Projects, and the Wii Fit Plus

I am super excited about... well... stuff! Take a look at the pictures below! I grabbed the last of the TSP I had sitting in my workshop and put it to good use. I plan to repaint (in black) the magazine rack and the planter (this week). The table and chairs took a LOT of work to get clean (and they have some paint on them, which I was unable to remove. I'm thinking of painting them a bunch of lively colors anyway eventually).

As for the cradle... it is an heirloom. I was just going to give it a good cleaning and then use it that way, but after cleaning it I noticed that there were paint spatters on it and holes drilled in the bottom (my mom-in-law used it for a planter for awhile, apparently), so I'm planning on having it stripped, re stained and re varnished. My mom volunteered to strip it for me. Apparently I'm not allowed to do so (which I don't mind. I wasn't going to use paint stripper, I was just going to sand the dickens out of the thing... which isn't as good, apparently). My mom has stripped antiques before, so I totally trust her. And it really needs to be refinished. It doesn't look as nice as I'm sure it did years ago... before it went into storage... but it looks a lot better than it did before I cleaned it!

As for the magazine rack... that probably made the water quite dirty by itself. See, it had large spots of... I'm guessing tar or something like it, on the top. It also needed to be tightened up. The thing would wobble a good six inches from side to side! I only paid $2 for it at a garage sale, so I'm totally fine with tightening a few screws.

And, because I'm weird that way, here are the two buckets of 'water' after the cleaning fiasco. The one on the right is the one with the TSP, and the one on the left is the 'rinse' water (to 'remove' the TSP). Doesn't that look appetising?

Eww... gross.

Exciting thing #2... my Wii Fit Plus workout routine! I've had on my list for a few weeks that I wish to exercise daily (weekdays anyway) on the Wii. Well, I have. And in approximately 30-35 minutes I generally burn the 120 calories I aim for.

Yesterday, I was having some fun.

I just went on for no reason (it wasn't one of my goal days, you see), and Baby M loves watching me play anyway (she will get on the balance board while I'm doing 'non board' exercises and mimic me. She will also go 'up and down' like the 'trainer' on the screen when I'm doing lunges or squats or something. She dances and everything). It didn't take long before I was past my 100 calorie mark. So, I set the goal higher... to a piece of yellow cake... 310 calories. I managed to exceed that one as well (after an hour and 13 minutes total). So, just because I was so close anyway, I decided to go for the '3oz of milk chocolate' calorie burn goal... 455 calories... the highest food goal on the game. I didn't think I'd ever find myself getting to that point again anyway, and really wanted to say I did it just once! We were going to watch a movie that evening, so I set my wii fit to the 30 minutes of 'free' jogging, and got it ready to do once I finished eating (in such a way that we could continue the movie uninterrupted... how can you tell I've owned this thing awhile?). I ended up burning a total of 490 calories that day!

I love how this game tracks calories and time like that! It really makes me feel like I've done something!

Anyway, I'm so psyched! I can hardly believe I did it! It took almost 2 hours of 'exercising' on this thing, but I did it! And to be honest... it will make me think twice before I go scarfing down 500 calories of non-nutritious goodness. Because after working out that long... it just doesn't taste as good.

That said... I still crave sugar. Maybe I'll try to stick to the healthier kinds... like fruit. (mmmm, apples, bananas, and pears, OH MY!)