Gilbert, Arizona Temple Painting

Last year we got to visit the Gilbert Arizona Temple Open House with all the kiddos. What a neat experience to walk through with our children. Our oldest will be 12 soon and get to do baptisms for the dead, but so far they've just been able to walk around the outside (I guess some of them walked through the Redlands and Newport Temples but they were too young to remember). Gilbert Temple is so big and I love how each temple is unique and inspired by the area it is built in. I'm glad that my husband and I were married in the temple and set that example for our children. No matter which one you go to is a beautiful, peaceful, sacred place

Pilates and Strength Training Exercise Sheets

I love to exercise regularly but not for hours a day. I like to exercise for 30-45 minutes a day, sometimes up to an hour, but definitely not an hour every day. I love doing pilates and I love exercising in my own home. I love getting it done first thing and not having to drive somewhere to exercise. I started doing pilates by watching workout DVDs, but I got bored fast. I started muting the TV and listening to the radio or podcasts instead of the sound coming from the TV. I like to get my workout done as quickly as possible (especially when I have a baby to workout around) so I had the idea to just draw a few pictures to help remind me of the moves without having to watch the DVD over and over again, and have to wait around at times while they explained things. 

I also like to do some strength training exercises in between. I know the value of not doing the same exercises every time, so I rotate those strength training moves. I really like to use the exercise sheets from magazines because I like the variety. One day my baby ripped a few of my favorites up, so I decided to also draw those. I love to be able to glance at a picture to remind me of a move. But I don't like doing exercises that I feel are uneffective, and I like to do a balance of muscles. For example I don't like doing 6 different exercises in one day for one muscle group. So I created my own routines from several different exercise sheets. 

Usually I will do Pilates and Strength Training  twice a week. Each day I do them, I switch my Strength Training page. For one month I rotate through 3 pages of strength training exercises. The next month I have a different set, but I haven't drawn those yet! Here is Month 1. These are great because they don't use up too much ink, and if they get torn, you can easily print out another one. I keep mine in a sheet protector with the Pilates page on one side and the Strength Training sheets facing the other side. If you want to print these out, just right click and Print!

I love combination moves where you are doing an exercise for your legs and arms at the same time, I feel like I'm getting more out of my workout and like I'm being more efficient with my time. Also, I don't like doing sets, for example 3 sets of 12 reps. I am not very motivated to go back and do the same exercise again. So instead I just do 50 reps of one exercise and I'm done with that one (or 25 on each side). I like to use 5 or 10 pound dumbbells. Whenever I was pregnant I'd switch to 2.5 pound dumbbells.