Mango (not so) Green Smoothie

This weekend has just flown by for me! Anyone else? While I won’t bore you with every single thing that we did this week (or still plan to do!), here’s a quick rundown of this weekend’s festivities.

Friday night, as I blogged about here, we had a pretty low key night. We are addicted to Breaking Bad. Can.not.get.enough. We had to run out to Target this morning and buy Season 3 because we couldn’t wait to start watching it. If you haven’t seen it, I highly suggest you do!

Saturday was a bit more productive. We started our morning by taking Peanut for a quick walk and then headed to a local breakfast place called The Farm at South Mountain. Their Morning Glory Cafe is delicious and has a dog friendly patio, so we took Peanut along. If you live in the Phoenix area and have never tried The Farm for breakfast or lunch, definitely do!

After watching a few more episodes of Breaking Bad, I headed out for my 8 mile run. And run I did. This was a new PDR for me, so going in I was excited and nervous at the same time.

To keep it interesting, I drove about ten minutes down the street to a local park for my run. When I first started I created a loop that was a little over 2 miles and so I just repeated that about 4 times…this strategy worked for me. It spiced things up but also let me know exactly how much actual ground I had left to cover. Even though I was wearing my watch, this physical distance reference kept my head in the game.

And, I finished! And honestly, I felt pretty strong. I won’t say I was speedy…because trust me, I wasn’t I covered 8 miles in about 1:27. But I’ll take it! My race isn’t until March 2, so I still have plenty of time for training!

Came home and was starving so I made a quick snack of cheese, tuna fish and crackers. And a few sour patch kids snuck their way into my mouth too.

After snacking, more Breaking Bad, and a quick shower, we headed out to Four Peaks Brewery with a couple of friends for dinner. The place was packed! But we ended up waiting and had a good time chowing down on some delicious food and chatting.

This morning Justin and I hit the gym for a quick workout. I ran 3 miles in about 28 minutes and let me tell you, they were a tough three miles. I think my legs just wanted to rest.

After our workout, it was smoothie time! and spoiler alert, my green smoothie for today, didn’t turn out so green. But it tasted delicious, so I’ll take it!

Mango Green Smoothie

1 cup mango (fresh or frozen, I used frozen)
1 cup strawberries
2 cups spinach
1 frozen banana
enough very vanilla soy milk to move it around (i probably used about 2 tblsp)

I’m pretty sure my smoothie went wrong in the spinach department. I definitely overestimated the amount of spinach I had left in the fridge, so while you should use 2 cups for this recipe, I probably only used a little under a cup. I think if I had had the correct amount, it’d be more green! 🙂

I’ve got to get started on taking down these darn Christmas decorations…my motivation? More Breaking Bad!

Enjoy the rest of your Sunday!

It’s been awhile…a long while

Well hello everyone! It has been over a year since I last posted. Crazy how time flies. Anyway, while I was away, I never stopped reading the blogs that I know and love, and I didn’t stop running or taking yoga or any of the fun stuff I blogged about in the past. I guess, my life just sort of took over and for the past year I was busy with things relating to me, my career and my family and that was where my time and energy was focused. But, I’m back! I’ve committed to making this blog a part of my daily priorities again because I’ve felt myself yearning to write again!

But first, let’s have a short recap of what’s happened since I’ve been gone.

First, I got MARRIED! That’s right! On March 3, 2012 I married the love of my life in Phoenix, AZ. It was a beautifully sunny day filled with family, friends, laughter and love and it was honestly the best day of my life to date.

All wedding photos by the amazingly talented Kim Bee at Bumble and Bloom Photography. (bumbleandbloom.com).

And after we got married, we went on a fabulous 14 day honeymoon cruise through the Caribbean all the way down to South America! It was honestly the most amazing trip of my life. To unplug and be so far away from our normal lives was seriously a once in a lifetime experience.

After coming back to reality renewed and refreshed the husband and I had a whirlwind of a spring/summer. With a few close friends celebrating their own weddings we had quite the travel schedule. And in the midst of all of that, we added a new member to our young family. Our wonderful dog, Peanut!

She has truly become a part of our family and I can’t imagine our life without her. She is quirky, energetic, yet very lazy at times and just so much like us it’s crazy! We adopted her from the Humane Society and it was one of the best decisions we’ve ever made. Oh, and if you’re wondering about her cute little tongue sticking out of her mouth, understand that I didn’t just catch a good pic of her…she literally has her tongue sticking out ALL the time. It’s the cutest thing ever!

Other than those big updates, I have just begun training for the Phoenix Half Marathon on March 2. This will be my first half marathon to date and I’m super excited to reach this new milestone in my running career!

Stay tuned for more…I promise I’ll be back!

And…I’m Off!

To say today was crazy would be an under statement. It went a little something like this…

Woke up, had a quick bowl of Blueberry Frosted Mini Wheats….(and I scarfed this down, mind you)

Look at my cute Halloween inspired bowl! (Target for like $1.50, score!)

Once we were ready, Justin and I ran out the door and carpooled to work. Thank goodness for the HOV lane in Phoenix…we flew all the way to downtown (where Justin works) and then I headed on to my office. My day at the office was a blur. I’m pretty positive I was either in a meeting or slaving away at emails every second I was there. In fact, my lunch consisted of Cheez-Its, a string cheese and half an apple. Not of that is pictured because I’m not even sure I chewed any of it. I’m pretty sure it was inhaled and I moved on with my day!

I was in the office til around 6:45 and then headed home, ran a few last minute errands because I’m taking off for a work/fun trip tomorrow and headed home. When I got home, Justin let me know he had ordered pizza. Yum. Fast, easy, I’ll take it.

After inhaling my second meal of the day, my night consisted of dealing with more of this.

To ensure that our apartment soon looks like this…

And don’t worry, I think I’ve had like 5 handfulls of these throughout the night as well…(peanut butter M&M’s, yummmmm)

Now, I’ll need to pack my suitcase for NYC (blah), finish up a few work things and hit the hay. I totally woke up with a splitting headache this morning so I didn’t get to my run so I’m making that a priority tomorrow morning. 4.5 or 5 miles here I come!
Okay, I’m off! Expect some updates from the airport/East coast soon! 🙂

Me at the Guinness Factory in Ireland about this time last year.

Chocolate Chip Dough Balls

Happy Sunday everyone! Today was a busy day for us. After sleeping for about 9 hours last night. (Ahhhhh sleeeeeep) We got up, got ready and promptly headed to Buffalo Wild Wings to watch the Lions game. After a nail biter, the Lions walked away with a W, yippee! We came home and headed right back out to Target to get a bunch of these…

…in order to start packing our apartment = booo. But moving into our new house = yay!

However, while at Target, I also bought the last two ingredients needed to make these…

Chocolate Chip Dough Balls! I literally copied the recipe from Diana at The Chic Life, so hop on over here to find the recipe!

However, I snapped photos my whole way through the baking process so here is the recipe in picture form for your viewing pleasure!

True to cookie baking form…gather all of your ingredients and mix all your dry components together…

Then, add your sugars and wet ingredients into a medium sized bowl and stir until well mixed…

Then mix your dry ingredients into your wet…it totally seems as if you did something wrong and measured out your wet ingredients incorrectly…however as the recipe states…keep mixing and it’ll form a stiff dough…

Then mix in your chocolate chips…I used 1/2 cup Nestle Semi-Sweet

Then you are supposed to chill your dough for at least 20 minutes…I can say I literally threw them in the fridge for 20 minutes on the dot and it worked out fine. I used this time to clean up the kitchen…see?
From this…

To this….

Clean counters make me happy.

Once 20 minutes had passed I popped the dough out of the fridge and started rolling them into balls. I believe the recipe says to use a small melon baller or sorbet scoop but I didn’t have either so I used a 1TBSP scoop. It worked perfectly. Scoop and roll….scopp and roll…

and then I sprinkled some sugar on top, for good measure, and popped them in the 350 degree oven for 10 minutes on the dot.

They came out golden brown on the bottom and just the right amount of doughy on the inside…mmmm mmmm goood.

All the while, Justin was couching it…playing on our iPad…

Lucky him! Yummy treats and he didnt even lift a finger! Anyway, these are seriously delish, so I highly suggest you head on over to The Chic Life and make.these.now.

The rest of my evening was spent packing, packing and more packing…trying to pack for a week out of town while also packing up everything you own have proven to be challenging.

In other news, I totally didn’t get my run in today. Boo. But I’m planning to get one in tomorrow morning (going for 4.5 miles) and again on Tuesday morning. I leave Tuesday afternoon for a work trip in NYC, so I wont have much time Wed-Fri (or the weekend for that matter, staying in NYC with a friend) to get any runs of decent distance in, so I’ve gotta pound the pavement while I can before I leave!

I hope everyone had a great weekend! I’ve totally spend my free time today reading everyone’s race recaps and have been so inspired! There are so many amazing members of the blog community it’s unbelievable! I’m so thrilled to be a part of it all. 🙂

What’d you do this weekend? I’d love to hear about it!