DC Opportunity Scholarship Program

I love The Heritage Foundation, and Virginia Walden Ford, whom I have had the pleasure of meeting several times in her fight for the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program.

She recently blogged at Heritage and I hope you check it out.

In her honor, I created this pin. You can check out the first pin I ever made here.

I feel like a pinning genius, yo.

s'mores bars

I discovered these on Pinterest and they swiftly became my family's dessert of choice.

You need:

- 5 tbsp butter
- 1 12-oz package of mini marshmallows
- 6 cups Golden Grahams
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- chocolate chips.

Put the chocolate chips in the freezer (so they don't melt when you mix them into the rest of everything later).

Melt the butter and 4/5 of the marshmallows with the vanilla extract.

Pour the melted mixture into a bowl with the Golden Grahams, the leftover marshmallows, and the chocolate chips.

Stir, and transfer to a casserole dish.

Enjoy hot or cold.

getting healthy

Source: survivalofthefit-ness.tumblr.com via Emily on Pinterest

I'll say that being on Pinterest, and especially frequenting the fitness board, has really impacted my life so far this year. I get so much motivation from there.

Love it.

ready to change

The past year has been a very body-centric year for me. Between pregnancy and birth and nursing, I think that makes a lot of sense.

This year, I resolved to take control of my body. I've never been really overweight or anything, but I've never been fit either. I decided that this year, I'm going to be fit.

It's involved some changes. I've had to start changing mindsets. For example, the mindset of rewarding myself with food. If I have a hard day, I'm always tempted to go out for dinner. But I am coming to conclude that food is not the proper way to reward a person who lives in a country where obesity is prevalent.

Source: Uploaded by user via Allie on Pinterest

Another change is the mindset of working out. In high school I never worked out intentionally. In college I started running and I would go to the gym somewhat regularly, but not as regularly as I should have. After moving home I started doing nightly workouts with my girls Emily and Julie, but only until I got pregnant, and then I had to stop because I was so morning-sick all the time that I couldn't afford to expend any calories on exercise (I lost like 15 lbs during my first 6 months of pregnancy).

For the past three months I've been doing Insanity, and it's been a real paradigm shift to plan on doing those workouts once--and sometimes twice--a day every week. It was hard to plan on working out at first, but now it's harder not to plan that part of my day. Today I did a wimpy lame workout in the morning and now I'm kind of itching for something more intense.

I've been noticing what I eat more, and being more mindful of my dietary choices. I know that has made a big difference too.

I'll just add here that I have lost over 5 lbs in the month of January. The month isn't over yet and I wasn't really aiming to lose weight. I've been aiming to live more healthfully.

I'm ready to change.

Source: Uploaded by user via Allie on Pinterest