Last Day Of Work As A Ms.

Today was my official last day of work before the wedding!! Now I'm starting to get really excited. I'm also done all the things I wanted to get done before the wedding, I just have to work on some organizing.  Getting everything up to the venue on the day before the wedding is going to be intense. 

Even though it's an exciting Wednesday, it's still What I Ate Wednesday! 

I started my morning off with what I thought was a big breakfast:

blueberry chobani, 1/3 cup old fashioned oats, almond milk, peanut butter and craisins

This only lasted me until about 9:30 until my stomach started eating itself. Snack time!

Watermelon and half a KIND bar.  I ordered a box of these bars online today to take with me on the honeymoon.  I also ordered individual peanut butter packets...the important things.

Lunch:

I used my smashed chickpea and avocado mixture to make a wrap with a slice of turkey underneath and some spinach on top.

I had  yummy afternoon snack before heading to volleyball.

Celebratory cupcakes at work! I'm not a big icing person so I usually scrape most of it off, but the cake was so good.  Vanilla cake with chocolate chips.

Today was the perfect day for volleyball.  We only had one game today.  We won one set and lost two (this is very good for us).  On my way home I munched on the rest of my KIND bar so I could make it until dinner.

Dinner was a random salad with a salmon burger on top.

I mixed a packet of salmon with half an egg, some panko breadcrums, red onions, garlic powder and pepper and then cooked it on the stove top.  I topped my salad with strawberries, green beans, carrots, broccoli, celery and blue cheese.

Time to go water the plants, take out the recycling and then most likely pass out before 10pm.  Lots of errands to run tomorrow. The plan: wake up, breakfast, gym, dentist, main st. for a smoothie (?), parent's house, grocery store, HOME!!!



Negative Splits!

Today was either going to be hit or miss weather wise for running. They've been calling for scattered thunderstorms for the entire week and it wasn't looking the greatest out, so I just stalked the weather all morning.  When I looked at 3pm, it said there was a 30 chance of rain.  That's good enough for me. I was out the door and ready to run.  I really needed to clear my head today after a super busy day at work and an even busier day that is coming my way tomorrow. 

When I started running, it took me a while for my legs to get warmed up.  I had a slow first mile, but then I started feeling fast. I decided to go for negative splits for my run (run each mile faster than the last).  I see all those cool marathon runners doing negative splits on their blogs all the time, and I want to be cool like them obviously.

My Splits:

9.27

9.11

8.56

8.51

0.5 miles at 8.14 pace (sprinted that biznatch)

Running felt great minus the gross humidity outside. I haven't sweat this much in a really long time.  I was sweating so much that it started to drip into my eyes and man did that sting.

"glistening" sweaty hot mess

When I got home I was so excited for dinner. Somehow I convinced Matt to make breakfast for dinner.  I could literally eat breakfast food for every meal.  Matt cooked the pancakes and I cooked the eggs.

almond butter between and apple butter on top of pancakes

Don't worry, I evened this out with a big salad for lunch.  And there's story behind that. All you people not from the DE or PA area, the best convenience store around here is Wawa!  I love wawa.  You can have sandwiches and hogies made to order and they have pre-made sandwiches, salads, fruit cups, veggie cups...lots of stuff.  Well I go there today because I was too lazy to make a lunch and I really wanted a good sandwich on rye bread.  They just got a bunch of new toppings too including spinach and cucumbers.  I go to the machine to order my sandwich and.....it's not there!! There were only hogies.  What happened to the sandwich??? I'm not a huge fan of hogies, just too much bread, so I ended up with a garden salad and a  hummus and mini pita package. 

Now that that tangent is over....4 days until the wedding!! Tomorrow is my last day of work until next Tuesday.  We got new ID badges today at work and mine has my new name on it:

That's going to take some getting used to.  Pretty sweet last name I know hahah. 



Is it Guac or Hummus?

The title of my post I'll get to in a second. First things first...let's talk about the highlight of my night last night. Keeping Up With The Kardashians returned and it was just as horrible as I remember.  I just can't Not watch it.  And poor Matt got sucked into watching it too, what a good fiance lol. 

But there was one thing that was different about the way we watched the Kardashians last night....we watched them in HD and boy was it scary.  Yikes.  Bruce's face looked like it was sliding off his skull and Kris's face looked like it was so taught that you could pop it like a balloon. And then the makeup on all of them was a whole different story. I think I'll go back to watching it on the regular channel so I can make it through the entire hour.

Now onto my Monday.  I decided to try something a little outside of the box for lunch.  I found a recipe on Pinterest from Running To The Kitchen that I based mine off of for a Smashed Chickpea and Avocado Sandwich.

First I drained a 15oz can of chickpeas and smashed them with a potato masher.  Then I added an entire avocado to the mix and combined the two.  I aslo mixed in a teaspoon of chopped garlic, 3 chopped sundried tomatoes salt, pepper and lime juice.  Simple as that.

I spread mine on a whole wheat deli flat and topped it with a slice of cheese and spinach.  The flavor of the mixture was really great. Some sort of cross between hummus and guacamole (both of which I love).  The only thing I had to get used to was the texture since the chickpeas are only smashed and not blended like when they are in hummus. And this recipe made a lot.  Probably enough for another 3 sandwiches.  It could also be used as a dip for veggies!

After work I went to the gym since it was nasty out.  My legs were pretty sore from my workout yesterday, but I decided to attempt a slow run.  I started out with a five minute warm up, and once my legs got loose I felt great.  I did 4 miles of interval work, first doing a 2 minute jog and 1 minute sprint cycle and then switching to 2 minutes of sprinting with 1 minute of jogging for the second half. I finished 4 miles in 38 minutes. 

Then it was time for dinner and yet another recipe from pinterest (I have issues I know).  I used this recipe to make my own.  I cooked two chicken breasts in a crockpot all day while I was at work.  When I got home from the gym all I had to do was cook up some peppers and onions, combine that with the chicken, wrap it in my whole wheat wraps and assemble.  I loved the combination of greek yogurt and salsa for the enchilada sauce, both things I already had in the fridge.

Not the prettiest picture b/c I had some difficulty getting them out of the pan, but they still tasted amazing.  And we have lots of leftovers. 

My day of eats tomorrow will not be as excited. I'm lunch ADD again and can't decide what to have, so I will probably be running to the salad bar for lunch. Fingers crossed that it doesn't rain tomorrow!!



New Butt Kicking Circuit Workout!!

Last night when we got home from Marie's graduation I had this waiting at my doorstep:

I was so excited I attempted to flip through the whole thing in one night, until I realized it was over 400 pages long.  So let's just say I SKIMMED it. 

I was most interested in the section for total body workout moves.  I made my own little circuit workout for this morning at the gym.  I did three sets of this workout with a set of cardo work that I found on pinterest.

Big Book Of Exercises Full Body Circuit Workout

Dumbbell Straight Leg Deadlift To Row (15 dumbbells, 12 reps)

Single Arm Dumbbell Swing (single 12 lb dumbbell, 10 reps each arm)

Seated dumbbell overhead tricep extension (8lb dumbbells, 12 reps)

Side Lunge and Press (8lb dumbbells, 10 reps each side)

Split Stance Dumbbell Curl (10lb dumbbells)

Single Arm Dumbbell Snatch (15lb dumbbell, 10 reps each side)

My favorite new move was the single arm dumbbell snatch:

I loved this. I felt like I was in crossfit! PS I want to try crossfit so bad but it is rediculously overpriced.  $150/month...I think I'll stick with my $24/month gym membership.  Matt and I watched the Crossfit Games on ESPN this weekend and we were both like "I want to try that so bad!!"  Maybe someday when we are rich and famous haha.

Sooo anyways...after each round of my circuit workout I did this short but very intense cardio workout from the creator of Insanity, Shaun T.  This workout consisted of 7 different moves that you do for 30 seconds each with no rest in between.  Let me tell you, my thighs were on fire after this.

Pushup Jacks

Power Knees (30 sec each knee)

Ski Abs

Tricep Dips

Plank Squats

Power Jumps

Power Squats

I'm going to be totally honest with you, I couldn't do teh pushup jacks, so I cut them out of my workout.  My favorite move were the plank squats.

After three rounds of the circuit workout and three rounds of the cardio workout, I was dead. It took me 45 minutes all together. I ended my workout with about 10 minutes of ab work and lots of stretching.

The rest of my day was spent running errands out the wazoo.  The high point in my errands?? Purchasing these wedges from DSW (I had a $20 coupon).

And making homeade turkey meatballs for dinner :)

No method to the madness really.  Turkey, oregano, basil, an egg, panko, and parmesean.  Baked for 25 minutes at 400 degrees.

That's right, I eat my spaghetti with a spoon.  All real Italians do lol. 

I only have 3 days of work this week and lots of little things to get done. I asked Matt to proof read the place cards that I made, and for one husband and wife I actually wrote Mr. and Mr. instead of Mr. and Mrs.  Oops. haha.