmarried couple like us would ever possibly find a use for a Nintendo system. He also has a vintage shirt and sweater collection that would rival that of any 90-year-old man, but that's a story for another day.

In keeping with his Luddite ways, he was a little late to the cell phone game. He has owned two cell phones in his entire life. One had an antenna you pulled out for better reception. The other one? This gem he's been using for roughly 8 years.

Enter his tech obsessed wifey, me.

I think everyone knows my love of all things technological, and specifically, my love of all things iPhone. I've documented my yearnings quite ably over the years on this blog. (You can read some of it here and here and even this one time when someone got all mad at me for whining about not having one here.) Heck, I even did a scrapbook page about placating my desires with the purchase of an iPod Touch, as seen here:

The irony, of course, is that I do not own an iPhone myself, mostly because it's a hard one to justify when my cell phone usages averages to roughly 22 minutes per month.

But with Father's Day looming and a $100 instant rebate being offered to replace Dan's aging phone, I decided to roll the dice on Dan's behalf and I ordered the iPhone 4.

Ahhhh. Now isn't that better?

Other than when he first took it out of the box and just starting yelling at it to try and activate the phone, he's taken quite a shine to it. Initially incredulous that he wasn't going to be on a 4G network (What? This is only 3G? Are you KIDDING me? That's just GREAT!), he has settled in nicely, even finding time during the day to play a few rounds of Words with Friends with yours truly.

He swears he won't get all into apps and for now, the only other app I made him buy was Scrabble. But I say, let him find his sea legs and then he might just realize how fun Plants vs. Zombies can truly be.

And even if he never goes app crazy, with a view like this, he'll never be able to doubt the value of an upgrade.

 

2004 + Digital

In 2004 I got my first digital SLR, a Nikon D70. I will never forget the thrill of seeing that first image appear on the camera's screen. Have I ever shown you that photo, DSC_0001.jpg?

Sigh. Out of focus, oddly yellow, instant love.

One of the things I love most about digital is the ability to go back and look at your life in photos with just a few clicks. I've been very careful over the years to back up my library (both to external hard drives and CDs), so I'm able to feel somewhat confident that it's not all going down in a ball of error code flames.

I found a few shots yesterday that reminded me of the fun of that first year of digital photography.

The first example? The Black Velvet Background Portrait Era (TBVBPE). Good LORD. I remember being amazed at how just a bit of natural light coming from a window could create such an amazing effect on a subject's face. I shot this kid so many times in front of that swath of Joanne's fake velvet that I think she thought it wasn't natural if the area behind her in every other part of her life wasn't black and fuzzy. But it wasn't just my kids. Hell, I put everyone in front of it. No one was immune from TBVBPE.

(Well hello, Daniel Sr.! It's okay. Just relax!)

Some pictures we're highly posed and eventually turned into really bad scrapbook pages, with titles like "A-wreath-A." (No, I cannot find this layout, but I assure you it exists!)

Eventually, I learned to stop posing people all the time and start observing.

Of course, my observing became a bit obsessive at times, but I wouldn't trade some of the images that I caught that first year for anything.

2004 was the first and only year all Zielskes appeared in a photo for a Christmas card.

And it was also the last year for some unknown reason.

2004 was the year I really savored taking pictures of objects and everyday things as well, realizing that a story can be found pretty much anywhere if you pay attention.

2004 also had hot husbands galore.

What year did you jump into digital? And how has it changed the way you document your life?

Facebook changes

I'll never forget a conversation I had a few years back with my then fabulous Managing Editor Jennafer Martin. I told her, "I don't get Facebook at all! Isn't that just something people use on the PC?" And she told me, "Cathy, you seriously need to get on Facebook now. You're completely missing out."

And so I did.

Over the past few years, I've seen the power of Facebook. I've also seen the time suck that it can be (oh, but it's a good kind of time suck!), and I love how it has let me connect to friends, family, blog readers and students.

However, my personal Facebook page has over 4,750 friends but I only know about 150 of them. As Facebook makes more changes to its format (I'm apparently one of the testees to get a new look and feel) it has removed my ability to create custom news feeds that let me keep track of my friends and family.

I have two Facebook pages, but I'm going to be shifting my present posting to my public page which can be found by clicking here. The best thing about the public page? There is no limit to the number of friends. On my personal page, the limit is 5,000, and I've got about 1,700 pending friend requests that I haven't added due to these limits. I want to include the these people as part of my Facebook community and the only way to open it up is to take advantage of my public page.

I want a way to continue to connect with my blog readers, students and former students, and people from the online scrapbooking community, but I also want to be able to keep track of my family and friends via my personal Facebook page.

I'm going to be paring down my list on my personal page to include family, friends and people I have online relationships with. This is not to cut anyone out of the action with ill intent. This is only to have my personal page be a page that truly reflects people I know and have relationships with. I will be posting to my public page beginning this week with much more regularity. It won't simply be a page where I post when one of my new templates goes on sale. I'll still let you know the same kinds of things I've been posting to my personal page. You know, the good stuff like: I have a headache, or, Cathy Zielske just ran like a mother yet again, or Mother Nature is knocking and I don't want to let her and her cramps in, or, I just ate my feelings in Goldfish.

Also, keep in mind that this blog is another way to connect with me. I read each and every comment posted, and try to reply to as many as possible.

I just wanted people to know if I stop showing up in their feeds, it's not that I don't like you anymore. It's just that I don't know you personally and my Mom keeps asking me why I'm not commenting about what she's posting.

Please come and join me at my public page to keep up with my always entertaining but often inane Facebook chatter: Cathy's Public Facebook page.

 

 

Her summer plans

Last week, Aidan officially completed her first year of high school. Sigh. Where does the time go, people? Can you answer that question for me?

To celebrate, she said the following words that would warm any scrapbook-lovin', life-documentin', photo-takin' kind of mama: "Mom, I want to get some kind of cool scrapbook to document the next three months. Let's go to Archiver's!"

So off we went in search of a cool scrapbook, and lo and behold, right at the front of the store, they had a steadily dwindling supply of those uber-funky SmashBooks. We'll take one to go please!

She bought the Retro style (mostly because that was the only style left in stock), returned home and got down to business.

With her beloved Fuji Wide Format Instax 210 at the ready and the Smash Pen/Glue Stick in hand, she commenced the documenting.

(No, she's not smoking in that photo. Optical illusion. Believe me, this kid and that other one of mine have gotten more anti-smoking lectures than you can shake a pack of Marlboros at.)

She is so geeked out about this scrapbook. She's already planning how she'll do one every summer of her high school years. Some people have noted that SmashBooks are nothing new, and I agree. They're simply the old school version of a scrapbook. The only difference? Killer marketing and adorableness.

God knows I'm a sucker for killer marketing and adorableness.

And for this girl.

If you're curious to know some of her plans for the summer, I asked her if I could copy part of her list to use on a scrapbook page of my own.

She said yes. Of course my documenting is decidedly less Smash-y in style. (Click on the layout to see it larger in a new window.)

SUPPLIES: Layered Template No. 65 (Cathy Zielske) • Laurel Paper Pack (Michelle Martin) • Digital Dates Vol. 12 (Katie Pertiet) • Stitched No. 1 (Anna Aspnes) • Avenir font

Here's to documenting summer in whatever funky (or clean and simple) way you choose.

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Interested in encouraging your kids to document their summers? Right now, Big Picture Classes is offering a workshop called Kidding Around (2), taught by Tami Morrison. For less than the price of summer camps, you get six weeks of playful prompts to entertain and engage your kids on long, hot summer days. Though not required, this class is designed around using a Smash Book as it's base for recording the memories. Check it out! Class begins June 23.