Weekend scenes

I can’t believe the weekend is almost over! I need an extra day off of work soon.

Here’s my weekend through less text and more pictures for the sake of time.

Was happy to get a package from White Girl salsa yesterday. I won some last year and it finally came. I was so sad to pick up the box and see stuff was leaking. Even more mad when I sliced my finger on a piece of glass, even though I was very careful opening the box.

This came as a sample in our newspaper. I had it after the gym and thought it was pretty tasty.

After a shower and lunch, I was just as tired as my three boys. I read my book and fell asleep for about five minutes.

Traded in an empty bag of Starbucks beans for a hot cup of coffee. I was one of the few who didn’t get a love cup around Valentine’s day, so I was happy to randomly get one. I tried the blonde roast for the first time and I liked it. I usually like darker blends of coffee, so the taste of the lighter bean was different at first.

Grocery shopped. Just needed a few things to get us through the week.

Shopped at one of my fav local grocery stores, Sendik’s.

Got these for free using a coupon sent to me by the company. Will let you know how they are!

Had to get this salad dressing at the store because I love eating salads, but love them even more when this dressing is on top.

Got my ring cleaned. It’s all shiny and looks new now!

Weekend movies/shows. Can’t get enough of Downton Abbey still.

Read a little. Not as much as I would have liked. My eyes keep getting so tired!

Karma is always on my lap when I am curled up on the couch with a blanket.

If you want to enter to win 12 of the new Chobani flavors, come back tomorrow because I’ll have a giveaway!

I am definitely a city girl!

We’re back from our trip up north! It was nice to relax, unplug a bit, nap, sleep in, and read without distractions. I did miss home and our cats especially, so it feels good to be back!

While I enjoy getting away from the city, I am definitely not a country girl. I guess I take after my mom! I told Craig that we’ll probably never go camping together. I feel bad, but in all seriousness, if I can’t handle spiders in the cottage bathroom, how could I ever camp?

Here’s a recap:

Some of the food I/we ate:

Trader Joe’s maple oatmeal with Justin’s maple almond butter (so good).

A big salad from the Pick N’ Save salad bar. By yesterday afternoon, I was just craving tons of veggies.

We went out to eat on Friday night and had fry bread and cheese for our appetizer.

For fear of strange looks, I didn’t take a picture of my main meal. I got a delicious veggie burger with swiss cheese and mushrooms on it.

I was sent an Erin Baker sample pack of products before we left, so I tried Erin Baker’s Organic Brownie Bite. It was unexpectedly a bit minty and tasted so good!

We brought two bags of the Food Should Taste Good chips up north and tried those. Let’s just say my husband loved the White Cheddar and that bag is already gone. Glad I got to try more than a couple of handfuls of that flavor!

I munched on some jalapeno chips during our car ride home. Not that we needed any more “heat” added to our drive. You’ll hear more about that in a bit.

Entertainment

We went out to eat and walked around town on Friday night. We enjoy one particular restaurant in town, so we always return back there.

Restaurant interior

Typical main street in any Wisconsin small town.

We played Uno a couple of times. Craig was declared the winner far more often than I was .

I finished reading The Hunger Games! It was so addictive to read. Craig also was reading it on his kindle and he claimed I was being competitive, trying to finish before him. The truth is, it was just so good that I had to get to the ending! I can’t wait to read the other two books!

Only “up north” would you see this:

Workouts:

I actually did not workout a lot and I missed it. I did a walk/run with Craig one morning before the humidity set in.

And I did yoga this morning using the Hot Body Yoga app from Women’s Health. It was my first time using the app and I really enjoyed it. Can’t wait to try it more often.

It felt amazing to do some yoga! My body needed it.

Today’s car ride felt like our own version of 127 Hours. We weren’t stuck in the desert and we didn’t have to cut our arms off, but we were in extreme heat the whole way home and Craig’s air conditioning was not working.

Did I mention that I hate bugs of any kind, especially spiders? There was a black spider crawling around our pillows and food in the back seat. When I got the opportunity to, I killed the bugger. I know, it’s not very nice, but hunching forward in my car seat to avoid him wasn’t so pleasant either.

Besides the bugs and extreme temps, we faced a nice highway backup. Why oh why Dept. of Transportation of WI, would you have a popular two lane highway going from north to south cut down to one lane on a weekend when no one was doing any construction work? I am sure they have their reasons, but we and the other 100 something cars in the backup were not happy!

I actually feel sick when I am in that kind of heat with the sun blaring down on me. I was so happy to get home to our air conditioning blasting and the happy faces of our kitties.

Time to go change the laundry, unpack some more, and find something to eat.

I’ll be back tomorrow with the Food Should Taste Good chips giveaway!

Barbies, exercise, and a yummy dinner

It was another great day for me/us! The warm weather put me in a good mood. I can’t believe it got up to the high 70′s today in Wisconsin! We aren’t used to these kind of temperatures at this time of year.

So, I woke up this morning and realized I have been dreaming about weird things lately. I remember this, but I woke up in the middle of the night from a running dream and was actually pounding my feet on the bed and woke Craig up. Then, I was dreaming about bananas too. I had a dream about brussell sprouts the other day. Craig said, “you’re even a food blogger in your dreams!”

I started out my day with coffee and Post Great Grains Cranberry Almond Crunch cereal.

My parents came over mid-morning to bring a big filing cabinet to us. I will be glad to get rid of paper work from our office and organize it in this cabinet. They also brought some of my stuff they were still storing at their house, including my Barbies. Yes, I still have my childhood Barbies and I am 30 years old. Doesn’t every 30 year old still have theirs?

Karma enjoyed playing with one of them. He was attacking her at one point.

After my parents left, I fueled up for a run/walk with some water and a clementine.

Craig and I were pretty warm after spending about 20 minutes outside.

I went to the gym after that and lifted a full circuit of weights, biked for 22 minutes, did squats and abs on the BOSU, did some abs on the Swiss ball, and lifted free weights. As you can see, the warm temps (extra warm in the Y workout room) motivated me to workout today!

Back at home, I made a chocolate banana protein smoothie. I added ground flax too.

I didn’t really eat much else for lunch. The warm temps are affecting me and reducing my appetite.

I finally finished Animal, Vegetable, Miracle in the afternoon! I read this book pretty slowly, but really appreciated learning about the Hopp/Kingsolver family’s experience with eating from their farm and eating locally for a year. Looking forward to discussing it at the book discussion this week!

I was excited to start Crazy, Sexy, Diet, so I dove right into that selection. I love it so far!

Dinner was fresh asparagus roasted with olive oil, lemon, garlic, sea salt and ground pepper from Penzey’s. Yum!

And some tofu.

Now it’s time to get off of here and pay attention to the Amazing Race!

How was your Sunday?

Tweet tweet

I finally joined Twitter.

I am not sure I quite “understand” it yet, but I joined last night. It was the hash tag thing that confused me!

FitintheMidwest

Find me here: @FitintheMidwest

Hope to see you on Twitter! If you want to wait to follow me, I promise I will have a giveaway soon and following me then will earn you an extra entry.

After work, I ate and went to Boot Camp. It was a good, tough class.

Now, I am headed to the couch to read the last 100 pages of The Girl Who Played with Fire. I need to finish that book and move onto something more cheery next. Any book recommendations?

Ok, that’s all folks for today. I was in a Monday funk today and didn’t take pictures of my food. I figured I would be doing that enough on Thanksgiving anyway!