Fooducate

Happy Monday! This has turned out to be probably the single-most productive weekend of my adult life. My stress levels about the wedding have really gone down, so I'm just going to take a moment and pat myself on the back for conquering my to-do list. If we had any cookies in the house I would also reward myself with one... but alas, no cookies. I'm planning on dedicating a post to talk about all of the wedding preparations and what they've entailed for me. For as many wedding planning guides and magazines as I've read, I can't claim to have stuck to any particular timeline so I thought it might be useful for my friends who have weddings in their not-so distant futures to hear some suggestions and learn from my mistakes. Stay tuned for that!

In the meantime, I wanted to tell everyone about Fooducate. Carl and I have gotten hooked using this really cool iPhone app (it may be available for all smart phones, I don't know for sure). What it does is scan the bar code on your food item and gives it a grade (A, A-, B, etc) based on its ingredients and nutritional value. It will also give you information on "mystery" ingredients that are commonly found on food labels. We spent about a half an hour yesterday scanning every product in our cupboard and refrigerator. Sadly, most of our foods fell somewhere in the B and C range, many of which were labelled as healthy or natural products. For example, I bought a Kashi lunch meal that got a C+. Kashi is expensive but I'm willing to pay for it, given that it's providing me with a nutritious, well-rounded meal. I was disappointed when it only got a C, and probably won't continue to buy their lunch entrees. The app has made us a lot more aware of what we're eating (and it's made us wonder how our bodies are still functioning with all the junk we put in them), and I know it will motivate us to eat a little better. I highly recommend it, and would love to hear about the good food that people have found using it- or foods that we all assumed were good for us but turned out not to be.

Today I am working on cleaning the house from top to bottom one last time before the wedding. We'll see how far I get before I lose my gusto. As early wedding gifts arrive, our house has become filled with boxes and tissue paper, not to mention the arts and crafts explosion that has taken over the entire kitchen. I've really got my work cut out for me, but coming home to a clean house always helps me to stay unstressed. 

And look- we got pumpkins!

We haven't carved them quite yet... I wasn't sure of the shelf life of a carved pumpkin and didn't want them to rot before Halloween. That cute little bench they're sitting on was handmade by Carl's dad, Ernie. There are two pipes coming out of the siding that were really an eyesore (you can just see the bottoms of them here), so this was the perfect solution. 

Hope everyone has a great Columbus Day, and my condolences if you did not get the day off. I'm off to continue my cleaning frenzy!