1. The 30-Day Challenge. My husband has recently become obsessed with Morgan Spurlock and his 30 Days television show, and he has been issuing himself 30-day challenges. Today he wraps up his challenge to go without soda and without biting his nails for 30 days. He’s teaching himself discipline in all areas of his life 30 days at a time. The challenge that begins tomorrow and that has also been issued to me is to spend 30 days engrossed in God’s Word with the goal of reading the Bible in its entirety in 30 days. This equates to about 40 chapters of Bible reading every day. I, too, could use some additional spiritual discipline in my life, and I am going to spend my days reading the Bible and meeting my self-assigned quota of journal pages every day. Needless to say, this challenge requires me to sacrifice much of what I enjoy doing in my free time, and writing for A Fool of Myself is a logical time-spender to sacrifice during this time.
2. The New Business. Chris and I have started freelancing again, and this time we are serious about making this venture stick for the long term. So we’re pursuing print design, web design, and blogging clients, and as money comes in, we’re legalizing the business one federal or state form at a time. Much of our evenings are spent working on our own collateral or on client projects, so blogging naturally takes a bit of a back burner. It’s simple math really: I can make money working on the business or not make money blogging.
3. The Training. I haven’t talked much about it recently, but I’ve started running again with the hope of doing a longer race in November. Training for this race starts next week. I’m hesitant to use the word marathon because I’ve said I’m training for a marathon a million times before on this blog, and I’ve not yet had the discipline to stick it out. So I’m saying that I’m running to prepare for a longer race this fall. After July is over and I’ve stuck with the training plan for a month, I’ll have a better idea of whether I want to do a full or half marathon.
4. The Miscellany. In addition to all the above activities, I am throwing a baby shower next month and helping with a wedding shower. I have at least one crochet project/gift to finish, possibly another small one. At work, I’m working to unroll an online membership database that will allow LPC’s people to login, update their information, register for events, check their giving records, etc., and all that requires a lot of thinking. And I have a family reunion. And there’s a ton of yard work we need to do that has to be done during the hottest six weeks of the year.

All this to say that I think it’s wise for me to sacrifice some television and blogging and a bit of Twitter this month to focus on a few other things that are of great importance to me and my family. I’ll still be maintaining SGFblogs.com and planning a July meetup, and I’ll still be on my Twitter account and Facebook because part of my work depends upon those social outlets, but I’ll just not be hanging out here. For that reason, comments will be closed come tomorrow, too. I’m also declaring Google Reader bankruptcy and will not be checking RSS feeds, which means no Twittering on bloggers_guide or tweeples_guide and very few comments on your all’s blogs.

Chris and I could definitely use your prayers during the next several weeks. Thanks for being faithful readers and thanks for understanding! Talk to you in August!

I scoured the Internet looking for a solution, but I couldn’t find anything that was both attractive and utilitarian. I wanted to be able to see all of my collection in case I was looking for a particular color, but Chris wanted something that was contained, ideally behind a door or in a box somewhere. Neither of us wanted the spare bedroom to become the “craft room.”

Thankfully, my incredible, awesome husband realized that I would not rest until my yarn was organized, and he remembered that we needed a closet system for that room anyway, so he and I picked out a system at Lowe’s that would both hold all my yarn and many cables and electronics we need access to. Plus, there’s three rods to hang clothes on, so this closet has now become home to my wedding dress and Chris’s kilt. (Don’t ask.) And there’s room to spare, so when a guest comes, they’ll have a place to hang their clothes. Here’s the pic:

Drawers on bottom for cords and specialty yarns. Skeins of sport-weight yarn on top. Smaller balls of yarn hanging in a shoe bag. Don’t you just love the rainbow?

Me, too. Which is why I promptly started what Chris has christened the Fiest-Afghan. Here are the pieces laid out:

So it’s a little bright, but it used up a lot of the bits and pieces I had floating around, and once finished, it will use up an entire skein of navy blue yarn. Each of the above squares will get a navy blue round and the entire afghan will get a navy blue border. And it already has a home. My pal Lyndsey is going to get it! Yea!

I have some more projects in my queue. Two crobots. One for Sarah. One for Another Chris. Baby afghan for my upcoming niece Livie Jo. (Have I told you how excited I am about this kid?) Then we’ll see what happens. I have at least six skeins of camoflage yarn to use for something. Anyone know any hunters who need a sweater?

A problem arose. Turns out, I’m too cheap and too calorie conscious to let myself grab a coffee at McDonald’s every morning, but I don’t have a coffee pot at home either. So I’ve been making due with what I do have: a counter-top espresso machine and loads of Torani syrup.

And so I thought I might share with you all my iced cappuccino recipe today.

Awesome Iced Cappuccino

Makes one 16 oz. beverage.

Ingredients

• Ice
• 2-3 oz. espresso OR 8 oz. coffee*
• 1-2 oz. Torani syrup** of your choice***
• Skim milk

Instructions

1. Measure and pour Torani syrup into a 16 oz. glass or container.
2. Fill your glass with ice. If you’re using hot espresso or coffee, fill the container to the very top. If you’re using chilled espresso or coffee, fill 3/4 with ice.
3. Measure and pour espresso or coffee into the same 16 oz. glass. If you’re using hot espresso/coffee, it’s OK if the ice melts.
4. Top off your glass with skim milk.
5. Stir and enjoy.

And that’s it! If you’ve made the espresso or coffee ahead of time, it only takes 3-4 minutes to put together, which is another reason why I like making it. A hot cappuccino on my machine would take me 15 minutes to make every morning. Plus, my recipe is made with skim milk and McDonald’s is made with cream, so I’m saving in the fat and calorie departments. Yes, Torani syrup is a bit high in calories since it’s pure cane sugar, but the company also makes sugar-free varieties if you’re into that sort of thing. And you can forgo the syrup all together if you like.

* My espresso machine makes up to four servings of espresso at a time, so I save leftover espresso for the next morning and use it chilled.

** I’m a syrup snob; therefore, I prefer Torani syrup. In my area, you can find it at Price Cutter, coffee shops, and boutique kitchen stores.

*** My favorite flavors are almond roca, hazelnut, Irish cream, and coconut. You could even get fancy and combine flavors. My favorite combos are almond roca/coconut, Irish cream/hazelnut, and vanilla/caramel.

But I’m trying to turn over a new leaf this summer, and I’m embracing the warmth. Here are the top ten things I love about summer:

1. Homemade ice cream
2. Independence Day
3. My birthday (August 20)
4. Flip flops
5. Tank tops
6. Driving around town with my windows down and radio up
7. How green the grass is right after it rains
8. (Slightly) slower days at work
9. Sonic slushes
10. The smell of freshly-laid asphalt

OK, back to you. What do you love about summer?

Tomorrow is my first speedwork class, which is likely to include a lesson on vomiting. My goals are to 1) Wake up and get to class at 5:45 AM, 2) Run all assignments, even if I’m getting smoked by others, and 3) Adequately cool down and stretch before driving home. I’m a little concerned that this class might be too much too soon, but I know I can’t make it to next Thursday’s class, so I’ll have two weeks to recover from this hard workout. And Other Sarah and I have already decided that Friday’s run will be easy, so we can work the kinks out of our legs.

My body is slowing remembering that we used to run like this all the time. My abs are like, “Oh, you haven’t used us like that in a while.” And my hamstrings are saying, “We’re a little tight from sitting in that office chair all day long. Don’t forget to stretch us!” So I’m remembering what it means to be a good, healthy runner. Trying to stretch every day. Going to do some ab work and strength training once I get a few more weeks under my belt. Eating the prescribed calories before and after workouts. Drinking water. Sleeping.

It’s funny, after only three days of behaving like a runner and actually running, I already feel like a runner again. And it always surprises me how a little bit of hard, physical work wipes away much of my body-related anxieties/perceptions/unhappiness. I love that.

8 Things To Which I Am Looking Forward

1. 5/22: The first day of my 10-day vacation.
2. 5/28: The second annual Ladies Trail Ride with my mom, aunt, and horses.
3. 6/6: The day both sisters-in-law arrive in Nixa with their hubbies and kiddos.
4. 6/10: My four-year wedding anniversary.
5. 7/15: The release of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.
6. 9/9ish: The arrival of my brother’s first-born Livie Jo.
7. 9/10: The return of Linden.
8. 9/12: The opening leg of U2’s American tour at Soldier Field in Chicago.

8 Things I Did Yesterday

1. Woke up at 5:25 AM
2. Ran three miles
3. Made a rather disgusting batch of iced coffee
4. Watched a biography on Cameron Diaz
5. Ate lunch with my pal Heather and her kiddo Noah
6. Celebrated my mother-in-law’s birthday
7. Began reading Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
8. Went to bed at 10:15 PM

8 Things I’d Like to Do

1. Run four days a week (in the mornings) all summer long
2. Spend my vacation on a beach reading
3. Find two solid-wood chests of drawers to refinish this summer
4. Run a marathon
5. Buy the perfect pair of blue jeans
6. Make ice cream
7. Find uses for the three tubs of yarn I’ve recently been given
8. Go bungee jumping again

8 Shows I Watch

1. Dancing with the Stars
2. So You Think You Can Dance
3. The Office
4. CSI
5. Grey’s Anatomy
6. Private Practice
7. Cupid
8. Castle

8 People I Tag (and People Whose Blogs You Should Read)

1. The Other Sarah
2. Teresa
3. Betsy
4. Jen
5. Another Chris
6. Sabre
7. Jason
8. Linden, of course

On Saturday, we trekked to Overland Park, Kansas, for our oldest nephew Cameron’s senior piano recital and high school graduation. He is one talented kid, and he tackled some pretty difficult music. I can’t wait to see what God has in store for him! Got to spend a little bit of time with the rest of the family. Not nearly enough time for all five kids, but they’ll be in town in two weeks to hang with the whole crew: Schmutzler clan (2 adults, 5 kids), Bryson clan (2 adults, 3 kids), and Austin clan (2 adults, 2 cats). And Chris’s parents. And Chris’s grandparents. That will be a crazy weekend, but hopefully there will be some time to do some spoilin’. I LOVE being an aunt!

Sunday. Lots of meetings. But we got to hear my friend Heather’s testimony. I’ve read it a million times because she’s written a book, and I’ve done some editing on it, but it was so different hearing it in person.

Today. Ran 2.93 miles with Sarah at 6 AM. If I am going to get any running in this summer, it’s got to be in the mornings. I am forcing myself to wake up early with the promise of coffee. I don’t want to jinx myself by saying that if this goes well, it could be called pre-marathon training, so let’s just say that if this goes well and I stick to it, I might be doing a long-distance race this fall. (!!!) We are meeting at Crossfit on Monday, Wednesday, and Fridays, so we can hit the road right after her class, and we’ll be running 30-40 minutes. On Thursdays, we’re meeting at a local track to do a speed class. I’m sure I’ll have a vomiting story on Thursday for you.

Lunch with Heather. Dinner at Chris’s grandparents’ house for a birthday dinner for his mom. We’ll either play cards or watch the Dancing with the Stars finale.

And really the rest of the week is easy peasy. Well, I have to do everything twice this week because I’m off ALL NEXT WEEK, so that could get a teensy weensy hectic, but it’s nothing terrible. And my boss leaves town on Thursday for a 10-day trip to Europe, so there’s the possibility I might get hit with a handful of extra tasks before he leaves. But it will be worth it for one week of freedom, sweet freedom!

Status Updates via TweetDeck

First off, the Status Update. For a long time, I sent everything I posted to Twitter to my Facebook status. Yes, there’s an app for that. Turns out, my Facebook friends are not the same audience as my Twitter friends, so I turned off that function because I was annoying them and myself. But I was still too lazy to login to Facebook to make status updates. Then TweetDeck released a new version of itself, which included Facebook status functionality and allowed me to send tweets to Twitter, Facebook, or both.

At the same time, TweetDeck will also collect the Facebook status updates from my friends and put them in their own TweetDeck column. Now I have a running feed of what my friends are saying on Facebook. I am so lazy.

Notes via RSS Feed

Some people choose to use their Facebook Notes like a blog, and aside for feeling sorry for them for not having real blogs, I don’t have a ton of time to read through all their memes about high school and their kids. But I still feel compelled to do something with those notes. After all, something might be interesting once in a blue moon. Facebook creates an RSS feed of my friends’ notes, so I read those notes in Google Reader. While Facebook’s RSS generator does a lousy job of maintaining any semblance of formatting Notes allows, I get an general idea of what’s going on in the note, and if I need formatting, I can go back to Facebook for it.

Essential Email Notifications

Some notifications on Facebook are essential to know about pronto. I’m thinking Message notifications and Wall postings primarily, but I also want to know if I’ve been tagged in a note, photo, or video or if someone has commented on anything of mine. Facebook emails me every time something of this sort happens on my profile, and those emails go in a tidy little folder in Gmail, so they don’t clutter up my inbox. The important thing is that these notifications are sent to me; I don’t have to fetch them by logging in. If they require action, I can login at my leisure.

I find some notifications that Facebook offers pesky and choose not to receive notification of them because the information they provide does not warrant immediate action. For example, being invited to a group. That can wait. Being invited to an event. I’m antisocial and not in college, so that can wait. Being added as someone’s friend. That can wait. (Because if we’re not already friends on Facebook, well, you get the picture…)

My Self-Declared Best Practices

I follow a few self-declared best practices to keep my Facebook time to a minimum. For one, I rarely add applications. The ones I do add usually have some function that allows me to do something in Facebook automatically. The others are silly and a waste of time, and I block them. I also rarely chat on Facebook. I rarely chat period. I actually am not a fan of chatting unless you’re a really close friend. And when I can, I try to move Message conversations into email. (Seriously, I really hate the Message function in Facebook. Let’s face it, those are essentially emails, and emails belong in my Gmail Inbox. Period.)

My One Facebook Vice

Now, the one thing I have no qualms about logging in to Facebook for is posting photos. I have no problem logging in to post my photos on Facebook. I do have a problem logging in to look at photos on Facebook because I can waste so much time looking at pictures. And then when I don’t look at them, I miss some good ones, and that sucks. Unfortunately, there is no good way to be notified of those automatically.

I hope you understand that I’m not anti-Facebook. I’m just a firm believer that information should come to me and that I shouldn’t have to check Facebook every other second to see if someone did something new. Maybe I’m a little bit lazy, but that’s fine with me, darn it.

So am I wrong? Is there something inherently awesome in Facebook that I must be logged in 24/7? Or are you just like me, logging in only for the bare Facebook essentials? Tell me!

Saturday. Wheel of Fortune auditions in Branson with old friend Jenn. Lunch at Danna’s BBQ. Dinner at Ruby Tuesday. Surprisingly, Nixa traffic was more crazy than Branson’s. That’s saying something.

Sunday. Awesome group of kiddo’s in KidLife. Going to miss them. I’ve stepped down from teaching next year. It’s the right choice even though I’m just getting into the groove of teaching 1st- and 2nd-graders.

Monday. Social Media Think Tank meeting in Springfield. Love meeting other social media junkies. Seriously, the way we all introduced ourselves (Hi, I’m Sarah. I’m addicted to Twitter.), you’d think we were at a social media anonymous group. Can’t wait to see what comes of this group. Tonight: dinner with hubby’s extended fam. Lots of canasta and incredible food.

Tuesday. Normal day. Springfield blogger’s meeting. Several have RSVPed. I love meeting new bloggers.

Wednesday. Hair cut. Bangs are crazy thick right now.

Thursday. Absolutely nothing, unless Other Sarah decides to go running after work.

Friday. Bro’s graduation. Praise Jesus!

Saturday. Nephew’s graduation. Can’t wait to give him his ninja crobot.

Sunday. Busy night of meetings at LifePoint.

I could continue, but you get the picture. May is crazy. And June is shaping up to be as well. Thankfully, I’ve had the foresight to take off the entire week of Memorial Day. Yes!

*Forgive my lack of linking. I’m in a hurry.

We walked into the restaurant around 5:30 and a host promptly escorted us to a previously-reserved table. Unless you arrive early, reservations are encouraged at Fedora; this little place has become quite the night-life spot in downtown Springfield, and the bar and tables fill up early and are full throughout the evening. We were seated in the front of the building, so we had plenty of light, but the farther back into the restaurant you go, the darker it gets. I didn’t get a chance to scope out the decor in detail, but the depths of the restaurant really feel like a classy lounge (from what I could tell to and fro the restroom).

We started with the Siciliano fondue ($12), a blend of mozzarella, Gruyere, and Havarti cheeses, melted with marinara sauce and Tuscan seasoning, served with pita bread and pepperoni. Imagine fondue pizza, and you’ll be right on target. Our server brought our fondue pot and “dippables” straight to our table, lit the fuel, and instructed us to stir every little bit until the cheese melted. She checked on us regularly to make sure the fondue was melting properly. Once we’d eaten through our pita bread and pepperoni, she took away our pot, but promised to come back with our entree soon.

Chris and I chose to split an entree fondue, so we could have dessert, and we chose Shrimp Scampi ($15) cooked in a mix of butter and garlic and dipped in a spicy seafood sauce or a tarragon caper remoulade. Again, our server lit the fondue pot at the table, and we had to wait for the broth to warm up before cooking our shrimp. It took longer than we wanted, for the Siciliano had certainly appetized us, and we were still hungry, but the shrimp was worth the wait. Nothing special about the shrimp, per se, but butter-garlic broth and sauces made the shrimp really yummy.

We still had room in our bellies for some dessert, and our server enticed us with a new fondue that hadn’t made it to the menu yet: Snickers Fondue ($12)! That’s right, chocolate fondue with bits and pieces of Snickers candy bar mixed in. Yum-O! This fondue came with marshmallows, graham crackers, and pretzels, but they weren’t enough! We ate all of them, and there was still chocolate left. I wanted to lick it straight out of the bowl!

Having never “done fondue right,” I was really pleased with Fedora’s range of fondue options and the quality of food we received. I was really pleased with our service, too. Our server was very attentive to us and the table-top fires, making sure that our fondue pots weren’t too hot but that our food was melting correctly and giving us explicit instructions that we were not to blow out the fires on our own. For the bachelor party, the guys brought in a group of 12, and they were well taken care of. (And they continue to rave about the steak fondue.) If you’re looking for a place to take your special someone or if you’re a pyromaniac or if you need to feed a group, you must give Fedora Social House a try. (Just make reservations in advance!)

Fedora Social House is located on 300 Park Central East in Springfield and can be found online at www.fedorasocialhouse.com.