Shopping on my day off

I was off today due to working on Saturday and dedicated my free day to shopping.

On a side note, two years ago today, my wonderful husband asked me to be his wife. Best thing I have ever said an ecstatic YES to!

Breakfast was two Eggo waffles (whole wheat) and coffee.

I watched the Today show and wanted to get up to get moving, but this cute kitty laid on the blue blanket on my lap and stayed there for a good 40 minutes. I can’t resist Karma’s charms, so I let him sit there and relish in the warmth of my lap.

I got ready and organized myself for my two shopping trips–one to the mall and the other to the grocery store.

I had some coupons to use up at Banana Republic and Gap and found things at both. Two cute new tops, yay! I also went to Boston Store for their Goodwill sale and handed in some jeans and a top. In turn, I got four 20% off coupons. Since the bras I buy (Wacoal) are never on sale and Macy’s doesn’t let you use their coupons on Wacoal, I bought two bras and a cool new Jockey tank top that included free underwear. The Jockey tank top has some kind of NASA designed cooling technology to keep moisture away from your body. It isn’t necessarily wicking material like is used in fitness clothes. I asked the Jockey rep that when she was telling me more about the material. I get really hot from silk tops underneath shirts and I just get hot all day at work in general, so I hope this works! I’ll let you know how it is.

After two hours at the mall, I was thirsty for something cold and nutritious and a little bite to eat. Off to Starbucks because I had a gift card to use..

I ordered a Strawberry Vivanno smoothie with a boost of green tea matcha and had an orange cranberry scone. Both hit the spot and were delicious!

I didn’t eat lunch, as that snack filled me up.

Then I was off to Menomonee Falls to their Woodman’s. We needed groceries badly again and all of the selection and awesome prices at Woodman’s caused me to spend a little over $100 there.

Here’s what I bought!

Clearly these pictures indicate I have a serious Chobani addiction. I also added a few of the Stonyfield greek flavored yogurts to my cart to mix things up.

Overall, I just love the selection of different varieties of food at Woodman’s and their unbeatable prices. I may be going grocery shopping there more often, even though it’s not very close to our house and it’s so huge to navigate through. I found so many fake meat products there especially–score! That is why I bought three tubs of tofu (one herbed, yum) and a Gardein product again because I really liked the tuscan chicken breasts when I reviewed them a couple of months ago.

A late lunch/dinner was a french baguette with ham, provolone, tomatoes, spinach and Frank’s Red Hot.

Of course, dessert was a few Haribo frogs.

I meditated, changed and went to the gym for the 4:30 Boot Camp class at the Y. I ran into my friend Angie in the parking lot and I was hoping she’d say the new teacher had started, but alas, it was still the same old one that I don’t care for. I honestly feel like I get a better workout on my own instead of in this particular teacher’s class. I am looking forward to when the new teacher starts in April. Until then, I won’t be attending boot camp and will do my own workout on Mondays instead.

Before my grocery shopping trip, I tried to find some recipes to make for Craig and I to meal plan with. I only found a granola bar recipe that sounded delicious in the recent issue of Fitness magazine. They are called “Oh-So-Good Granola Bars.” Check out the link to make them yourself.

After the gym, we went to the library and then I got to work on making the granola bars.

While they baked, I snacked on plain non-fat Chobani with strawberry rhubarb jam and fresh strawberries.

I tried the bars fresh out of the oven and they are yummy! They didn’t stick together as well as I had hoped they would, but maybe I should have added more honey. I’ll try that next time. It was my first time making granola bars, so I figure I can experiment a little more with ingredients and bake times. I’ll take a picture of a bar tomorrow when I have it for a snack at work mid-morning.

Well, Craig and I are trying to adhere to an earlier bedtime from now on, so I better go get ready for some zzzz’s. It’s back to work for this girl tomorrow.

Recap of my relaxing Sunday

Yesterday, I started to feel rejuvenated. It took a day of rest at home, where I just put on sweats, showered, but didn’t do my hair or makeup and did not go to the gym. My body hurt so much over the last two days that I figured I could use an official rest day that didn’t require walking, rushing around to clean up a program, etc. like I had at work over the last two days. I did manage to wash dishes, do laundry and start using some of our new organizational tools.

Huggable hangers. Yay!

I brought out this wonderful three tiered shelf for our kitchen cabinet (it’s from Target). I should have done a before picture, but picture them shoved on a shelf with no rhyme or reason.

Most of our spices are from Penzey’s and most were completely free because of the catalog I receive in the mail or other coupons. Sweet! They are awesome spices.

I hadn’t thought of it until reading A Better Bag of Groceries last week, but I alphabetized my spices. So simple, but it hadn’t even crossed my mind until I read her blog post about organizing her spices.

I started off my Sunday with some Raisin Nut Bran cereal and a big cup of coffee.

Lunch was a poached egg on an english muffin and some Stonyfield vanilla yogurt with strawberry rhubarb jam and fresh strawberries.

Dinner was pizza. We realized we had this huge box of pizza and breadsticks in the freezer forever and it was taking up so much room. I am kind of sick of pizza, but we couldn’t come up with a meal we were craving and didn’t feel like going out, because again, we didn’t feel like much.

Had one piece of pizza.

And about three breadsticks with sauce.

After that, I just watched Amazing Race then the movie the Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest for about an hour. We’re watching the rest of it now and I must go pay attention. A Monday recap is coming soon. It feels good to be blogging again after three days off.