May 10th, 2008

I need your help, folks! As many of you know, I've had over a dozen photos showcased on national Jones Soda labels over the past few years. My oldest daughter, Sabrina, has been on about 6 or 7 now (I'm beginning to lose track!). Her sister, Juliana, has never had her photo selected.

Jones Soda is coming up on their 10,000th label, so they decided to run a contest. People submitted photos, and after wading through 3,889 entries, they selected their top 20 favorites for people to vote on. Juliana is in the top 20! The bonus is that even if she doesn't win the coveted 10,000th label... they will be printing the picture for a national label run. Unbeknownst to Jones, they gave Juliana an early Birthday present. She turns 4 next Wednesday. So... if you would please, click on her black and white picture there, and go vote for her! If you would like to forward that on to all your family and friends, and have them vote too, that would be awesome! Thanks!

March 28th, 2008

Get Healthy Mission: Week 5 update

We've cut out 95% of the sugars from our snacks and meals. We use Splenda as our sweetener alternative when needed. We eat whole grain breads... and keep an eye out that they don't include high fructose corn syrup. Watch out, because a lot of breads do! Once a week we allow ourselves a "regular" treat. I'm eating a lot more oatmeal, and if I feel the desire for sweetener, I use the Splenda brown sugar alternative. We are all drinking a lot of water. I tend to gravitate towards the 0cal Aquafina Flavorsplash waters. If I want to drink just plain water, I stick with steamed, distilled water. Steamed tastes so much better to me than spring water.

I've lost about 14lbs! My clothes fit a lot looser on me. I've hit a weight milestone that I haven't been at in over 6 years. Can't wait to get down to the next dress size!

March 24th, 2008

I'll be selling some of my craft supplies on eBay. Check for listings by "the_magic_forest" to see what's available!

March 5th, 2008

For those of you that can watch the Food Network, tune in to reruns of an episode of Unwrapped entitled "Fizzy". The first segment discusses Jones Soda and their carbonated candies... and if you look closely at the Jones bottles that they repeatedly display, you might just spot my daughter Sabrina on a bottle of Berry Lemonade!

Thanks to Herb Woerpol and the Northwest Advance for featuring me in an article in this week's paper!

February 20th, 2008

As part of our Get Healthy mission, I've made the decision to quit drinking soda. For years diet soda has been a part of my daily routine. I thought it was OK. After all, it said diet, right?

A doctor recently told me that carbonation in drinks, diet or not, will leach the minerals from your bones. That leads me to think that carbonation could be a contributing factor to osteoporosis... and considering I've got close family members suffering from the disease, it's best just to get it out of my life all together.

On top of that, I've been reading health reports about the sweeteners used in diet soda. Apparently, they slow our metabolism and thus make it more difficult to lose weight. How is that diet?!

That same doctor told me that the best alternative sweetener to sugar is Splenda. Unlike Nutrasweet, which is only a compound with a sweet flavor, Splenda is actually sugar that has been modified to turn off the element which makes the sugar absorb into our bodies.

You can't bake with Nutrasweet. The heat will nullify the sweetness. You can bake with Splenda. This is a good thing. My daughters were on the verge of tears thinking they'd never be able to have a cookie or a piece of cake again. Even with Splenda, I told them it's only in moderation, and only on special occasions.

So... it's now day three without any diet soda. I've got a caffeine withdrawl headache like you wouldn't believe. Can't wait for this part to be over!

February 17th, 2008

We're on a mission here at the Tiensivu household. It's time to get into shape! After all, summer isn't too far away... and I don't know about the rest of you Michiganders, but I am SO ready for it. Enough with all this snow!

The two things we are working on are, of course, diet and exercise.

I am definitely not the world's greatest cook. There aren't that many dishes that I can prepare. We're all very sick of pot roast at this point!

Every once in a great while I'll throw something together that turns out tasty. Tonight was such a night. You will find a link at the bottom of this page that will lead to my (good!) recipes.

As for the exercise... We're doing 60 minutes every day of crazy free range dancing to a selection of upbeat songs. We'll work on a more structured exercise program over the next few weeks.

February 13th, 2008

Just a note on email... Not sure who it was, but someone tried to send me a 21GB email this past week. Yes folks, 21 Gigabytes, not Megabytes. My husband said it probably took the sender a week just to get it processed from the mail servers on their side.

There is no way I could have ever downloaded it. Not only did the message disrupted my mail service, but every other email account hosted on the same server as mine. It was deleted before I even got a chance to see it, and I don't even know who it was from. So to whomever sent it... try sending me a text only message next time. If you have to attach a photo to your email, please make sure it is under 1MB! Thanks!

February 1st, 2008

I am pleased to announce that I am able to attend my first ever creative workshop. Of all the classes I could have come across, I could not be more excited about this one.

In late April I will be learning more about sculpture from none other than Wendy Froud. If you are unfamiliar with Wendy or her work, you are in for a treat. She created puppets for two of my favorite childhood films; The Dark Crystal and Labyrinth. In fact, her then-infant son played Toby in Labyrinth! You might have heard of her most famous work... the little green creature she sculpted for The Empire Strike's Back; Yoda.

Needless to say, I am really looking forward to this event!

January 30th, 2008

Newest Portrait:

Once again I decided to play around with photoshop, dreamweaver and flash to make a new site layout. For as much as I enjoyed creating and displaying a pure flash site, I realized that the web crawlers weren't able to pick up my content. It was back to the drawing board for me. I decided to go with a simple/neutral color scheme this time in hopes that the site wouldn't be a distraction for visitors viewing my other creative works.