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By Aimee, July 24, 2010

It’s a three day weekend here thanks to a state holiday! So, this means it’s a perfect time to work on “Project Basement”! With hubby home from work, and access to the truck, we can finally clear out the basement. Over the years it had become quiet the dumping ground for all homeless and unusable items in the house. That’s not what we wanted for our basement! We wanted it to be a great workout room.

In a dream world, we would be finishing the basement. However, since our budget is zero, we can’t hire an electrician to wire the basement. We’ll make something good happen though, even if we have to leave it unfinished! Here is the horrid before, where you can see just how packed full of “stuff” our poor basement had become. What is it about unfinished basements and their amazing stuff magnet powers?

It also turns out that it’s a hard room to photograph well. You can see that we have shelves for storage, and there is a work bench that was also here when we moved in. We might remove the shelves and put things on the other side of the basement (there is a second room, also unfinished), so we can gain the extra 3 feet that the shelves take up. Of course, that would mean dealing with all the stored items in those shelves too, which after spending all day clearing out the main part of the room, doesn’t sound all the appealing.

Today will bring a run to the thrift shop to donate all the things we are letting go of. And hopefully not much more than that since today is a holiday and we will be spending time with family and lighting fireworks. More photos to come though!

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By Aimee, July 24, 2010

Number 43 on my 101 list says “Cook two recipes from each of our cookbooks and blog about it”. Anyone want to venture a guess at how many cookbooks I have? Honestly, I don’t even know. It’s a lot though. So, the first recipes comes from the book Hungry Girl: 200 Under 200: 200 Recipes Under 200 Calories.

We have been trying to be a lot healthier all around, but every so often a person still needs something sweet! I thought it would be a perfect time to try this low calorie “shake”. We even ate it outside, which helped beat the heat. The recipe is called the HG’s Chocolate Chip Cookie Crisp Puddin’ Shake, and you can find the recipe by clicking that link if you want to make your own. However, the recipe in the book is different from the site in that the chocolate almond breeze isn’t listed in the book. It’s just listed as chocolate soy milk.

It was interesting. I really wasn’t sure what to expect, especially since I hadn’t eaten Cookie Crisp cereal before. The “shake” doesn’t really have the texture of a milk shake, but it was still yummy. The one tip I have is to blend it really well, and to make the individual servings. I made a double batch, which seemed easier, but it didn’t blend as well so my portion was a lot thicker and more cereal flavored than Heath’s was.

Not a bad way to have something sweet while not loading up on calories though!