And That's a Very Good Thing

I tried out a new recipe the other night and just have to share the results.  I present to you:  dark chocolate avocado mousse, created by the very ingenious Julie of Peanut Butter Fingers.

Feast your eyes on what happened when I combined 3 simple ingredients in my food processor:

Come a little closer...

Just a little bit closer...

Judging by the name of the recipe, you probably guessed the "secret" ingredient - avocado.  The other 2 ingredients are honey and cocoa powder.  That's it!  Magical.  Truly magical.  I could not believe how light and fluffy it was - just like you would expect of mousse!  I even used an avocado which I had frozen, and it still turned out this light and fluffy.  I ate half of the recipe one night and stuck the other half in the fridge for later - I wasn't sure how it would keep with the avocado in it, but it tasted just as good the next night!

So chocolate mousse is good.  You know what else is good?  Yoga.  Awhile back I bought a Groupon for a 10-class pass to a studio called Anytime Nirvana Yoga.  

Yesterday morning I finally redeemed my Groupon and went to a Power Yoga Basics class.  I was a little nervous at first because I was one of only two students in the entire class, but that actually turned out to be amazing; it was practically like a private lesson.  I've only ever taken yoga at fitness centers and gyms before,  so I'm used to having mirrors lining the walls.  It was kind of nice to focus on how my body felt in a pose rather than how it looked in a pose.  And it was really nice that the teacher could help me to adjust and get deeper into the poses.  Great start to the weekend!  I even feel a little sore this morning, especially in my shoulders and upper back - lots of low planks/ chaturanga dandasana.

This past week I also officially joined the gym associated with my school.  They had a "guest week" for non-members to try out the gym and the classes for free, and I went to about 5 group exercise classes that week (Caribbean cardio, an abs class, a spin class, and a couple of Zumba classes - so fun!) and absolutely loved them.  Even though my semester is really busy, I feel SO much better when I take time to exercise, and I absolutely love group exercise classes.  I can't wait to try out even more!

Some more good things:  these sunsets that I've seen from my window recently.   

And one last good thing: my very first CSA share!

I got kale, zucchini, a red bell pepper, beets, an onion, broccoli, a hot pepper, 2 tomatoes, carrots, an acorn squash, and 2 apples.  So good!  I made "cheesy" kale chips with the kale and red bell pepper, and I made a stir fry with the zucchini, broccoli, hot pepper, and one of the tomatoes.  Everything was really tasty!  I ordered another share which I get to pick up on Tuesday - can't wait!

So those are my good things recently.  Hope you've got some very good things of your own going on!

Song of the day:

"Stubborn Love" by The Lumineers.  Basically, I just love their entire self-titled album.  

DIY Personalized Coasters

Hello friends.  Well, this semester is crazy-busy and I don't see it getting calmer anytime soon, so my posts will be sporadic.  I still want to share fun things as I can, though, so I'm taking pictures and keeping notes for the rare moments when I can squeeze in a post!

In August, I went to visit my best friend right after she moved into a new (gorgeous!) apartment in DC.  I wanted to bring her a little housewarming gift, so I turned to my oft-admired and rarely-used Pinterest boards.  I decided to try making some custom coasters for her.  The link to the original website doesn't work anymore, but I was able to gather enough information from the picture and caption to get started.

Materials needed:  4 x 4 plain tiles from a home improvement store (I got mine at Lowe's super cheap, like $0.15 or something), pictures/ scrapbook paper/ whatever you want to use to decorate, a permanent marker, a straight edge (i.e. a ruler), a utility knife, Mod Podge, a paint brush, clear spray paint, scrap paper.

First, gather your supplies and lay out the scrap paper to protect your work surface.

I wanted to color the edges of the tiles to make them look more polished, and I initially tried painting them.  The paint wasn't going on well, so I switched to a permanent marker which worked much better.  Bonus - no drying time!  It really wore down the marker, though, so use an old one or mourn the loss of the nice, crisp tip of the marker.  (Or maybe that's just me... I have a strong attachment to Sharpies.)

I used a black marker to stick with my black and white theme, but you could color coordinate your edges with your pictures/ designs.

I previously chose some digital pictures that I wanted to use to decorate the coasters, made them black and white on my computer, cropped them so that they were square and slightly smaller than 4 x 4 inches, and printed them out on resume-type paper so that they were a little sturdier than regular office paper, but not so thick that they would be raised up on top of the coasters.

Then I used a ruler and utility knife to cut them out - you want your edges to be as straight and clean as possible.

I printed out a few extra pictures so that I could see what looked best on the tiles.

After you've chosen and cut out your pictures/ scrapbook paper, use a paint brush and Mod Podge to adhere the pictures to the tiles.  My ink bled a little bit when I did this, so I kept a rag nearby to wipe off any discoloration.

After the Mod Podge dries, you can put on a coat of clear spray paint.  This is important:  go outside!!!  I'm speaking from experience here... it's not pleasant to spray this in the house, and you might feel like you're going to die from the fumes for the rest of the night.  Oh, and your family/ roommates/ pets will really not appreciate it.  (My dad: "You care about everyone's environment except for mine!!"  Woops.)  Yeah, I know, who uses spray paint inside?  But it was clear...  clear = harmless, right?  Not quite.  Definitely a blonde moment.  Don't be like me!

After the spray paint has dried, stick four protectors on the bottom of each tile.

You could use felt protectors, or little plastic ones like I chose.  Or you could even use a hot glue gun and make little dots (but I tend to burn myself with hot glue guns so I didn't attempt that method).

And there you have it - personalized, homemade coasters.  They're not very expensive to make, and I think they make great housewarming gifts, or even gifts for birthdays and other holidays.  And it was really fun to choose pictures specifically for my best friend!

I wrapped them up with a pretty bow,

and added a container of homemade red velvet macaroons to go with them.

If any of you read The Fitnessista, you know that Gina has a famous and secret macaroon recipe.  She recently shared her red velvet variety, and I was so excited to try them out for myself!  My grandma let me borrow her old-school dehydrator - doesn't it look like a space ship?

They smelled gooooood.

Yummy.

And they're the perfect little sweet treat to go with a cup of tea!

By the way, my favorite tea right now is Lady Grey - like Earl Grey, but more refined :)  It's decaffeinated, and I think it has a lighter, smoother flavor than Earl Grey.

Even though I'm not usually a big fan of coconut, I did enjoy these a lot.

And they got good reviews from my best friend, a neighbor, and my grandma - so I think they were a success!

Okay, that's all for now - hopefully I'll be back soon with some more fun updates.

Song of the day:

"Blown Away" by Carrie Underwood.  Loving this song right now.

Gimp Life

Bonjour mes amis.  How are you doing?

I spent a wonderful Sunday afternoon boating with my family, but it ended in injury.

Injury of the lamest variety.  I forgot my shoes on the boat when we were taking it out of the water, but I figured I would just hop in the car when my dad stopped at the top of the ramp before driving to a spot in the parking lot to clean up the boat.  Except... my dad didn't stop at the top of the ramp.

So I thought, no big deal, I'll just walk barefoot to the car.  I was mostly grossed out because it was not a very clean parking lot, to say the least, so I tried to hurry to avoid the grime and the hot blacktop.  This turned out to be a terrible decision, though, because I ended up burning my feet.  I developed 2 HUGE blisters on the balls of both of my feet  Seriously, grossly, shockingly huge.  I've had trouble getting around since Sunday and have had to hobble on the sides of my feet.  I can't even drive.  And I may have crawled up the stairs a few times... and scooted down them :)  Yep, pretty pathetic, right?

It doesn't hurt, it's just really annoying.  I don't like not being able to move around as much as I want!  I've never been laid up with an injury before (knock on wood), and as minor as this is, I'm anxious for the blisters to go down so I can walk normally again.  And Gina at the Fitnessista started her Summer Shape Up on Monday and I haven't been able to participate :(  As soon as I can get moving again I'm going to join, though!

Adding insult to injury, today I received a couple of new workout DVDs that I bought from Groupon, and I really want to try them out!

Source

The Fitnessista is a big fan of Shaun T, so I jumped at the chance to try some of his workouts (and couldn't pass up a good deal, per usual).  Has anyone else tried these DVDs, or any other Shaun T workouts?  (I still need to do a final review of the Physique 57 DVDs, too - soon, I promise!)

So that's pretty much what I've been doing.  Sitting around.  And sitting some more.  I did make myself a delicious smoothie after work today.  I named it the choco-nana-nut.  Rolls right off the tongue, doesn't it?  :)

It had 1 cup almond milk, 1 T natural peanut butter (Trader Joe's brand - very smooth and delicious!), 1 large frozen banana, and 2 T Ovaltine.  I just happened to see a huge tub of Ovaltine in the kitchen cupboard and it made me nostalgic for my youth - I used to have a big glass of Ovaltine after school almost every day - so I decided to throw some in for old time's sake.  You could also use cocoa powder or carob powder instead.

I went to the farmers' market over the weekend (finally) and got a nice big bunch of kale.  I'm planning to make a massaged kale salad, and maybe try sautéing some of it?  We shall see.

PS If you are like me and enjoy seeing weird skin things (but not blood! eek!), scroll down past the song of the day for some lovely pictures of my blisters.  But please stop reading now if you wish to save your eyeballs from the horror.

Song of the day:

"Hold On" by Alabama Shakes.  I'm obsessed with this song right now - there's something so primal about it.  In a good way.  I had no idea the lead singer was a woman until I looked up this music video.  I bet this band would put on an awesome show!

Okay seriously, stop reading if you don't want to see gross pictures.


Really.


Okay, ready?

Left foot.

Right foot.

Right foot again.

So there you have it.  Don't walk on blacktop in your bare feet.  You've been warned.

Bad Blogger

I've been a very bad blogger.  I don't feel like I really have a lot going on, but all of my days have been absolutely packed.  I've been taking a few pictures here and there, though, so I'll use them to share what I've been up to.

First things first - I've successfully woken up in time to do 6AM workouts 3 times since I last posted.  Luckily I just stumble blearily down to the basement, so I don't have to worry about my bangs sticking up everywhere.  Although I don't love waking up that early, I am always so happy to get my workout in first thing in the morning; if I wait to exercise after work, something else almost always comes up and I don't get around to it.

I'll write more about the Physique 57 DVDs once I've done them a few more times, but so far I'm a fan!  I've done the classic 57-minute DVD twice and the 30-minute ab and arm booster DVD once.  The workouts are definitely tough and I struggled to get through a few of the exercises - mainly the ab routine!  After I did the classic DVD for the first time, I could really feel it the next day in my booty and my lower abs <-- good signs!  I particularly like incorporating the ball into the workouts - I could really feel the burn in my inner thighs, which is great since that area is typically difficult to target.  And the ball also greatly increases the effectiveness of the ab exercises, from what I can tell (as evidenced by my extreme shaking, haha).  So far so good!

Check out these beautiful flowers which greet me when I go to work:

I still need to work on improving my lunches - this is basically what I've been eating every day (apple, carrots, bell pepper, sugar snap peas, Larabar).  Tasty, but I could use some more variety and creativity.

Someone wants to share my lunch.

I've been mooching off my parents so far, but today I finally stopped at TJ's to get some food of my own.  Hopefully that'll help me to mix things up a bit.

My haul:

Brown rice cakes, seaweed snacks (excited to try these for the first time), beer for a Memorial Day party, spinach, steamed lentils, Greek yogurt (it's been too long! Can't wait to dig into this container), sunflower seed butter, raw unsalted almond butter, natural peanut butter, kalamata olives, artichoke hearts, salsa, cherry and cashew cookie Larabars, B vitamins, white bean basil hummus (sounds interesting - can't wait to try it), dry roasted unsalted pistachios (I haven't had pistachios in SO long, very excited for these), sweet potatoes, and a baguette to go with bruschetta that I'm planning to make for the Memorial Day party.  Oh and there are some medjool dates hiding somewhere in there, too.  There have been so many desserts and treats around lately and I've been over-indulging, so my plan is to snack on a medjool date to satisfy some of my cravings for sweets.

I think Barbie was out shopping while I was at TJ's.  See that bubblegum pink Mercedes convertible?

A new favorite snack of mine:

Whole wheat bread with peanut butter, a sprinkle of cinnamon, and some granola that my sister made.

I had a coffee date at my favorite local coffee shop (Angel Falls) with my BFF who was in town from DC.  I got a cortado, which is 6 oz. of milk with 2 shots of espresso.  Bzzzz.

I brought some work with me to do after my friend left.

More coffee today.  It wasn't actually 95* out, but that's what my car was reading when I first got in.  Great day for iced coffee!

Plus a chocolate cookie with walnuts (both from Panera).  About those medjool dates to satisfy my sweet tooth...

Other happenings include a day at the racetrack.

The muscle cars were my favorite.

But the semi with a jet engine was pretty cool, too :)

I got a little overzealous with my library holds.  Lots to read/ watch/ listen to!

Last but not least, did  you know that wiper blades don't come in pairs?  You have to buy two separate packages.  Mmhmm, I didn't know that.  Also, I decided which brand to get based on the packaging.  (Bosch won, clearly.)  That's logical, right?  I'm such a sucker for marketing/ good design.

And I think I'm all caught up now.  Hope you enjoyed that hodgepodge of random stuff.  Oh, one more thing - I've already worn my new maxi dress twice and have gotten compliments each time.  Success!  So if you've been hesitant to try one on, I say go for it!  It's super comfy, and looks very chic, in my opinion.  I mean, come on, doesn't a floor-length dress make you feel fancy?  I've already got plans to wear mine again this weekend, haha.

Off to tackle a million and one things on my to-do list.  See ya later!

Song of the day:

"Beekeeper's Daughter" by the All-American Rejects.  I know, I know, but I had to.  I have a soft spot for AAR (I get nostalgic every time I hear any song from their debut album - it instantly takes me back to summertime in high school, driving around with my best friends, singing along with the windows down).  I got to meet the band one time at Warped Tour (yup, I definitely thought Warped Tour was the coolest thing ever when I was in my wannabe-punk stage) - the guys had a signing tent - and I can assure you that Tyson Ritter is just as beautiful in person.

I even got a picture with Tyson <-- prized possession, haha.