Category: Women

debt, Family, Food, money, Stay at Home Mom, Uncategorized, Women

Dreaming of Spring time

Hannah Lucio

I absolutely love when the kids take long naps, Ha-ha! I can relax with some hot coffee, a few red vines and catch up on VanderPump Rules. HA!

red-vines-and-spring-blog

Over here on the East coast we have some pretty cold winters. Since it is really cold we are not able to be outside as much. So it is a little bit of a bummer. But, as much as it is super cold over here in the winters we absolutely love it. There are actual seasons over here. And we are not planning on moving. We are coming up on our second year in Virginia and it has been amazing. In the fall we decided to get a kid carrier to pull behind us on our bikes. We also decided to get a geared bike for me so I can pull them easier. My husbands work is a tad further that it used to be so I will have to pull them a little further. That is not a problem. I am actually excited about this challenge. I absolutely love fitness! The thing about Spring that I am so excited about is to be able to have fun outside with the kids again. Brayden will be old enough to be in the kid carrier with Maverick. I cannot wait to hear their giggles when we ride. And, now that we are not having anymore kids I can enjoy being active with them. I can teach Maverick how to play basketball, play t-ball and start running. We are also going to move into a house when our lease is up and that is equally exciting! I’m not sure how many other people are thinking that Spring time, but I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one. Until then we will be enjoying this rainy, colder and sometimes snowy weather.

I am really hoping everyone is having a wonderful beginning of the year! It not to late to start living healthy and a more positive simple life.

 

Live Positive

Live Simple

breastfeeding, debt, Family, Food, money, Stay at Home Mom, Uncategorized, Women

Kefir….no thanks

Hannah Lucio

I have been curious about how I would feel after trying a few foods. We have been getting sick left and right after we started letting our boy go to Sunday School. We are a family that never gets sick. Ok, maybe once a year and it last’s about 3 days total. Now, since he has been going to Sunday school every week we have been sick all the time. He loves Sunday school so that is not really an option to not have him go. So I researched things to “boost” our immune system. One thing it said was that you literally cannot boost your immune system. So I looked for ways to get more “healthy” foods into our diet. Every day I make our smoothies and that has seemed to help a little. I read to add a probiotic into our diet. Kefir is one of the most mentioned probiotic that I saw on the websites. So I got it and tried it out. I have to mention that we are not a family that drinks milk or has a high dairy diet. I do top our meals with cheese but not more that a 1/4 cup at a time. When we need a milk like product we use Almond Milk. We are not allergic to dairy, but it is a choice we make to not have a lot of it. I actually watched a few documentaries this last week and it said that cow milk is actually not made for human consumption. Very interesting.Anyway,  I started adding Kefir to our smoothies and after two days pulled the plug on adding it.

What happened?

I felt fat, bloated, sluggish and worse off. Oh and I gained two pounds in two days. Yikes!  Our oldest son started getting hiccups after drinking it. And since I am breastfeeding Ill add that he was fussier than normal. It is very interesting to see how our bodies react to certain foods. I did not know that our body would react that quickly and make us feel worse.

Today is the first day back to our regular smoothies and we are all good to go. I have my regular boost of energy with the smoothies, our  oldest son did not have hiccups and our little guy has not been fussy.

That just means no milk products. Besides cheese , ha! Also, we are just going to have to deal with getting sick if it means our boy is happy at church. If you are feeling bloated all the time or sluggish check your diet. When I eat a certain way I have tons of energy and lose weight.

I also cannot eat a lot of protein because I will actually gain weight. Even if it is just plain chicken or protein shakes. No matter what the meat of protein alternative, I gain weight. Now, that is quite opposite of what healthy sites or magazines tell you. I think we should listen to what our bodies are telling us. Because we are all different. In this day in age we can learn so much! We should be taking advantage of all the information that is out there. I literally watch a documentary every day on Netflix about foods. Take advantage of it, I really enjoy learning!

 

Live Healthy

Live Simple

debt, Family, Food, Hair, money, Stay at Home Mom, Uncategorized, Women

Happy 5 Years!!!

Hannah Lucio

It has officially been 5 years since I quit smoking! No, it was not a New years Resolution. It just so happened to be at the beginning of the year.

See, I met this guy. We went on our first date. That night I knew we were going to get married. I just knew it! I decided that night to quit smoking. Cold turkey. I did not want to lose him over some absolute disgusting habit. I had always wanted to quit and for some reason never had a “reason” to quit. Boy did I do an amazing thing by quitting. I am still married to that man and one day will write about our amazing story. It sounds to good to be true but it was truly meant to be. I love telling people about it!

I am so incredibly happy to have quit smoking and if you are wanting to quit, today’s the day!! Quit now! It is SO worth it!! It is not pretty, it ruins your skin, hair, you smell (yuck) and it is not healthy. And with the money you save you can also pay down your debt. Or save for a summer vaca, smoking is expensive ya’ll!

 

Live smoke free

Live simple

debt, Family, Food, money, pregnancy, prenatal, Stay at Home Mom, Women

Critics, marriage, babies-let them be your biggest motivators 

Hannah Lucio


The only place to take a full picture of myself is at church. So I took one. Finally. It feels weird to whip out my phone and take a picture. Of myself. At church. But I’ve thought about it week after week and finally did it. I feel SO darn proud of myself in taking control of my weight. 

See. I’m not “into myself”, I don’t think I’m “hot”, I really don’t think I’m pretty if you want to know. But I do know this. I have grown up struggling with my weight. My whole life!  I’ve been on so many different diets, weight lose pills and also tried to be bulimic. Yuck! I lose weight, gain a s*** ton, kinda lose it again, it’s all just vicious cycle. Until I got married…..that’s when I took control of my weight.

People typically say that when you get married you gain the marriage weight. People also told me when I got pregnant that I would never lose my weight. I  was literally laughed at. A lot. By more than one person. I told them that I wanted to be a fit mom and lose all the weight I gained. Good luck, they told me. I was told different stories about how they never lost their weight after pregnancy. What a let down. I was also told it was really hard because I would be SO tired and not motivated. Well crap, I thought. Just one more thing I didn’t need, negativity. I was thinking I really hope I am not like that. It got me down, a lot. It made me feel, well, horrible. And then I thought……CHALLENGE ACCEPTED! 

Here I am two babies later and 20 lbs less than when I got married. 20 lbs!!! I beat all odds apparently. I am that “fit mom” I wanted to be. I have a lot of energy. I like to play with my boys in ways that I would be able to if I had not lost weight. I can run around the playground, go on walks and show my boys what healthy living is. We are far from perfect about what we put in our bodies but we try to lead by example. I try to feed our family good foods but we also treat ourselves to regular junk foods. Remember your kids don’t buy their own foods, we do. Also, what we don’t have at home we won’t eat. I really believe that my consistent working out and watching what I eat has helped me. I drink my Smoothies every morning. Up your fiber content, drink plain black coffee instead of adding junk, drink water and stay positive. My body cannot process high protein amounts so I tend to eat more fiber foods. I do eat ground turkey, brown rice and black beans for dinner a lot! Omg it taste so good. 

Now that I have gotten to my first weight goal I can start to get to my ultimate weight goal. I would also like to be a motivator for others. If I could even just help one person get motivated to eat better and workout I’d be SO happy! I know it’s a new year and people are looking for ways to get their New Years resolution going. 

My advice would be to 

1. Start somewhere. 

2. Start small and work up

3. If someone is not helping you get to your goal but instead getting in the way, fix it. Distance yourself from that person. I had to do that because some people really do not want to see you succeed. I have many examples, if you want to just ask 🙂 I’ve actually stopped hanging out with a lot of people because they were not healthy for me. It might sound hard but it’s not. 

4. Stop making excuses. I’ve heard so many from people about how they cannot lose weight, eat healthy or go workout. Walking outside is free. A few dumbells are really cheap. YouTube exercise videos are free. Eating healthy isn’t that expensive. When I lived in California I used to shop at Sprouts, mega cheap and we had a ton of veggies and fruit. Over here in Virginia…..it’s a little more expensive. But we still buy it! Whole Foods, Trader Joe’s and Harris teeter are our go to for foods. No-GMO’s!!!

5. Start somewhere. Yes, I repeated number one because it is SO important to just start!!

Live healthy
Live simple

Christmas, debt, Family, Food, Hair, money, pregnancy, Sewing, Stay at Home Mom, Uncategorized, Women

Get out of debt

Hannah Lucio

When we first decided to kick our debt to the curb it wasn’t that easy. When you grow up not being taught how to manage your money. Not taught how bad credit cards are, isn’t a high credit score good after all? I was taught to get a credit card and get a credit score. I was not taught how to invest. Budget. What’s that?I just knew I needed a job to pay my bills and hope to one day….Idk I had no idea what I was supposed to do. I did not have a dream of being anything. I didn’t want to be a stay at home wife. I actually never wanted to get married and have kids, that is a whole different topic. No Cinderella dreams over here. Ha! It is kind of sad when you think about it.  And here I am, married for over 4 years, two kids and stay at home mom. Interesting how thing work out for the good 😍

I read this Article from Dave Ramsey’s website today and agree with it all. We have literally done it all. Or gone through it.

1. The doubt was enormous but once we made our budget and starting plowing through or debt i was optimistic. 

2. We really got gazelle intense! I was looking in every direction on how to save and pay off. 

3. I listened to Dave Ramsey Podcast, all three of them. Everyday. While I worked out. Cooked. Cleaned. I loved it. It is SO motivating! I was able to learn so much. It also helped me give money advice to others. Pretty darn cool. 

4. Oh my goodness did we sell. We sold so much our dogs thought we were moving. Haha! No joke. We had about 1/4 of the stuff we moved with and it felt AMAZING! We live a pretty simple life now and I never want to go back to the “old us”. 

5. Bargains. Yes, varage sale is huge in California so I bought used everything. I tried to get as much free stuff also. A lot of people just want to get rid of things and I loved it! Of course I sanitized everything but I never minded second hand stuff. 

6. Budgeting. Not the most desired thing for me but I started to love it. This is such an important step when getting debt free. Tell your money where to go, every penny of it. 

7. Cash. It gives me a bit of anxiety to use cash….at Costco. But once I started using cash it got easier. I treat it like a game, a challenging one. I also save the change for a rainy day. It’s amazing how fast change adds up. 

8. Family. Yes. My husband and I were on board from day one. It would have been impossible to do this without him. 

9. Work hard was an understatement. My husband, he is amazing! He worked SO much overtime. He would work hard around the house on weekend to save money also. I also worked my hardest to make homemade everything and fix stuff myself. Sometimes a second job is needed. Thankfully we are doing it without. 

10. When you are able to see how the progress is going it can be very motivating. I have it written on our dry erase board. 

11. The word no. Oh gosh, that’s a hard one for me. My husband, not so much. He is good at saying no. Learning how to say no was probably one of the hardest things ever!

12. Packing lunches and making our own coffee was easy for us. We were already doing that and not to save money but to be healthy. I love black coffee! Love! I would spend $10 a day at Starbucks (if I only drank black coffee). That’s $70 a week and $3,640 bucks a year! On just coffee!! How bout food. You eat out for each meal. 3x $10 (the average meal these days). That’s $30 a day, $210 a week and $10,920 a year! That’s not including alcohol, going out, fancy foods. Just plain old fast foods. Coffee and fast a year (on average) would be $14,560. Its way cheaper to make food at home and brew your own coffe with no added stuff. And healthier! By far. I am 20 lbs lighter than my wedding day because of this 😃 a win win situation. 

13. Spending time with people who respect your process is ideal. It makes it easier.

14. Creative should be our last name by now. It is an important piece to our puzzle. 

15. We stopped my husband 401k since mine didn’t exist due to me not working anymore. 

16. Prayer. Ah yes. This is one thing I do a lot. Sometimes scream, cry and just talk to God about it all. Faith is what has kept us chugging along in our journey. 

Once again, Dave Ramsey has put together such a great list. If you are thinking about getting your finances together. The time is now! It’s never to late to start. We started when I was 31 and my husband was 33. It’s not usually fun in the beginning but once the train starts to go it gets better.  Believe me. We will also teach our boys how to Manage money, that I do know. I do not want them to be clueless about their future. I highly recommend you check out Dave Ramsey, listen to his podcast and start today. 
Live debt free

Live simple

debt, Family, Food, money, prenatal, Stay at Home Mom, Uncategorized, Women

Living simple

Hannah Lucio

I just watched the movie The Minimalists last night and it recharged me. Living simple is something I have been “into” for a very long time. I’m not into collecting stuff or buying stuff to show off. I never have been. I’ve tried it and it really doesn’t make me feel better. 

Here is our story.

When my husband and I got married we had a lot of stuff. Mainly him. I moved into his place and I got pregnant about a month after we got married. We then decided to go buy a house. Like a “normal” person. We had a lot of debt and wanted to get a mortgage to add to our debt. Like normal. We went through 22 offers for homes and finally on the 23rd they accepted. This house was in the booneys of Southern California. We loved it, for the most part. I mean, we had a little over an acre, a simple old house and it was cheap. When we moved we had to get the biggest uhaul, took several smaller trips with our leased vehicle. And filled up friends vehicles for them to bring to our house. That’s a lot of stuff!! When I sat down and did our “budget” and calculated how much debt and money we had I got really sad. My husband wanted me to stay home after giving birth and we simply were in way to much debt. When I calculated how much we needed for me to stay home we actually would have needed $1000 extra just to survive and that would have been without groceries😩 My husband brought up this guy (Dave Ramsey) he had heard about and I researched him. We found his Podcast and after listening to it one time I was hooked! We immediately got on board and we literally sold 90% of our stuff we moved in with. It was kind of hard considering we lived pretty far from the city, but it worked! We turned in our lease and got 2 used vehicle. That lease term was still over a year left and then 3 years of more payments to buy it! Yuck! We paid off our used vehicles in about 6 months or less. Both, yes!  We paid off SO much debt with our “stuff” we didn’t really need. We actually sold SO much stuff that our we became freer in our budget. We had $1000 extra every month! How bout them apples. Ha I made everything homemade- bread, tortillas, pizza, everything. We grew our veggies and had chickens for eggs. It was a very simple life. I loved it! No cable, just Netflix and internet. When we moved over here to Virginia we moved with one car and one of the smallest uhauls they have. It felt great! We do not have a lot of stuff and it still feels great! We recommitted in December to living on a minimal budget so we can move into a house with a yard in June. We want a yard for the kids and dogs. We do not want a huge house but just something with a yard. And not buying! Renting. We will not be ready to buy for a long time. We also just cancelled our cable again and I am very happy about that. I am going back to making things homemade and it’ll help with our budget immensely. I hope that if you are thinking about living simple that I can encourage you. I can try to help you out on how to get back to the basics. We don’t really need stuff to make us happy. Our world has taught us that more is better. If we chase the world things we will never be happy. I hope you find encouragement through our story and if you have questions feel free to ask! 

Here are some of Dave Ramsey quotes that I love:

Live happy

Live simple

debt, Family, money, Stay at Home Mom, Uncategorized, Women

We Finally Did it!!

Hannah Lucio

I am so darn excited today. I have been going back and forth for the last two months. One day I say do it, the next day I don’t want to. I don’t want to “miss out” on what is happening. A few of my favorite shows have new episodes coming on this week . It is my way to drain my brain but also get the news and what is happening around the world. But Saturday night I said “That’s it, I am SO done with this crap”. So done with the junk on TV, who cares about the reality TV people. Oh my gosh I am a reality TV junkie, like seriously. Since Cox was closed yesterday we went today. I walked in with the cable boxes, phone modem and gave it all back! We CANCELLED Cable!! Wahoo!! I feel like throwing a party. I feel free from paying for stuff that does not help us grow in life. I will miss Impractical Jokers immensely! I am going to miss Fox News, badly! And all of the other stuff I watched.

 

Now, I can focus on things that matter. My husband, my kids, cooking and baking, reading books and reading the Bible. We have a huge goal to meet and kind of have to meet it by June so we can move into a house. Needless to say we will busy and do not need our TV slowing us down. I really do feel free now. Sounds weird but man oh man does it feel good. If you have been thinking about it, do it! Instead we have internet and Netflix, it comes to half the cable bill. It is also not as tempting for me since I am not a huge fan of movies. We will be saving $480 plus in 6 months just by cancelling our cable. That’s a great deal! Just do it! You will feel great and you get to save money!

Live wiser

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Christmas, Family, Food, pregnancy, St Pattys Day, Stay at Home Mom, Uncategorized, Women

Milk Chocolate Fudge

Hannah Lucio

This is an amazing and easy fudge recipe that I just made yesterday. I made a different recipe last week and it was disgusting! That recipe called for baking chocolate and it was gross. This is going to be my go-to recipe when I want fudge. It is really creamy, smooth and melt in your mouth fudge. I always looked forward to the holidays when my mom would make fudge and now I can have a little taste of “home” on the East Coast. Here is the easy recipe, I hope you get to enjoy it as much as we do.

 

Ingredients:

2 1/2 Cups White Granulated Sugar

3/4 Cup Butter (softened, it makes it easier and faster to cook)

2/3 Cup Evaporated Milk

2 Cups Milk Chocolate Chips (I use Nestle Toll House=Yum!)

7 Ounce Jar Marshmallow Cream (I always use Kraft)

1 tsp Vanilla

Directions:

  1. Line a pan with parchment paper. Typically you would use a 9 inch square pan or in my moms case a cookie sheet for thinner fudge. I used my Cast Iron pan and it was perfect for me. It is a non-traditional shape for fudge.
  2. Use a heavy saucepan (I used my Pioneer Woman dutch oven, I’m trying to not cook with metal). Over high heat, combine; Sugar, butter and evaporated milk. Use a wooden spoon (the best for fudge) to stir slowly until butter melts. Make sure to scrape the sides of pan so you do not leave sugar crystals.
  3. Bring to a full rolling boil, stir constantly with your wooden spoon. Once it is at a full rolling boil turn the heat down to medium and cook it for 5 minutes. Make sure you stir constantly to prevent it from sticking to the bottom and to cook it evenly.
  4. Once mixture is done with the 5 minutes,  test to see if it is done. Fill a little glass cup with ice old water and drop a tsp of the very hot sugar mixture in it. If the sugar mixture can roll into a ball then it is done.
  5. Remove the mixture from the heat and add the chocolate chips. Stir until the chocolate chips are melted and mixture is smooth. Add the marshmallow cream an vanilla and mix really well until smooth. Pour into prepared pan right away.
  6. Let fudge cool down and try not to eat to much of it before then. Ha ha I really love warm fresh fudge so this is VERY hard for me!
  7. Once it is cooled take out of pan with the parchment paper, cute and serve. Make sure to really cover the fudge to prevent it from getting hard.

 

Live Happy

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Christmas, Family, Food, Stay at Home Mom, Uncategorized, Women

Mavericks favorite “Santa Cookies”-Recipe included

Hannah Lucio

Yesterday we made cookies for Santa, they are Mavericks favorite by far. They really are the best! Soft and chewy! And So incredibly delicious! We normally just put chocolate chips on them but maverick wanted to add his favorite candy. Maverick is a chocoholic! Chocolate and m&m’s are two of his favorites. Santa ate the cookies we left him but left a little bit on the plate so Maverick knew he ate his cookies and drank his milk. 

Best Chocolate Chip Cookie recipe ever

Ingredients: 

1 Cup Unsalted Butter (softened) 

1 Cup White Sugar

1 Cup Packed Brown Sugar

2 Eggs 

 2 tsp Vanilla Extract

3 Cups All Purpose Flour

1 tsp Baking Soda

2 tsp Plain Hot Coffee

1/2 tsp Salt

2 Cups Semi Sweet Chocolate Chips (we put in 1 Cup m&m’s and 1 Cup chocolate chips this time) 
Directions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees

Line cookie sheet with parchment paper.

Dissolve (in a little bowl) baking soda in the hot coffee. Set aside. 

Cream together; Butter, white sugar, and brown sugar until smooth.

Beat in eggs, one at a time. 

Stir in vanilla

 Add baking soda and coffee mixture to the above ingredients and mix. 

Add; flour and salt and mix together. 

Add chocolate chips and mix together, do not over mix. 

Drop cookie batter on parchment paper with cookie scoop.

Bake for 12 minutes and remove. Leave on pan for 2 minutes and then put on cookie sheet to finish cooling. 

Try not to eat them all at once! I hope you get to enjoy these “Santa cookies” as much as we all did! 
Merry Christmas!!! 
Live happy

Live simple. 

Hair, Stay at Home Mom, Uncategorized, Women

Platinum blonde hair at home

Hannah Lucio

I seem to be having such a hard time finding a hair stylist I like over here on the east coast. I have gone to 2 hair stylists to get my platinum blonde hair back like I had in California. The first hairstylist I went to over here I spend $200 and that was without a haircut!! And It came out brassy and not good looking. The second stylist I spend $150 with haircut and she said I didn’t need toner?! Weird. I have never had a hairstylist tell me no toner for bleach blonde hair. I had brassy hair, shocking. I also have tried a few different box brands at home in the last year. I was just trying to find a solution and a less expensive solution at that. Well, I finally found a hair dye I can use at home and it is $8.49. You can get it almost anywhere, in my experience so far. I typically get it at Target but i have seen it almost everywhere that hair dye is sold. This hair bleach has worked wonders for me and I do not have a brassy color after using it. I naturally have dirty blonde hair and next to my bleach blonde it looks black. So it is pretty hard to lighten my hair without getting a brassy color to it. If you are looking for a platinum blonde at home dye this is a really good one. I did not filter the pictures below, they are different angles in the light. I absolutely love L’Oréal Féria Absolute Platinum. It is my absolute favorite and I will be using this from now on. The color comes out amazing (for me) and I highly reccommend it. I cannot say you will have the same exact color but I have used this twice with the same awesome results!! I have gotten SO many compliments on my hair!

Disclaimer: I am not a hairstylists and I cannot guarantee you will get the same results. But I am very happy with my results. I also have only used it as a touch up since the rest of my hair is already bleach blonde throughout the years. I do know if you use this hair dye on your already processed hair it may break. That is typical with bleach. Use at your own risk, you are responsible for any harm or damage that you suffer as a result. 

Live simple

Live happy