Wild and Crazy Saturday Afternoon

My week is halfway over so get fired up! Love me a four day week. I am off on Friday but more about that later.

This morning I went to the gym...

Whoa whoa WAIT A MINUTE...did you say this morning, Laura?

Yes I did.

You mean you got your jiggly booty out of your warm bed with your 230-pound heater before 6am?

Yes I did.

You mean you braved the bitter cold winter temps before 6am all in the name of health and fitness?

Yes, yes, and YES!

I was proud of myself for getting up and going this morning, instead of giving in to the temptation of sleeping another two hours.

At 5:45am I bolted out from under the covers and laced up those tennis shoes! Bright eyed and bushy tailed, I whistled a happy tune as I put on my SweatyBand and iPod! I walked out the door and skipped to the car for my sunrise drive to the gym! I flung open the gym door and greeted the front desk people with a booming rendition of Oklahoma's "Oh What A Beautiful Morning!"

Or something like that.

Then I did:

• 30 minutes on treadmill*
• 15 minutes on ArcTrainer
• Cocktail Dress Arms

*15 minutes run at 6.0mph, 15 minutes power walk at 4.0mph/5% incline

Tomorrow I think I am going to do week 1 of the gym's Fitness Challenge and I am nervy because it involves push-ups, and I have the upper body strength of a T-Rex. So we'll see how that goes.

*Rewind to the Weekend*

You see, when Tom is out of town I like to do really crazy, wild, single-gal things like put on fake eyelashes and fill up the bathtub with hunch punch and have a big raging house party.

But this weekend the Piggly Wiggly was out of pink lemonade (the main ingredient in hunch punch for those of you who aren't a party gal like myself), so I had to go with Plan B.

I was inspired by this post on Young House Love (yes it is from June...I was perusing the archives while bored at work. Don't judge.).

Scratch that...I am inspired by ALL their posts! Sherry and John, the authors of this blog, are DIY and organization gurus and I want to be just like them when I grow up. Them, and Pioneer Woman.

So anyway, on Saturday afternoon once I finally peeled myself off the couch at like 1:30pm I decided to organize one of my messiest kitchen cabinets. The Food Cabinet.

First, I assessed the cabinet situation:

I remembered to snap a pic after I had already started cleaning out...but you get the idea.

Our food cabinet is not too terribly cluttered but it's not organized at all. And I had a feeling there would be a few items lurking in there that had moved in before I did (two and a half years ago). Time to purge. Using Sherry and John's '100% Rule,' I took every single item out of the cabinets and put them on our kitchen counter. Just as I suspected, there were a few items that made me scratch my head and think, "Why do I own this non-perishable food item?"

Starting with: Easy Cheese. A college freshman does not live here. Why the Easy Cheese?

I don't even know what this is. A tiny cardboard box with a buck head proudly printed on it. I wondered where this came from, then I remembered who I'm married to.

Oh, of course! Silly me! What else would be inside this tiny cardboard box
other than dip mix in a shotgun shell? Duh.

The top half of the wrapper is cut off but I think you can tell what this is.

The 80's called.

They want their drink mix back.

Canned olives. Never have I ever cooked anything with canned olives.

An example of something that was in the cabinet pre-Laura.

Canned cat food. We don't even have a cat! Oh, wait, but we did....

Great, now I'm depressed and feel like a failure.

Manwich. 'Nuff said.

Canned Chopped Turnip Greens. Because Tom likes to annoy me

by making our house smell like a nursing home.

So after careful assessment of the contents of my food cabinet, I sort of grouped categories together. Rice, pasta, sweets, canned goods, etc.

And put them back in.

Not life-changing, but definitely better.

These handy-dandy little white trays over to the right hold all sorts of goodies.

One with little envelopes of seasoning packets.

Before these were scattered about and I never knew what I had or didn't have.

Little envelopes of drink mixes, Emergen-C, hot chocolate, etc.

Before these were in boxes and took up more room.

All my running nutrition. Luna Bars, GU, Chomps,

gum, chap stick, etc.

And last but certainly not least....

Baking items. Extracts, chocolate chips, brown sugar, etc.

Although I am not, by nature, an uber-organized person like my girl Sherry, it is nice to purge and clean every now and then. Now, I feel a sense of accomplishment when I go to the cabinet to get a handful of butterscotch chips or stuff my face with Nutter Butter bars.

And with my newly organized food cabinet, the next time my friends come over for a Rave, they will be able to easily find the pink lemonade for a fresh batch of hunch punch. I won't be available to make it since I'll be busy doing a keg stand. :)

Have a great week, everyone!