A Hot Rink

Yesterday was such a busy day that I decided to stay unplugged when I got home at 9pm. I sat out on my deck taking in the gorgeous night we were having instead. The day started off with a bowl of Wildroots cereal:
Since it’s been so hot this week (which I love), I haven’t really been feeling like eating much at all. Funny how the weather can affect one’s appetite. I’d much rather be outside than in the kitchen making big meals.

We had a meeting at work which sucked up the whole morning. It was a productive meeting, though, so it was well worth the time. Summer vacation and hours have been sorted out, schedules have been set. We’re good to go! Starting July 5 through to Aug 27 I’ll be working 30hrs/wk (as opposed to 35) and taking Monday’s off. Nice! I ate this blueberry muffin bar before going to the gym:
Didn’t taste like a muffin at all, but it was OK.

I decided on a programmed interval “course” on the treadmill yesterday. It actually worked out great! Each interval was about 2mins long and flipped between running at 6mph with a 5% incline and walking at 4mph with a 7% incline. I felt sufficiently sweaty when I was done and my ankles didn’t bother me at all so I think this is on that I’ll be putting in my workout rotation.

Time: 45 minutes
Avg Hr: 153
Max Hr: 172
Calories Torched: 432
Distance: 3.5 miles

Lunch was the last of the wheatberry salad I made Wednesday stuffed into a WW pita.
And a pack of almonds because I was still hungry!! And there was pineapple, too!

Dinner was fast, cool and easy! We had to leave the house by 5:30 to pick up our Jeep from the mechanic (needed an oil change) and get DS to his soccer game. I mixed a can of water packed tuna with some salad, sprinkled it with a bit of grated cheese and used multi grain chips to scoop it all up.
I found a coconut carob pecan oatmeal bar in the fridge for my sweet end: Soccer was a blast! DS just has SO much fun playing, even in the 30* heat. He did down a mega bottle of Gatorade, though. Gotta keep him hydrated. I didn’t get any good photos this time around, but I’ll be sure to do a better job of it next week so I can post some. I was hungry by the time we arrived home as it had been 4 hours since my smallish dinner. No picture, but I did eat a Dr. Kracker flatbread slathered with almond butter.

I finally got back into the mood for oats this morning! It’s been like, 4 days. LOL! I decided to make my dark chocolate cherry mocha oats:
I figure go big or go home, right? And I loved every second that this bowl lasted. YUM!

Work was busy, busy again so lunch snuck up on me. Not so fast that I didn’t have time to enjoy a WCMN Clif bar before going to the gym!
I stuck to my 4mph, 7% incline walk today….AND I caught the new video for a song featured on the Eclipse movie (Twilight) so I got me some Edward, too. Nice!

Time: 45 minutes
Avg Hr: 152
Max Hr: 167
Calories Torched: 418
Distance: 3.2 miles

Lunch was a refreshing salad made with romaine, red bell pepper, cucumber, cheese, the last of the tuna/salsa mixture and blueberry acai salad dressing:
BEAST!

DS is in a ball hockey tournament this weekend in the next town over so we had to leave the house by 5pm to get there on time. My hubby made a beer butt chicken on the BBQ so we had an early dinner before the game. I toasted an English muffin, spread some blackberry jam on it, topped it with chicken breast and goat cheese and dug in!

The game went well. We tied 3-3. The only issue was the fact that the rink had NO air conditioning in it! It was more like a sauna in there. Here’s me and DD looking hot just sitting there:

We weren’t near as hot as DS, though! Here he is right after the game:

They play at the same rink again tomorrow at noon. I hope they’ve done something about the temperature in there! I’m going to unplug now and grab a bowl of cereal. Dinner was long ago! I’ll leave you with a few shots from the game.

Bye for now!!

Puppy Love

Today was a much better day than yesterday was! I drank loads of water last night, put my feet up and had a solid sleep. Although I was sad to miss Pilates, looking back on it today I know it was absolutely the right decision. It was steamy here again today which is the type of weather I thrive on. Give me a fire anytime! I get cranky when I’m cold! I had a refreshing breakfast of goat’s milk yogurt, Crofters blueberry superfruit jam, wheatberries (which I cooked up last night) and fresh blueberries:
My eyes were definitely bigger than my stomach because I couldn’t finish it all!

My hubby is on vacation this week so it’s extra hard to come into work. On the flip side, he did finish painting the bathroom yesterday! I just have to buy a new window covering, shower curtain and some art work this weekend and then I’ll post a picture. Let’s just say that I totally LOVE the shade of blue that I picked! YAY!

I deliberately ate my chocolate raspberry Luna bar slowly today so I could savour eat bite. This flavour is second only to chocolate peppermint stick! ;)

I had a nice elliptical workout today. Young Pup was in there again so we chatted it up for a good half hour which helped pass the time. I don’t know how that boy can run at a good clip and talk at the same time. Must be his youth!! ;)

Time: 45 minutes
Avg Hr: 159
Max Hr: 180
Calories Torched: 459
Distance: 5 miles

I’m a very visual person so I always keep track of time spent being active….be it in the gym or the garden. Having my activity on paper makes it seem more “real” somehow. Yes, I’m a dork. Here’s an example of how I track:
It’s basically the same as what I post on the blog. Do you track your workouts? If so, why?

Lunch was a great little salad I whipped up last night:
Wheatberries, red bell pepper, avocado, Yves Veggie dog, white balsamic vinegar, S&P. This had great flavour, great textures…an all around winner!

I also snacked on some chocolate covered powerberries throughout the day:
I’m pretty sure the bag won’t last long. They’re just like Welch’s fruit snacks covered in chocolate. YUM! I also ate some grapes.

Dinner was a massive salad with spinach, yellow bell pepper, tomato, cucumber, goat cheese and falafels(which were cut in half).

This is the dressing I used.

There was also some grilled asparagus, fresh from the organic farm just outside of town,

The fam had tacos and when all the shells were gone DS decided to make himself a “taco” salad that he wanted me to take a picture of.

After dinner DD and I went to the nursery to buy my veggie plants and some potting soil. While we were there we had the pleasure of playing with this lovely lady!

She’s a precious 4 weeks old and we could’ve stayed with her for hours! Here she is with DD:

Wonder if I can talk my hubby into one? LOL! When we got back I had a little bit of dessert. My hubby bought me some Skinny Cow fudge bars which ended up being the perfect treat on a hot day. What did I do while I ate this? Observed DS watering the plants for me!

Child labour right there!!! :)

Bye for now!!

Monday Blues

I woke up through the night with a sore throat. Blah. Thankfully everything else feels OK! I sipped on hot tea all day which was nice and soothing. *sigh*

Breakfast was oats, of course!

-1 cup water
-1/2 cup Quaker oats
-wheat berries
-cinnamon
-small handful Sahale Snack mix
-1 Tbsp southern pecan coffee creamer

Mmmm…YUM! Another delicious bowl of goodness! :)

Love almond butter? Yes? Then you need to go visit Hangry Pants for a chance to win a jar of Wildtimes Food almonds only almond butter. This stuff looks like it’s seriously delicious!

I snacked on some Nature's Path Optimum cereal and a hot chocolate while watching TV last night. I really like this cereal. It's nice and crunchy and not too sweet. Great buy!

I packed these 3 medjool dates and snacked on them throughout the morning.

Oh, how I missed their sticky sweetness! Good thing I only packed 3 because I could really eat too many of these at a time. At home I hide the container from myself so I’m not tempted!

No running for me today. Although it’s only my throat bothering me, I felt a little wiped out by lunch so I decided it would be best to rest today. Obviously my body is fighting something off and I didn’t want to make it worse by exerting myself. This was actually a very tough decision for me to make. I went back and forth all morning on whether or not I should just suck it up and run. I hate missing a chance to get my heart pumping! Common sense finally prevailed, though. Does anybody else struggle like this when feeling a little unwell? How do you talk yourself through it?

I brought a leftover portabello mushroom cap for lunch today. I decided to make a “burger” out of it so I stuck it in a WW bun with some ketchup and Dijon mustard. If you remember from yesterday, it had Sabra hummus and white cheddar cheese already on it. I peeled a big ole orange to eat as well. Gotta get my vitamin C into me!!


I ate all this at 12:30 and by 2pm I found myself starving again. When I looked back to my lunch, I realized that I didn’t do very well in the protein department with my meal. No wonder I was looking for munchies! I broke into this guy…

I left half at home so I wasn’t tempted to eat the whole thing. I’m glad I did because this flavour rocked and there’s no way I would’ve just eaten half. Here’s my piece;

I am definitely a Clif Bar kinda girl. Then….a co-worker brought around some raspberry lemon cake. I snagged this small piece…

….but did not like it so I inconspicuously tossed it. It looked good but just tasted like oil. BLAH! I think my taste buds have changed quite a bit over the past few years!

Before I left for Pilate's I ate an apple with dark chocolate dreams PB, but I was in such a rush that I forgot to take a picture! What bad planning for a food blogger! Once again class was very enjoyable. We worked on the different movements of the spine today. All the stretching feels fantastic and I left feeling nice and refreshed.

After picking DD up from dance I made some dinner. It was a toss up between soup & grilled cheese or salmon & veggies. I asked DD her opinion and she thought that soup & grilled cheese would be best for my throat, Smart girl! I warmed up a cup of V8 tomato and served it with a mozzarella WW grilled cheese.

Looks like someone was hoping I'd share! Charlie has manners, though and went on his way. Pepper, however, was a different story. Damn kitten was pretty sure he wanted some tomato soup. Weirdo! My verdict on the soup? Not bad at all! It had some texture to it which I was fond of. The tomato taste was a tad bit weak, but some salt fixed that right up. I would buy this again for sure!

The remainder of my night will be spent helping DS with his reading, preparing lunches for tomorrow and parking my butt on the couch with a mug of Neo-citron (I have NO clue how to spell that) in hopes of squashing whatever bug is trying to invade my body. Hope everybody has a fun show to watch or a fun "thing" to do tonight!!

Bye for now!!

Birthday Party Fun & Some New Reads

Hello everybody! I wanted to start out this post by giving a shout out to all my new readers out there! Thanks for commenting...I just love reading the comments I receive on my blog. For those of you with your own blog, you can be sure that I will be checking them out in the next few days. I'm always on the hunt for new, exciting blogs to read.

My day certainly started off on the right foot. DD & DS made and brought my hubby and I tea/coffee in bed this morning! How sweet is that?! I got a pumpkin spice tea and my hubby got his coffee, 2 sugars, 1 cream....just how he likes it. I don't have any photos, though, as the camera was downstairs. After getting some laundry in the machine, I got my oats for the day on the stove.

-1 cup water
-1/2 cup Quaker oats
-1/2 mashed banana
-wheat berries
-pumpkin butter
-cinnamon

I had forgotten all about my pumpkin butter so when I saw it in the fridge, I knew it had to go in my oats. YUM! It tasted great with the banana. The jar is almost done which is kinda sad.

I didn't have time for much this morning because we had to be out the door by 10:45am to pick up the birthday cake and get over to Burger King. I did manage to squeeze in some blog reading between my shower and packing up. Here's the cake....it's "Monster Truck" themed.

The party went VERY well! There were 11 kids in total and they all enjoyed running around and playing tag in the pay area. I enjoyed it because there was only one door to get in and out so it was easy to keep track of everyone! DS came home with what felt like a truck load of gifts. I barely heard a peep out of him for the rest of the afternoon he was so occupied!! And the Webkinz were a big hit! The kidlets had fun showing off which ones they'd picked out of the bag!

I knew there wasn't going to be anything I wanted to eat while there so I made a bagel to eat for lunch. It was a WW bagel with 2 pieces of deli ham, white cheddar cheese and sabra hummus. It was suppose to have lettuce on it to, but I completely forgot to put it on! DUH!

I ended up eating this at 2pm as we were driving home. I nibbled on maybe 5 fries and had a small piece of cake at the party. To tell the truth, I left the cake and ate the icing! That's really odd for me because I'm not usually a fan of icing, but this stuff was GOOD...not at all sweet like most icings. DD figured you all needed to see "after" pictures of the cake, so here it is!

The remainder of the afternoon was very quiet and peaceful. We didn't have any errands to run or places to go which is nice for a change. I watched a bit of TV and did a little reading before I got started on dinner.

Before I post about dinner, I wanted to show you all what I bought last night! I received a gift card to Chapters for Christmas and knew right away what books it was going towards. Last night I finally got around to picking 2 of them up!

That's right! Twilight & New Moon! The only reason I didn't buy the other 2 is that I am picky when it comes to my books and HATE hard cover. I do most of my reading in bed and they're just too heavy to hold up! I have enough $$ left on the card to grab the others when they come out in paperback. I'm excited to start on Twilight but have a few books from the library to get through first. YAY!

Okay...back to dinner! The fam had chicken alfredo (bletch!) so I made myself a chicken veggie pasta dish. I combined about 1 cup of steamed veggies, 3oz of chicken breast. 2oz of pasta and a big scoop of mango chutney...

This meal was bursting with flavour! Pretty darn good for something I just threw together. I didn't really need it, but I ate another small piece of cake for my sweet end. I'm definitely all caked out now! What's left will be split between my parents and my in laws tomorrow. Tonight I have to get at some work that I brought home with me. Not looking forward to it, but I don't want to leave it until tomorrow. I'll like it even less then! I truly hope that everyone else's Saturday night will be loads more fun than mine!! :)

Bye for now!!