Whole Body Cleanse, Day 0

I decided to try Whole Body Cleanse's two-week program. It's about $20, and you can get a $5 off coupon on their website. I'm not sure what I'm expecting out of it, but I thought I'd blog about how it goes. if it's not too gross. at least Amanda will find it interesting.

So everyday for the first week, I will take:
Morning: 4 Fiber Fusion UltraCaps
Bedtime: 4 Fiber Fusion UltraCaps, 3 Laxative tablets, and 1 Super Milk Thistle UltraCap.

the second week is slightly different--less laxatives, more Super Milk Thistle (let's call it SMT). the SMT is to cleanse the liver and gall bladder, and it "helps eliminate the toxins and excretory matter which gets loosened up by the Laxative Formula and absorbed by the Fiber Fusion." Fun! it also has artichoke extract, licorice, and dandelion! the Laxative Formula contains magnesium hydroxide, slippery elm bark (to support healthy intestinal mucous), and marshmallow root. the Fiber Fusion contains "all-natural fibers and herbs" and pectin from citrus fruit and psyllium husk. Apparently, "cleansing without fiber isn't pleasant." Toxins bind to the fiber and are excreted from your body, instead of being absorbed back into your bloodstream. cool!

Here's what I find most amusing about the little booklet i'm getting all this info from: pretty much every sentence ends with an asterisk to a footnote that says (in tiny font): "this statement has not been evaluated by the FDA. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease." True, i don't expect it to. I'm kinda glad the Enzymatic Therapies company hasn't bothered the FDA with their product, so the FDA can focus its limited resources on MY company's products.

Here are some helpful cleaning tips:
-drink lots of water (duh)
-avoid eating highly processed foods, sugar, refined flour, artificial sweeteners, caffeine, alcohol...
-limit your intake of beef, pork, sausage, bacon, shellfish, soy products, peanuts, oil, margarine, shortening...
-eat less dairy and wheat products.
So basically i can eat chicken, fruits, and vegetables? and maybe not as much fiber as i usually eat, since i get to take 8 fiber pills a day!

Tomorrow is day 1, so we'll see how it goes!

Pottery, Part 2: the Reveal!

When painting with the glaze, everything looks pastely, so you're never sure how the final product is going to turn out! Fortunately, all of ours turned out great!
My vase:
I intentionally only did one coat on the inside, and on the outside I probably should have done another coat to get it more solid and less streaky, but once the glaze dried, it was hard to tell where I'd done 3 coats already!
Matt's stein:
with the sponge-paint technique.
Laura's bowl:
Amanda B and her bowl, turned out great!:
She sponged the inside:
Action shot! Amanda K's reaction to her bowl:
Bottom:
She did very good with the tape.
I didn't pick up Rhi and Lisa's, so here are the pictures Lisa took and posted on facebook:
Rhi's bowl (i think it came with chopsticks, but those were not glazed):
The inside of Lisa's platter:
It took her a LONG time to do the yellow background, and then the detail on the stenciled fruits, cake, and coffee cup. I'm sure her SIL will love it!

Crafting with others: Pottery, part 1

This month's group non-work crafting event was hosted by the fabulous Amanda B! She is a fan of painting pottery, and a while ago there was a Groupon for Kiln Kreations in Woodbury, so it was meant to be! Other attendees were Rhi, Lisa, Amanda K, Laura, and Matt. Here are action-shots of the hours of painting our masterpieces required.
Rhi and her chopsticks bowl. she did the "wax paper" technique to create very cool-looking dots.
First you put some glaze on wax paper, then lay it over the piece...
Then take it off! voila! art.
Lisa and the platter she designed to match her sister-in-law's kitchen. this is just the first layer of art! there was more!
Amanda B and her beautiful bowl, coming soon to a summer party near you, probably filled with homemade guac.

the marrieds: Matt looks SO excited to be there. but he was. he wouldn't have come if he wasn't into it. right? Laura worked very hard on her polka-dotted bowl.
Matt did a solid background on his stein, then sponged different colors on top of it.
Amanda K made sure to do at least 3 layers to get very solid colors on her bowl.
Here I am with my wavy vase. behind me you can see part of the wall of unfinished pieces we could choose from.
I painted the background a solid lavender, then used the "writers tips" bottles in 4 colors to created pointilism flowers. such an artist! this is the best thing i could think of that didn't require free-hand painting. that never ends well.

After the crafting was kinda the best part of the day...classy tailgating! Amanda brought snacks for us to enjoy while we painted, but then we were told we couldn't have food in the main room! just the rentable group room. :( so we all had a fresca at the table then moved the party to the parking lot!
we had to eat all the guac and cheese to see the designs that amanda painted on ceramics in the past! it was a fun challenge.

I will post pictures of the final fired pieces tomorrow! I bet you can't wait!

Gardening

New season, new things to grow! Here's what I've got cooking.

Mom brought some pots from home and i used one to make a pretty arrangement for the front path. I don't remember what's what, but as you can see, i am going for a purple and pink theme.

Instead of putting a pot of flowers in this spot, i moved the rock back and put some fresh dirt in the old sandy stuff and a variety of flowers.

i put the extra flowers in a hanging pot, which i have no place to hang!

In the back... i put in a lot of seeds, so i'm letting everything grow. not sure if any are weeds! the pink flowers are a geranium i got for my birthday (from Karyn, i think. or whoever else brought a flower, i forget. sorry friend, but i love it!).
can you see the gnome in the middle, hiding amongst the lilies?
i put in white and red lilies last fall, so hopefully i have a wide variety of colors. so that's what's happening at my house! more pictures to come as things bloom!