christmas shenanigans and a discount!

I have spent the last 30 minutes waiting for the announcement of the winner of Project Food Blog.  I honestly cannot imagine being one of the finalists right now – my stomach is so nervous and I didn’t make it past challenge 3!

In fact, it also caused me to make lunch twice.  I was so distracted I left my corn tortilla chips in the oven for way too long and they ended up looking like this:

In went another batch – good thing they only take 10 minutes to bake!

Much better.

I finished off the last of the chili for lunch, and it made me sad.  Definitely going to be cooking up another batch soon! The husband is begging for it.  Not even kidding:)

Yesterday was full to the brim of Christmas shenanigans!  I have to be honest, there are some things going on right now that are causing me to struggle with remaining joyful each day.  You know when there is something in your life that you just wish was different.  In other words, you have plans that don’t exactly match up with God’s plans.  Well, that’s kind of where I’m at right now.  The biggest thing I’m doing to try and maintain a joyful spirit and focus on all of the blessings in my life is praying for gratefulness, perspective, trust and patience every single day.  Nothing calms my fears like spending time with Him.

The second thing I do is just stay busy with everything that’s going on right now…focusing on living in the moment (as I tell my yoga students every Wednesday).  Yesterday was definitely busy and it warmed my spirit to focus on such fun aspects of the holiday season: giving gifts and sending Christmas cards!

The husband and I sent gifts to all of our business clients.  The peppermint bark is probably not vegan…but neither are any of our clients.  ha.  And while I still try to only make and buy vegan food, even when buying for others, the packaging was designed just so that I could not say no to the husband’s pleading eyes.  What can I say? He’s a sucker for classy packaging…and I’m a sucker for him.

And now for our personal card

My parents-in-law gave me the bird stamp for Christmas, and I’m pretty much in love with it. I just want to stamp everything I own.

We put hours and hours of time into these cards!  I kid.  We really pulled them together rather quickly, especially compared to cards we’ve done in the past.  Like two years ago when I handmade each and every card.  They were cute.  But it will be a long time before I commit to that again:)

Anyway, plans for this weekend include finishing up our Christmas shopping and then going to my hometown for Christmas on Sunday.  I’m still trying to decide what to make to take for Christmas dinner. I’m wanting to make some kind of salad – like a grain or pasta salad…and then definitely a dessert!  Must decide soon!

And now for some exciting news!

Ecolissa is offering all ChiaSeedMe readers 20% off anything in her shop!

“Ecolissa carries only fashionable eco friendly and vegan woman’s clothing and accessories.  [They] specialize in dresses and easy to wear separates.”

[source]

Not only does Ecolissa carry dresses and tops, there is also a plethora of cute accessories available as well. I’ve had my eye on a couple of items – and I love knowing that they’re eco and animal friendly!

Here are some items I love:

I’ve wanted a scarf like this since it got cold, and I think this one is adorable.  And so cozy looking:)

To receive the discount just type in the code “vegan20” when you check out. The offer is good through the end of the month!

Now go get your shop on:)  There are some awesome gift ideas as well!

Happy Friday everyone!

Any good suggestion of what I should make to take to Christmas dinner? I need ideas!

lulu, i love you

Hola, friends!

Well, I almost just sold my right arm tonight to buy Lululemon pants. I kid, I kid.  However, I did really just use almost every last bit of my birthday money for them, though.  And my birthday isn’t even until tomorrow.  Oops!

Anyways, here’s the loot

I had never even seen these pants before, but I found them in the sale section and they had rave reviews!

This weekend is the Healthy Living Summit (which I’ll be talking more about as the week goes on), and on Friday some of us are going to tour the Frito Lay Plant.  Just about a week ago, I received an email informing me that I must wear long pants, but no jeans.  Say what?!

This probably sounds crazy, but I don’t own a pair of long pants that aren’t jeans, other than my nice dress pants that I wear wore to work.  I am not even considering wearing dress pants and high heels to a Frito Lay Plant, thank you.  So, when I saw these I thought they’d be perfect!

The next pair are what I actually set out to buy.  I had already decided that if I received any money for my birthday I would use it for these pants.  I already have the wunderunder crop pants and I absolutely love them!  I wear them almost every single day, no lie.  I’ve been thinking that when it starts to get cold I’m going to wish I had a full length pair (especially now that I’m teaching classes:), and with the price I knew it was birthday money or never!

I’m so excited for these to arrive!  Thank you mom, Clark, grandma, Jamie, Kristin, Brad and Debbie:)

Anyway, on to less materialistic matters.  Breakfast this morning was a green monster.  But not just any green monster – a green monster in the new cup my mom and step-dad got me for my birthday.

2 big handfuls of spinach, 1.25 cup almond milk, 1 tbsp chia seeds, 1/2 scoop Amazing Grass, ice

I love drinking my gm’s through a straw, but I get so tired of throwing plastic straws in the trash every single day.  So, I have been contemplating buying a glass straw, but this is even better!  It’s a whole cup!  Thanks mom and Clark:)

Because we got back so late from the concert last night, I hadn’t planned on getting a run in this morning.  But at about 10:30am I still hadn’t showered and my body was just begging me to go get a workout in.  Do you ever have those moments when you feel like you might just go crazy if you don’t get some sweat flowin’? So, I took off to the gym, ran a quick 3 miles in just a little over 27 minutes and drove back home just in time to hop in the shower before lunch.

The usual.  Whole wheat pita with homemade hummus, black bean burger, broccoli slaw and pickles.

I have been feeling so uninspired when it comes to lunches lately.  I guess I’m just in a rut!  I’m going to have to brainstorm some new ideas quick!

a little later I snacked on some plain soy yogurt with raw oats and a sprinkle of granola

While I did eat dinner I’m too embarrassed to tell you what it was, so no pics.  I’m sure you can guess;)  I’ll tell ya this much – it was tasty!

I’m off to bed!  You guys are awesome!

Do you eat basically the same thing for lunch everyday?  Or do you mix it up a lot?  Please share your ideas for a quick and healthy go-to lunch! I need some inspiration!

it's race time!

Hey guys!

Hope you all had a great Sunday and that you’re ready for the week ahead!  Thank you all for your suggestions and opinions on the dresses this morning. They were really helpful in my decision!

I’m crazy.

And a bit indecisive.  Okay, a lot indecisive.  But I’m working on it.

I ended up ordering the cream Modcloth dress in two different sizes, the pink and gray Modcloth dress and the black and white Modcloth.  If you couldn’t tell, I really love vintage modern style, and I just decided that those three were more “me” than the black one I bought on Friday.  I’ll be waiting until after the Modcloth ones arrive before returning it though, just in case none of them fit well enough.

Oh, and I’ll be returning all but ONE of the Modcloth dresses.

Really I will;)

I just ordered all of them so I’d have a high chance of getting one that fits.

Rewinding to this morning, Jon and I dragged ourselves hopped out of bed at an early 5:30am this morning to go on our first training run!

We have decided to train for and run this race on November 21st. Jonathan has been creating the design (tshirts, medals, signage etc) for this race for the past 6 months, and we’ve been leaning toward running it, but finally made the decision to go for it yesterday.

We’re planning on going for our 2nd full marathon (1st full marathon recap here). But we are recognizing that there may come a point where we have to drop to the half. As much as we want to do the full, we’re a little worried about time.  Jonathan’s boss (at his 9-5 job) will be going on maternity leave starting in September, which will leave Jon to manage the entire department by himself.  Add on his second job (Outbox), and that doesn’t leave much time/energy for training!

So we may end up doing the half, but we’ll see!  This morning we started training as if we’re running the full by pounding out a full 6 miles.  I’ve mentioned a couple of times lately how hard just 3 miles has become for me.  This morning proved that it really is all about perspective. We set out to run 6 miles, and we ran 6 miles.  With flying colors I might add.  We felt great the entire run and out last mile was our strongest.  Can’t beat that!

Here is the elevation chart for our 6 miles.

Total ascent = 138 feet  (those were some serious hills!)
Total time = 1:03
Avg pace = 10:18 per mile
Fastest pace = 8:33 per mile

As long as we’ve had our Garmin, I still haven’t sat down and figured out how to get our mile splits, but I’m definitely going to figure it out before our next run.

can you tell it was hot out??

we’re pretty excited:)

I feel so excited to be embarking on training for a marathon again.  There is just something so emotional for me when it comes to running long distances.  Jon and I have now run a half and a full (among other smaller races), and we always train together.  It’s such a great thing for us and really helps us to grow in our relationship methinks.

We always compare our marathon to our year in Thailand.  There were parts where we didn’t think we’d finish, but we helped pull each other through and were much better for it in the end.  I can’t wait to experience that again!!!

Now for some eats.

As soon as we got back from our run, I realized we were out of soy milk.  NOOOOO!

I absolutely had to have a green monster to follow the run, so off to the store we went – sweat and all!  Lucky for me the husband is sweet enough to run in for us so I didn’t have to subject all the nice Walmart people to my grossness.

Finally.

1.25 cups soymilk, 2 huge handfuls spinach, 1 scoop Amazing Grass, 1.5 tbsp chia seeds, 1/2 banana, 1 tbsp natural pb

This monster was huge!  Hence the stainless steel juicer cup:)

This held me over through Sunday School and church.  We got the chance to take Mohammad to church with us this morning, which was so fun!  He was really interested to see what the American church is like.  Of course we were happy to oblige, also praying that God would speak to his heart of course:)

After church I made up a quick black bean burger pita.

whole wheat pita, Morningstar black bean burger, spinach, broccoli slaw, hummus, guacamole and chia seeds

And then we passed out in bed.  For 3.5 hours!  I guess that run wore us out more than we realized! Bed seriously felt so good:)

veggie sub on 9 grain wheat – lettuce, tomato, onion, bell pepper, banana pepper, pickle with olive oil and oregano

I was in such a haze when we woke up that I just didn’t feel like pulling together anything for dinner, so we got free Subway!

Last Christmas we were in south Texas visiting Jon’s family and he found a $25 gift card for Subway in the middle of the road!  Obviously we don’t go to Subway much considering we still have money on it, but it totally hit the spot tonight.

Tomorrow I’m meeting my mom and she’s going to offer her moral support and manual labor to help me clean out my classroom.  I’m a little nervous because I’m thinking it’s going to be pretty emotional, but I’m ready to just get it over with and move on!

I’ll “see” you all tomorrow!

Have you ever run any races?  If so, what distances?  Feel free to leave a link to your race report!

For those of you who haven’t, are you interested in running races at all?

help a girl out!

Good morning!

Yesterday Jon and I slept in and then went a did some shopping around town.  Krazy days is going on right now, which is a weekend in our town where all the shops have huge sidewalk sales.  We didn’t buy anything, but it was fun to wander around a bit.

I spent most the rest of the day working on our budget/bills and looking for a dress for Healthy Living Summit.  I found a dress Friday night on the sale rack at White House Black Market.  I like it okay, but it was pretty pricey…even on sale.  I’m kind of torn about what kind of dress to get.  It’s a cocktail party, so I feel like I need a cocktail party dress; however, I really don’t want to pay $100+ for something that I probably won’t wear again.  On the other hand, it might be nice to have a fancy dress on hand just in case something comes up.  That way I can avoid being in this situation again, and having nothing to wear.

I’m really tempted to just buy a dress that is a bit less nice, but that I could wear more often.  Plus, I’m always in the market for a new cute dress – I love dresses! I really don’t want to be underdressed though! Here are some pictures of dresses I’m considering…what do you guys think?  Are you tired of hearing the word “dress” yet?  ha.

This is the one I bought Friday night.  I like the way it fits and all, but I just don’t love it and again, not sure if I’ll really wear it again

This one is from Modcloth.  It’s quite a bit less dressy, and I don’t completely love it.  BUT – it’s $28!

I really like this one from Modcloth, but it might not be dressy enough.  It’s a little more pricey, but I definitely would wear it again.  It’s in my top two favorites.

This one is from Modcloth and I originally saw it on Jen’s site.  I love the style, but it’s a little short in length.  It seems that many Modcloth dresses are quite short.

Also from Modcloth.  Adorable – but also on the short side (25 inches from top of bust to hem)!

I like this one from Anthropologie.  It’s the most expensive and still not as dressy as the black. Some reviews said the gray color of the lace made it less dressy.   But I could wear it a lot.

Okay, so you see the dilemma?  lol.  There are actually several from Modcloth that I would snatch up in a heartbeat, but they’re out of stock (of course, right?!).  I’m supposed to receive an email when they’re back in stock, but Healthy Living Summit is in 3 weeks, so I don’t exactly have time to wait!

I have to run so we’re not late for church, but I just wanted to get your opinions!  Help a girl out! 🙂

I’ll be back a little later with some eats and some race talk.  Yep, race talk:)

Hope you’re having a great Sunday morning!!