Currently, Vol. 7

This last week has been full of some interesting and fun days. We are going through a rather complicated issue with the kiddo and school, I was sick for four weeks, and spring is definitely on the way. So, here is a little recap of what is going on Currently.

First off I want to give a great big thank you to Motherhood Through My Eyes for featuring one of my instagram photos in her Moms Who Motivate post yesterday, really made my day as Instagram is my favorite social media and I am glad I made her feel like gettin' up and movin'! Now groove on over there and check it out, and follow me on Insta if you don't already, would love to "see" you over there! 

Making...a lot of smoothies lately. Trying to use up the frozen fruit so I can defrost the freezer, it has a lot of ice build up.

This gem is from Angela over at Oh She Glows, it is her Flu-Buster Clementine Smoothie. Full of Vitamin C and just really makes your throat feel awesome when it is raw and dry and just feeling awful.

Watching...sunsets, around 18.30...so lovely to have no clouds and sun until 18.30!

Enjoying...my workouts. Took me a long time to fall back in love with exercising again. I had continued on my workout path but wasn't truly enjoying them, I am happy to report I am truly loving my workouts again.

Loving...the date nights my hubby and I have had and the yummy restaurants we've been finding.

Thankful...for all the time I get to spend with this young lady and that she is so adventurous in exploring our city and Europe in general.

Quote of the day...Things haven't been easy the last few weeks for the kiddo at school, but as soon as she gets home and can be herself and we can goof off laughter seems to cure all. So, chin up, everyone...if you are having a bad day, try and laugh it off....will at least bring down the stress levels ;)

So, what have you been making, watching, and enjoying?

What are you thankful for lately?

Currently, Vol 3

My hubby was gone all week last week making it somewhat productive/somewhat lazy. All-in-all was a good week, but so glad he comes home tomorrow!

This post almost didn't get written. I have entered a lazy streak, but trying to break it. So, here I sit, writing.

Currently....

Thinking about...this young lady I met today while walking home from the grocery store. It was bright and sunny and I had just tripped over my own two feet and was chuckling to myself, I looked up and smiled at her. She did not look happy. She said something to me in Dutch to which I responded, "Sorry I don't know that much Dutch yet", she happily conversed with me in English, it went something like this:

YL: I am not happy so I cannot laugh.

Me: I'm sorry to hear that.

YL: Why, you cannot do anything about it.

Me: Well, you are so sad that you cannot return a smile and for that I am sorry, I truly hope your day gets better.

YL: I don't.

Me: (extremely taken by surprise) Well, I am sorry to hear that but you are very young and I promise today will not be the worst day that you have. Even if you don't hope your day gets better I hope that for you, be careful out there.

A few minutes later I see her on her bike and she yells at me, "Mevrouw, look at me! I am smiling! Are you?" I told her I was and I was glad to see her smiling...she rode off as teenagers do dancing around in her bike seat and looked to be having a better day.

I initially left the conversation feeling very sad for this young lady but knew in the end I did all I could and truly hoped things got better for her, and I hope, since she smiled a bit, her day did turn around.

Excited about....hubby coming home tomorrow, lunch with friends this week, a ladies night in with friends this week, and date night with the husband! There are many other little things I am excited about, but those are the highlights ;)

Crafting...a Valentine's Day banner, centerpiece, and a ridiculously cute/cheesy Valentine's Day t-shirt set for the hubby & I!

Loving...the weather we have had. It has been a lot of fog and snow, but it was a welcome change from the just dreary cloudy weather! Today it was sunny though! 

Looking at....my yearly goals notebook trying to make sure I am on track for all the things I want to accomplish. So far I am somewhat getting there.

Thankful for....so many things! The number one has to be the opportunity to show our daughter Europe and teacher her about the history of the world in a hands on way.

So, that is what we are up to Currently. Make sure you hop on over to Becky's Blog, Choose Happy and check out everyone else that is linking up!

Feature Friday #3

Woohoo! Friday it is! Does anyone have any fun plans for the weekend? 



I know we have New Restaurant Friday and then Saturday the Teenager is having a couple friends spend the night. Sunday will actually be relaxing since there is no cheerleading. Hoping to fit in a run that day.

If you missed last week's Feature Friday make sure to check it out here. This week has been a great week in the blog-o-sphere! I've found lots of great stuff to read!

What I've Read:

The first article I read that really spoke to me is from another fitness mama. She's Rachel & she is over at Random Kings. She writes about Birth Stories and why they are a big deal. I have never judged someone for how they choose to give birth. That is obviously a very, very personal experience and what is right for the goose is most definitely not right for the gander. My friend Rachel had two completely natural births..good for her..I am jealous. I wish I could have done that, but I am a huge wimp and got the epidural...like as soon as I could! I had the most enjoyable, lazy birth. I will say when I tell people my birth story they are amazed my epidural worked so well. I have never felt judged by it though. Maybe I am just not that sensitive to notice if someone was judging me. But, as women I do feel that when we are in online forums and talking with our friends no matter what we should support them, especially with a birth story. Everyone makes the best decisions they can at the time and things don't always go as planned no matter how much you try to plan! So tell me what you think? Have you ever felt "judged" by your birth story? Have you ever judged someone for how they chose to handle the birth of their child? Better yet, leave her a comment on her site ;)

Next, I read two articles that I wanted to feature. Tomorrow I have a travel article coming up and these two ladies posted nice articles about places they have recently visited. The first is from Cosmos Mariners she writes about How to Have an Inexpensive Trip to Scotland. This spoke to me because we just got back from a fairly inexpensive trip to London. We love to save money so any tips on making trips less costly are always appreciated! The final article I am going to write about is from Megan Joy Jaunts.  She writes about visiting Seville, Spain! While there they visited a beautiful cathedral: Catedral de Seville. Go check out her beautiful pictures, this place is definitely on my must visit list some day! 

What I Wrote:

During my Meal Plan Monday post I write about 5 things you can do on Sunday to make your whole week run smoother & make sure you don't miss those workouts ;) This week I also continued on my weekly deep cleaning series: Living Room and Dining Room. Finally, if you didn't see this beauty yesterday I posted my recipe for making Granite Cleaner Wipes. Go over and check these out. Let me know what you think! :)

What I Watched:
I don't really have any links but this week we have been crazy into Big Brother Canada! Any one else watching? I love how they had the new house guest come in! Excited to see how that will shake the house up. 

I've also been way in to Reign.  It's getting super interesting. I love how they are going down an interesting sexual path with the King. This last week when he screwed the woman right out the window was shocking! Who else watched? What do you think?

I'm linking up over at Blogitudes today, if you are a blogger go link up too ;)

Feature Friday!

Hi! So, I wanted to start doing a Feature Friday to feature some of my favorite posts for the week that I read an wrote!

What I Read:

My good real life friends over at Food For Your Cell wrote a great article on 15 Minutes to Better Health. These are easy things that you can do everyday to improve your health. Go read it, what will you start implementing today?

The other thing I was reading this week was up on Cheerfully Imperfect ; her post about the 30 day fermented foods challenge she is doing. I am always looking for new and different ways to improve my health and learn about new types of food and improve my palette. I don't usually go for fermented foods but her list of fermented foods really got me thinking. So I've gone out and bought some keifer, some coconut yogurt, and kombucha. The recipes I am going to try making are the pickles, applesauce, and ranch dressing for my salads.

What I Wrote: 

This week I had a couple of great articles I feel! The first was a post about how each week I focus on one room/area of my home to deep clean. I assign a task to each day and do those, they take usually no more than 15 minutes. Here is the article.

The other post I want to talk about is an awesome keepsake I created for my daughter and her cousins. It is an ornament I made with a picture of the 3 of them in it with some sand from our favorite beach and some baby shells we all found together. Go check it out as it is a great thing to have in mind if you are going on a big vacation this year, it is something you can gather most of the supplies while on vacation! 

So, that is for my weekly wrap up! I hope everyone has a great weekend!

Meal Plan Monday #18

Linking up at: OrgJunkie!

Happy Monday, Everyone!! I haven't been blogging too much the past couple of weeks. With summer upon us it sadly went a bit by the wayside. Up here in Vancouver we have to take advantage of the beautiful weather when we have it otherwise we risk regretting it around mid-November! ;) We've been doing a ton of hiking, saw a real, very large waterfall, and some other beautiful scenery. But, we are on the countdown for back to school. The kiddo is in the last three weeks of summer filled with camps and other various back to school activities. So, that being said things should get back to normal so I can really get back into this blogging thing. I have tons of great posts coming up! But, that's not what we are here for without further ado....here is my meal plan for the week!

These are the items I got from the farmer's market...they are going the be the stars of my meals this week....

First, don't forget to clean out your kitchen and toss any expired or questionable food, leftovers make sure to make them the star of a meal Monday or Tuesday!!!

Snacks
Mostly consisting of fresh strawberries, cherries, and bananas, popcorn, almonds and creme frais (fresh cream cheese from the farmer's market), and ham

Breakfast
Monday: Egg and avocado sandwich with cucumber slices and strawberries
Tuesday: oatmeal raisin "cookie" overnight oats
Wednesday: cereal with bananas/cream cheese toast with pb and bananas
Thursday: Egg sandwiches with cucumbers and avocado
Friday: Creamy overnight oats
Saturday: Cereal
Sunday: Omelettes with bacon and muffins

Lunch
Monday: 
Me: veggie sandwich with avocado and homemade vegan ranch dressing, hard boiled egg, and cucumber slices
Kiddo: Ham sandwich, hardboiled egg, cucmbers
Tuesday: Leftover squash spaghetti, almonds
Wednesday: 
Me: Chicken salad served on zucchini "crackers" with vegan ranch for dipping, toasted almonds
Kiddo: Chicken salad with zucchini "chips" and cucumber "chips"; granola
Thursday: 
Me: Leftovers
Kiddo: Grilled ham & cheese (served cold), fruit salad, cucumbers
Friday: Leftovers
Saturday: Plate of: ham slices, cheese slices, fruit, cucumber slices, mixed nuts
Sunday: Just a basic plate of popcorn, fruit, cheese, nuts

Dinner
Monday: Grilled cheese, chicken & rice soup with carrots, chips/salad
Tuesday: BBQ Chicken Breasts with yellow squash boats, rice, and quinoa
Wednesday: Teriyaki beef with fried rice/fried quinoa (this will be made using the leftovers from Tuesday)
Thursday: Quinoa with roasted beets salad (using leftover quinoa from Tuesday...can you tell I'm the only one that really eats it ;))/breakfast for dinner for everyone else
Friday: New Restaurant Friday...somewhere teen friendly since she leaves for camp the next day we'll treat her ;)
***These next two recipes are from the Williams-Sonoma Steak & Chops Recipe book. It's a seriously amazing cookbook! A definite fave!

Amazon

Saturday: Pork chops with sherry gravy, farmer's market veggies (tbd), and roasted potatoes
Sunday: Pineapple-hoisin glazed pork ribs, broccolini, corn on the cob

Dessert
Soft batch coconut oil cookies

So, that's it for us for the week! I'm trying two new recipes, the soft batch coconut cookies and the pineapple-hoisin glazed pork ribs! Are you trying anything new this week?

P.S. Happy Monday!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!