Whole Body Vibrations (WHAT?!)

 

 So I recently found out about this machine called the ProVibe. Have you ever heard of it? I first tried it at a local health food store, Gloria’s Good Health. Check out their page about the machine here. Then watch this video:

An excerpt from Gloria’s Good Health website:

“Movements performed on a Whole Body Vibration (WBV) oscillating platform have been shown to be four times more effective than equivalent exercises performed on a stationary surface.

Because the amplitude and intensity of the vibration can be controlled, WBV is intended for users of all types and all fitness levels.WBV activates an average of 97% of all muscle groups and produces up to 30 involuntary reflexes per second, all of which results in the burning of fat and the building of muscle.

There is no stress on the joints, ligaments or tendons compared to other resistance training. The result is more benefit in less time.”

I know that the response from many people is: “it is an excuse that you don’t have time to go to the gym.” But maybe that was your excuse in your lifestyle and priorities. I know me and my family life, and you know your own. That is pretty much the extent of how much anyone knows about another person’s “excuses”. For anyone curious enough, however, I don’t mind letting you in on how my days usually go:

Monday through Friday, I leave my house in the morning at 7:30 and once I am off work and pick up my daughter, we usually are not home until 6 p.m. That is on a night that we do not stop by the grocery store, visit with anyone, get gas or anything. Once we are home, we cook supper and spend time cleaning up and playing together with our daughter. A few nights a week we also do “preschool at home” type things. Then she needs a bath, teeth brushed, and bedtime story books. It is between 9:30-10 p.m. on a FLAWLESS night before she is finally asleep and snoring. Considering I am in grad school with homework; we mow our own lawn; and we occasionally like to have a social life and invite friends/family over for just an hour or two… It can be later than that before Trevor and I can sit down. Most nights I don’t even start my homework until 10 p.m. I’m also at the age and have enough demands on my life, that I sort of need a little bit of sleep. Otherwise mama begins to crash. So, yes, I have changed the way we eat (which is a major hurdle in fitness and weight loss), but my priorities and time are different than other peoples. I prefer time with my 3 year old over an hour in the gym. If that defines me as “making excuses”, I totally can respect your opinion; therefore, respect my opinion. 🙂

My point is, when I found out about Pro Vibe, and that 10 minutes on the machine is equivalent to an hour on the treadmill in the gym.. I was interested enough to check it out! It is a few miles from where I work, so I just drive over on my lunch hour.

I really enjoyed it! Not going to lie… it is weird and awkward at first, but now I just get on it without thinking twice! The second day I was on it, I used the straps you can pull tight to help tone your arms, and by the time I left work that evening my arms were sore! The soreness that you usually feel the next day after upper body workout in the gym.

Some stats from different days after my time on the machine:

313 Calories burned. Equivalent of running 6.26 Miles In Ten Minutes.

322 Calories burned. Equivalent of running 6.44 Miles. In Ten Minutes. (Distance/Calories vary because I vary my speeds)

There are so many benefits to using the machine. Here are a few of the benefits:

• improved bloodflow
• improved circulation
• increased flexibility
• reduces lower back pain
• improves bone density
• increases metabolism
• accelerates weight loss
• tones and strengthens muscles
• massages and relaxes muscles

 

 

I’ve noticed a difference in the firmness of my skin. I feel more energetic, too. Who wouldn’t be happy about that and want to share the excitement with everyone??! Do you have a local health food store? Call around and find a store that has this machine and just check it out!

You will not regret it. 🙂

 

Free Photo Book from Wedding Wire & Shutterfly




When we first got engaged I signed up over at WeddingWire so that I could have a little assistance with a checklist and little things to remember. It is actually a great site for the checklist and budget tool! I used a lot of personal vendors and a lot less national and big name vendors; therefore, I didn’t actually use it for vendor shopping. I did use it for hairstyle ideas and centerpiece ideas! So overall, I think it is a great website! Plus you can also create a custom wedding website for all of your guests to have access to if you would like. You can check ours out here.

I later was offered a free gift if I would review my vendors, even if I needed to add vendors to their list. I did, and ended up receiving a FREE PHOTO BOOK from Shutterfly. I already had an account and previous experience with Shutterfly and was excited! I recently ordered our free photo book using our engagement pictures so that we can have it on display on the guestbook table at the reception.

I definitely suggest checking out WeddingWire if you are in the process of wedding planning! Who knows what freebies you might be able to score! 😉

You can also view a digital version of the photo book we were given below:

Click here to view this photo book larger

Shutterfly offers exclusive photobook layouts so you can make your book just the way you want.

10 Summer Bucket List-Worthy Activities

About a week ago I stumbled across Project Light to Life and her post 10 Summer Bucket List-Worthy Activities. It is an amazing list of things to do for an enjoyable and memorable summer! A few of the activities I have already done previously or do often (like horseback riding, geocaching, hiking, and para-sailing), but this is a great place to start and it suggests some awesome ideas that I would have never thought of doing!

A few of the ones that I definitely want to do before the end of summer:

1. fruit picking
2. explore caves
3. start a “nice things jar”
4. wine tasting

I wouldn’t mind finding an indoor trampoline park to do sometime as well. How awesome would that be??

Do you have a summer activities bucket list??

Share some of those ideas with me!!

Things to Do North Alabama

It is Thursday and the weekend is in sight! Just hang in there. 😉 As you are looking forward to the weekend and the rest of summer, check out the list I have compiled below that includes many things to do across North and Central Alabama! I see day trip plans in our future!!

Things to Do – North Alabama!

AL Constitution Village – Huntsville, AL
Alabama Center of Military History & Veterans Memorial Museum – Huntsville, AL
Alabama Music Hall of Fame – Muscle Shoals, AL
Ave Maria Grotto – Cullman, AL
Barber Vintage Motorsports Museum, Birmingham, AL
Birmingham Zoo – Birmingham, AL
Blount County Covered Bridges – Blount County, AL
Carnegie Visual Arts Center – Decatur, AL
Cathedral Caverns – Woodville, AL
Cook’s Natural Science Museum – Decatur, AL (Check out our trip here.)
Coondog Cemetery – Tuscumbia, AL
Desoto Caverns – Childersburg, AL
Dismals Canyon – Phil Campbell, AL
Early Works Museum – Huntsville, AL
Guntersville Museum – Guntersville, AL
Hartselle Depot Days (September) – Hartselle, AL
Helen Keller Birth Place – Tuscumbia, AL
Historic Huntsville Depot – Huntsville, AL
Jesse Owens Museum – Oakville, AL
LaGrange College Site – Leighton, AL
Little River Canyon – Mentone, AL
Lookout Mountain – Fort Payne, AL
McWane Science Center – Birmingham, AL
Mentone Wedding Chapel – Mentone, AL
Mule Day (September) – Winfield, AL
Noccalula Falls Park – Gadsden, AL
North Alabama Agriplex – Cullman, AL
Oakville Indian Mounds – Oakville, AL
Pickwick Belle – Decatur, AL
Pond Spring (Gen. Joe Wheeler Home) – Courtland, AL
Rattle Snake Saloon and 7 Springs Lodge – Tuscumbia, AL
Rickwood Caverns – Warrior, AL
Ruffner Mountain – Birmingham, AL
Sci-Quest – Hunstville, AL
Splash Adventure Water Park – Bessemer, AL
Stevenson RR Depot Museum – Stevenson, AL
Tennessee Valley Old Time Fiddlers Convention (October) – Athens, AL

U.S. Space & Rocket Center – Huntsville, AL (Check out our recent visit with Girls Scouts here.)
Watermelon Festival (August) – Russelville, AL

Have you ever visited any of these?? Have some suggestions that I can add to the list?

Share them below!

I hope you all have a happy and safe holiday weekend!

Color Scheming for Photos

Hello Monday!!

I have recently found myself trying to plan a lot of picture outfits and wardrobes. I hate when everything is very  matchy-matching, and finally heard the perfect way to explain it a while back – Make sure you coordinate, not necessarily match. I thought, yes! That’s what I’ve been trying to say. Haha!

If you are like me, though, and find yourself not being a fashion guru or natural, you still need a little help every now and then. I found this graphic below and it is perfect to give an idea and assist when picking out clothes for a photo session. Just because you wear pink, does not mean he, she, the kids necessarily have to wear pink, too! Get that 1990s family portrait thinking out of your head! 😉

I appreciated having this graphic so much lately that I wanted to share it with you! Save it to your computer or phone and just pull it up next time.

Have a great week!!

My {Latest} Favorite Hobby – Kayaking

Trevor had recently took up kayaking with some friends when he has “guy time” and I was iffy about it. For some reason if you’ve never been kayaking, everyone wants to scare you with how easy it is to flip and alligators, etc. I got tempted and tried it out in his parent’s pond on Memorial Day weekend… it is NOT scary and I do not know why people love to freak others out about such a fun activity! You would think this was paddle boarding an ocean current or something! (I’ve never done that either, so it might actually be fun and easy. Just setting an example here.)

I paddled around for at least 30 minutes that day! When Trevor saw how much I loved it, he ended up getting himself a new blue kayak and giving me his yellow one. We got the chance to go for a couple of hours a few weekends ago, and I am in love! I have many hobbies that I mostly never have time to do often, but this is one that I definitely want us to commit to doing many times throughout the end of summer! (Summer weather doesn’t end here until like the end of October. 😉 )

We’ve only been to “New City Lake” here in out hometown, but I am ready to make a plan to Kayak all across North Alabama!! I think it would be boring to kayak the same location over and over. I want to find all of the little lakes and places that aren’t super popular. Like here, no one visits the city lake except for the locals. I want to find those places. I have already started researching!! 😀

I’m so thankful to be from Alabama the Beautiful!!

 

 

 

He fished, but I wasn’t up for that yet. I wanted to enjoy just kayaking for my first time.

 

Have Kayaking ideas that are in North/Central Alabama, northern Mississippi or southern Tennessee???

PLEASE SEND THEM TO US!!

Something to Think About: Letting Your Significant Other Go

This is an amazing post that I found a while back. Freedom to be ourselves in our relationship with our partner/spouse is so important, and I could have never imagined saying it the way Seth Adam Smith puts it in his post

I’m Letting My Wife Go.

But now I frequently refer to our life and plans as building our birdbath 😉

Go check out his post.

Hope you have a great weekend!

I rarely have a chance to craft anymore, but finally did…

As the subject line states, I never really have the chance to dedicate time to crafting or DIYing anymore. Between work, running a household, playing with and raising our daughter… I’m happy to sleep. Ha! This weekend when I knew I had one extra day to get things done, I made time to finish a door wreath that was supposed to go up for spring through summer. Oops.

First, I started with a straw wreath from Hobby Lobby. I picked a medium size.

Then, I bought a roll of burlap ribbon and hot glued it down around some edges as I wrapped it around the wreath.

After that, I took a wooden letter “H” that I also bought from Hobby Lobby and glued it to the side that I preferred for it to appear on.

I made my fabric flowers next. Here is a tutorial to show you how. I promise I am the worst example to follow. So watch this video or find someone else on YouTube to learn from!

I arranged and rearranged the flowers until I was happy with the outcome.

(I bought fabric sample packs from Wal-Mart for around $3 each.)

I hot glued the flowers down and cut a strip for the hanger at the top.

Here was the outcome:

In this picture I actually had one more flower to add, but I didn’t think it turned out too shabby! The floral prints are blues and greens. Then I picked a green pattern and white ribbon for the other flowers.

What kind of summer wreaths have you seen that you love?? Have you made a new spring/summer wreath? I’d love to see it!!

Happy Memorial Day, Grandaddy!

1st. Lt. William D. Britton

United States Army

1 Cav Div Airmobile

Vietnam War

My Memorial Day is always honored toward all of those who serve in the United State Armed Forces, but specifically to this man. My paternal grandfather who gave his life in Vietnam just one month and one day after arriving. He left behind a pregnant wife. Four months later, she delivered William D. Britton, Jr. Twenty-one years later, I was born and then my brother 21 months after that. During my early childhood, I did not understand much about my grandfather. In my teenage years is when I began to investigate and understand who my grandfather was and what I came from. This quote sums it up:

“The legacy of heroes is the memory of a great name and the inheritance of a great example.”

– Benjamin Disraeli

Today I celebrated Memorial Day with my father and daughter. I snapped a picture of them fishing together and later looking at the photo, I just thought of what my grandfather left behind. But most importantly, what he ensured his son and descendants would be able to enjoy in freedom.

Today and every day I am thankful for his sacrifice.

I hope you celebrated and thoroughly enjoyed your families this weekend. And more than that, I hope you remembered to thank a military service man and/or woman.

Venus Snap VoxBox

 

I am honored to have been selected to review another product through Influenster. They mailed me the product and I have to use it for a few weeks and then submit reviews on it. I share them on twitter and on the Influenster site. (I could also share on Facebook, but I don’t have one of those.) Basically, I’m testing the new product for the company so that they can create brand awareness because a company’s greatest branding opportunity is word of mouth. This time I received a Gillete Venus Snap:

Is that not the cutest razor you have ever seen? Haha! It is so tiny. It is for on the go moments when you accidentally missed a spot, forgot to shave, etc. It fits in the console of my car. I think it might would fit in my pocket!!

I can’t wait to use this a few times and see how well it works.