January 2016 Favorites & Life Updates

One of my goals for this blog for 2016 is to post a monthly favoriteโ€™s update. I follow a lot of youtubers who post their monthly favorites and I thought it would be neat to do the same in blog form. Most monthโ€™s I get a lot of new products from my other blog (Emily Reviews) and while I like most of them, only a few stand out as big favorites most of the time. Here we go!

Books:

January books

This month I finished reading The Witness Wore Red by Rebecca Musser . I like watching Sister Wives because the concept of polygamy is hard for me to wrap my mind around. I was very well aware that Sister Wives portrays a relatively healthy relationship while many polygamist groups donโ€™t believe in women having choice or really a voice at all. When people talk about unhealthy polygamy you often hear about the Warren Jeffs group. The Witness Wore Red is by a woman who grew up in that โ€œWarren Jeffs groupโ€ and she was married to Warrenโ€™s father, Rulon Jeffs, while she was barely an adult and he was in his 70s. When Rulon passed away on 2002 his son Warren became the group leader and they began allowing girls as young as 12 to marry among other awful things. Rebecca escaped the group to avoid being forced to marry Warren after her husband Rulon had passed away. When law enforcement discovered that underage marriage, teenage pregnancy and abuse were prevalent in the group and began to try to convict many of the men in their community Rebecca testified to help convict them. It was a really interesting read.

I started reading The Resurrection Of Johnny Cash. Johnny Cash is a really interesting figure to me because of how contradictory he seemed to be. It always makes me laugh how everyone on the political spectrum tries to โ€˜claimโ€™ him, but itโ€™s also not surprising because he has a lot of very liberal songs including anti-veitnam during the war, singing about convicts and sinners, while also having a lot of very patriotic songs, and while also being a strong Christian, singing many hymns and even being close friends with Billy Graham. The book discusses this odd mixture of feelings and beliefs that made up who Johnny was as a person while also discussing how he regained popularity in the 90s and onward after two decades of barely getting any records sold. Iโ€™m only about 1/4 way done right now but itโ€™s interesting so far. Iโ€™ve read a few other Johnny Cash books but none focused on the latter portion of his life.

Shows:

I havenโ€™t really been watching much TV. I have been trying to keep up with Teen Mom OG seems how it has a new season going on right now. I havenโ€™t watched the Catelynn & Tyler wedding special that was last Tuesday yet though. I want to try to save the shows Iโ€™m into to watch during exercise and I hurt my ankle last week and its STILL really sore so I havenโ€™t worked out since then or watched it. ๐Ÿ™

Clothes or accessories:

Kohls boots

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The first week of January we went shopping with Christmas money and gift cards and I got a pair of black boots at Kohlโ€™s that I canโ€™t find on their website. Theyโ€™re super cute and pretty comfortable for having a heel (I am awful about wearing heeled shoes) but I havenโ€™t been able to wear them because of my ankle.

Dailyshoes boots

After realizing that heeled boots can be comfortable I decided I wanted a brown pair too, so I was excited to get a pair of DailyShoes quilted boots in exchange for an amazon review. The sole is a bit more โ€˜chunkyโ€™ than I realized, so it sticks out from the boot which I donโ€™t really prefer but theyโ€™re super comfy and great as an everyday boot. It seems like most boots these days are black and I wear a lot of black leggings so I feel like brown is a shoe color I can wear more often.

Dog items:

Jacks premium boar earsjacks premium boar ear

The second pic is beansโ€™ boar ear after TWO chew sessions!

I got a 20 pack bag of Jacks premium free range boar pig ears for an Amazon review and they really impressed me. Iโ€™ve reviewed and purchased a LOT of different types of ear chews for my pugs in the past few years. Weโ€™ve done SO many brands of pig ears, plus lamb ears, cow ears and buffalo ears. These free range boar pig ears are HARD and thick so they last my pugs SO long. I gave them each one last night and they both chewed for over an hour when they gave up and the ears were still 99% unconsumed. Then after a few hours they both chewed on them some more. Frank finished his in that second setting but Beansโ€™ is still 80% still intact this morning! They smell TERRIBLE but they have easily lasted twice as long as any other ear chew weโ€™ve purchased so I plan to purchase them once we run out. They are $27 a bag when I usually am for a little under $1 per ear for a good deal but I think at a little over a dollar per ear itโ€™s worth it for how long they seem to last.

We switched dog food this month. I was paid for a blog post with a PetSmart gift card, I thought I would use it to buy Frontline Plus for the dogs because we use it year round but it was a lot more pricey than Amazon โ€“ I want to say it was around $50 when we pay around $33-35 on Amazon. I decided it would be a better use of the gift card to get something more reasonably priced so I was going to get dog food but they didnโ€™t have our regular brand (Diamond) so I bought Natureโ€™s Recipe easy digestion instead. It was about the same price as Diamond usually is (a little over $1 per pound) and I knew it had a 3.5 star rating from Dog Food Advisor which was the same as Diamond so I bought two bags to use up the gift card. We ran out of Diamond this month so we made the switch and the dogs had no stomach upset at all. It was the first time we had ever managed to switch dog foods without tummy trouble so that was pretty cool. Itโ€™s been a few weeks now and we havenโ€™t seen any changes in the dogs so it seems like itโ€™s working well.

Food/recipes:

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I think I only tried one new food combination this month and it really is just a food combination, not a recipe. I made apple cinnamon oatmeal and then mixed in a container of apple pie greek yogurt and warmed it all for just a few seconds to get it warm. I thought it was really good and have eaten it a few times that way when itโ€™s cold in the morning. Ryan says it smells awful.

Video games:ย 

Ryan got me Cook, Serve Delicious which I completed in a few weeks. I play similar cooking games on apps so it was nice to have one that was similar but didnโ€™t require me to sit around waiting for my lives to fill up.

January Accomplishments:

When we moved back in November I piled a lot of stuff in our garage that I wanted to sell. I was so busy with my holiday gift guide in November and December that I didnโ€™t get around to listing any of it until this month. I listed a lot of clothing from Ryan & I plus some random odds and ends of review items that I didnโ€™t end up using long term. I made a little over $100 so far in the Facebook groups. I have a lot of items piled up that I want to list on Ebay as well but I havenโ€™t gotten to that yet. Hopefully this month.

Health & weight loss:

Ryan hit 50 pounds lost on January 22nd! He is also now at a 29 BMI meaning heโ€™s no longer considered obese but is instead overweight according to his BMI.

I dropped under 120 yesterday for only the second time in my adult life. I had hit 119 right before we moved and then I had gained some back for a few weeks but itโ€™s back off. My starting weight was 135 so I am now down 15.5 pounds or so. I have a doctorโ€™s appointment this week and am curious to see how a doctors scale lines up with my at home scale. I am expecting it to be a couple pounds higher.

I increased my cardio length a lot this month (until I injured my ankle). I started off only doing about 15 minute of cardio and got up to 45 minutes when I got hurt. I need to get some really nice shoes so I can keep up the length of the cardio without risk to my ankles. I wish athletic shoes werenโ€™t so expensive. If nothing else, I am going to start jumping on a yoga mat so lessen the impact on my ankle.

Other Favorites:

I got a quick-dry yoga towel for review. Itโ€™s HUGE, itโ€™s almost as big as a throw blanket but itโ€™s super thin and soft. It absorbs really well and dries really quickly. I like using it to wrap up after a shower before getting dressed, itโ€™s so cozy.

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