Sunday Seven 3-24-2013

It's been a quiet, snowy Sunday around here.
I ran a quiet and steady 6 miles before church this morning.

Total of 25 miles for this week

I baked some delicious Irish Soda Bread, prepped meals for the week and went on a little clean and purge.

Delicious with a small tab of sweet cream butter

Soup for dinners, rice/veggies/black bean burgers for lunch, overnight oats

It's been a nice day, good ending to a pretty good week:

1. I got my first Voxbox in the mail this week!

So far I've tried the Nectresse all-natural sweetener, the Dickinson's witch hazel wipes and the BelVita breakfast biscuits. So far, I'm really enjoying trying out these products. Thanks to Influenster for sending me the items to try!

2. This was my first Tuesday night off since January.

Yum- Stout beer. 

I enjoyed a little happy hour and chatting with this guy. It's been a long time since we had Tuesday night date night!

3. We got to have a lovely birthday dinner with my mom and sisters

She got a GIANT cookie skillet at the restaurant so I made her pose. :)

Look how tiny baby Gwen looks with Aunt Amy!

I'm not sure what she thinks of me, but I like cuddling her. :)

4. NCAA wrestling tournament was in town this weekend.

T and I volunteered to serve at the IA Craft Brew Tent

We stood in the cold for 6+ hours selling 16 oz beers to a bazillion beefy, squatty, cauliflowered-ear guys. It was pretty entertaining actually.

5. Saturday was a great day: race, relaxing and a birthday party for a friend.

I got 6th in my age group!

Post run oatmeal

Amazing donut cake, cute kids and cool guy. Happy 30th Wayde!

My 2 item makeup routine even worked out perfectly Saturday night. 

6. Screen shots I love from this week:

This made me laugh

Great picture, great quote. 

This sounds fantastic

I love this shot. Mornings are my favorite. 

7. Did you know that Google Reader is going away? I'm sort of irritated about that. Probably because I am 1000 blog posts behind and I don't think I'll be caught up by July. Ha! But I think I'm going to switch over to Feedly. What about you?

How was your week? Did you watch any March Madness? Do any power reading to clear out your Google Reader?

Favorite Instagrammers & Screen Shots

I realized the other day that I'm addicted to taking pictures of my iPhone screen.
If I see a recipe I like on Instagram or a cool picture, I'll screen shot it to save for later.
Besides Pocket, it's my next favorite invention.

So here is a little bit of what I've been Screen-Shotting (I'm sure that is not grammatically correct) lately:

First of all, if you don't yet, you should follow all these people:

@treehouseohm on Instagram. Zaiden is awesome. She always posts pictures and quotes that challenge my mind and my body. Plus- she's a little sassy and I like that in people. Here are a few awesome things I've found on her instagram:

Workout Part 1

Workout Part 2

Workout Part 3

 I think between these 3 screen shots I have a few things to help keep my fitness mixed up. I'm really interested in trying the 4 minute plank workout.

I love this quote. And someday I'm going to get that bendy. 

These look super delicious. And easy. And nutritious. 

Here are a couple other inspirational fitness people from Instagram:

Elliebean of @Raeble_Raeble: Vegan gal training for a goal weight. She posts a lot of motivational type things and tips. With a little humor mixed in.

I don't know if this burns 1000 calories, but I bet it sure feels like it! 

This makes me laugh. so. hard. 

I love workouts you can do while you are doing other stuff- easy peasy!

I did a little Internet research on this one...and it appears to be true. SUPER interesting. Especially to those that have issues with cholesterol. 

@InstagramFitness: This account has food and fitness. They feature other people who are pushing their fitness levels. It gives me ideas and reminds me that my body is capable of much more than I think it is.

These look awesome

@SimpleGreenSmoothies: I'm pretty sure I've mentioned the 30 day challenge before. I did it for the month of January and pretty much have made this a lifetime commitment- green smoothies often. So good for me! Here are a few recipes that caught my eye:

This protein power drink sounds delicious

I love cranberries and thought this sounded like a great winter recipe.

I love avocado in a smoothie- it's really good. 

I still haven't tried the frozen grapes or goji berries, but I'm adding this one to my list. 

@kmaecags: Krissy is a beast in the best sense of the word. She pushes her body to the limits when working out, has a super interesting story (recovering addict to creator/owner of BAMFit) and some BA tattoos.

This workout scares me. 

Another healthy ball recipe. Try not to laugh when you read that. 

@Mealprepmondays: I'm a huge fan of prepping meals before the week begins. Make lunch and snack packing for work easy. Plus- takes the guess work out of meal planning and grocery shopping. This account always motivates me and gives me ideas on how to mix it up.

African stew? I'll try it. 

I love anything with Dijon and goat cheese. 

Here are a few recipes from my favorite people:

Jenna from Eat, Live, Run

Yum. I love Thai.

Kim from This Healthy Endeavor

I love bananas in anything. 

Amber from Girl with the Red Hair

I'm addicted to Brussels sprouts

And a few more things just because:

That one time Josh Wolf responded to my tweet:

When I 'quit' twitter for awhile and then nonstop tweeted for a whole day.

Klout is so crazy.

A little gem I found in my notes on my phone. I really do love my fiance's hometown.

Do you use the screen shot feature on your phone? Do you love instagram as much as I do?

Hope you are having a good weekend!

Sunday Sevenish... 1/21/13

What up friends?
I've been a bit of a busy gal- my second job is in full swing and I had some things planned this weekend (Thai & Movie date night with T, BFF coffee date and Annual church meeting) so today is the first day I've really been home and had some time to write!
It's my Sunday. :)

Here's what's going on around these parts this week:

1. I've been a working fool. Tax season has officially kicked off so I'm back to working about 60+ hours a week between the two jobs. Which requires a LOT of planning and preparation (come back tomorrow for a special post on Tips for a Busy Life).
2. Have you ever used Pocket? Somehow I just discovered this last week and it is my new favorite Iphone app. I can save links to cool articles or blogs from twitter without emailing myself 50 times a day. And visually- it's really quite beautiful.
3. Speaking of links, this is what I've been loving this week on the internets:

• This article on how to use your time wisely from Relevant Magazine.It was so timely for the new year and I related to the point about figuring out how to effectively use your free time for those things you love.
• For the ladies out there, do you feel like your job gives you enough work/life balance?
• If you follow me on Instagram, you probably saw a picture of me and my friend Sarah who just sold up all her belongings and moved to Mexico. Crazy? Or Awesome? I think both. Either way, she's documenting it all for us here. Check out her blog and give her some comment love.
• This article on 13 banned foods still allowed in the US was blowing up twitter this week. Yet another reason to #eatcleanandgreen
• I've been looking for a good training plan to get up to 25ish miles a week and I saw this article on a simple running and cross-training plan on Twitter via Runners World.

4. I participated in my first ever twitter party this week- #writestuff with Anne Bogel and some other writers in the twitter world. It was so much fun and I learned so much about how important it is to practice your craft- no matter what it is...

5. Enter The Write Practice. It's an amazing organization created by Joe Bunting (ghostwriter and editor) that encourages writers to practice 15 minutes a day via emailed prompts. So far I love it! The other day I created a new word- wickpire. What does that mean, you ask? I'll let you try and figure that out and I'll share later this week on the blog. 

6. I've been reading War and Peace.It's on my 30 before 30 list and I'm hoping to finish it before the end of the month! 

I really am enjoying it so far. Despite the war sections, I'm really loving all the relationships and the gossip and chatter among high society taking place in the book. I guess it just goes to show how some things never change. 

7. T and I had a little date night Saturday night. We went to Zuzap- a local Thai restaurant near our office. It. was. amazing.

 

Vegan Spring Rolls (check out the amazing carrot rose!)

T ordered red curry and rice- 4 stars- great spice!

Pumpkin Curry with rice noodles. I could eat this every day. 

Thai Tea- LOVE

Fortunes. Turns out my fortune (not the shopping one of course) is from a poem called 'The Anniversary' by John Donne- read it here.

We also went to Zero Dark Thirty. 

I have a lot of mixed feelings about the movie. 

There were some parts that were hard to watch- like the torture of detainees. 

Especially knowing that what we saw in the movie is probably just a small piece of what actually happened. That it's been probably severely edited as to not scare people.

I wonder what happened to all those kids and women who were part of Osama Bin Laden's family. I wonder what happened to that CIA agent that came from high school and spent 12 years of her life trying to bring down the leader of Al Quieda. I also realized that no matter what they show us in movies- there are a lot of things at work in our government and other governments around the world that we have no idea about it. Nor do we probably want to.

Anyway- you should see it. I'm curious what you think. 

All in all, an amazing date night with my favorite guy. I seriously love him. And Thai food. :)

What's been going in your world? 

Anything you'd like to see me feature here?