Category Archives: Food for Thought

Jazzercise Halloween & A Giant Cookie

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Hey there! Halloween is almost over, but Nick and I are still getting a couple trick-or-treaters as the night winds down. We should probably turn off our porchlight soon before Mac has a heartattack from all the kids dressed up in costumes ringing the doorbell. Poor little guy has been hiding underneath my bed most of the evening!

Jazzercise Halloween

I headed over to my Jazzercise center right after work at 5 pm to teach the last class of the evening. I walked into the end of the 4:30 class where Andrea, a fellow instructor, was teaching her class while dressed as a cowgirl!

photo(91) image(3)Haha she is so funny. She kept complaining about teaching in jeggings, boots, and a cowboy hat. But she was rocking it even through all the sweat. 🙂

I only put on some fairy wings to teach my class. A full costume just wasn’t in the plans for me this year.

We had a fun class full of lots of sweat followed by lots of candy and sweet treats.

Two of my students dressed up as Thing 1 and Thing 2! (Ignore the sweat – this was after they took 2 classes!)

image(4)Dede (on the right) was SO thoughtful and brought me a giant cookie cake for my birthday!

image(2)

photo(89)YUMMM!! I immediately knew what would be my dessert tonight! I made it home after class and had a small sliver of the cake before hopping in the shower.

image(1)Then post shower,  I had some veggies and a wrap with ham and cheese (unpictured) before I ate another little slice.

photo(90)I couldn’t stay away from it! Nick loved it too. His reaction to me bringing it in from the car after class was priceless though… “What are we gonna do with that?!” Well….we’re gonna eat it. Or least I am. HA!

It was a fun little evening, to say the least. I love dancing with my Jazzer sistas, especially on holidays when we get to be a little silly.

I hope you’ve had a wonderful Halloween. I still have a lot of leftover candy + a cookie cake now, so I think I’m set for my sugar fix for a few days. Tis the season for sugar comas!

Tomorrow I’ll be spending the first half of my day relaxing & shopping  with my momma, then Nick and I will have a nice dinner together after he gets off work. It should be a wonderful 24th birthday weekend!

Nighty night, and I’ll see you when I’m a year older!

It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown!

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Happy rainy Tuesday! It’s been pouring cats and dogs all morning. I had to drive extra slow this morning to avoid floating off the flooded streets. What a great start to the day, right?! 😛

I’m not scheduled to run today, but Nick and I had a fairly big dinner last night and were lazy around the house. So I thought I should get up and at least do a couple miles to jump start my metabolism today. When I woke up at 5:30, I heard rain hitting the roof and the lightning and thunder were booming….great. But I was already awake and knew my brain wouldn’t be able to shut back off for an hour, so I got up to watch some TV with Mac and have some coffee and cereal before my day had to start.

charbrownTV at 5:30 am isn’t too exciting, and I was feeling festive. So I popped in this DVD to watch an old favorite!

photo(112)It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown! haha I bought this holiday collection DVD on Amazon last week. I’m excited to have a Charlie Brown classic to watch during each holiday this year! Since I was half asleep this morning, I’ll probably have to rewatch the Halloween one on Thursday night while we pass out candy. It only seems fitting. 🙂

LINUS AND SALLY MISTAKE SNOOPY FOR THE GREAT PUMPKINThis is my favorite scene where Snoopy pops up in the pumpkin patch pretending to be the Great Pumpkin. Nothing takes me back to my childhood more than these old classics. Guess I’m feeling a nostalgic today. 🙂

Breakfast + Bday Week

Breakfast today was eaten at my desk like normal. But what wasn’t normal was the overabundance of coffee that I brought with me!

photo(107)Protein bar + banana + Greek yogurt + 2 mugs of coffee! I’m a little wired, but the weather was calling for some extra caffeine today. I also remembered to bring a Groupon Goods purchase with me. I tried out some jeans, and sadly they were about 3 sizes too small! So Groupon shall be getting them back shortly.

So this morning, between the rain and not being able to get in a little run like I wanted, I was a little cranky by the time I got to work. I really don’t like when mornings don’t go my way! But I started thinking…

  • It’s the week of Halloween
  • It’s my birthday week
  • I have off work on Friday for my birthday
  • My mom and I are getting together on Friday
  • We’re going to see White Christmas on Saturday!

So why am I cranky again? Oh that’s right….I have NO reason to be cranky or down. It’s my birthday week, and nothing is going to bring me down!

The rest of today will consist of work and 2 Jazzercise classes, so it’ll be a busy one. At least my workout tonight is indoors since I don’t see this rain letting up anytime soon. I’ll see you all later – have a great day!

STL Bound

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Happy Friday!! I hope your having a wonderful day so far. It’s gorgeous (and cold!) here in Springfield, and I’m loving it!

Right after work today, Nick, Mac, and I will load up and head out to St. Louis for a weekend at Nick’s parents house. I’m very excited! Though the anticipation is making this work day go by rather slowly… oh well. It’s already half over. 🙂

Backing up a bit to yesterday, I had a little more work to do in my kitchen before all my goodies would be ready to take along for the weekend. Frosting the sugar cookies was the final thing on my baking agenda!

photo(90)Plain sugar cookies with vanilla frosting = Nick’s father’s favorite! Mark is an easy man to please (his bday is 4 days after mine), and I had a wonderful time licking all the extra frosting off the spoon.

photo(92)I used a simple Betty Crocker Sugar Cookie mix, so they aren’t fancy but still delicious! And I actually ended up eating tons of the leftover frosting right before I went to teach 6:45 pm Jazzercise. Smart idea? Probably not. But I managed to make it through class without getting sick. 🙂

I also whipped up a batch of chocolate chip and pecan cookies for the rest of Nick’s family to enjoy. They aren’t into the plain sugar cookies as much as Mark is.

photo(91)These are like little pieces of heaven, people. Seriously.

I found semi-sweet baking chips in a Halloween variety to make these extra festive!

photo(89)And I obviously did not frost these. The chocolate chips were enough addition!

I now have 2 dozen cookies and a BIG bowl of the Halloween Chex Mix that I posted yesterday to take along for the weekend. Nick’s mom always complain that my treats are unhealthy and that I need to bring along some of my healthy food. But that’s no fun! Birthday weekends are meant for splurging, so splurge we will. A lot.

Morning Run

In lieu of me having to change up my half marathon schedule, I had a crosstraining day yesterday and taught 2 classes. So that made today my shorter run day! Yay for not having to run as far! 😛

I woke up early to the coldest morning we’ve had so far: 30° F! Woah! I bundled up in my best running layers, including a cozy ear warmer and gloves, and headed out on a 45 minute run. I tried to make today’s run a tempo run, but the cold held me back just a bit. My perfect race pace would be between a 8:00-8:10 minute mile, but this morning’s pace was 8:28 overall. I was a little faster than my run on Wednesday morning, but still not at my best. That cold air makes it hard to breath!

I made it to 5.1 miles in 43:30 and was more than ready to be back home. Today’s run was difficult to say the least. I was struggling to pick up my feet and almost tripped myself a few times. This was probably a mix of being tired and eating so much sugar all week. I’m still not feeling my best from eating so many sweets in the midst of all my baking/cooking for the weekend, so I’ll be ready for a ‘sweets detox’ starting Sunday night when we make it home!

I hope you all have a great weekend and can enjoy the beautiful weather! I’m not sure when I’ll have time to check in, but I’m sure I’ll have lots of fun times to share – talk to you then!