What I Ate Wednesday #2 & WODs!!!

So, as I get more and more blogging done I feel like I am getting the hang of this stuff! I even learned how to create a collage for my post today! I'm super, super proud of it! I'm beaming!

Anywho, let's move on to What I ate Wednesday! Like I said last week I love connecting up to this link party because it's so fun to see what deliciouness everyone is eating!!! So....here goes....

The shrimp & steak Surf & Turf dinner we just cooked on Saturday night. It was quite a treat for us! The steak was cooked perfectly, as well as the shrimp! We enjoyed it as a family and watched Extremely Loud & Incredibly close! #tearjerker! 

A few weeks back we went to a video game themed restaurant here & had some amazing popcorn! I kept wanting to recreate it so I did! It was quite easy and is now a favorite snack of ours! 

Last is just one of my lunches and a breakfast this past week & a dinner I left for my hubby last Wednesday on my carpool day...it was just Pillsbury crescent rolls with ham & cheese in the center and a pear. The crescents are so easy and quite filling!

I've also had quite the week with workouts. I'm in week two of Insanity, month two! My back is incredibly sore, my abs are sore, my derriere is sore, my calves are sore, my hamstrings are sore. So, basically everything on me is sore! Every single workout is exhausting! But, it is so worth it! I was down 1.6 lbs, and all my measurements that should have gone down were down at least a quarter to half an inch! 

So, here's a breakdown of my workouts from the last week:

Last Wednesday:  Max Cardio...this is a warm up and stretch then half an hour of non-stop cardio! I have quite a high calorie burn, although less so than I would actually expect from non-stop cardio.

Thursday: Max Recovery. This is the day I live for during my weekly workouts! This is not an easy workout by any stretch of the imagination as I still burn a solid 500 calories during it, but it's all deep muscle work and I love it!!!

Friday: Max Interval Circuit. This one gives me a super high calorie burn in the hour long session. It's totally HIIT based and gives the perfect amount of work vs. rest.

Saturday: Max Interval Plyo. My phone wasn't charged so I couldn't use my heart rate monitor, but I will say Saturday's are probably my most favorite workout because hubby and the kiddo are home to talk to me. The kiddo likes to try and hop around me and try not to get hit as I bounce around lol It's really quite hysterical and frightening at the same time. But, it passes quickly because I have them to talk to & cheer me on!

Sunday: Active rest day. Normally I just do a walk and the P90X X-Stretch DVD. However, it was mother's day and I was really wanting to get out. So, being the dutiful daughter my 13 year old got up and we went to Lulu Lemon for their free Sunday Community Yoga Class. It was a fantastic day. You can read about it here.

Monday: Max Cardio. I didn't have quite as high a calorie burn as last Wednesday, but my body was totally exhausted after the yoga class and we didn't eat so well Sunday and I just felt horribly sick to my stomach. Oh well, at least I did it! ;)

Tuesday: Max Interval Circuit. Again super high calorie burn and I was sweating like crazy! I couldn't even believe it! I also did really good on some moves that last week I couldn't make it all the way through! My mantra for today was if your tired do 10 more then rest...of course 10 more became 5 more, then ten more so I was really pushing myself as hard as possible!

Plan for today: Max Interval Plyo. I hate this one because you do those wide knee oblique jumps (I forget what they call them in the video but they are like tuck jumps but with wide knees). I actually love the jumps themselves, but they work me so, so hard that I'm exhausted at the end!!! :-/ But, it's well worth it. Today I am also going to do a second workout in the afternoon because Tony Horton is going to be doing a live stream workout on UStream...which I love him and have never been able to go to a live event where he or ShaunT are doing a live workout so this is my chance I feel!!! Maybe I'll get the courage to try beachbody coaching again someday so I can get cool invites to live workouts...maybe...we'll see lol

So, this my week in review. What sort of food/workouts have you being eating/doing this week??

Jewelry Organization Tutorial

Good Morning!!!

The first thing I want to share with you all are some pictures I took last Friday on a walk through the Stanley Park Rose Garden here in Vancouver! I am trying to hone my photography skills so I wanted to share what I felt were the top three of all the ones I took. I think they really embody Spring! Which, with all this rain we started getting Saturday night I need to be reminded spring is even here!

I love how this one turned out because it looks like a field of tulips! Really, it was just  a small  flower bed, but I guess I played with the angle just right! 

This was a neat little cave area & the sun was shining in at just the right angle.

Ok, so on to the tutorial I want to share with all of you. After (mostly) living in small apartments over the last 13+ years of marriage I needed to finally get some sort of jewelry organization going. It was everywhere & wasn't being taken care of the best. Because of this, I have lost a few pieces. So, not want to lose any more I knew  a solution needed to be found.  So, in comes Pinterest. That gave me an overwhelming number of options. I had to narrow it down. So, I stopped looking at Pinterest for a few days and just examined my space & my pieces of jewelry. I knew I had to get creative though because nothing I had seen was “just right”. So, here is what I did.

I used this as inspiration for my long dangling earrings. I made a few changes though. Here was my process:

Supplies:

• Picture hanging wire
• Old frame
• Hot glue gun or super glue or staple gun
• Stapler
• Card stock
• Wire cutters
• Paint
• Glossy Mod Podge

1. Take the back off of the frame. Paint with color of choice (I used Americana Metallic Silver). I had to do about 5 coats to achieve the color in the picture. Make sure you let dry well between coats. I then did two coats of glossy  mod podge over, letting dry in between coats. 
2. When paint is drying measure from one side of your frame to the other with the picture wire. I cut about 20” of wire. I looped one end through the little tabs on the back that you’d normally use to hold the back of the frame in place. Loop through until the ends are even so you are left with two 10” strands. Twist these strands together. Now, if you have a staple gun feel free to attach the other side of the wire using that. Otherwise, take a small square of card stock & fold it in half around the other end of the wire & staple. I then super glued the card stock to the frame. I did use hot glue at first; that has worked pretty well but, I had a couple pairs of pretty heavy earrings & where I wanted to hang those kept coming undone so I just super glued it & it’s been fine. Repeat the process for the remaining hang tags. For my super long earring up at the very top I had two more tabs that would hold the back of the frame in so I just used those to hang those earrings from! Now, prop your frame on your dresser/nightstand/vanity, hang your earrings, and enjoy your handiwork!

The adorable heart holder for my rings I already had but you can just use an old small dish or decorate an old lid from a recycled jar. Get creative and see how you can reuse what you already have! 

For my studs I had a small spare jewelry box my husband had given me many years ago so I just organized them into the compartments in there. I loved that jewelry box so I was happy to finally get organized enough to give it some good use! I may still take it and get it engraved with my initials...when he bought it he had no idea that's what the blank space in the middle was for!! 

For my bracelets I just re-purposed an old paper towel holder. As you can see I've really stacked up the long side, thank goodness there is a second area for me to loop more bracelets around! ;) If you don't have an old paper towel holder this about using a bottle like this.

Finally, I needed something for my necklaces. I had a spare area on the side of my dresser & came up with a fantastic idea using my favorite thing in the world...3M Command Hooks! I had a 40% off coupon at Michael’s, so, I bought a large set of command hooks in the smallest size they make. I then proceeded to the following:

Supplies:

• 3M command hooks and stick-ey wall mount pieces
• black/silver paint pens (in colors of your choice I used silver & black)

1. Attach the hooks to the stick-ey wall mount things, but leave the side that says “wall side” intact until you are ready to attach it to the wall. ;) 
2. Take the silver paint pen & color the hook part silver so it would match the earring frame I made above, plus the rest of our decorations. Once all of those are colored & dried, the white tab part that hangs down I knew it would be way too visible hanging on my black dresser so I decided to color it black with a black paint pen. It took three coats until you couldn't see the lines anymore, but it was well worth the effort!!!
   
   I am very happy with how it turned out!!!
   
   
   It all seems to match the bedroom and keeps everything clean and picked up!
   
   
   I hope everyone has a great day! Send me pictures if you make one to my email!!! I'd love to feature some on the blog!!!
   
   
   Linking up to this awesome new link party: Organize It! Link Party!
   
   
   
   

Happy Mother's Day!!!

Happy Mother’s Day!!!

I hope all you Mommy’s out there were totally spoiled & if you aren’t a Mommy I hope you got to spoil your Mommy!

My daughter & I went to yoga at Lulu Lemon this morning. It was such a wonderful way to start off a day peace, thankfulness, and reflection. The heart-openers through the practice we were supposed to dedicate to our Mom’s. It was great because sometimes in the hustle & bustle of daily life living so far away from my Mom she sometimes is at the back of my mind. So, it was nice to have one hour dedicated to thinking about all the wonderful things my Mom has done for me throughout my 32 years of life! At the end, they were saying a nice devotion to all of the Mom’s out there; just blessing them/us and putting good feelings into the Universe that no harm will come to them and that they will see no hardships, especially as they age. Toward the middle of the devotion, my 13 year old gives me a little rub on my back. It still makes my eyes well up just thinking about that sweet lovely gesture. Some days can be very trying with a teenager (I am very blessed & thus far haven’t had any issues with her), but still teenage-hood, puberty, etc., can be a very trying time and little gestures like the pat on the back during a devotion lets me know just how much love is there. I hope my Mom knows how much I love her and appreciate all she did for me growing up (even when I made her feel like crap when she had to go back to work or went out & acted like a lunatic at parties! Lol) and as a young adult that was crazy enough to go off and get married at 18! We all do crazy things…good thing we have at least two people in our lives that have to love us no matter what! ;)

So, as this mother’s day draws to a close I’ll leave you with a few wonderful pictures I took over the last week that helped me to slow down & see the beauty in the everyday and take time out to think about those we love.

Happy Mother’s Day!!!

How to Make Book Page Bottles

So, we have a book we love, for me it's the last book in the George RR Martin Series Fire and Ice....ya know "Game of Thrones". So, this book has been across the US and back; been in the hands of many different people. Well, needless to say this book as seen better days. Pages were quite literally falling out of it!!! I kept trying to tape them back in, but hubby finally bought all the books on the iPad so we'd always have them so we have this poor little falling apart book & nothing to do with it...however, in my meager attempts to not waste ANYTHING I decided to do some book page crafts! I know, some of you are about to faint right now, but remember, this book was just going to be recycled so I decided to turn it into some fun crafts so we could always have little bits of it around the house! I've done several different book page crafts with this book but I'm just going to feature one here today and that is the Book Page bottles I made! They are so cute, and so easy!!! So, here we go...

Supplies:
-one-two glass bottles (I used two old coke bottles)
-a bottle of matte mod podge
-an old book
-ribbon/other adornments if you want

Process:

1. Tear out a few pages from your book, cut those into 1-1.5" strips. You can cut them or tear them. I chose to cut mine, but I wasn't too picky about how even they were. 
2. Working in sections put a thin layer of mod podge and lay down a strip of the book. It should be about the length of the bottle if it's longer or shorter you can fix that later, don't worry! Work your way around the bottle doing this. Let it dry for about two hours.
3. Then, working around the bottle again, coat with mod podge and lay book pages going the opposite way or in whatever direction you'd like. This is a piece of art so make what you want!! I sort of laid mine every which way. You can see that here: 
   
4. Make sure everything is smoothed out. Let dry at least another two hours.
5. Coat with a final coating of mod podge. Let dry at least 1-2 hours. 
6. Add some cute ribbon to go with your decor & maybe a flower or I found these cute Styrofoam spring picks at the dollar store & they really add a splash of color to my spring mantle!! Here is the finished product: 
   

These are super cute and very easy to make. Plus, they make good use of a book that was about to be trashed! I turned it into a fabulous treasure!! If you make some email me pictures here!

Food & Fitness...

Ok, so I am getting slightly better at the blog posting thing. I’m hoping next week to get in every day! But, we’ll see how that goes. 

Today, I love linking up to the Pea’s & Crayon’s “What I Wednesday” linkey party because I love getting to see what sort of delicious goodies everyone is cooking up. 

I love drooling over stuff I’ll never make because it isn’t healthy & I love bookmarking new healthy recipes!! So, without further ado here is what I’ve been eating the last week or so:

Fries prepped & ready for some homemade healthier poutine!

This was from lunch with my honey last Friday! It was black bean tacos with black beans, rice & tomato's. It was slim picking on their veggie menu! But, it was delicious!

This was dessert a few days ago. Greek yogurt with cocoa, stevia, granola, strawberries & bananas! So delicious. It took me a while to hop on the Greek yogurt bandwagon, but I'm here & a willing participant!!

Delicious green banana smoothie! I'll post a recipe for this soon!

Greened up homemade hamburger helper! Found the recipe for homemade helper here. It tastes just like the real thing only fresher! I greened mine up by adding spinach & zucchini. The kidlet followed suit & even though she hates spinach she choked it down.  

"Green" strawberry smoothie. I greened this up by adding the tops of the strawberries into it. There is also some raw oatmeal in there. Gave it an amazing thickness! 

This was a fruit dip & fruit plate the kitlet had after school. I'll post the recipe soon for the dip,  it was tasty! She inhaled it all!

My amazing protein breakfast with fresh brewed lemon & ginger tea! 

On to the workouts!

So, last week for me was my Insanity rest week. So that meant a whole lot of core cardio & balance. I LOVE this DVD! By the end of the 40 minutes I feel like I worked, but not too hard. Also, at the end of the week my core is always much stronger! So Wednesday I did core cardio & balance, Thursday I did P90X, X-Stretch, Friday I did Core Cardio & Balance, Saturday I did core cardio & balance & X-Stretch, then Sunday I took a nap! Ha! Monday, started Month 2 of Insanity. This has been a rough week! I did my fit test as well as Max Plyo Cardio Circuit. I stupidly did the circuit first then did the fit test. BUT, my results were still AMAZING! I improved so much since my first fit test (yes, I missed a fit test somewhere in there lol). Next was Max Interval Training, and today was Max Cardio. So, during month one you get shocked that the DVD is only 36 minutes & then a second shock when it’s 20 solid minutes of nothing but cardio. Month two totally trumps that with a 47 minute DVD & 30 solid hardcore minutes of nothing but cardio!!! It’s hard but oh-so-worth it!!! Today I also competed in a walking lunges challenge on a fitness board I belong to. The highest number I could get to was 50, but my legs were quivering majorly & I was ok with not getting as much as others as I have been working out so hard!! Each day for me has also entailed a 20 minute each way hilly walk to the beach & a 30 minute post dinner walk with the kidlet. So, we've been moving & grooving over here! Tomorrow is a recovery day so I’m excited, but the Max Recovery is not easy I’m always sore so I may have to make some more poutine to bribe my husband to give me a massage ;)

What workouts have you been doing lately? Do you feel like you’re doing the best you can to be healthy????

Meal Plan & Prep

Breakfast options:

Kiddo: Cereal & Carnation instant breakfast (premeasure three Carnation Instant Breakfast), premeasure (2) ¾ cup of Cinnamon toast crunch & ½ cup of milk. Set aside two bananas for the cereal & three apples to go with the Carnation’s.)

Kate:

Monday: Spinach & cheese omelet with ¼ cup cottage cheese (premeasure into small canning jar) & ½ cup melon (precut melon & premeasure into mason jars

Tuesday: ½ cup eggwhites & spinach & ¼ cup oatmeal with berries

Wednesday: Peanut butter banana oatmeal smoothie

Thursday: Strawberries & cream oatmeal smoothie

Friday: Same as Tuesday. (saved leftovers of Tuesday’s oatmeal for today)

Everyone:

Saturday: Omelet’s (egg & cheese & bacon/spinach & cheese), with bacon & orange slices

Sunday: donuts

Lunch

Kiddo: buying, leftovers, nutella & jelly & fruit salad

Hubby: hamburger (premade when did monthly grocery shopping, cooked, & froze) & apple (2x’s), bbq pork (from leftover frozen pork tenderloin) & bacon sliders with pear, omelet, muffin, and apple, French dip sandwich (will serve this a day or two after we have it for dinner) & corn

Kate: spinach & chicken salad (3)(when I cooked Monday’s dinner I make two extra chicken breasts & just divided everything up into mason jars layering cottage cheese homemade avocado/yogurt dressing chicken, spinach, cucumber, onion & tomato) , shrimp po’ boy (will serve a day or two after making for dinner), fruit & almond butter bowl

Everyone:

Saturday: see breakfast, will be a “brunch”

Sunday: chicken & rice bowls

Snacks will be yogurt, zucchini chips, hummus, leftover oats, protein recover juice, banana’s & nutella, nutella filled strawberries, homemade poutine, etc. I don’t plan snacks too much as I try to make sure they are super healthy & consist mainly of fruits & veggies.

Dinner:

Monday: Chicken with rice & mixed veggies

Tuesday: ham crescent rolls with cinnamon apples & pears

Wednesday: Shrimp po’ boy & French dip sandwich with salad

Thursday: Homemade hambuger helper with salad

Friday: pizza burgers with corn/salad

Saturday: Ribeye’s with potatoes, green beans & corn

Sunday: Three cheese turkey pasta bake with salad/zucchini/corn

Well, I hope everyone has a great week! I have a fun tutorial on an easy way to clean up dirty sneakers & a cheer bow tutorial. As well as some fun revelations about my health & the way I’ve been taking care of myself!! 

Hope your week has started out well! What is your family's favorite meal?

Water & Workouts

Water is defined as:

Noun A colorless, transparent, odorless, tasteless liquid that forms the seas, lakes, rivers, and rain and is the basis of the fluids of...

Verb Pour or sprinkle water over (a plant or an area of ground), typically in order to encourage plant growth.

Water is essential for our body to function correctly. Approximately 60% of our body is comprised of water. Years ago I switched from drinking sugary sweetened drinks to all water. I literally don't drink anything but water anymore (well, ok I do have the occasional wine or martini, but for my everyday drinking it's all water!).

So, here lately though I have been getting a bit bored with drinking water. I drink a lot of it everyday at minimum 64 oz (on my rest day) to up to 120 oz. Needless to say after a few years of this one gets a bit tired. So, after browsing Pinterest I saw that people were making aqua fresca. Many of these though were sweetened with honey or agave, which if you are going to have a sweetened drink those would be my first two sweeteners to use! But, I am trying to watch how much sugar I consume so I wondered why I couldn't just put fruit in & let it steep. In '08 when my family & I resided with my parents for a bit my mom made some water to help with digestion that she found in a magazine so I just adopted the same concept. Here are a few of my faves:

The one on the left is 8 oz water, a mint green tea bag, a handful of frozen strawberries, and one half of a sliced lemon. I let it sit over night & then squeeze the tea bag out when I am ready to drink & then I use a fork to muddle the lemon & strawberries. After I drink it throughout the day I just refill the cup! I do discard the fruit at the end of the day/

The one on the right is what I love to call "sunshine" water. It's so yellow and happy isn't it?! It's just 8 oz of water, one half of a lemon and a handful of frozen peaches. When I am ready to drink I muddle this as well & just keep refilling throughout the day! I do discard the fruit at the end of the day. :)

This is the water my mom used to make. The original recipe calls for mint & to peel the cucumber but I am too lazy to peel the cucumber & I didn't have any mint so those two things didn't happen. I prefer it this way so this is the recipe I"ll give. One whole lemon, one small cucumber (or half of an English Cucumber which is what I used), and one teaspoon of grated fresh ginger. I drank an entire pitcher of this yesterday. It is very refreshing. I refilled the pitcher last night & just added a bit more ginger. I only reuse the same fruits in this one 3 times. :)

Some other fun things I've been eating lately:

From the top left: Bacon & veggie saute with half a sweet potato,  oatmeal from our local grocery cafe (it's amazing), homemade granola, fruit, and yogurt parfait, veggie tacos with homemade shells, and hubby's fave dinner steak, cheese fries, and corn! Totally decadent but so worth it ;)

The final thing I want to talk about are my workouts. Last week was my last week of month one of Insanity. This program is so amazing. Seriously, if you want something to whip you into shape fast  & make you crave fruits, veggies, and healthy proteins this is it! So, Sunday I started my recover week. I had to make up for our cheerleading carpool so I had to take the kids on Sunday to cheer practice & it's three hours so I spent an hour & half doing a great 80 min walking workout where every 5 minutes you stopped & did some sort of full body exercise. I then came home & participated in a weekend tabata challenge. I was so sore on Monday, talk about a way to start your "rest" week! It's very much been an active rest. Monday I did Insanity Core Cardio & Balance DVD. Then yesterday I did the P90X X-Stretch DVD along with a nice long walk along the sea wall to the part with my daughter & some serious swinging. I woke up feeling like a new woman this morning! Then, I was back to Core Cardio & Balance today. Thursday (tomorrow) will be Core Cardio & Balance along with X-Stretch. Friday will be just Core Cardio & Balance. Saturday will be just X-Stretch, then Sunday I will walk up to our local Lulu Lemon & participate in their free Sunday morning yoga. If you have a Lulu Lemon near you look into this it's an amazing way to start your Sunday and get in touch with your community. My 13 year old even loves to go with me! ;)

What have your food & workout's looked like this week? Are you eating delicious things that make you feel good?

P.S Linking up at: