We’ve been taking it super lazy at Casa Buffy lately (didn’t you know that our house is Buffy’s House? I usually call it “Buffy’s House”–she rules the roost! And now you really think I’m crazy.)

So I was taking photos w/ Patrick’s iPhone tonight and found my Black Bean Brownie photos! Better late than never, right? (Especially since I’ve been so incredibly lazy in the cooking department lately.)

Black Bean Brownies

This recipe fits in well with the “laziness” I’ve experienced lately.

It’s based on a Weight Watchers recipe sent to me by a friend.

Take a box of brownie mix (I used No Pudge! We love No Pudge! brownies around here.) Open a can of black beans and drain and rinse the beans thoroughly and make sure you save the can. Return the beans to the can and then fill with water (yes, with the beans in the can.) Put the beans and water mixture into a food processor and process thoroughly. Mix your bean mixture with the brownie batter. Stir well and dump into a brownie pan that has been sprayed w/ cooking spray. Bake according to directions. (Note: Our box of mix goes into an 8×8 pan.)

They really are delicious (and full of extra fiber and protein!) Patrick was very skeptical at first, but he quickly fell in love (just as he did with me almost eight years ago! Ha ha ha. Seriously, someone has been drinking too much Coke Zero.)

So here’s an exercise question for all you few readers out there. 

(I was playing w/ Patrick’s iPhone’s editing abilities w/ his camera. I find it awkward to take photos of yourself w/ the iPhone. I think I much prefer my Droid’s camera.)

Anyway …

After exercising … do you always take a shower? Or do you sniff yourself and if you don’t think you smell too bad, you just change and go on? How about your hair? It takes me forever to dry my hair (it is so thick and gets longer by the day) so I def. don’t wash it when we get back. I decided maybe I should just shower and blow dry my sweaty hair and let it go. Not like I’m not going to shower in the morning. That’s what I have been doing. Now if we exercise earlier in the day, I take a shower–but it doesn’t seem worth it when we get back at 9 or 10 and are just going to bed anyway. I always wipe off the sweat …

What do you think?

Now that everyone is grossed out that I don’t always shower post-exercise …

Pet Corner

Buffy with a mohawk.

G’nite all,

Sara and Buffy

Sheepless Shepherd’s Pie

(similar to this recipe on the blog. I changed the name because it’s sheep-free … not shepherd free. I mean, there are obviously not bits of shepherd in this recipe, duh, or in the other one.)

So the only difference between this version and my last version is that I used more of the Morningstar Crumbles (an entire bag) and I made my own gravy. The gravy was such a flop I will not post the recipe (not sure if I even know what how I made it.) Though I had concerns, it turned out OK. I put the “crumbles” in the gravy and it formed a “meat-like paste” and I put it in the bottom and then added additional gravy on top of the beans and corn.

Patrick seemed to enjoy this version better than the other (though we both agreed we like C.F. Sauer’s brown gravy best.) Note: Did you know C.F. Sauer was a Richmond-based company? I try to buy their spices because it is local. They also own Pleasants Hardware. Nifty, eh? That last link will take you to their site and you will see the sign that is on Broad Street in Richmond.

So back to the “pie.” I didn’t care for this (not only because of the gravy) but the additional “crumbles” made this resemble beef too much for my liking. Perhaps that’s why Patrick liked it. Back to the old recipe for next time.

Cheesy Rotini Bake

I wanted to do something with the odds and ends of rotini pasta we had on hand. (We had some Trader Joe’s whole wheat rotini and some Ronzoni Smart Taste rotini.) Patrick claims he doesn’t like the whole wheat rotini, so I thought mixing it (to use them both up) would help. It did.

So what I did (this is so simple it’s almost embarrassing) is I put pasta sauce on the bottom (after spraying the dish of course) then I put the pasta mixture (cooked) on top. I put some reduced fat cheddar and mozzarella on top of the pasta, then more sauce, more noodles, more cheese and then finally to top it off–a bit of sauce and a tiny bit of cheese. (Lots of cheese, pasta and sauce. Not my best creation ever. I wish we’d had ricotta or something on hand to make it more lasagna-like.)

Anyway, I served it with Trader Joe’s meatless meatballs

(Patrick’s bowl)

and a side salad

(My dinner. Patrick’s salad had tomatoes … I am picky about my tomatoes and these winter ones weren’t cutting it.)

So that’s it!

I am obviously not much of a chef. When left to creating my own recipes I tend to throw a bunch of pre-made stuff together. Creative, right? What’s one of your favorite kitchen creations?

Not to be a tease, but I left the black bean brownie photos on Patrick’s phone. So that will have to wait for another day.

Pet Corner Yes folks … that is Buffy when she was a wee puppy. She was not quite three months old yet. (She will be three years old at the end of this month!) This was taken the first day we brought her home. I miss my little, playful puppy–but I love, love, love the big, sweet, cuddly dog that my puppy became. (And she is so much better behaved). Happy gooey comfort foody Wednesday, Blurry Sara and Buffy

I’ll let the photos (such as they are) speak for themselves.

Enjoy!

From Christmas …

Christmas cupcakes

(I used a box mix of holiday cake mix but subbed in applesauce for the oil (I always do this.) The icing was adapted from Mama Pea’s recipe and I added food coloring and then put sprinkles on top. Ta-da!)

Dog cookies

(Merry Christmas to the dogs! From this recipe. These were made with a mix of whole wheat and all-purpose flour + peanut butter + a little olive oil + water. That’s it!)

Cutout Sugar Cookies

(From the Peas and Thank You cookbook. These were SO good and may just be our standard sugar cookie recipe from here out. Patrick helped me cut them out since apparently I lack the skills to cut out cookies effectively. Flour is so essential! Or a husband with more patience for that type of thing. I rock at making dog cookies–they don’t stick so you don’t need the extra flour, though P disagrees.)

More recently …

Homestyle Chocolate Chip Cookies w/ Sea Salt

(From the Peas and Thank You cookbook–we eat a lot of Mama Pea’s creations around here.)

That’s it! I may or may not post my latest attempt at Shepherd’s Pie. I had an issue with gravy (couldn’t find the kind I typically used) and attempted to make my own. I wasn’t as in love with it as my usual gravy, but it was still pretty good. Patrick liked it.)

What’s your favorite holiday baked good? I think I enjoy Christmas cookies the best (and Chex mix.)

Pet Corner

Medlin enjoys sleeping by the window during the day when the sun is shining so that she stays warm. Being a little cat–she only weighs 6 pounds–she probably gets cold more than the other cats. While she also enjoys sleeping under an end table (more so when the Christmas tree is out) at night, she likes to sleep in the hut on the cat tree for warmth. Of course, in the summer, she just mostly hides.

Happy Cooking,

Sara and Medlin

As I type, both dogs and all three cats are asleep. It’s peaceful and quiet minus the noise from Patrick’s video game. Soon as I hit “publish” I plan to dig more into “New Moon” from the Twilight series. Patrick is itching for me to finish it so we can watch the second movie (me too). People at his work have been telling him bits and pieces and have increased his interest a bit. He thinks he is going to like Jacob better. Me–I’m so sad Edward is gone (that’s where I am in the book right now) so I keep putting off reading. I just feel bad for Bella. I know if when Patrick and I were dating, had he just up and left, I’d have been totally and completely crushed. So I feel her pain. Someone told me to keep reading and maybe I’d change my mind about Jacob. We’ll see.

OK … on to other topics.

-We made it to the gym today, last Monday and this past Thursday. I also power walked at lunch on Tuesday. Not too shabby. I was actually really proud of my walk this week because I did an average of 14 1/2 minute miles. Yay! My goal is to be able to do the entire 10K in March at 14 minutes or faster. Like I said, the main goal is to have fun. I really do need new shoes though. We plan to tackle that this week (Patrick needs new ones too. Ours are both over a year old, yikes!)

-In our effort to eat home more, we didn’t eat out at all this weekend! I made a cheese and spinach omelet on Saturday morning w/ toast and fresh pineapple on the side (I got a lot done while Patrick slept. It’s amazing what you can accomplish on a Saturday when you get up before 10!) I’m getting pretty good at making omelets–but not so good that I want to photograph my creations.

…I made Mama Pea’s famous Mmmm Sauce Saturday night.

I really want to like curry, but I don’t. Anyone else out there who doesn’t care for curry? So needless to say, I wasn’t a fan, but Patrick liked it a lot.

(whole wheat cous cous + lemon rosemary roasted chickpeas + veggies + mmm sauce)

… I made French toast this morning w/ pineapple salad (pineapple, craisins and raisins) and I tried Costco’s Greek Yogurt out, thanks to Kristin @ Stuft Mama (love her blog!)  It is really good. It’s fat-free and two tubs is only $6.99. I put pineapple in it along w/ some chia seeds and a few chocolate chips.

Yum! (Pig agrees.)

…speaking of yum–we also tried the new peanut butter Cheerios. I LOVE peanut butter so needless to say I really LOVED the Cheerios! Go try some now!

…lastly, a new snack!

–honey graham crackers w/ peanut butter + chia seeds + 2 chocolate chips = yummm! I made some for Patrick the other night and he liked them too. (Can you tell I love peanut butter?)

That’s about all that has been going on here. Now I need to motivate myself to finish up the laundry before getting into my book.

I’l try to post some old recipes this week (maybe), along with a few new recipes I plan to try (one involves broccoli slaw, another cauliflower and cheese, and the last one is a Mexican tortilla lasagna of sorts.)

P.S. I am really happy that my Google Chrome laptop lets me put up photos now! Yay! In older posts, when I tried to put up photos, it didn’t work quite well, but something changed and it is fabulous. Now I can blog from my laptop always! (We rarely use our desktop. Patrick had a TouchPad and I have my free trial Google Chrome laptop that I’ve had for more than a year. If it dies, I’ve become so attached that we’ll have to buy one. Ha Great idea, Google. Give me a laptop to test out your operating system for you and report bugs and then get me hooked! I really do love it. If anyone has questions–email me.)

Pet Corner

It’s all about George.

I loved my first cat, Kallie, with all of my heart, but George has the best personality of any cat I’ve ever had (I’ve had five including the three we have now). Even though Patrick fusses at him often (sometimes causing big iced tea spills–long story) I think he’s his favorite too. George Catstanza was supposed to be my surprise cat. After two female cats that were both supposed to be males (the shelters got it wrong), Patrick was determined to finally get a male cat. He found George (who was originally named Buster) at our local animal shelter and put in an application. The animal shelter started calling the references the same day and so my friend, Megan, texted me and told me that she gave us a good review to the animal shelter. Uhm, say what?? I was really puzzled. So Patrick had to come clean. We went to the shelter and saw George and Patrick wasn’t really sold on him. But I told him that George was watching him leave the room and he really liked him (honestly, he was just a cute cat and I was tired of dealing with cat adoptions). We were approved and went to get him from his foster home. He was just full of energy. We brought him home to meet Medlin and Zelda and the dogs and he put the dogs in their place the first day. Buffy tried to corner him and George hissed up a storm! I thought Zelda hissed at them a lot when she first met them, but wow, George! Now the dogs the girl cats and George are best buds. He adores the dogs and they (well, Buffy does–Jasper’s not much for cats) love George.

And I’m done rambling, but honestly, I can’t get enough of this furry gray boy. He is my cat companion!

Peace and love,

Sara and George

Our scanner is broken so I never posted our Christmas card from this year, but Merry Christmas too!

So what’s new? Not much. We’ve been off a bit more for the holidays and have been enjoying it.

I thought I’d share some “goals” for 2012 (not resolutions.)

By the way, how was your Christmas and New Year’s? We had a wonderful Christmas spent with loving family and friends and the pets. The pets all got a gift or two (they are really spoiled. I even made them cookies! More on that later …) and we too were quite spoiled with gifts. New Year’s was really low-key which is a always a good thing. We rang in 2012 at home, on the couch, watching “Bridesmaids.”

So back to my goals.

1. Train for the 10K in March (Ukrop’s Monument Avenue 10K in Richmond to be exact.) We signed up in December. I wanted to do it a few years ago when my co-workers were training to do it, but I chickened out. Patrick agreed to do it with me, so we plan to just power walk it (14 minute mile pace if we can make it.) I wanted to set our goal lower so there’s no pressure. The idea is just to do it and have fun and next year focus more on time. Fun is key though.

2. Go to the gym regularly. We met with a weights person at the gym that we joined for Christmas and he showed us how to use the equipment. More on this “stuff” as we progress.

3. Get down to my goal weight. I had the opportunity to review some medical records last month and saw my weight gain trend (up 10 in 2008, 20 more by 2009 and then I gained a little more between 09 and 10). It was interesting. I think the number I set for myself is a good goal. I’ll be in the mid-range for a healthy BMI and ultimately it will all depend on how I “feel” and pants size–not a number on a scale.

4. Reduce the amount of cheese I consume. I’m semi-lactose intolerant (OK lactose is really not my friend, but I do eat some dairy.) Cheese really isn’t my friend and it seems lately we’ve been eating a lot of mac and cheese and pizza. I need to cut back on those items anyway, so that will help with my cheese goal. This should also help with my weight/health goals too.

5. As I said above, cut back on pizza and mac and cheese. I think we plan our time poorly so sometimes last minute we need something quick and it usually involves mac and cheese (usually with baked beans on the side and veggies or “chik’n tenders.”) While that’s not terrible, it is a lot of carbs and we eat it a lot. Same with pizza. “Oh gosh we are low on time. We need to grab something quick. Let’s order a pizza.” Eh, no. This all leads to my next goal …

6. Eat out less to compensate for gym membership and building up our savings. ‘Nuff said.

7. Finish all of the “Twilight” series of books before the last movie comes out. I’ll admit, I thought the books sounded dumb and I didn’t get the hullabaloo. So I bought the first book for $2 and started reading. I got hooked. I just finished the first book so we’re watching the first movie tonight. I’m on the second one now, then we’ll watch that movie and so on. I’m sure I can get through all of the books in time to see the final movie in the theater. I’m kind of disappointed by the trailer for the first movie. I have a feeling it will def. not live up to be as good as the book (but I was warned by friends about that anyway.)

And those are my 2012 goals. Spelled out in black and white on my blog. Not sure about any blog-related goals. I am still not really sure what I intend to do with this blog, but I hope to only post when I truly have something to share. I guess I have to decide the intent of the blog, and I think that it’s basically just an online journal for me and a forum to get input from others (though right now that is really just input from my dad. Hi Dad!)

So we’ll see where 2012 takes us! I’m excited for 2012. It will be a year of mental and physical health and of saving money! That’s the ultimate goal.

Back to work tomorrow. It’s going to be tough–but at least we had a lot of time off and we were able to enjoy every minute of it. Here’s to a good 2012!

Pet Corner

Tomorrow is Jasper’s birthday! Maybe I’ll get around to a post for that. I hope so. He turns 5! He got his haircut on Saturday and is ready for his birthday. We got him a new toy (we gave it to him today) and we got him a special bone with his name on it from Three Dog Bakery.

Yes. We really are joining a gym! This week in fact. My parents gifted us the gym joining fee for Christmas. Isn’t that a fabulous gift idea? Sadly, we won’t be able to go until maybe Thursday since I am not feeling well. I thought I’d be able to kick my “every three months sinus infection” but I feel like the crud on the bottom of a disgusting shoe today. I am hoping that rest will help, as well as getting to bed at a decent time on the weekdays.

Oh and I am still walking two miles during my lunch break a few days a week.

What are you doing for the holidays? I’m off Friday and plan to bake the day away by making cookies and other holiday treats. I also have some laundry to take care of and cleaning to do. Fun stuff, right? We’ll go to our Christmas Eve service at church on Saturday and spend Sunday with my parents and in-laws.

I will really miss the Christmas music and movies!

Here’s something I made for work (you’ve probably seen them elsewhere.)

Reindeer Pretzels = mini pretzels, candy cane Kisses, and M&Ms (for the eyes and nose!)

Ta-da! Simple, festive, tasty and cute. (Sorry, Dad. Now you know what I made you.)

I made these a couple years ago using chocolate Kisses. If I made them again I’d probably go back to using the chocolate kisses. Only true peppermint lovers (like me) will appreciate these. It seems the chocolate ones were a bigger hit at work when I made them than these candy cane ones. Darn!

Have a good week! I will try to check in before Christmas.

Pet Corner (Decided I like this instead of “Pet Photo of the Day” since I usually don’t post daily and it’s just better to group most of the pet biz in this little section. I hope to get back to my “Buffursday” posts soon too. We shall see!)

Taken w/ my phone in poor lighting–but every night when I come home from work, George stares out the back door and Buffy (not pictured) stares out the window. Jasper usually joins her too.

Thanks for reading!

Sara and Buffy

Mostly because I was so rushed–I completely forgot to take photos! 

But I can share the recipes (later) and maybe it will inspire your Christmas meal.

Quick recap? We had a great Thanksgiving, I went to a work conference for a few days after Thanksgiving and now we’re on vacation for the week. Just lazing around the house mostly, though we are going to see the new Muppet movie tomorrow! Yay! Date lunch!

So back to the present …

The first homemade baked good I’ve made for the Christmas season, is this chocolate pudding pie (via this post on Peas and Thank You).

Yum.

We ate half that pie last night (good thing we’re joining a gym–right?)

I have great plans to make no bake cookies and sugar cookies (also from Mama Pea) and a few other holiday treats. What a deliciously sweet time of year.

So yes, you read correctly. We’re joining a gym. We’ve been off all week and have been using our free pass at the gym near our house. We’ve been (since last Tuesday) four times! Yay! Our free pass didn’t start until Saturday, but we were able to go on Tuesday for just a free day. By the time Saturday rolls around, we should have gone about five times (not including that one Tuesday.) Go us! 

I decided that enough was enough. We are simply not the type of people who are motivated enough to go run around the block or use the stationary bike and treadmill at home. There are far too many distractions–cute pets, laundry, TV, interesting books, you name it. So far this is working out well. We plan to go on the weekends plus two to three times during the week.

I also signed us up for the Monument 10K in Richmond at the end of March. We plan to power walk it–not run it. I hope we can at least jog most (if not all) of it by the time March rolls around. So far, so good.

We’re not obsessing over weight loss either. This is more for health than weight loss (though that is def. an added benefit. We weighed ourselves Monday and then we plan to weigh in again in a month. See? Not obsessing.)

Another benefit? Bonding with my spouse. Lately we spend time sitting on the opposite end of the couch–and that’s about our only “bonding time” unless you include running errands also. It’s nice having something we can do together! We got a few games for the XBOX Kinect a few weeks ago too and that has been fun bonding time too. I also kind of promised to play video games with Patrick. Oops. 

I bought the first of Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight series (“Twighlight”) on a whim. I saw where blogger Tina had posted about seeing the movie with her sister. She admitted that she got the first book to read to basically prove how silly the series was. I thought maybe I would do the same. Three days into the book and I am about halfway done. I spent a couple hours today just reading and reading. I have a feeling I’ll be finished by Friday, so I bought the other three on Half.com for $10! (All three for $10!) Woo hoo.

Off to swoon over Edward Cullen, hop into my pajamas and settle down on the couch w/ a slice of chocolate pudding pie and some “Friends” episodes. (We FINALLY replaced my ruined series of DVDs over Black Friday. Yay!) 

Pet Corner

This is Buffy, after she puked up a Lysol wipe on Sunday (that she ate a week ago), went to the ER vet at 2:30 a.m. on Monday, getting Rx and finally perking up Tuesday night. This photo was taken this morning (Wednesday) and she had finally started attacking Jasper and the cats again (though you can’t tell from this photo), eating normally and barking out the window.

I greatly dislike when my Buffy is sick. I don’t like it when any of our pets are sick. This time though, she was so lethargic and the look in her eyes reminded me of the way Jaws looked before he died. I knew Buffy wasn’t going to die–but the face was too familiar. It made me miss my Jaws and feel very bad for Buffy. I knew she needed an antibiotic (we’ve been through this eating thing with Jasper way too many times). 

Jaws during better times.

All that remains of his tank is the “No Fishing” sign. (Well his tank is on the deck, but we’re hoping someone will buy it and the stand. The sign was cleaned and is hanging out at our kitchen sink.)

Love and miss you Jaws.

I hope to post more later, guys. Honest! 

First off, I have lost a few more pounds! I have been walking with my co-worker at lunch and we’ve been playing some dancing Kinect games at home. (Me and P, not me and my co-worker.)

Secondly, I’ve been making salsa. Lots of salsa. I’ve been experimenting with recipes. The latest one was inspired by my deep love for Chipotle’s rice bowls and a recipe in the Peas and Thank You cookbook.

Thirdly, we found Five Alive at the grocery store. Woo hoo! I love a good kickback to my childhood.

Fourth off, I did my nails today. I haven’t painted my nails myself since I was a kid and I haven’t had them painted by anyone else since my cousin Heather’s wedding. I think they are way fun and this might be a semi-regular thing.

Thanks, Sally Hansen Salon Effects!

And last but not least … here’s my Shepherd-less Shepherd’s Pie recipe.

Note: My mother makes a mean Shepherd’s pie. Delish! I think I made a pretty tasty one too when I cooked with meat. Now that I cook meatless, I made a meatless version. Morningstar Farms’ crumbles are not my favorite, but they’re not too bad either. And neither was this “pie.”

Not the best food photo ever (better to come!) but it was tasty. We ate lots of this last night for dinner and Patrick had the leftovers for lunch today. Wish I could’ve saved some for my dad. I know he would’ve liked it!

In the “pie”: Bottom layer = brown gravy (a “mix” from CF Sauer) + the meatless crumbles, middle layer = green beans and corn, and the top layer (of course) is mashed potatoes!

Please note I used frozen corn, green beans and mashed potatoes (Schwan’s makes some AWESOME mashed potatoes! So yummy!!)

I just baked it in a 400 degree oven until the mashed potato top was brown around the edges. Delish!

I hope to organize my recipe section soon. With posting new meal ideas/recipes, I will def. need to do so.

In other news, Buffy has a cyst on her face and a hot spot on her leg, but she’s on the mend. We’re hoping all of the meds she is on will heal her cyst, else we may have to have it removed surgically.

Off to make some brownies, hush puppy muffin bites, and homemade mac & cheese (All courtesy of the fabulous Mama Pea. No matter what sort of “diet” you follow–her recipes are AWESOME. Trust me. I rely on her site and cookbook for many of our meals and treats.)

I hope to post some Thanksgiving recipes post-Thanksgiving and some others I’ve been making lately too.

Missed posting!

Sara and Buffers

Thing 2: Our beloved goldfish, Jaws, died on November 8.

He had been ill. He stopped eating last week, apparently from a bacterial infection in his digestive tract. He turned half red by Sunday evening from the infection and started getting fin rot by Monday. It was terribly sad watching him so sick. We medicated him and tried to help as much as we could. We’ve since decided not to get anymore fish and are selling our tank. They don’t live long and we can’t take them to the vet if they get sick; so it’s best that someone like me (who gets majorly attached to things) doesn’t have a fish. If you’d like to remember Jaws, please check my Pets page.

…

So a third thing … We’re starting a blog at work. It will be different writing a more serious blog for your place of employment.

I think I had a fourth thing, but I forgot it.

I hope you have a chance to visit my Pets page to see Jaws. He was a very beautiful fish. He made the best fishy faces and I like to think I made equally nice fish faces back to him. Patrick considered surprising me with a fancy goldfish that I always thought was cute, but thankfully we determined we don’t want anymore fish. So no surprise fish and no more fish heartbreak for me.

Love you, Jaws!

Have a great weekend everyone. Tomorrow is Veteran’s Day and we have off from work (my employer believes veterans are very important–and they are!–so they give us the day off.) I’m the proud granddaughter of a Veteran and a proud American citizen. God bless all the veterans!

-Sara

I have just been occupying my time in other ways while at home; plus the Fall TV lineup is back on Duh! (P.S. I am typing this on my Chrome laptop, so no photos, folks! It’s a beta model that I’ve had for a year (you may remember that blog post from early on in the blog) so it doesn’t have capabilities for photos.)

I’m also in charge of social media at work (I have been, but … well … it’s a long story. I’m “back in charge” I guess is the right way to explain it!) Trying to build up our Facebook page. Staring at that all day; I really don’t want to do much on the computer when I get home. Besides, I stare at two computer screens all day long … and actually having two screens spoils me. When I get home, tasks are just so much harder to complete! Oh and I adore my laptop but it won’t allow me to post photos … so it’s not as easy to blog from it.

(Secretly, I hope it dies so I can buy a real Chrome laptop. Not that this free one isn’t awesome, but I’d love to be able to post photos from here. I love, love, love my little, quiet, fast notebook! Plus it was free. But I’m a semi-Google freak, so I love it.)

So, back to the topic.

Last year, you may recall a post about the Lupus Walk I did in Richmond with Patrick, my dad and my aunt and uncle. We’re doing it again this year (well, me, Patrick and my dad are, along with the pups! Last year, Buffy had injured her paw and we had to leave the dogs at home.)

By blogging about the walk last year, I met a new friend. She doesn’t live too far from me. I admired her awesome Great Dane (named Charlton) who was at the walk, dressed up in a shirt and tie. He was awesome! Anyway, through searching about the walk, she found my blog. She saw my email address and emailed me. We emailed back and forth and became Facebook friends! Small world!

Last year we walked in memory of Patrick’s Aunt Dee Dee. This year, we’re not only walking in her memory (our team is named Susan’s Butterflies because Susan was Dee Dee’s real name) but we’re also walking in honor of India and again for my co-worker, Tonya. Tonya is such a sweet lady. I think I found out about the walk through her and that’s how we got involved. She inspired me to sign up and try to collect money. I had no idea she had Lupus when I met her. She is so strong and brave and kind and has SUCH a positive attitude! I actually bought my stationary bike from Tonya; she later bought my steam mop and I gave her a rocking chair. I guess we trade stuff back and forth.

Anyway …

Long story short.

I know you don’t really know me, but if you find it in your heart and have a little money to spare and you want to donate it to an awesome cause … this is a great one to choose.

To my knowledge, not much is known about Lupus. There isn’t a cure. We’re hoping to raise money to help with research costs and to make people more aware of Lupus.

Last year while walking, I saw a woman pushing a stroller down the track (we walk on the track at Richmond International Raceway. Isn’t that neat?) … anyway, she had a stroller and then I noticed she had a sign on her back that said “I’m walking for me.” That just goes to show that Lupus (like many other diseases) affects people of any age. It has no boundaries.  I’ve done a good bit of charity walks and I have to say the Lupus walk was one of the most moving walks I’ve ever done. There was just something about the volunteers helping, the setting, the mood, the walkers … it was just moving.

I hope you feel moved too.

Please check out the website for the Richmond walk (There may be a walk in your area; check!) http://lupusdmv.kintera.org/faf/home/default.asp?ievent=481438&lis=1&kntae481438=ED128239AF944547842D30C01E5A54BE

Click on the URL and you should see a button on the front that says “Sponsor a Participant.” (I think you may be able to search by team … if so, search for “Susan’s Butterflies.”)

My name is Sara Owens; it’d be awesome if you searched for me, went on my page and donated to either me, a team member or to my team — or heck — any team!

Go out and make a difference. If you believe in something … prove it.

I hope to go back and post more soon!

Thanks for listening,

Sara, Patrick, Buffy, Jasper, the cats and the fish (and my dad)