I love Macy's, don't you? And reason I love it is because it's a great place to park at Mayfair (it's my secret parking place, so don't tell anyone). I also love it because of the ladies shoe department. Every time I go to Mayfair, I park by Macy's, enter by the ladies shoes, and then browse through the shoe sale racks in the hopes of finding The Shoe of My Dreams -- which, by the way, has yet to happen. Oh, I've found The Shoe of My Dreams, but they weren't on the sale rack.

After I browse through the shoes, then I move over to the Coach and handbag department where I drool over the latest handbag that I'm not going to buy for myself because everyone else already has it -- the last thing I want is to be just like everyone else. It's the same story as the shoes, I'm also always on the lookout for The Handbag of My Dreams.

From there I usually leave Macy's, but that all changed when my husband's uncle gave me a bar of soap from Lush for Christmas. Yes, a bar of soap. How boring, right? WRONG.

I love Lush! It's located right there in Macy's too and the products are all awesome, and the solid shampoo does wonders for my hair! If you have curly hair, Tricomania is the shampoo for you. My husband uses New! and our daughter uses Seanik. 

If you want soap, they've got oodles to pick from (personally, I love Mud Flats). The bath bombs and bubble bars are really nice .... if you want rock star bubbles, wow, get yourself a bubble bar! Our daughter loves the bubble bars! I've been cutting them into smaller chunks to reduce the bubbles actually, no kid needs to have THAT many bubbles in their bubble bath.

So there ya go. Lush is my newest favorite.

I'm so tired of the snow. Will it ever be spring? I can't believe Easter has come and gone and I haven't seen a single tulip sprouting out of the ground yet. I'm so over winter! Aren't you?

March 22nd marks my one month anniversary of being a dedicated member of Weight Watchers. One whole month! And I did it! I took my crazy busy life (work, grad school, a 10 hour movie marathon, wine club, PIZZA!) and I managed to successfuly make it through my first month of Weight Watchers.

I think I've lost about 7 lbs so far, and I have to say that I've really worked hard for it. I've only got 20 points to use each day, and that's not a whole lot. I had to completely change all of my eating habits. Granola in my yogurt? Gone. A bowl of ice cream to reward myself for working out? Gone. Or how about a glass of wine most nights with dinner? Gone. Eating an entire sleeve of Thin Mints at once? Well, sadly that habit has been broken too.

New habits have set in, and now I get up at 6 a.m. four days a week and run 3-4 miles before I even wake up my daughter for school. Sure, I'm sound asleep by 10 p.m. but I've put in a good workout before the day even starts. And I'm eating salads for lunch every single day, and making smarter choices for dinner. I feel great, and you know what? I can fit into my favorite pair of jeans again! I'm so Lucky!

I've always struggled with my weight, sometimes better than others. I've always been very active, I run a lot, and I spend a great deal of time at the YMCA (did you hear that they are lowering their membership fees?), but my body was like: Okay, you want to eat that bowl of ice cream? Let's put it right here! and then it was attached to my hips and I couldn't zip my jeans.

I am sad to report that I haven't been to Kopp's once in the past month. I'm really sorry Kopp's, it's not that I don't love you, it's just that a scoop of tiramisu custard in a waffle cone is something like a gabillion points! (I just checked, as I write this tiramisu is the flavor. I didn't know that. Jeez, way to make a girl feel bad about her decision! I think it's calling me like an old boyfriend who just won't give up. Or like Natalie thinking Matty is her soul mate on Big Brother, that girl is so clueless. Did you hear that tiramisu: YOU ARE CLUELESS!!!)

So here's to one month down and a bunch more to go!

(Cross posted @ Thoughts Outside My Head)

Last night was Super-Tuscan night at my monthly wine club. What are Super-Tuscans? I've got a bit more about them here, but most would say they are a cult wine.  I think they are delicious! If you ever find them on a wine list be forewarned that they’ll be very pricey, if you buy them at the store they run anywhere from $15 (hard to find at that price) to $75 a bottle.

Now, onto the wines from last night. We had six different wines, and they were all very good.

Bigi Umbria Vipra Rossa, 2004. A blend of Merlot and Sangiovese.

Banfi Centine, 2005. $13.99

Villa Antinori, 2003. A blend of 60% Sangiovese, 20% Cabernet, 15% Merlot and 5% Syrah. This was a remarkable wine! $23.99

Santa Cristina, 2006. A blend of 90% Sangiovese and 10% Merlot. This was very good.

Arceno Prima Voce, 2003. A blend of  blend of 13% Sangiovese, 22% Cabernet, 57% Merlot and 8% Syrah. This was nice, but it smelled like a perm. If you’ve ever spent an hour in your mother’s kitchen getting a perm then you know the smell. $19.00

Capineto Dogojolo, 2005. A blend of 80% Sangiovese and 20% Cabernet.

It's been a super busy week! And Daylight Savings hasn't exactly helped. My sleep is all off, my body clock is off, and I'm hungry for lunch at 11 a.m. -- sometimes 10:30! I don't know how I've managed to get out of bed early every morning so that I can run 3-4 miles before I get my daughter ready for school, and then go to work. Perhaps it's just because I know that I won't have the time in the evening to do it. And my pants were getting too tight. And those darn Thin Mints are so good!!!

So what is on my agenda for the weekend? Well first up is wine club on Friday night. This month we are tasting Super Tuscans. I don't have a lot of experience with these wines because they are rather pricey, but what I've had, I've loved!

Saturday is Sleeping Beauty at First Stage Children's Theatre. We haven't been to a theatre performance in a while, but they are always enjoyable.

Then on Sunday afternoon is the Admirals hockey game with my daughter's school, Milwaukee French Immersion. She received a free ticket for reading and she's pretty excited. I haven't been to a hockey game in years, but I used to go fairly often when I was in my early 20's. There was a point where I was as in to hockey as I'm now into grand slam tennis (VERY!).

In between all of that I have a final project due for my Productions and Operations graduate course.

Have a great weekend! I'll post a wine recap on Saturday.

p.s. In case any of you are wondering, my phones are plugged back in. That's right, the phone company had unplugged my wire at the big box up on the corner. They thwarted my phone-lines-are-located-in-the-basement security system and everything! Kudos to you AT&T! But I'm plugged back in, my iPod is charged, and since my DSL is working too I can continue to blog about stupid little trivial things .... like how much I love this video and I'm trying to talk my husband into taking our two treadmills and putting them side-by-side so that I can practice the moves.

I love art, and my daughter, Zoe, has inherited this love. She is also extremely talented (what kind of mom would I be if I didn't think that?), and spends hours upon hours working on art projects and drawings. She'll be 7 years old next month, and to this day, any toys she gets are only played with for a small period of time before she goes back to the drawing board. Literally, the drawing board.

I found a few art classes at the Milwaukee Art Museum that are specifically for kids. Tomorrow is the her first class, it's a parent and kid class so I'll be there too. We'll be learning about Andy Warhol, then create a work of art using him as inspiration. I think it'll be fun, and Zoe is pretty excited too. Next month is my very most favorite artist of all time, Georgia O'Keeffe.

Other happenings around the area this weekend for kids include:

Alice in Wonderland, which is being performed at the Theatre on Main, 25 S. Main St., Oconomowoc.

Sleeping Beauty, which is being performed at First Stage Children's Theater.

Behind the Scenes, Milwaukee County Zoo.

Happy Birthday Dr. Seuss, Milwaukee Public Library, Center St., Capitol Dr., and Mill Rd. locations.

Saturdays at Central, Milwaukee Public Library Central St.

Story Time, Menomonee Falls Public Library.

Have a great weekend!

We have no phone service at home, and no DSL either. No one ever calls us, but my iPod desperately needs to sync up with the mother ship — that’d be iTunes. Oh, and I’ve kinda gotta get back to my Scrabulous game on Facebook too.

Do you remember when I wrote this:

The only access I have to my backyard from my house is my sliding glass doors. I have no idea why I don’t have a back door, or a door to the yard from the garage. My best guess is that the guy who built this house thought it would be too much of a security issue. Yes. Right here in Menomonee Falls. I can’t understand it either. All I know is that my house is wired up the wazoo for just about everything. I’ve got a security system, overhead sprinklers in the hallways, motion detectors, and my phone lines are located in the house – you know just in case my life turned into a suspense thriller movie and I dunno, the bad guy came and cut my phone lines. Now you know that you have to invite yourself into my basement to cut my phone lines. Good luck with that. Have you seen my Boxer?

And now I’m wondering, did someone sneak into my house and tamper with my phone lines while I was escorting my daughter onto the school bus yesterday morning? Or, did AT&T decide to cut me off?

(Cross posted @ Thoughts Outside My Head)

There were plenty of shells on the beach in Riviera Maya, most of them had occupants in them though. My husband picked a few very very small ones to bring back to Zoe. He put them on the countertop in the bathroom, and a couple of them got up and moved. Oops. Those he had to take back to where he got them from.

Here’s a few pictures of a hermit crab that he followed. As well as one of the many lizards that lived at the resort. Sometimes I’d forget about the lizards and then they’d scare the crap out of me when they’d scurry past me on my walks.

There were signs in front of our villa that said there were Howler Monkeys living in the brush. I never saw one, but I looked.

Here is the beach. We spent our first morning here, mostly snorkling. I saw a lot of fish, and got the bejeezus scared out of me with a sea urchin in some coral I was about to float over. You’d have thought Jaws was coming up on me with all the flailing I was doing.

My husband came across this crab, isn’t he cute? 

Do you remember the bridges I wrote about? This is what they looked like, you had to walk up and down them to get anywhere.

That’s all for now! Have a great weekend!