Pictureless Post

***EDITED TO ADD -- It's 11:30pm here and I thought I'd try one last time to get these picture's downloaded. BAM! It worked! I guess blogger worked out the kink. The picture's of my eats are now available for your viewing pleasure! :)***


This will be quite the boring post as blogger is giving me errors when I try to upload my pictures. Not sure what's been going on with the site the past few days, but I hope it gets sorted out soon. If I can get them downloaded later, I'll edit this post to show them.

I woke up this morning to another winter wonderland. The roads were crappy, but I can excuse this because everything looked so pretty with a fresh blanket of snow! Work was busy again, but it was to be expected! I’m going to make this another quick post because DD starts swimming lessons tonight at 7pm so my blogging time is limited! :)

Before I get on to my eats for the day, I should let everyone in on a little secret. I haven’t done an official grocery store trip in a month! With extras from the holiday meals around and stocked up food, I’ve been determined to save some money by avoiding a full fledged trip. The only items I’ve purchased have been the essentials…milk, eggs, bread, etc. Needless to say, the cupboards have gotten quite bare….to the point that DS has even noticed! I’ll fix this situation at the end of the week, but until then, please excuse my lackluster meals! OKAY! Here we go!

Breakfast:
I found some fruit!


-1 cup water
-1/2 cup Old Wessex 5-Grain cereal
-cinnamon
-dash of coconut extract
-2 Tbsp liquid egg whites (I needed to finish the carton!)
-a few blackberries and blueberries

Morning Snack:


-TAZO Earl Grey tea
-medjool dates

No run again….. :(

Lunch:


-2 slices Weight Watchers WW bread, almond butter, Cinnamon Plum Tea jam (Stonewall Kitchens)
-3 clementine’s…these guys were hard to peel. Sure sign they’re on their way out. Thankfully, there’s only a few left!

Afternoon Snack:


-0% Fage with agave nectar drizzled on top. This is my last single serve of Fage. Very sad for me as I don’t know when I will be back to the States to buy more….

I left work at 5:30 today which was MUCH earlier than expected. YIPEE! I'll wait until tomorrow to post my dinner seeing as the pictures just won't do their thing. Very disappointing.

Enjoy your evening and if you need to go out in crappy weather (freezing rain and snow) like I do, stay safe!!

Bye for now!!

A Busy One

***I tried to send this a few hours ago, but something was up with blogger and it wouldn't publish! Anyone else on blogger have any issues?***

Holy Hannah, work today was the most insane I thinks it’s ever been! Tomorrow’s not looking much better, either. To be completely honest, I’m beat so I’m gonna make this a quick post.

Breakfast:


-1 cup water
-1/2 flax seed porridge
-cinnamon
-1 Tbsp butter pecan International Delight coffee creamer

Morning Snack:


-3 medjool dates
- “calm” TAZO tea. I was needing something calm in my life!! :)

Lunch:


-100 cal English muffin, ¼ cup egg whites, whipped cottage cheese, Sabra Peppadew hummus. And a side of carrots. I ate a lot more carrots than this! Crunch, crunch! I went to Costco on the weekend and couldn’t find the Sabra hummus anywhere! I hope they were just out of stock!

And these 2 guys….


No lunch run today because I didn’t really take a lunch break, per se….just ate as I worked. That’s the one thing that really irritates me about being so busy at work….my workouts suffer. I like to get it done at lunch because there’s usually no time in the evening and I’m just not a morning person. I just keep telling myself to be positive and think of all the lieu time I’m accumulating! :)

Afternoon Snack:


Grapes rescued from the back of the fridge! Poor little things were forgotten about in there!

I ended up leaving work at 6pm. That makes for a 10 hour day when I usually work 7 hours. It was a quick 10 hours, though! When I got home, everyone had already eaten so I pulled out a can of Mr Goudas rice and leeks that I had bought and forgot about. I've never tried it before and it looked decent and only had a few natural ingredients listed.


Looks good, right? WRONG! This stuff was horrible! All I could taste was vinegar! EEWW! I only had a few bites before I pitched it and make a bowl of 0% Fage, honey and Kellogg's Satisfaction cereal...


MUCH BETTER!

I'm off to make a BIG cup of tea to drink while I watch the season premiere of The Biggest Loser! I'm so hooked on that show! I do apologize if this post comes across as me being cranky. I'm really not....just wiped out. Tomorrow will be another rough day, but Thursday will be back to normal. Amen! Thanks for baring with me!

Bye for now!!

Bad Work News

Hello, all!

Well, I’m not gonna sugar coat it – getting up at 6:15am this morning seriously sucked! The kids co-operated, though…..thank God for small miracles…and we were out the door on time. Seeing as I was still half asleep when it was time to eat, I kept my oats on the simple side…


-1/2 cup chocolate peppermint Vitasoy
-1/2 cup water
-1/2 cup Quaker oats
-sprinkle of granola

I enjoyed this in relative peace and quiet while the kids coloured in the other room.

After I finished all my “chores” last night, I ended up baking some PB & chocolate chip cookies. My hubby had a hankering for them the other night, but I was too lazy to dig out a recipe and bake them. When I got off the computer last night, I found him wandering around with one of my cookbooks! GASP!! In our house, this is equal to me wandering around with a hammer….no good can come out of it! See, after nagging him for what seems like endless days to hang a picture for me, I finally seek out his precious hammer with the intent to just hang the darn thing myself. As soon as he sees me it’s instant panic and I get the “WHAT are you doing with my HAMMER????” Before I know it, the picture is up! HAHA! Same thing goes when I find him with a recipe…”WHAT are you doing with my RECIPE BOOK?????” And before he knows it, his cookies are made. :) Here’s the finished product.


I should mention that I used this recipe from Redbook magazine. I didn’t make any filling and I added about a 1/3 cup of mini chocolate chips. They. Were. Good! I ate 4 of them (well, 6 if you count the raw batter I ate!) That is precisely why I do not bake such things very often. Who can resist a cookie warm out of the oven? Not this girl! **Just a quick sidebar….my hubby inhaled 8 of these beauties in about 2 minutes!**

Okay! Back to today. Mid morning at noshed on these 2 clementine’s. One was really tasty, the other a bit dry. Glad I ate the dry one first!!!


Here’s my stats on my lunch run!

Time:35:19
Avg HR:167
Max HR:181
Calories:338
Miles:3.37

My run went by quickly today because I was so distracted watching my kitten and middle cat (Charlie) playing. Animals are funny little creatures!! Also, today was one of those days where I could’ve kept going. I felt really good and strong.

Lunch was the last piece of snapper from the other night…

Looks pretty sad, eh?! No matter…it was still tasty! I also ate some cut up peppers and carrots with Sabra Peppadew hummus…


One of the other payrolls girls was off today and we came to find out that she broke her wrist yesterday. Poor girl. Sucks for myself and the other payroll clerk, though, because she’ll be off for 6-8 weeks….and we’re already short a person. YIKES! It’s gonna be a busy month! We do have a lady helping us out with some things which will be a big help. When you work in a payroll environment, you can't just pull any old joe in to help because everything is confidential.

I’m sure nobody will be surprised to see this for my dinner…


Leftover chili! Tastes even better today! My sweet end? You guessed it! PB cookies! I think they'll be gone after my hubby and the kids are done with them tonight. Amen.

I'm off now to pick DD up from dance, then I have to get moving on the work I brought home today. I'm so excited about the task...enter sarcasm...Enjoy your night!!

Bye for now!

The Party's Over

I rolled out of bed at a lazy 8:30 this morning. I had a headache that’s pretty much stuck with me all day long. Bah. My system must know that it’s back to work tomorrow. I may be feeling a little bit whiny about that, but secretly, I thrive on a routine so it’ll be nice to have some normalcy back in my life after such a hectic December!

I had some fat free evaporated milk in the fridge that was left over from the chocolate cake that I made for New Year’s Day, so I decided to use it up in my breakfast.

-3/4 cup evaporated milk
-1/4 cup water
-1/2 cup Old Wessex 5-Grain cereal
-cinnamon
-a “blob” of fig preserves (the end of the jar)

This was very filling, but I’m not sure how I felt about the evap milk. It seemed cloyingly sweet and a bit gaggy towards the end. Oh, well….lesson learned!!

For a snack last night I ate a gala apple with a scoop of almond butter.

This is one of my favourite flavour combinations. YUM!

We made our weekly visit to the farm after breakie and I ate 2 cookies with my coffee while catching up on the week’s events.

Funny looking things, aren't they?!

We stopped at McDonald’s on our way home because DS decided he wanted to have his birthday party there so I had to book a time slot. So far, we are set to go for Jan 25 from 1-3. His actual birthday is the 28^th. God, I can not believe that my baby will be 7 in 24 days! Seems unreal to me. Here's a photo of him at about 2 months old...

Baby!!

I wasn’t really hungry for lunch, but I knew I had to eat something or I’d just end up picking all afternoon so I mixed a 0% Fage with a Tbsp of honey and a handful of Kellog’s Satisfaction cereal.

This was followed by an unphotographed medjool date. I am loving those dates!!

A little later on I made myself a cinnamon latte to settle in with while I did some blog reading.


I made a huge pot of chili for dinner tonight. I love this dish for its versatility. When I make chili, I just grab whatever I find on hand that sounds good. Here’s tonight’s mix:

Chicken Chili

-2 tsp olive oil
-1 onion, diced
-1 each red, yellow & orange pepper, cut into chunks
-3 cloves of garlic
-1 lb of chicken breast, chopped
-1 Tbsp chili powder
-1 tsp each cumin & oregano
-S & P
-1 28oz can diced tomatoes
-1 cup tomato sauce
-1 19 oz can romano beans

*heat oil in large pot and add chicken. Cook until almost cooked through
*add onion, peppers and garlic. Cook another 5 minutes
*add spices…cook 1 more minute
*stir in diced tomatoes, tomato sauce and beans
*bring to a boil, then partially cover and let simmer for 15 minutes

I like to serve mine with a dollop of plain yogurt on top.

This evening will be spent preparing for tomorrow....making lunches, backpacks packed, snowsuits dried out, etc....you know the drill! Also, all the bedsheets were washed today so I have beds to make now. Yipee!

I’ll leave you with a little tidbit I found while reading my Family Circle magazine last night.

“If you take lemon & sugar in your tea, always add the sugar first since the lemon’s acid will prevent it from dissolving”

Bye for now!!

Dessert For Breakfast

I made myself a seriously decadent dessert, I mean breakfast, this morning!


Noggy Blueberry Bread Pudding

-2 slices WW bread
-1/2 cup blueberries
-1 Tbsp agave
-1/4 cup egg Beaters
-1/2 cup Vitasoy Hollynog
-1 tsp cinnamon

*Preheat oven to 375 degrees
*break bread into pieces and place in a greased oven proof casserole
*combine all other ingredients in a bowl and pour over bread
*bake for 30-35 minutes


Seriously good stuff! After my food had a chance to digest a bit, I ran 3.5 miles on the treadmill. The HRM worked much better this time around-thanks for the tips! I wet the band a little more and tightened up the wrist strap. Voila! No pauses in recording! Here are my stats:

Time: 35:10
Time in Zone: 34:37
Avg HR: 170
Max HR: 180
Calories burned: 349

I hopped off and played about 10 minutes of the Outdoor Challenge on the Wii with the kids to cool down. By the time I had a shower and put my face on, it was lunch time! Seems like a really fast morning!

Lunch was pretty much a repeat of yesterday-stir fry. The only differences today were that I added a bit of left over chicken breast to the tofu and used mango chutney instead of the pomegranate one.

Very tasty, indeed! I also ate a medjool date filled with almond butter for a bit of a sweet end. Not photo, though!

It wasn’t long after lunch was done that my brother brought my niece and nephew by for a visit. The kids pulled the outdoor challenge back out and had a good time with it. After they left, we decided to hit the rink for some public skating. We haven’t been yet this year because DS is on the ice every Saturday & Sunday, but there’s a big tournament on in town this weekend so there was no hockey. Now, I don’t skate very well at all. Both my kids can lap me with their eyes closed and my hubby has been playing hockey since he was 5, but he learned to skate at the age of 3. I am SO jealous because they make it seem so easy and I just can not get the hang of it. I do try my hardest because I really want to get good, but after 20 minutes today, my feet were positively SCREAMING at me. I actually wanted to get on my hands and knees and crawl off the ice they hurt so badly. Fortunately for me, my hubby tried out his brand spanking new skates today, so he was off the ice not long after I was. It never felt so good to get my (fake) Ugg’s back on!

Once home, I made a frothy cup of java...


Then I parked my rear end on the couch to watch some tube. I wish I had thought to bring my camera in the room with me because Pepper and Charlie decided to curl up in my lap for a nap! WAHOO….2 of them have finally made nice. My older cat is coming along…he’s stopped hissing, anyways!!

My hubby and the kids decided that they wanted a store bought lasagna for dinner so I nuked a ravioli Smart Ones frozen dinner and ate that with a half cup of steamed edamame. I'll admit to a few bites of the store bought one...usually, I find that they taste horrible, but this one wasn't too bad!


PHEW….filling meal! No sweet end for me just yet! Maybe later. My parents should be arriving shortly for a visit and then I plan to watch Canada play at the Juniors. We have a ferocious team this year!! Hope you all enjoy your Staurday evening, no matter what you have on the go!

Bye for now!!

A Photo Recap

I was checking out my post from yesterday and realized that somehow, the part about yesterday’s breakfast was missing!! I don’t know what happened there, but I’m sure you guys were pretty confused about how I went from eating cottage cheese at night to baking a cake the next day!! Sometimes I am a dork, plain and simple! I must have deleted a paragraph somehow. Here’s what I ate….. a mix of Quaker oats, water, cinnamon, French vanilla International Delight coffee creamer and pumpkin seeds.


I still wasn’t hungry by 1pm (this is still yeaterday), but my parents eat VERY early….at 4:30…so I knew I had to get something in my system or I’d go there starving. I nuked a ¼ cup of egg whites and put it between a 100 cal English muffing with some whipped cottage cheese and hot sauce. I also ate 2 clementine’s for good measure!


Mom put on a grand feast, as usual! Course #1 was a small piece of lasagna, salad and a bun…


Course# 2 was veggies, roasted sweet potatoes and ham…


Dessert was a piece of my oh so rich flourless chocolate cake and a biscotti that Mom made.


The plate is a disaster because I almost forgot to take a picture and had already dug in! Whoops!

There was also a tray of sweets out that I picked on but didn’t take any photos. I think I had 2 more biscotti, a raspberry square and some chocolate/peanut yum that my sis made.

We were home by 8pm and I just crashed on the couch with my kitty! At that point, it felt like midnight I was so tired! I was light’s out a bit before 11pm and woke up refreshed at 7:30am this morning. I got up and went straight to the kitchen to make a pot of oats!

-1/2 cup chocolate peppermint Vitasoy
-1/2 cup water
-1/2 cup flax seed porridge
-sprinkle of granola


This was just what my belly needed!! After I ate, I made a big cup of green tea and proceeded to get some blog reading done. I have really enjoyed reading about everybody’s Christmas traditions over the past few weeks! Very entertaining and I found some neat new ideas, too! One thing I really enjoyed this morning while blog reading was Meghann and Angela’s photo recaps of their adventure’s in 2008. I thought I’d be a copy cat and do the same thing. While searching for picture’s on the computer, I realized that before I started to blog in August, I really didn’t take many pictures! I think that will change this year!! I did scrounge a few up so I hope you enjoy them!

In January, we went to see the Monster trucks in Toronto for DS's 6th birthday. What a BLAST!!


Our annual weekend get-a-way to the Nottawasaga Inn & Resort in April. This is always a fun filled family weekend!


In May, DD turned 9....Hannah Montana style!! My hubby and I also celebrated our 10th wedding anniversary in May! Man, time sure does fly!


In June, a very excited DS graduated from senior kindergarten. He was psyched to move on to grade 1!

In July, we participated in our first fund raiser as a family, walking a 5K for Jessica's Footprint...


Hubby and I at Canada's Wonderland in August. DD took this picture of us!

In November, DS and his hockey team played the intermission of the Canada Russia Hockey Challenge...a first "on ice with a crowd" experience for him and us! That's him with his stick on the puck....


In December, we welcomed a new furry friend into our home...Pepper!

And there we have a basic recap of 2008.

We took down the Christmas tree today. I’ve always found that to be such a sad chore. It really marks the end of the holidays and reminds me that real life is waiting for me just around the corner. *SIGH*

I made a quick stir fry for lunch using some tofu, leftover veggies and a tbsp of pomegranate chutney.


Easy and delicious! I also had a few clementine’s. I get so addicted to those little guys every year! After eating, I decided I’d better get out of my PJ’s and get some things done. First up was a trip to Costco where I found these….


Medjool dates! I’ve found them in the bulk section at the health food store, but never in a tub like this! I ate one as soon as we were back in the van and when we arrived home, I cut a slit in one and filled it with a tsp of almond butter.


Heaven! I can certainly see why some people eat this as a dessert.

I’ve been reading “The Cell” by Stephen King (one of my favorite authors) and realized today that it’s due back at the library tomorrow! Thankfully, I only had a few chapters left so I spent some time finishing it up. For those of you who are into Stephen King, it was a good one!

Snapper was on the menu for dinner tonight. I found some really nice, fresh fillets at Costco so I “snapped” them up! Oh, how I kill myself! HEHE!! :) I served it up with some sweet potato chunks that I steamed in the microwave.


My sweet end was a piece of chocolate cake…


I'm off to play with my Wii! Not sure what game yet...I'll decide when I get down there. I'll leave you with a picture's of pepper's first experience smelling fish. Needless to say, he went a little wild! Kittens are SO cute!


Bye for now!!