Factual Friday

Happy Friday!!!  I read a neat little survey that Christina posted on her blog today and thought it would be perfect for a foodless Friday post.  Enjoy!
1. Name 3 things you are looking forward to: *The weekend
*My copy of Peas & Thank You arriving in the mail
*Planning a BBQ with friends
2. If you could have a dream come true, what would it be? *Quit my job, but still get the pay cheque!  LOL
3. You have $200.  You have to spend it on yourself, you can’t donate it, and it can’t be something you actually need.  What will it be? *Some new Lululemon digs….
4. What helps to pull you out of a bad mood? *Spending time with friends
*A good book/magazine
*My cats
5. What is your bedtime routine? *Brush teeth/wash face
*Change into PJ’s
*READ
6. If you are currently in a relationship, how did you meet your significant other? *Through a mutual friend
7. What kind of books do you read? *I’ll read anything with text on it, but I’m not super fond of heavy romance type novels.  Give me a good murder mystery, with a touch of scandal!
8. How do you see yourself in 10 years?
*In 10yrs my kids will be 22 & 19 so I’ll likely be an empty nester.  Hopefully I’ll be traveling much more (and farther) than I do now, but I’ll probably be too busy worrying about those kids!  ;)
9. What’s your fear? Spiders
10. Would you give up all junk food for the rest of your life for the opportunity to see outer space? *Ahhh…..NO!
11. What’s the first thing you do when you wake up? *Stretch
12. If you could change one thing about your significant other, what would it be? *Make him less of a worrier
13. If you could pick a new name for yourself, what would it be? *There was a time where I would’ve had a list of names I preferred over my own, or changed the spelling to Khrysta, (I know, right?) but I’ve come to like my name!
14. If you had to choose between six months of sun or six months of rain, what would you choose? *SUN!  That was a no-brainer……
15. If you could only eat one thing for the next 6 months, what would it be? *Pizza, lots of ways.
16. What is the thing you enjoy about blogging the most? *Reading the comments!
17. Do you prefer salty or sweet foods? *Sweet, but I’m starting to like salty more than I use to……
18. What items are in your purse right now?
*Wallet
*Make up “bag”
*2 packs of gum
*soccer team contact list
*USB
*camera
*keys
*cell
*mints
*sun glasses
19. If you had to choose between vacationing at the beach or in the mountains where would you go? *Beach
20. What do you watch on television that you know you shouldn’t? *Don’t watch much TV.  The kids usually have some kind of crap on, though…..
Before I go, here’s some information about a fun contest that’s being held by Flanigan Farms!!
National Trail Mix Day Photo Contest
In the constant hustle and bustle of everyday life, we often need a quick, energizing snack.  Trail mix makes a great on-the-go snack that is healthy and popular with adults and kids alike.  Flanigan Farms trail mix won’t leave your hands oily, because it’s all natural and unsalted…so you can snack while you...hike, bike, play sports, sail, etc. etc. etc.!

Photo Contest Instructions:

1. Like Flanigan Farms Facebook Fan Page
2. Snap away!  Post a photo and short description on Flanigan Farms Facebook Fan Page of an activity outside the home that you engage in where you may benefit from a quick, healthy snack. Be creative! 

- Feel free to include group photos of your friends and family (be sure to tag them in the photo, so we know who’s with you!).
- No limit on the number of submissions…P.S. We like videos too!

1. Let us know how you heard about the contest.

Prize:  In light of National Trail Mix Day on August 31^st, Flanigan Farms is giving away multi-packs of Nuts ‘N’ Things® 1.5oz trail mix.  This is one of its most popular products, and includes only the finest ingredients: Dry Roasted Peanuts, California Raisins, Sunflower Seeds, Cashews, California Almonds, and Pepitas (pumpkin seeds).
1^st Place: 72-pack of 1.5oz Nuts ‘N’ Things® trail mix (a $49.68 value)
2^nd Place: 36-pack of 1.5oz Nuts ‘N’ Things® trail mix (a $29.88 value)
3^rd Place: 12-pack of 1.5oz Nuts ‘N’ Things® trail mix (a $10.56 value)

Deadline: All photo submissions must be posted by Tuesday, August 30
Winners Announced on National Trail Mix Day, Wednesday, August 31^st

Sounds like a great contest, no?  I hope you all enjoy a FANTASTIC weekend!  And just for fun, pick one of the 20 questions above and let me know your answer in the comment section!!
Bye for now!!

It's Getting Hot in Here

Going back to work on such a beautiful day was a chore….I can’t lie! I did make myself a superb breakfast, though!

-1 cup water
-1/3 cup Sunrise grain blend
-cinnamon, vanilla, salt
-2 chopped strawberries
-2 tbsp of Flanigan Farms trail mix
-splash vanilla flavoured coffee creamer
This particular blend has SO much texture to it. I enjoyed it immensely!

As always when coming back after a few days off, there was a pile of paperwork on my desk that needed to be sorted through. That took up a good chunk of the morn! My co-worker and I went for our daily walk around the block at 10:30 and when we came back I ate my mix of parnoosh dates and dried apricots;
The dates are almost gone and I’m not gonna buy anymore for a bit so I opted to pick up some of the apricots for a change. I always forget how much I like these!

I’m on early lunch today so I headed out to the gym at 11:30. It was WAY too hot in there today at 77*F. I had to walk the last 3 minutes of my run because I was starting to feel physically sick. Not fun times. I think I probably sweat out every toxin that dared to be in my system, though!

Time: 45 minutes
Avg Hr: 165
Max Hr: 180
Calories Burned: 447
Distance: 4.31 miles

I brought a great big salad for lunch;
This guy has half a savoy cabbage, a tomato, a ¼ cup of lentils, a bit of leftover pork chop and cranberry walnut Gorgonzola dressing.
Later on in the afternoon I ate my honey crisp apple….
Sweet and delish! Can’t wait for them to come into full season.

Now for a wee bit of bad news. My MIL’s baby horse passed away later Sunday afternoon. :) Poor little guy just couldn’t fight the illness that took over his little body. So sad. Buuuut….that same evening a new female baby horse was born! This is the second girl with the first being born late last week. Nature can do some odd things sometimes!

So, I just gotta tell you about something that I've been really wanting to try and finally found at Whole Foods yesterday. The product is Artisana Cacao Bliss which I've seen featured on many a blog. It looks fabulous so you can imagine my glee at spotting it on the shelf. Glee turned into horror when I saw the price tag sat at $17.99 for an 8oz jar! WTF??? Who can afford that? Not me! Have any of my Canadian readers seen this at a more decent price anywhere? Please say yes!

I baked up some salmon for dinner tonight along with steamed green beans and a sweet potato that saw some microwave and oven action;
I haven't had anything for dessert yet, but I have something in mind that I will be enjoying on the deck shortly. Tonight my only plans are relaxing in the sunshine as they're predicting rain right up until Saturday. Ugh. Hope the sun is shining where you are!

Bye for now!!

An Oddball Breakfast

The day started out cloudy again but by the time noon rolled around the sun was shining! YEAH! Happy day. My breakfast was a little different this morning, but I’m not counting it as part of my “eat a different breakfast once a week for June” challenge because it wasn’t too far off what I normally eat. Follow me;

-1/2 cup Silk
-1/4 cup water
-1/2 cup cooked rice
-cinnamon, salt, vanilla
-1 tbsp Flanigan’s Farm trail mix
-hulled hemp seeds
This was a great switch up! It was close enough to my oats so that I didn’t miss them and held me over just as well. This is what the package of trail mix looks like;
This was a really nice addition. I enjoy having raisins and peanuts mixed in the same bite!

As usual, I ate my dates around 10:30ish. I think these are becoming a bit of a bad habit! On the weekend, I forget about them completely, but find that I miss them through the mornings at work. I’m on 12:30 lunch this week so before the gym I chowed down on this Chia Raspberry Cashew Dr. Weil bar;
Holy Hannah, this was most definitely my favourite flavour of the 5 that Nature’s Path sent me a while back. It was jammed with raspberry flavour and cashew pieces. I didn’t notice the chia, but I’ve never tried it before so maybe I just missed it? Anyways, I would buy this one again for sure.

It was so awesome to finally get back in the gym! I hammered out a fantastic run today. But it was HOT….76*F when I finished up. S-weaty!

Time: 50 minutes
Avg Hr: 164
Max Hr: 179
Calories Burned: 493
Distance: 5.08 miles

I’m back in the game! Yahoo!

I brought the leftover cod and veggies for lunch today. I wasn’t really feeling it, mostly because I forgot to pack the peach bruschetta with it! Oh, well. It did the trick.
Don’t ya just hate an unfulfilling meal? My lunch dessert was a cup of stewed rhubarb, sans Cool Whip!
My fresh fruit supply is dwindling terribly but this made a great substitution. Shopping day is Friday and I want to wait until then to restock.

For dinner I made myself a "burger" using lentils. Here's what I mixed together;

-1/3 cup cooked lentils
-1 tbsp Sabra hummus
-1 butt end slice of WW bread (made into breadcrumbs using the Magic Bullet)
-2 tbsp Eggbeaters
-chili powder

I just mashed it all up, formed it into a patty and let it sit in the fridge for a 1/2 hour. I cooked it up in a greased pan until brown on both sides. I topped it with a generous scoop of peach bruschetta once plated. On the side was a pile a steamed veggies;
This is the first patty I've made using beans and it was stellar. It held its shape pretty good and the blend of hummus and peach was out of this world. I'm sitting here wondering why it took me so long to try this! And I just realized how many of these steamed vegetables I ate today! Holy fibre...watch out for me later! :) My sweet end was a Cravings macaroon...
No words are needed here! In a few minutes I'm off to the pool for the kids swimming lessons. I believe that next week is the last night and then that will be it for swimming until the end of September. My hubby has just gone up to Purolator to pick up my laptop! SO excited!! I can't wait to be able to blog where ever I want. HEHEHEHEHEHE!!!!

Bye for now!

Moose Antlers & a Pie in the Face

Happy Sunday, everyone! We had a beautiful, but chilly day today. They were calling for clouds and rain, though so no complaining over here....well not much, anyways! DD must have been more tired than she thought. She didn't wake up until 10am from 9 last night! In all of her 10 years she has NEVER slept that many hours, not even when sick. I teased her by saying that she's getting lazy now that she's into double digits! Her actual b-day is Wednesday, but I let her know that after today the festivities are done. It's been fun, though!

So, yesterday I promised a few reviews and a new (to me) food. I must apologize as I never got to the new food, but I will definitely been trying it tomorrow! My first product review goes along with breakfast. While perusing the weekly grocery flyer, I saw that one store has started carrying frozen blackberries. I've never come across them before and at $2.99 I had to have them. They're from a company called D'Angelo...
I thought they would be smaller than normal, but they were a decent size and not all stuck together. Check them out;
I put some in my oats and once thawed I couldn't tell that they were not fresh. I hope the store continues to sell these!! So, here's my bowl;
-1 cup water
-1/3 cup Old Wessex 5 Grain cereal
-cinnamon
-mashed banana
-blackberries
-trail mix
Holy, delish!! My second review is the trail mix that I put on my oats. It's from one of the sample packs that I got from Flanigan Farms last week...
I really like that this one has no peanuts in it because DS loves it and is able to take it to school with him. I also liked the fact that it was unsalted. You could really get a taste of the ingredients true flavour au natural.
This is one mix that I would buy again for sure!

After breakfast we hoofed it over to Ikea. I somehow managed to get out of there with only a $2.00 candle! Restraint, baby, restraint! We ended up leaving at just about the lunch hour so the fam got some cheap-o hot dog's and frozen yogurts. No way I was eating that crap so we hit the first drive thru we came across so I could get a salad. Said drive thru just so happened to be McDonald's which I haven't been to in years. I ordered a grilled chicken salad and almost choked when I saw how pathetic it was for almost seven bucks. I had some iceberg lettuce, 2 slices of tomato, a few onion slices and the chicken. That was it. See for yourself...
I only used a few tbsp of the dressing and brought the rest home with me for later use. Lesson learned. At least it held me over until we got home. There was some fruit salad left from the other morning so I mixed it with a 1/4 cup plain yogurt, cinnamon and agave. I ate about half of what you see here....
We had our family over at 2 for cake and presents. It's so nice to catch up with everyone all at the same time! My best friend who lives 3 hours away was able to make it which was just awesome! She's the brains behind the name of my blog! Here she is with DD...
Hot mama, eh??? :)

As well as having the Caramel Banana bread that I made yesterday, I also made a Duncan Hines chocolate cake. Most people had a piece of each and the bread received rave reviews! There were a few who preferred the chocolate one, but 9 of the 12 pieces of mine went too! Here's my delicious piece!
DD has been wanting to go out for dinner to a restaurant called Moose Winooski's for her b-day for a few years now so that's where we took her. The reason she wanted to go there so bad? For your birthday they make you wear moose antlers and spin a wheel to have/get embarrassing things done to you. She got a pie in the face! Here are a few shots I took.


What a dork! :) She enjoyed every minute of it. I'm not surprised as she's always loved an audience! (So not like me)

For dinner I had my second salad of the day, only this one was 100% better! It was called "Balsamic Chicken salad. Here's the menu description, although I apologize for the darkness of it!
The salad came with huge chunks of vegetables and some really tender chicken breast covered in a sun dried tomato pesto.
I really enjoyed this and was stuffed after cleaning my plate!

I'm sipping on a coffee right now and plan to chill out for the rest of the night in front of the TV. I'm hoping to convince the fam to go on a hike tomorrow. It's suppose to be a sunny day and I think we can all use the fresh air. Hope you all enjoy the rest of the evening!!

Bye for now!

No Bills in the Mail Today!

WOW-EEE, I woke up feeling great again today!! I did have to get up a bit earlier because DD’s class went on their field trip to Medieval Times in Toronto today and she had to be at the school by 8:10am. While at the health food store Monday night (that’s where I found the $1.99 Almond Breeze) I stocked up on kamut flakes so that’s what went into my bowl this morning.
-1 cup water
-1/3 cup kamut flakes
-cinnamon
-blueberries
-banana
-unsweetened almond breeze
-slivered almonds to garnish
I really like the kamut flakes for their chew. They really hold their shape and texture. You can read all about kamut right here. I’m sure these can be used other ways, but I’ve never tried. I think I will Google some different recipe ideas. Anyone out there use kamut for anything other than breakfast???

The morning at work was spent doing some heavy auditing before we ran our payrolls. Checking everything back is not my favourite part of the job!! I get bored easily with it and then my body thinks it’s hungry when I know it’s not! Hence the following photo of some Swedish berries;
The afternoon was busier in a different, better way!! Before making my way to the gym I ate my usual Parnoosh dates….
I knew I had to give my ankles a break after yesterday’s jog so I opted for 30 minutes on the bike and 20 minutes of strength exercises….AKA, catching up on the BBBC! Here’s what I did;

*2 sets of 10 step lunges with 5lb weights
*3 set of 10 BOSU squats
*3-30 sec reverse planks
*2 sets 30 reverse crunches
*1 set 30 crunches
*3 sets 10 (girly) push ups
*3 sets 10 tricep dips

I am loving the BOSU squats! They are so challenging and fun to do.

Time: 50 minutes
Avg Hr: 133
Max Hr: 166
Calories Burned: 321

Lunch was nothing special at all. I ate the other half of the Amy’s lentil soup from yesterday with 2 more kamut bread sticks.
You can see that only half of one bread stick made it into the picture! I was hungry!! :) My lunch dessert today was ½ of a banana dried fruit loaf…
So. Good. And best of all….nobody even noticed that I used baby food prunes in them! Tricky, tricky! Before leaving work I ate pretty much what was the last bit of fresh fruit in the house…an apple and an orange…
Before I left the house this morning I put a pork roast in the crock pot so that we could enjoy pulled pork sandwiches for dinner. Half way through the day I realized that we had no buns so I stopped by the grocery store on my way home to buy some. While there I picked up some fruit for tomorrow and some wraps for my supper sammie. These are the kind that I buy...
I mixed 3oz of pork with a 1/4 cup of Memories of Damascus BBQ sauce and served it up in a wrap with a LC cheese wedge. Fiddle heads completed the meal!
My sweet end was these 2 Lindor chocolate....YUM!
As the title of this post alludes to, I had happy mail today!!!
First up was a package from Full Bar which contained 2 bars and 2 packets of water flavouring. You can learn more about Full Bars here and I will be sure to do a review as soon as I try them out. That chocolate one looks awesome!
The second parcel was from Flanigan Farms and had 3 packs of their nut mixes to try out. They were also kind enough to send me quite a bit of information about their product. Here is a link to their site.
DS loves nuts and wanted to try the almonds so I opened that pack and had 2 almonds. I was lucky to get those because the little bugger snuck off and ate the whole pack!!! Guess that means they were pretty darn good almonds, eh?! Again, I will be trying these mixes out over the next few days and will let you know what I think about them then.

Tonight is swimming lesson night so I'm off to the pool for an hour to read, I mean watch the kids swim. There's not too much planned after that. Tomorrow is only a half day for me as I booked the afternoon and Friday off work to get things ready for DD's birthday celebrations this weekend. Enjoy your evening!

Bye for now!!