Pick the right shoes for your workout

We need to talk shoes 👟👟. A lot of people including me experienced knee pain when we first did Zumba. Most of the time the reason is that you are wearing the wrong shoes. People tend to just use their  running shoes. Running shoes tend to have a lot of traction. Zumba and a lot of our other fitness classes tend to have us move side to side or pivot.

You might ask yourself "seriously! Shoes is what will fix it?" I say Yes ♥️ ask me, a d ask many around you that changed their shoes. We all noticed immediate difference when we changed to the right shoes.

We have couple of solutions here.
1- You can wear over the shoes socks that will allow you to pivot and slide easily on the dance floor. I have seen a lot of ladies that really like this.
Dance socks link

2- Buy a dance/studio or cross (trainers) training shoes. I have attached pictures of examples of how the bottom of the shoes will look like when they are appropriate for dancing. A lot of my Zumba friends love our rykas, they have models for wide or narrow and they have many many options. If you get them from Amazon you can get them  for very cheap. By now all major shoes companies have a dance/studio or cross trainer models.

3- wear your running shoes when the tread is worn out so it no longer have traction.

If you have any other questions please let me know. I love you all ♥️ Happy feet 👟👟

In Honor of my 1000 Day Streak in Duolingo

Couple of days ago I reached my 1000 day steak in Duolingo.  I do admit that Doulingo alone is not enough but it will for sure give you a nice starting point (You can read more about my Duolingo experience here). I did have to go online to understand some of the grammar but the thing that helped me the most was reading, music and TV. For that I decided to share some of the tools that accelerated my Spanish learning. 

1. Finding Music:

Not knowing the culture very well made it difficult at first to find the music that I liked because I did not even know where to start. I remember I was in the middle of my Duolingo tree when I found the song Bailando. I remember how the words were so fast I can barely understand, I had to look up the lyrics. After that I started using Google play and started Bailando radio where they start playing similar songs. When I hear one I like, I add it to My Playlist. If one of the songs was a bit different I start another "radio" for it and start adding what I like to the list. Suddenly I have over 60 songs from different genres (still adding). It is so funny how in the beginning every song felt so fast, and that I had to look up all the lyrics, slowly the same songs start slowing down just because your brain is now synced. Of course singing out load helps make you used to pronouncing words.

2. Reading Magazines and News: 

I first wanted to start reading stories and novels right after I was done with my Duo tree, but I found it very difficult to find what I would like. My friend Roberto from Spain suggested reading the news and articles about what interests me. He suggested a magazine called Muy Interesante it has subjects about everything. He was right! It was a lot easier to understand. I felt I had to look up words less just because I can deduce what it means from the article itself. Even though the reading helped me learn a lot more words and the music helped me pronounce the words well, I still felt like I can't really start a conversation with some one. That takes me to the next step.

3. Watching Spanish TV: (Novelas)

I started first tuning to my antena TV one and only Spanish channel. That plan failed miserably and fast, in an age where we get everything on demand, it was very painful for me to watch the TV and wait for something that might interest me. That made me move to Netflix in search for Spanish shows. I first tried to watch the american shows that I watched already dubbed in Spanish.  That was annoying to me, it might work for some people but I just could not tolerate it. Then I decided I should try to find Spanish shows. It was hard at the beginning, for the first show I watched (La familia de diez) I had to look at the English subtitles all the time. Unfortunately they only had the one season on Netflix and I was forced to look for something else. What I found next was not that great so I got a bit discouraged, until May of 2017 when my friend Brenda told me about a show to watch (el clone) and that opened so many doors to me and started me on a novela binge-watching journey. I will write more about that journey in another post. El clone was a bit over 180 episodes and when I first started watching it I did have to keep an eye on the subtitles and not do anything but hula hoop in front of the TV. By episode 90 I was able to go back to doing my crafts while I am watching the TV. Since then I have been getting better and better in understanding without looking at the subtitles.

4. Books to Read:

Since my husband is a year behind me in learning Spanish, I felt that it is my job to make life a bit easier for him. So I decided that for my 1000 day streak, I will try to find us some books and here is what I found:

1. 
Spanish Short Stories For Beginners: by Olly Richards

Now this is a fun book, I did not go through all of it yet, but I like how there is a quiz after every section. If you did not figure this out about me yet, I LOVE to study and I LOVE tests. This book is very easy for my level right now, I wish I found it when I was still doing my tree, but it is still fun and my heart still beats fast when I am trying to answer the questions even though it is easy for me. Yeah I know I am crazy (hence the name of the blog ;))

2. 
First Spanish Reader: A Beginner's Dual-Language Book…  by Angel Flores

This is also a great book, the stories are short and the translation is in the page across.

3. 
Cuentos de la selva by Horacio Quiroga

This book has shorter stories and Amazon had an Audio book. I also found a YouTube video of some of the stories by a native speaker, the accent in how they pronounce some of the words is different but I think that is important because we have to be aware of all types of accents. The video can be found here.

4. 

El Alquimista: Una Fabula Para Seguir Tus SuenosPaulo Coelho

This is another book that everyone recommends. The book is originally written in Portuguese by the Brazilian author Paulo Coelho. I have not read it yet but bought it already. Hoping to get to it soon.

I hope you find this helpful and can aid you in your quest of learning a new language. Remember, even if Spanish was not the language you are planning to learn. These tips can still help you. Also some of the books I mentioned are also in other languages. Happy learning :)

The Adventures of a Mad Lady: Plants vs Zombies Edition

My brother Al is a big fan of the game Plants vs Zombies, and one day he decided to ask me to make him one. I do make amigurumi (toys) every once in a while but not at this level of detail. I put that project on hold for a while until his birthday was getting close and I did not know what to get him. I decided, hey I have one month before his birthday, I definitely have the time to do this. I even have the yarn already.

Speaking of having the yarn already, I remember going to Walmart one day and seeing all the Redheart yarn on sale. I bought a skien of every color. Including the strange green that my husband held in his hand asking: "Where would you ever use this Ugly color?!" 

Anyways back to the Zombie, I looked online for a pattern since I had no time to come up with it myself, I had a one week of unpaid vacation and this had to happen now or never. I came across a pattern on Ravelry by AradiyaToys.

I started making the toy with my size 4 yarn but it looked like it was going to be very big. I decided to go with size 10 crochet thread instead and 1.00 mm crochet hook. 

For reference, this is the size 1.00 mm crochet hook

 Making these itty bitty fingers was so hard

I did end up spending my whole vacation time on making this, but what a rush. Finishing something with this much detail was a first for me and I was proud of myself. I did have to pay the chiropractor a visit couple of times a week for a month after this but it was worth it, and I would do it all over again


Patter by : AradiyaToys on Ravelry
Materials Used:
1.00 mm Crochet hook
electric wire (fro legs and foot)
artiste #10 crochet thread in colors: Hemp, Aspen, Papaya, Fudge
Aunt Lydia's  #10 crochet thread in colors: Dark Royal, White
knitpicks Curio #10 crochet thread in color: Hollyberry
Cotton thread (Friendship bracelets thread or embroidery thread) in pink and black 

Food Diary, For More Than Weight Loss

I started keeping a detailed diary of what I eat more than 3 years ago. It started as a way to loose weight because I was wolfing down food and saying: "I have no clue how I am gaining weight". I used a fitness and food tracker application on my phone to make it easier for me and to have no excuses. The tracker I used tracks your vitamin intake along with your carb, fat, and protein numbers. I started noticing that I was low on a lot of the vitamins and minerals, so I decided to scan in the supplements that I take so I can have a more accurate reading of what I really need.

My supplements were:
- A women's Multi-vitamin with low iron (6%)
- Fish oil ( I had an eye correction surgery that required taking fish oil and after surgery for 6 months)
- Iron supplement

Because I had this app, I was able to plan what I am going to eat for the whole week and buy my groceries accordingly. I usually enter what I will be eating tomorrow the night before.  Again, I am not a dietitian or claim to be telling you how to loose weight, I am here to share how tracking helped me with more than loosing weight. So without further ado let's see what it helped me with.

The dessert that started it all

- Butter is the source of my under the skin painful chin breakouts:

   After loosing 10 pounds and starting to increase my daily exercise routine I decided that my husband and I deserve adding desert to our menu. Especially that I know the calories in the desert I am making, and I know how many calories I am burning so there is no problem at all. Well, two weeks later I started having my pesky under the skin breakouts on my chin (thanks mom). I realized that I have had clear skin for the previous 6 months, so what is happening, what did I do wrong? Now, because I have a food diary I was able to go and look at the past month and see what changed and sure enough I noticed that I started adding dessert to the menu. The scientist in me started asking, dessert in general or an ingredient? I looked at all the ingredients and saw that butter is the only new addition to the table at a rate of 2 tablespoons per day. I stopped desserts for a month to clear my system, then started adding desserts made without butter for a whole month. No breakouts. Started adding butter and two weeks later breakouts.

- I am extremely intolerant to Stevia
  A friend of mine gave me an awesome recipe for iced tea and she told me that she sweetens it with Stevia. Why not? I will try that. I started sweetening my tea with Stevia and within couple of days I had so much pain in my intestines I got so bloated and gassy I felt I was going to explode. At that time of course, I did not know it was the sugar, I just knew that something is killing me and I don't know what it is. So I look at my diary to see what changed and that is when I saw that Stevia was the common factor.


- I am extremely intolerant to malt
  Same story with the Stevia, I had a malt shake and the same night had the same reaction of bloating and pain.

- Stopping my fish oil is the source of my back inflammation that won't go away
 This is where tracking your supplements can be so beneficial. I had a back injury that resulted in some inflammation in my back. I noticed that the inflammation was very persistent and would not go away even though I am doing all my workouts and stretches. From experience, when everything else fails look at what you eat. I went through my diary and found that I have been missing my fish oil for months. CVS stopped selling the one I like and I did not like any of the ones I bought after, so I just stopped taking it. I decided to bite the bullet and buy a new fish oil and take it even if it taste gross. Do you want to guess what happened next? You guessed it, after 3 weeks of taking my fish oil I started feeling the inflammation slowly go away.





I hope you guys find this helpful :)

Duolingo: The app that helped me learn Spanish

I have been bilingual all my life, I spoke Arabic and English fluently since I was a child. I did find out later in my life that my first language was English even though I was Arabic and grew up in an Arabic speaking house and country. Thinking and dreaming in English is what lead me to believe so. Once I got to high school I really wanted to learn a new language, my high school offered French and I hated it.

I tried to find more resources but everything I tried did not suit my way of learning.  I even tried Rosetta Stone but just could not stomach it. Fast forward a few years later, 2015 to be specific. My husband told me about this new app/site called Duolingo and I decided to give it a try. I decided I want to learn Spanish, I felt it is the best choice since I live in America.

I was a bit of a skeptic at first but I gave it a try. The program contains a tree of subjects that you have to go through. Every subject can contain more than one lesson. You can always test out if you know it. I started with zero knowledge in Spanish so I did not test out of anything. They also give you an evaluation if you have previous knowledge of the language, and will unlock parts of the tree that you know. They recommend doing a lesson or two a day, practicing for 5 minutes a day is a lot better than nothing.

This has the tree for the English for Spanish speaking people.

My obsessiveness kicked in full drive, I was racking up and average of 250 experience points a day. I was learning so fast I could not stop, I had days that I could not sleep, I just wanted to learn more. 138 days later I was done. I finished my tree and that was an awesome rush.

You can see the 138 Day streak.

 Finishing the tree does not make you 100% fluent in the language, but gives you a good head start. From there I started to find articles to read, TV to watch and music to listen to. My friend from Spain suggested to read articles and news because they will be easier to understand than novels and fiction. They also recommend doing the reverse tree. What does that mean? For example, I did Spanish for English speakers first then for my reverse tree I did English for Spanish speakers. The Spanish sentences there are more difficult because they assume you know Spanish. This gives you a wider range of sentences. In my my case the Spanish tree was a lot longer than the English tree, but I still managed to do it in 3 days. Again that is part of the obsessiveness that I have.

I still practice using Duolingo, but not as obsessively as I used to be, just because I am at a level where I need a different kind of practice.

As you can see here, I still practice daily.

I will have another post about the other resources I am using to improve my Spanish. 

 

How to Make a Detachable Fur Pom Pom for your Knitted or Crochet Hat

I don't know if you guys got to watch Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life, but I remember the first thing I noticed was the hat. I decided I have to have it, I mean I have to make it. I found a video on YouTube that helped me make it, and it was fun (How to Knit a Gilmore Girls Inspired Hat | Netflix + Knit).

The problem that I faced was the pom poms, I wanted to make it my self and I wanted to make it detachable. Making the pom pom detachable makes it easy for me to wash the hat. Here is where the engineering cap comes out. I decided to use size 10 snaps to attach the pom pom to the hat.


How to make a fur pom pom and attach a snap to it:

Material: 

• Fur fabric : I buy mine from JOANN. 
• Size 10 snaps: I used to buy them from JOANN but then I had to switch to bulk from here .
• Very strong thread: I used and upholstery thread such as this.
• Poly-fil  to stuff the pom pom.
• A sharp needle to sew the pom pom. 
• A cutting tool to cut the pom pom circle: I use a rotary cutting took like this. You can use scissors too but I found it  harder.
• A card board jig the size of the pom pom diameter especially if you are making more than one.

Cut a circle (4 in for a nice big juicy pom pom).

Use a heavy thread to do a running stitch all around the perimeter of the circle

Cinch the thread to close the pom pom, stuff with poly-fill before completely closing. It will be hard to keep the pom pom shut, you will have to stitch across couple of times to secure it shut.

Now, if you did not want to make a pom pom you can start with one that was ready made and start here.

The snaps are made of two parts as seen in the picture below. I suggest to use part 1 on the pom pom and part 2 on the hat. Why? I found out that if I used 2 on the pom pom the fur would sometimes get in that well and prevent the two parts from snapping tightly. It is up to you though.

Stitch part 1 on pom pom and part 2 to hat.

Stitching the snap to the center of pom pom with the thread that was used to close the pom pom.

Stitch the other part on the hat using the same heavy thread. You can try to match the color of your hat, but it is not important it will be covered anyways.

Ta da!

I hope this was helpful. I have made so many (30>) hats with in the last three months and I have used this method on all of them.

Yoga Videos for Anything that Hurts

It was 2010 when I had to go to the doctor for horrible back pains. I was sent to physical therapy where I found out that I had an extremely weak core. My physical therapist barked at me "Just do yoga". At that time YouTube was not very populated with Yoga videos, I had to buy DVDs from the stores. Since then I did yoga everyday, and all my pains went away. Every time I stop I revert back to my old pains. Now that YouTube is full of yoga videos, I was able to explore different routines that targets specific pains or discomforts. I was also able to find different video lengths so I would never say:" I have no time".

Here is a collection of yoga and stretching videos that I have personally tried and love. I organized them into playlists for easy access. Videos rage from 5 minutes to an hour so no excuses.


Targeted Videos:

1. For Back Pain: Back Pain Yoga
2. For Hip Pain: Hip Yoga, Hip, Hip Flexor Streches, and Foam Roller Workout
3. For Neck and Shoulder Pain: Neck and Shoulder Yoga

General Videos:

1. Morning Yoga: Morning Yoga
2. Lunch Yoga: Lunch Yoga
3. Full Body Yoga: Full Body Yoga
4. Night Time Yoga: Night Time Yoga

Again these are videos that I have tried myself and love so consult your doctor if you have any questions. The playlists will keep increasing as I find and try more useful videos 💛.  If you have any suggestions or questions please let me know.