Turkey Day

Howdy bloggies!

Please forgive me as I am way behind on blog posting/reading, etc, etc. However, it was all worth it to be able to spend some wonderful time with my family. I was very lucky to be able to take off of work and head up to my aunt and uncle’s house (about a 4 hour drive) to celebrate the holiday.

I can’t tell you how nice it was to see everyone and catch up on each other’s lives. It has been way too long since the last family get together…we all made a promise to see each other more often and not let the next year fly by so fast without much communication. It is so easy to get caught up in our own lives and our regular routine but I believe that making time for the ones you love is very important and NEEDS to be done. You never know if you’ll have another tomorrow.

We snapped quite a few pics so I thought I would share my blood family with my blog family….in a picture post!

My aunt and uncle have adopted two kids over the past couple of years…they are my bestttttttt buds:

Curtis (adopted from Hong Kong) is the boy and Ali (adopted from India) is the girl.

they “helped” me settle in on my blow up mattress:

Ali in my boots, hehe:

 

Some of the cousins:

Getting the food ready:

One of my beautiful aunts and cousins:

Look at this face:

(how could anyone say NO to her?!?)

I snacked…a lot. Ali helped me out:

My furry snuggle buddy, Macy:

(LOVE this dog!)

My cousin Shane and sister Jessica:

the girls:

 

Crazy family:

Recipe for disaster:

This is what happens when a bunch of kids have nothin’ better to do…

You get creative. Sometimes its end pleasantly, sometimes it ends with a popped air mattress. Sorry uncle Gary.

One night we decided we needed to get out of the house. So we headed for none other than…

Dave and Busters:

We were feelin’ lucky:

We got this crazy idea that we were going to take home the biggest prize they had…well almost $200 dollars and 8,000 tickets later, we come home with this:

Are we the best cousins ever or what?

They loved it.

Whew…and that concludes the picture post. Hope you enjoyed seeing my family. I know I have loved reading all the Thanksgiving recaps and can’t wait to finish reading all of them.

I am truly blessed with an amazing family. We definitely have our ups and downs, but no matter what, we are always there to support each other. That is what matters most.

Have a wonderful night!

Food and exercise blogging will resume in the next post…including a few reviews…stay tuned!

 

Kristi

packing woes

Hey guys!

How is everyone’s Tuesday going? My is going pretty fantastic, because I am now officially DONE for the week! No school, no work, life is bueno!

This is going to be a quickie post because I need to get packed…my family and I are leaving tomorrow to go visit family for Thanksgiving! And of course I would wait until the night before to pack. Oh, procrastination, why do you hold such a strong power over me?!

 

But first, I’ve got some yummy pics to show!

My eats as of late have consisted of…

simple oat goodness:

(1/2 cup oatbran, 1 1/2 cups water, 1 banana, cinnamon)

yogurt messes:

 

(Oikos plain, Nature’s Path granola, figgies)

snackie plates:

(celery, cucumber, carrots, orange, babybel cheese)

A new favorite combo, thanks to Janetha! (cottage cheese and chickpeas with a bit of ranch powder)

Cheetahs:

 

And in order to make up for the spiralized veggie dinner that did not get photographed in my last post, I recreated the feast again tonight…and DID get a picture!

Here it is in all it’s glory:

(3 small spiralized zucchinis, few leftover brussels, marinutta, fresh cracked pepper)

DELISH.

fun desserts:

(1 piece of crumbled banana bread on top of Jello brand chocolate pudding)

 

Tea of the day:

 

Good stuff I tell you, good stuff.

 

Now I’m off to go make a mess packing in my room…you can imagine it will look something like this:

Lord help me.

We should be hitting the road around noon tomorrow and then heading home on Friday afternoon. I still plan on setting aside some blog reading time (obv.) but I myself won’t be blogging again until this weekend.

In case I don’t get to tell you guys on Thursday:

What are YOU doing for Thanksgiving?

 

Kristi

Twihards? Count me in.

Happy Sunday!

I know I’ve said this before, but Sundays are one of my favorite days of the week! A day of rest, relaxation, church, football, family…couldn’t get any better.

I wanted to thank all of you for the support about my school work on my last post. Things are slowly starting to come together…I just need to work on my patience. It is something that I don’t have very much of sometimes. I’m sure you all can relate, right? Thanks also for the great tips on how you de-stess! I’m thinking a nice walk outside in this lovely fall weather will be my de-stress option of choice for the time being.

And as an added bonus, Jaci will sure be happy about more walks:

 

Before leaving for church this morning, I had a quick and delicious bowl of protein yogurt with fruit:

In case you were wondering, banana + pom seeds = race rockin’ combo.

At church today, it was “Thanksgiving Sunday.”  After giving communion, we made our way into the foyer, where there was a line of people waiting to get a box. These boxes had the name of a boy or girl who needed our help. Inside the boxes were a list of things to get the child that they need/want. Once you get everything on the list, you bring the box back to church and they ensure that the gifts get to the children on Christmas day.

My mom, sister, and I all got a little excited and ending up coming home with four boxes. I couldn’t help it, they were all so pretty! I feel good that we will be making a difference in someone’s lives.

What do you do to give back during the Holidays?

Then after church it was time for some body moving with this insanely upbeat lady:

Ah, turbo jam, how I love thee.

But before I could workout, seeing how chilly it was outside, I needed to warm up with some……

you guessed it, TEA.

I got a new kind recently that I am IN LOVE with.

Chocolate Hazelnut? Yes, please.

In a Tweety mug? Why, of course!

I added a dash of almond milk to it and it was soooo good! This flavor and brand is amazing! I will definitely be buying more of this. I also spotted a caramel vanilla flavor, but somehow I was able to resist…until next time, that is.

Lunchie was quick and easy:

Hugh Jass salad with hummus, cheetahs, grilled chicken, grapes, eco-friendly water bottle.

Up close and personal:

 

(smothered in spicy thai peanut sauce)

Tea aside, I’ve also been drinking some other lovely drinks, including…

Kombucha! I decided to try this flavor after seeing it on fitnessista’s blog…it did NOT disappoint! New favorite flavor!

Zevia, orange flavor was pretty rockin’ as well!

***

Tonight I am going to see New Moon. (AHHHH!) Let me try to contain my excitement here for you guys. YAAAAAAYYAYY! Okay, I just couldn’t do it. Many people did not like the 1st movie, Twilight, but I was in fact crazy about it. Now I’ve heard from many people that New Moon is way better than the first one…so I’m sure I will probably die and go to heaven during the movie.

So yea, you can pretty much just go ahead and EXPECT a raving review from me on this movie…as I can definitely for-see it in the near future.

Gotta go get ready now!

(your welcome)

 

Have a great Sunday!

 

Kristi

Spiralized Shenanigans

Hi bloggies!

How has your Thursday been treating you? Good, I hope!

Yesterday, I decided to have celebrate Indian Food Day a la Fitnessista with a fabulous meal, recipe courtesy of the lovely miss Jenna.

Homemade Dal!

With whole grain naan

 

all together now:

 

Ahhhh, how I love thee. Indian Food Day rocks. my. face. off. I just wish I knew of a good Indian restaurant around here…ohhh, the misfortunes of being a small-town girl.

The recipe was super duper easy and can be found HERE.

This was my first time having naan, and it was pretty much AMAZING. Talk about delicious carby goodness. I was just expecting it to taste like regular ol’ pita, but instead, it was thick, fluffy, buttery amazing-ness. I MUST get more soon!

 

Guess what?

…..

I got my SPIRALIZER!!! *insert huge smiley face*

I immediately knew what I wanted to make for dinner tonight. PASTA!

I stuck a yellow squash on there and got to windin’ and before I knew it, I had an entire bowl full.

This was actually a pretty small squash but it produced a large amount of volume. I was impressed!

I also spiralized a few mini cucumbers:

 

Then I got to work on my topping.

I went with one of my favorites, Marinutta:

• 2 tbsp flax
• 1 tbsp almond butter
• 1/2 cup marinara sauce

combine and microwave for 1 minute. Voila!

Very unfortunately, my camera ate my picture of the final product. Bad camera! I can assure you it was a tastey (and pretty!) combo though!

To make up for that lack of picture, I do have one of an awesome desert that I wanted to show…you know, just in case any of you are big dessert fans.

Cha-cha-cha-chia! pudding:

• 1/2 cup almond milk
• 1 tbsp chia seeds
• cinnamon
• 1 packet stevia
• 1 tbsp cocoa powder

topped with Better ‘n’ Peanut Butter. Mmmm. Lip smackin’ good.

 

Sorry my posting has been so sporadic. This week I started the 2nd trimester of the school year and things have been..well, stressful. I’ve got a lot on my plate right now with a brand new, FULL, schedule and lots of hard classes. I’ve been hitting the books hard and trying to get comfortable with everything, which I know will happen eventually, but right now I just feel mentally strained.

I like my “schedules” and my “routines” and once I get used to it, it’s hard to want to break it. It has made me feel very anxious this week, but I know that this will be GOOD for me. I need to be more comfortable with change and be able to embrace it. It will just take some time.

The good news is that next week is Thanksgiving Break. Wahooo! I have school and work on Monday and Tuesday and then I’m off for the rest of the week. I will actually be making a little road trip to visit family on Wednesday, then will be back home for the weekend.

Anyways, bare with me and know that I miss you all when I can’t fit in blogging. Hopefully things will settle down very soon!

So, question for today:

What have you found to be the best way to deal with stress?

I could definitely use some ideas to try out this weekend! I have found that a quick morning and evening yoga/deep breathing session has been helping me stay calm, cool, and collected.

Have a good night!

Kristi

Recovery Day

Happy Sunday!

Today, I declare, is Recovery Day. I got together with some friends last night, and after one too many treats (read: ice cream abomination) I woke up this morning with a need to detoxify!

Angela recently wrote a post about getting back on track after an indulgence that I felt was extremely helpful for me. You can find her post: HERE. She talks about using superfoods and other “healing”  items that will get you feeling back to normal in no time. Now, I don’t have any wheatgrass shots or special vitamins, since I usually stick to my ever so loyal Flintstones Vitamins. So I created my own number of steps to detoxify.

step 1 this morning was:

Green Monster.

In the mix:

• 1 frozen banana
• 1 cup unsweetened almond milk
• 4 cups of organic spinach
• 1 scoop of Amazing Meal, original flavor
• 1 packet Stevia
• cinnamon
• fresh squeezed lemon
• tons of ice

Step 2:

Lemon water.

Lemon has the ability to refresh and detoxify your body….perfect for this declared recovery day.

 

Step 3:

Exercise!

The workout plan is to get bus-ay right after I press Publish. On the agenda:

Anyone heard of Hip Hop Abs? It is made from the same people as Turbo Jam, which I have expressed my love for recently. It, too, is a fun workout…I usually end up laughing through the whole thing because the main instructor gets so into the music. Fun times.

And no, unfortunately I don’t have Polly’s DVD, but I will be using one of her online videos! I’m thinking I will do Yoga for Runners…I need a good leg stretch!

And there you have it, my easy peasy 3 step recovery plan, adapted from the lovely Angela!

 

In other news:

I bought a spiralizer!

After seeing all the delicious creations on Fitnessista’s, Averie’s, and Gena’s blogs, I finally succumbed and ordered one off of Amazon. Want to get one for youself? No problem, you can find it HERE.

I can’t wait to put together some raw deliciousness in the very near future. Lets hope this gets delivered ASAP!

Recipes I have my eye on:

Thai Peanut Zucchini Noodles

Asian Dressing

Tahini Sauce

And here’s one more recipe that has nothing to do with spiralized veggies, but is definitely food-gasm worthy:

Raw Vegan Chocolate Coconut Snowballs.

Averie, you’ve outdone yourself on this one. I want them balls. (do I even need to say it? Why yes, I think I will…That’s What She Said).

Ok, I’m off to continue on with my Recovery Day.

How are you spending YOUR Sunday?

Something to do:

Enter Katie’s chocolate covered give away HERE. Enjoy!

 

Kristi

 

This $h*t is Bananas…B-A-N-A-N-A-S

Gwen Stefani, Hollaback Girl, anyone?

Is anyone else off for Veteran’s Day today?!? I AM!

From work, anyways…I also did not have school though because it is finals week and I don’t have any to take today. Holla! I am officially 1/3 of the way through the school year. Craziness!

So what did I do with my day off? Make banana bread, of course!

Thanks to my girl, April, for the fabulous banana bread recipe I used!

I will post the recipe, but you can also find it on April’s site, HERE.

 

April’s Best Ever Banana Bread

Ingredients:

• 1 cup whole-wheat white flour
• 1/4 cup soy protein powder
• 1/4 cup wheat bran
• 2 ripe, mashed bananas
• 1/2 cup egg substitute or egg whites
• 1/2 cup no sugar added applesauce
• 1/4 cup NuStevia Baking Blend
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 2 tsp cinnamon
• 1/4 tsp salt

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Spray a 5 x 9  (or any loaf pan) with nonstick baking spray.
2. Mix the egg substitute, applesauce, stevia (or sweetener of your choice), and mashed bananas.
3. Add remaining ingredients; Mix well.
4. Pour the mixture into the loaf pan.
5. Bake for about 40 minutes, or until a knife inserted into the middle comes out clean.

Easy peasy!

Into the oven it goes:

 

And the final product:

I immediately tried a piece:

Smeared with Better ‘N’ Peanut Butter on half and pumpkin butter on the other half…because, well, I’m indecisive like that.

MMMMhmmm, and the kitchen smells soooo good now.

I definitely recommend this recipe! It came out great. Thanks April!

 

Now that I am properly fueled and considering it IS finals week, I probably better stop my procrastinating and get some studying done. Boooo. And you better believe I will have a mug of tea with me.

Have a great day everyone!

 

 

Kristi

I have a problem

Hey guys! Hope you all are enjoying your Sunday!

Sundays are one of my favorite days of the week. I can just relax, get caught up on stuff, watch football, and veg out. Love it!

And there has definitely been some vegging going on today. I’ve been spending the majority of my afternoon so far catching up on all my favorite shows. But I haven’t been a complete couch potato all day…lets back up, shall we?

First off, I started my morning off with a new (for me) breakfast that I LOVED:

Protein yogurt with fresh fruit

I used:

1 cup Stonyfield plain yogurt

1/2 serving all natural vanilla protein powder

1/2 sliced banana

sliced grapes

pom seeds

 

The protein powder made the yogurt nice and creamy and delish. I will definitely be making this one again…soon! It was the perfect light breakfast to get me fueled up for this….

 

This is such a GREAT workout!!!

I read online that you can burn up to 1,000 calories an hour with Turbo Jam. Crazy!

Their secret is that they use moves that works the WHOLE body all at the same time, creating maximum calorie burn.

But the best part about it…it is so. much. fun.

I was a sweaty beast afterward…and loved it.

 

Now, you may be curious about the title of my post…

Yes, it’s true…I do have a problem, an addiction rather.

I’ll let the pictures speak for itself:

 

It’s growing!!

 

Hi, my name is Kristi, and I’m addicted to tea. The first step is admitting, right?

It has gotten out of control, really. When I thought about what I needed at the grocery store this weekend, my first thought was, hmmm I think I will go check out the tea section again. (there might be one I actually DON’T have, the horror!)

A mug seems to be glued to my hand most times of the day.

green teas, chocolate flavors, chai, earl grey…you name it, I got it.

 

So in search of help for my problem, I hit up the ever so knowledgeable Google to hook me up with some info.

And to my surprise, check out what I found!

 

TEA

Polyphenols in tea have been known to:

• Help protect cells from the normal, but damaging, physiological process known as "oxidative stress."
• Help prevent blood clotting
• Help lower cholesterol levels
• Help neutralize enzymes that aid in the growth of tumors
• Help deactivate cancer promoters
• Help stimulate the immune system
• aid in weight loss/management
• improve relaxation and sleep
• Delay Aging
• Strengthen teeth
• Help fight against viral and bacterial infection
• Help improve the functions of the digestive and excretory systems

(Source)

REALL?! So my PROBLEM is actually a GOOD thing??!

*breaks out in a happy dance*

While my wallet may not be thrilled out this, my health will be ecstatic!

So…tea party anyone?

Cheers!

Oops, wrong beverage…

 

Ahhh, there we go.

 

Question of the day:

What is your favorite tea?

 

Quote of the day:

“You’re not always going to be understood, don’t let that stop you. Seek acceptance within & let the world do what it may.”

Kristi

Life Lesson

Happy Tuesday!

I was a good food blogger today and have a full day’s worth of eats to show for it!

Here’s the good stuff…

stovetop oatbran with a sliced banana and 1 tbsp of Sunbutter sunflower seed nut butter (love!)

I have fallen in love with sunflower seed butter. My jar has been getting lower and lower…I need to restock! I definitely suggest it if you haven’t tried it.

I also had some tea:

in my Tweety mug, no less. Stylish.

I got to work at my schoolwork and then came home and whipped up some lunchie:

this would be a sausage, egg, and cheese biscuit, no McDonalds needed.

I microwaved two egg whites, heated up a Morningstar soysauge, and layered it up on a whole wheat bagel with a slice of pepper jack cheese. Topped with red pepper flakes for substantial spicy action.

I have an abundance of spinach, so I also made a simple salad to go along with it. 

Strawberries:

I tried my next flavor of Zevia, too!

I <3 Zevia!!!

This flavor might be my favorite so far…very good!

Afternoon snack while at work:

 

I got my boot-ay right home and made up a fabulous dinner:

One with layers…

an eggstada (1 egg, 2 egg whites) topped with salsa, nutritional yeast “cheese”, spinach leaves, onions, mushrooms, avocado, sea salt, and black pepper.

I also had some leftover butternut squash fries. Mmmm.

And now I’m thinking there is dark chocolate in my near future…;)

 

****

I wanted to share something that happened today because it was something that put life in perspective for me. Today, my older sister Jessica, got in a car wreck. She missed a stop sign and got crushed by another car. Very luckily, the car hit on the passenger side and she and the other guy are fine. But I came as soon as I got out of school and it was not a very good sight to see. The whole passenger side of her car was crushed in. We just found out that BOTH of the cars are totaled.  My sister was very upset and mad at herself. I hated seeing her like that and not being able to do anything about it.

But it was realized that the only thing that mattered was that she was okay. In the blink of an eye, this wreck happened. It could have very well been a worse outcome. Thank God it wasn’t.

My point is,  tell your loved ones that you love them. Cherish the time you spend with them and don’t take it for granted. You never know what will happen tomorrow.

night!

Kristi

New Home!

If you are reading this, then you have successfully made it over from my Blogspot domain to my new address. YAY! I hope you all like it!

I am so excited to be blogging on WordPress now! I think it will take some getting used to at first, but I can tell I’m going to love it!

I would also love it if you guys would change your Google readers and blogrolls to my new address.

Something to check out:

Today I worked on my “About” page. Let me know what you think!

I am still working on my blogroll. Other links will be soon to come as well!

Okay, I’m going to be the life of the party super lame, and get to bed early tonight…I have some sleep catching-up to do! I’m 80 years old, obviously.

Have a good night!

Me like cookie dough

Howdy Bloggies! Happy Halloween!

Hope you all are enjoying the beginning your weekends…I know I am! I live for these two sacred days.

I took a break from Green Monsters this morning…

and instead started off with a much missed breakfast…its the return of the yogurt mess!

(Greek Oikos, Nature’s Path pumpkin granola, figs, Kroger natural peanut butter, Mighty Maple)

along with some herbal tea:

I have been drinking tea like crazy lately! It just warms me up soooo good.

Speaking of tea, I will be going to the new health food store today to visit their AWESOME tea section. Seriously, I am amazed by it…they have any kind of tea you could possibly want. I won’t be surprised if I come home with a whole cart full of them.

Want to see what I did with the butternut squash from my last post?

It went from this…

To this…

To finally this:

(smothered in Amy’s ketchup, post-picture, obvi)

Yes, I went for the obvious…yes, it’s been done before…yes, it was absolutely fantastic. 

I also had a homemade bean burger to go along with my fries:

(followed Kath’s recipe/instructions: here)

which was followed by these little babies:

I tried to rock the natural lighting…gotta work on those photography skills! Any pointers?

dough:

final product:

So what are those lovely morsels, you ask? Well they come from just about the greatest cookbook ever. Yep you guessed it…I’m talking about this gem:

As my very first EDBV recipe, I went for the Super Charge Me Cookies. I made mine with some carob chips and chopped figs (say that three times fast).

Two thumbs up…I’m already in love with this book.

So fast forwarding back to today, I took the opportunity to make a switch up from my usual exercise routines. I have been doing a lot of treadmill workouts or 30 Day Shred routines. I felt like I needed to bust out and do something different. So after 5 minutes of rummaging through my closet, I found this:

Turbo Jam!!!

This used to be my old go-to exercise DVD…talk about a good, FUN workout. This was actually my very first exercise program I ever purchased. It totally took me back to the days when I first vowed to change my habbits and get healthier. Just remembering those days was great motivation for me this morning.

If you have never heard of Turbo Jam, it is an upbeat mix up cardio dancing with a mixture of martial arts thrown in. They play fun music that really gets you up and moving. I LOVE the instructor! She is so much fun and very motivating.

I am so glad I chose to do this today. It was great to switch things up and I will definitely go for this DVD more often now!

Welp, the Madre is calling my name to help her with the Halloween decorations. I’m off to go get in the holiday spirit!

Tonight, the plan is to hand out candies to all the little kiddos around the neighborhood. I love seeing all the costumes!

What are your plans for tonight?

and because I couldn’t resist…

 

Kristi