Category Archives: Daily Life!

Finally Fall!

Daily Life!, Food for Thought,

Happy Fall, everyone!

photo(81)My Fall decorations returned yesterday evening, no thanks to Mac. He cried and barked through the whole ordeal. He’s especially bothered by this cute little scarecrow wreath. But I got all my goodies up despite his ill-spirit!

photo(83) photo(82)Yay for Fall! I’ve been anticipating the official start for a few weeks, so I was very excited for today to roll around! Nick arrived home from visiting his parents to find the house extra festive. My fireplace mantle makes me very happy, especially with my fake fire burnin’!

Breakfast

This morning started in typical Sunday fashion.

photo(80)Sunday newspaper ads + oatmeal + coffee! And today’s coffee was festive to celebrate the start of Fall. My house smelled like spicy pumpkin-goodness when I woke up thanks to the Dunkin Donuts Pumpkin Spice, so I kept my cup full all morning!

photo(79)Yum! Gotta love a good caffeine buzz to start your Sunday off right.

I walked Mac after a few cups of coffee to get a my body moving a little before I taught a 9 AM Jazzercise class. My quads were BEYOND sore from my long run yesterday, so I was very okay with only getting in a quick walk plus my class for my workout today.

Lunch was a grilled chicken and spinach salad at a Mexican restaurant with Nick as soon as he returned from his trip. I forgot to snap a pic because our normal go-to Mexican place, La Mision, changed over the last week so we were trying out the new franchise that has taken over the location. It’s called Las Margaritas, and it was okay. But it was a little more expensive, and we really missed the homey feeling we got from the hispanic family that owned it previously.

Thankfully, the salad was good and extra healthy. And healthy dishes were basically non-existent on the La Mision menu. We may try it again. Or we may try the other new Mexican restaurant that opened up next door to Las Margaritas. I’ve gotta a feeling our beloved La Mision family has moved next door under a new name. Stay tuned!

The rest of the afternoon consisted of a final fitting of my bridesmaid dress for Katie’s wedding this weekend! It fit (thankfully!). And then it was onto some light grocery shopping with Nick. BTW, avoid the grocery store at all costs if you are health-conscious at all. There is Halloween candy everywhere!!! It was literally haunting me the entire time we were in the store. Luckily, I have Katie’s wedding as incentive to not gain any extra weight/bloat this week from candy. After the wedding?? The candy may win. Time will tell how strong my willpower is.

Dinner

Dinner was quick and easy. I had some lean ground beef that needed to be used. So Nick picked out an old favorite at the store.

photo(77)Hamburger Helper is always okay by me. Supa simple! And he’ll gladly eat the leftovers (which is rare – he’s soooo picky).

photo(78)I quickly made this for our dinner along with some green stuff on the side to make myself feel healthier.

photo(84)Little spinach salad and some steamed broccoli. Yumm! It felt good to get some veggies in my belly.

Now we’re just watching some Duck Dynasty reruns, and I’m trying to pull my brain together before this busy week begins. I did take a moment to make a batch of Pumpkin Pie Overnight Oats though. Can’t wait to dig into those tomorrow!

Tomorrow morning will start bright and early with a 5:40 AM Jazzercise class. Hopefully my students are a little more awake this week! Enjoy your first evening of Fall!

 

Snuggly and Cozy

Daily Life!, ,

Good morning!! I’m so excited/relieved/happy that it is Friday! This has been one insanely busy week, so I was very thankful when this morning rolled around.

When I went to bed last night, I was in a complete food coma from all the food I ate at my Kappa Delta Alum meeting. So I slept great and even let myself sleep in til 6:15 AM before hopping into the shower. The forecast was calling for a rainy start to the day so there was no way I was going to wake up extra early for a run. Plus, Nick is going out of town to visit his family for the weekend right after work tonight, so I’ll have plenty of time to get in a nice long workout this evening. Depending on the weather, it may be a long run outside with Mac or I may head to the gym after work. All I know for sure is that I need to sweat and move my body after my indulging evening.

Breakfast

Breakfast this morning was going to be light, but then I realized I had lots of these little beauties leftover!

photo(85)Coooooookies! I had some Greek yogurt, a banana, and then several of these pumpkin oatmeal cookies to tide me over this morning. I brought the rest of the cookies into work to pawn off on my coworkers so I wouldn’t be tempted to eat them all while I have the house to myself this weekend. Thankfully, the cookies are now gone, so I can move on and away from the sweets for a few days!

And on that note, don’t you hate when you have a larger-than-normal meal, and then you can’t seem to get full during the following meals for a day or two? I swear my stomach gets ‘stretched out’ when I overeat by even the tiniest bit, and then it takes several days for my appetite to get back to normal. It’s a vicious cycle!

Today is drizzly and kinda sad looking outside, which is bringing on some cooler temperatures for the weekend. I’m going to take advantage of Nick being gone and hang up all our Fall decor and get lots of Mac snuggle time in while burning some Pumpkin scented candles…

Weekend outlook....Cold and pitiful
Weekend outlook….Cold and pitiful

We’ll be snuggly/cozy tonight for sure! Have a great Friday, gang.

SWMO Kappa Delta Alumnae Meeting

Daily Life!, Food for Thought, , , ,

Phewwww! It’s been a busy day/week! Who’s ready for Friday?!

Today started out with teaching a 5 AM Jazzercise class. I switched schedules with another instructor so I could have this evening free. Tonight was my first meeting with the Southwest Missouri Kappa Delta Alumnae Chapter!

I graduated from Drury University in May 2011, and though I really loved my sorority, I was ready for a break from the meetings/time requirements that it required after being active for 3 years. Sidenote: I only attended Drury for 3 years. I took the fast track and got my degree early. So no, I didn’t attend college anywhere else or drop out early. 🙂 I’m just that good.

I received an email from my sorority’s alumnae chapter about a month ago inviting us to attend the first meeting of the Fall. I finally felt excited about being active within my sorority again! So I took this as a sign that it was time for me to join up officially with the alumnae chapter.

Up to this point, I didn’t feel like it was the best idea for me to be super active with the alums because the chapter was still full of active members that were there when I was active. I always looked up to the alumnae when I was a student and didn’t know how this relationship would work out since I was almost the same age as the senior class members. After almost 3 years, most of those girls have graduated, and I finally can feel like an alumni!

The meeting invite said we would be planning this year’s calendar events, which is exactly what we DIDN’T do. HA! The eclectic group of women that welcomed me into their meeting tonight were far to friendly and chatty to get any ‘real’ work done. We spent 2 1/2 hours just eating and chatting about our lives and our time spent in the sorority. They were all so warm and inviting. I could tell that they were definitely sisters, even though there was a 50 year age different between some of us.

We eventually rounded out the evening by deciding that we would meet once every-other month since our schedules can be so crazy. We may get together soon (in October) for a wine tasting. But the next official event will be a cookie exchange in December. I may be old fashioned, but I can’t think of anything I’d rather do on a Thursday night than eat holiday cookies with some awesome ladies & sisters.

Dinner

BBQ was provided by our host, and we were all asked to bring our favorite side dishes to complete the meal. I opted to make a cold Quinoa & Cucumber salad to go along with the BBQ.

photo(84)But I also had to make some sweets for dessert! I found an amazing recipe for Pumpkin Oatmeal Chocolate Chip cookies on Pinterest and jumped at this chance to be able to bake.

photo(79)They were too delicious for words! And healthy-ish with no added oil or butter. I think I’ve found my new Fall go-to cookie recipe. I also saw a recipe on Pinterest that only required a Spice Cake mix and a can of pure pumpkin. They looked like little pumpkiny dough balls in the pics, so I will be trying those soon as well! (Thinking the addition of chocolate chips might be necessary here!)

Needless to say, getting this food ready last night completely destroyed my tiny kitchen, but it was well worth it. And everyone enjoyed the food (or seemed to!), so that’s what matters most! They oohed and aahed over the pumpkin cookies. I think the Fall-like weather made them even more enticing this evening.

Breakfast

photo(86)Breakfast today was the usual when I’m running late. And this banana was a little past its prime. ughhhhhh. But the Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Luna bar made it all okay. 🙂

Lunch

Lunch was quick and full of quinoa! I had some leftover quinoa from making the quinoa salad for tonight’s meeting. I threw that together with some leftover steamed veggies and wrapped it all up in one of my low-carb wraps.

photo(80)Supa healthy, right? Yeah it was until I added a little Lite Ranch dressing to give it some taste! The veggies were overcooked (my fault!) so they weren’t too tasty by themselves.

photo(86)I also had a little more quinoa by helping myself to the salad that I took to my meeting tonight. I made way too much of the salad so it didn’t hurt much for me to sample a few bites ahead of time. I felt like I was cheating on my typical lunch salad of romaine and veggies, but I suppose enough veggies were consumed regardless!

All-in-all, today was fun! I am now trying to deal with my completely full food baby. Did I overeat? Oh yea. No question about that one. But with my pumpkin cookies and some raspberry cookie bars someone else brought (and then sent home with me!), I couldn’t not be stuffed right now. So I think it’s time to hit the sack and start fresh tomorrow with healthy eating.