Taking Care of Myself (Or Not)

Hello!  Long time no “see”, eh?  My life got a little out of control there for a week or two, which I admit is totally my fault.  I let myself get stressed out about something I have no control over and as a result haven’t been paying enough attention to “ME”.   April is an extremely hectic month because Noah’s (yes, I’ll be using their “real” names now) soccer and hockey overlap.  We are in the midst of hockey tryouts for next season and his soccer team is ramping up for their season which starts May 1.  I’ve either been here: He’s the one with the orange cleats.  Or I’ve been here: He’s on the right.  While I LOVE watching him play, both sports are rather cold at this point which doesn’t help matters!  HA!  There hasn’t been near enough of this: RELAXATION!!  Although, Noah has no interest in chilling out.  He’s quite the energetic kid which is why we put him into sports.  The extra activity has done wonders for him.  I, on the other hand, need a sense of “balance” in my life and running from rink to soccer field 6 days a week, having zero time to clean my house, sacrificing my gym time over my lunch hour to run home and get something done at the house, meals on the go, not getting enough water into me and not getting enough sleep due to worrying about everything that’s NOT getting done has (had) me feeling anything but.  Thankfully, hockey will be done until September by this time next week.  That and I gave myself a real kick in the ass Wednesday night for not dealing better.  So even though we had a soccer game last night I committed myself to drinking lots of lemon water, preparing a decent meal for everyone and turning a blind eye to the house.  And you know what?  I slept GREAT last night!  And it’s great to be home today for Good Friday with everything closed because it forced me to just sit for a few hours.  Between my hubby and I, the laundry has been done, bedding is changed, the dishwasher has been run.  Vacuuming will wait until tomorrow.  This afternoon we left the kids at home and walked down to our favourite “hotspot”, The Red Brick Cafe: It’s a 3 mile walk, round trip with loads of hills….AKA, just what the doctor ordered!    My hubby got his standard; a vanilla latte and I rolled with a soy chai tea latte: We stopped atop a bridge to take a few pictures of ourselves…..so vain, I know!  :) Even though I look exhausted, the fresh air felt so. damn. good!  And I know it did me good, too!  I took a few more pics along the way to test out my point and shoot camera, a Canon Power Shot SD980 IS Elph.  We may have bought a new little surprise that I hope to share with you all very soon!  PURDY!!!  :)
And now for some eats.  These are pretty much all a week old b/c as I said, I haven’t been eating well the past 5 days or so…. That pancake was GOOD!  It was from last Friday morning.  The kids had asked for pancakes for breakfast so I decided to get decadent with mine.  It’s topped with whipped cream cheese, dark chocolate chunks and agave ample syrup.  Looking at this makes me really want another!
The above stir fry was today’s lunch.  I tossed together cooked wild rice, broccoli, avocado and tofu then mixed in some mango chipotle dressing and this Tabasco that I’m addicted to these days:
As the commercial goes; “I put that sh*t on EVERYTHING”!!!!!  Has anyone tried this??    
I haven’t really been eating a lot of oats for breakfast lately.  Instead, I’ve been inhaling this cereal like it’s my job: LURVE!!!  One lunch I did enjoy last week was one with my hubby.  We met at another Red Brick location closer to our jobs one day and I ordered a roasted red pepper and goat cheese panini with a side salad: And my hubby had a salami/provolone/apple panini with a pasta salad: We both enjoyed French vanilla coffees on the side: AND, we blew through a pack of this gum in no time at all! Well, I think that’s all I’ve got for now.  Thanks for letting me vent!!  I’m positive things are on an upward swing so I expect life to settle down somewhat sooner rather than later.  In the meantime, what are your top 3 stress busting “do’s”??  I’ll sign off with a photo that never fails to make me smile.  Pepper LOVES chasing leaves out on the deck and insists on trying to bring them in the house once he catches them. BABY!!!
Bye for now!!

Eggs & Allergies

Hi, all! How’ve you been on this fine hump day? I can’t believe it’s here already! Guess that’s what having Mondays off does. I’ll take it! I finally made a great bowl of overnight oats yesterday! I think the trick for me is to keep it simple….not too many flavours.

• 1/2 cup oats
• 1 cup USAB
• cinnamon
• vanilla chai powder
• 1 tbsp chia seeds
• blueberries
• mocha hazelnut sprinkles

Work was pretty busy, but didn’t keep me from getting my morning snack in!

This was AWESOME! Totally worth the $3 I paid for it. The scent was a deep coffee one and it reminded me of chocolate covered espresso beans. I love those! I’d buy this again in a heartbeat!

I brought my laptop to work again yesterday to do the Shred DVD. Two of my co workers joined in on the fun again! This is turning into a bi-weekly event that I look forward to. I think they do, too!

Lunch was a huge salad. You can see the purple carrots much better this time. I dressed it with a little Renee’s Caesar parm dressing:

This lunch stretched out so long that I didn’t eat my afternoon fruit! I did, however, make myself an iced coffee:

While at Starbucks last Friday night I taste tested their new line of Via Iced coffee and fell in love. They were selling the packages for a dollar off so I snapped one up!

The single serve packets are to be mixed with 2 cups of water and are lightly sweetened. I would normally take a little “milk” in my iced coffee but find that I don’t need it with this. The only downside to drinking this was that it was a little too close to dinner and ruined my appetite. DD and I had hair appointments so I knew I needed to eat something. I’m one of those lucky people who gets heartburn if I let myself get too hungry. I toasted an English muffin, spread some LC cheese, egg whites and hot sauce on top and called it dinner.

Sad looking, but my go-to meal none the less. You might even see it again today! ;) It was past 8pm when we got home and DS somehow roped me into playing some Wii with him. Playing with my little man is humorous because as soon as he starts to lose we have to switch games. He thinks he’s being pretty suave, too by telling me that he thinks I was having “trouble” with that one. HA!

I woke to a bright, sunny morning and spend a little too much time relishing that in bed. Needless to say, a quick breakfast was needed so I could get out the door!

All Bran Buds and Nature’s Path optimum cranberry ginger. This box is done now. I might have shed a tear or 2.

I was talked into making a doctors appointment by my boss today because I’ve had a bothersome cough for the past couple of weeks. Guess she got tired of listening to me! On the way to the office I ate a Kardea bar:

Yum! One more to go before review time. In the meantime, what is your favourite Kardea bar??

So, it turns out I have the same type of asthma as DS. I can’t say I’m really surprised because I kinda had a feeling she would say that. Basically, for the both of us, it’s allergy induced. DS has a lot of trouble with his breathing (and coughing) in the spring when all the pollen is out and in the fall when the leaves fall and the mould it out and about. Now, I’ve know for a good 10yrs that I’ve got allergies to grass, ragweed, birch tree pollen, cats and dust. Just like lots of other people out there. In all those years I can honestly say that these allergies have never bothered me. To the point where I didn’t even like to admit to having them after seeing my Dad and brother suffer with horrible symptoms over the years. Well, I guess ragweed is in full swing and this is the year that I’ve started to react to it. I walked out of there with a prescription for the exact same 2 inhalers as DS has. Bummer. Even more humbling is that now I know what my poor child has been going through his whole life. Sheesh!

No gym as my appointment was over the noon hour. When I got back to my desk I pulled out the tuna salad I had packed.

I’ve had these before and they’re pretty decent in a pinch. This was part of my efforts to clean the pantry out.

It was a tad spicy, but nothing I can’t handle. :) We got SUPER busy at work to the point where I left an hour late. That doesn’t happen often, but we had some balancing issues that needed to be taken care of before we could do our transfer. Then I spent a 1/2 hour waiting for my prescription to be filled. I was HUNGRY by the time I got home and just wanted to stuff my face. Enter eggs again.

Two slices of WW bread, toasted, hummus and farm fresh easy over eggs. Then I had a scoop (or 2) of ice cream:

This is a surprise flavour that I will be sharing at the beginning of next week.

Weeellll….I’ve got a few things to take care of before I tune into SYTYCD at 8. Hope nobody gets hurt this week!!

Bye for now!!

Muffins, Anyone??

How did Monday treat everybody? I had a pretty good day. I was off work so how could it be bad, right?? We had a HUGE thunder boomer last night and it was still cloudy when I got out of bed. I thought about oats but really felt like a bowl of cereal so I went with it: This was a mix of Wildroots, All Bran buds and some PC Ancient Grains cereal with strawbs on top. This is the ancient grain cereal I used;

I gathered the kids and took them to Italian school and then went to Pilates. We’re doing a lot of work on the stability ball this session and I’m enjoying learning different ways of using it. Once home I washed and hung all the bedding out and finally got to some blog reading. I had to drive DS to the next city over for another hockey session right after I picked them up so I made some sandwiches to go. Mine was almond butter in Stonemills cranberry pumpkin seed bread. DD and I did some shopping while DS was on the ice. I only picked up a purple T and a white tank, but at $11.27 for both, it was a steal! Foodie treats looked like this!

I’m uber excited to try the Gnu bar. Aside from the lure of espresso chip, I believe this is the first time I’ve seen these bars in my area. Once again, I bought us froyo before leaving the mall. This time I tried the chai latte mix and it was all I hoped it would be!

I even snuck a photo of their “board” while the girl was ringing in someone else’s order! Shhhh!

I got to work in the garden when we got home. My spag and butternut squash vines were starting to take over so I had some damage control to take care of. Here’s a peek at how my veggies are coming along.

I also picked the last head of lettuce, cleaned it, prepped my dinner and lunch for tomorrow and made a batch of muffins. All in just about 1 hour! Here’s the recipe for the muffins;

Cranberry Peach Muffins

• 3/4 cup of WW flour
• 1/4 cup of chia flour
• 1/2 cup of sucanat
• 2.5 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• dash of salt
• 3/4 cup Quaker oats
• 1/4 cup Egg Beaters
• 3 tbsp melted coconut butter
• 1/2 cup Almond Breeze
• 1 cup peach puree (I used baby food peaches!!)
• 1/2 cup dried cranberries

1. Heat oven to 400*
2. Combine flours, sucanat, baking powder and soda, salt
3. Stir in oats
4. Mix egg beaters, coconut butter, Almond Breeze & peach puree in Magic Bullet until smooth
5. Add wet to dry stirring until just combined
6. Fold cranberries in
7. Bake for 20 mins, then allow to cool completely

These turned out fabulous! I was sent some chia flour to review, but want to use it in a few different ways before I write that post up. I will say that subbing the 1/4 cup for the flour did not change the consistency of the muffin or the baking time. If chia flour is something you don’t have floating around your pantry, just use 1 cup of WW flour. This recipe also helped me use up some extra food items that I’ve been trying to get rid of. Baby food peaches, anyone??? HAHA!

Soon it was time for dinner. The fam had sausage, mac n cheese and cucumber slices. I had a HUGE salad with all the usual suspects. The highlight was the tri coloured carrots from the market, though!

They’re hard to see among all the other veggies, feta and chopped Yves veggie burger, but I love’em! Dessert was one of the muffins. Go figure, eh?

The rest of my evening will be spent reading a book. I only have to work 4 days this week and then I’m on vacay for 2 weeks!!! YAHOO!

Bye for now!!