weekend – Page 7

Weekend Catch up 3/19/18

March 19, 2018 by Alicia Leave a Comment

Hey guys!! Back to the work week and it’s almost officially the first day of spring, though still not feeling very spring like in upstate New York. I’m really hoping that by April it starts to feel like spring, especially since that’s my birthday month. Tomorrow is Brian’s birthday and we were originally supposed to get 1-3 inches of snow, but luckily that seems to have gone away for now. Hopefully no more snow.

This weekend was a quiet and much needed weekend to catch up on cleaning and various tasks. It was also nice that Brian was home for about half the weekend.

Friday was a rough day for me. It was a “sleep in” day as in I wasn’t going to the gym and could sleep until 6am, but I woke up at 5:15am with a Charlie horse in my leg. I clenched my leg and rubbed it a bit before I fell back asleep I believe and then my alarm went off at 6am. I woke up with a headache and feeling really hot, like I actually turned down the heat in the bedroom and normally I am bundling up when I get out of bed in the morning. It was weird.

I made my breakfast and headed off to work after cleaning off my car. The drive was really weird because there were snow squalls and the roads went from nice and plowed to blizzard like and not plowed in my 15 mile commute. It slowed me down a bit but I was still on time.

Then mid morning I rubbed my eye and seemed to move my right contact out of place. I tried to correct it, but I couldn’t get it out. I ended up going most of the day with my contact dislodged and tried to not touch my eye. I guess I am glad my eye sight isn’t too terrible, but I just felt drained throughout the day and couldn’t wait for 5pm to come around. I had my yoga clothes and was all set to go to yoga after work, but decided to skip it due to just not feeling the best.

Brian was home so when I got home he helped me discover my right contact was folded in half on the upper lid of my eye. Yeah..ouch…

I switched to glasses and we decided on dinner. We both weren’t super hungry so we opted for sushi. I was craving some miso soup and got a nice large bowl and then a California roll. We then stopped at Best Buy and enjoyed browsing and also picked up a new keyboard and mouse for my desktop. My keyboard and mouse were 10+ years old and the mouse was starting to break and the keyboard had a couple sticky keys so it was time to upgrade. Plus Brian always complains about how loud my typing is on my old keyboard, so I think the new one will be a bit quieter.

sushi date — Brian also got a haircut earlier in the day

On our way home, despite the cold and somewhat snowy day, we got some almond milk ice cream to share because it was the first day Humdinger ice cream was open for the season. I love love love the almond milk soft serve. Yay for a good dairy free option!!

Since the ice cream made me more cold, I had a cup of hot tea afterwards and did some foam rolling and stretching before bed. Hoping that would help my muscles.

Saturday 3/17/18

Saturday was a good day. I actually got to sleep in and woke up around 7:30. I made some protein pancakes and took my time getting ready before heading off to the gym.

I had a great workout and even was complimented on my squat form which I was very appreciative for since it’s hard to know how you are doing. I took a couple videos to check my form, but it’s still better when you have a person there to tell you how you are doing.

When I got back from the gym, Brian was still home for a bit. I got some laundry going (exciting Saturday to dos) and then Brian left to his work site.

In the afternoon I had a much needed hair cut appointment. I was impressed that I had the same hair dresser and she remembered me briefly from 6 months ago. I have only been to the salon that one time and she remembered me telling her about my travels last year. Also my hair had actually gotten long and it’s looking healthier. I attribute that to the fact that I started taking collagen about every other day around the month of November. Maybe I will write up a post on collagen benefits soon now that it has been a while and I’m actually noticing the effects.

Once I had my nice straight hair, I headed off to the Wegmans crowds. I usually shop at 8am there for a reason. 2pm was crazy busy, like you need some traffic lights in those aisles. I stuck to my list for the most part though and was able to check out fairly quickly.

After a quick stop at home to put away groceries, I found out Brian was visiting some family friends because he wasn’t needed at work yet. I took a drive and met up with him and we hung out for a while which was fun. It was nice to run all my errands and spend time out of the house.

The sun was out, but it was really windy on the highway. Since we got back around 6, I quickly made some turkey burgers. Brian headed back to work. I ate a turkey burger and saved the rest for dinners for the week.

I then decided to take some time to read. I keep saying I will read before bed, but I just haven’t lately so I have missed it. The only thing is that with reading in bed I get so comfortable I am ready to sleep, so after a bit, I had to get up and worked on this post before crawling back into bed and watching some of New Girl.

Sunday 3/18/18

Sunday morning was another wonderful sleep in day. I got out of bed around 7:30 and made my usual oatmeal for breakfast. Shortly after I headed to the gym. It was hard doing 2 leg heavy days back to back, but I also have felt much stronger this last week and was able to up weights on my squats and hip thrusts.

Since I didn’t have anything else going on for the day, most of Sunday was catch up on cleaning, laundry and doing some food prep. I made a new to me recipe, vegan sloppy joes. I got the idea from Julie’s blog when she posted her meal plans for last week. I opted for diced tomatoes instead of tomato sauce so they are not really “sloppy joes” but I am going to eat the recipe without a bun anyway through the week for dinners. It will be nice to have something different from hamburgers or chicken for dinner.

I must say my favorite thing is being home alone, listening to a podcast and doing some cooking in the kitchen. Cooking and baking definitely are my therapy.

I spent the afternoon doing some more cleaning. It never ends with boys in the house…Then it was time to relax with watching some New Girl and reading.

This catch up weekend was so wonderful after last weekend being in Philadelphia. Philadelphia was a fun trip, but it’s also nice to have a quiet weekend to catch up on cleaning and get back to meal prepping and everything.

What did you do this weekend?

Half Snow Day and Weekend

March 5, 2018 by Alicia Leave a Comment

On Friday we had a crazy snow storm and you wouldn’t even believe that it was 60 degrees just 4 days before that. It started as rain on Thursday night and turned to snow by the time I woke up on Friday. The schools were all closed, but I still had to head into work. The roads were not pretty in the morning and I think it took me about double the time to get to work than usual, but I made it.

Shortly into the work day, we lost power and then it came back on after a few seconds. The only issue was that if you didn’t save what you were working on, you were out of luck. Also add to that, it is month end and so I actually do have a to do list of things to get done, but my one file was not adding up and it took a while to find the error. Then when my co worker found the error and we were working on it again, power out again. This time, it took a few tries before it came back on. Basically I felt like I wasn’t getting anything productive done. I tried to save my file every 2 seconds, not knowing when the power would knock out again. At 10:30, we got the message that the offices were closing and we could leave at 11. They tried to stagger the people leaving, letting the factory workers go first.

I don’t sit by a window, but I walked by the door as I headed to the bathroom and it basically was white outside. It definitely was worse than the morning as we were expecting 7 inches of snow during the day.

At 11, I headed out to clean off my car which went fairly quickly. Then as I was in line to get out of the parking lot, his cousin called me and had me park my car and then drove me home. Thankfully he works at the same place and when he got on the roads before me, he decided to turn around and see if he could catch me, knowing I don’t have 4WD and it was bad.

So I left my car and rode with him. We were crawling along until the one big hill. We ended up at a standstill at the top behind so many cars. Either someone got stuck or crashed or something, but it caused a huge backup. It wasn’t long before Brian’s cousin decided to turn around and show me the other route home. I have only taken the one. It was more back roads which of course the snow is worse on, but because the snow is not as packed down from hundreds of cars, it is also easier to maneuver in I guess.

An hour and a bit later, I finally got home. On a normal day, my commute is 20-25 minutes. Obviously the turn around added time to going home, but I was home safe and hoping my car was safe for the night as the snow continued.

I ate my lunch and then decided to work on my taxes. Of course the internet was not playing nice for a while and I thought for a moment, we were going to lose power. Luckily, I was able to work through my taxes with a bit of help from my dad over the phone and got those taken care of. Yay for being productive on a snow day!

Once that was finished, the internet was working better so I decided to do a short yoga flow from Yoga with Adriene on Youtube and then have some fun taking yoga photos. It has been a while since I have taken a bunch of yoga photos and I need to get back to that.

I was able to do some other work on my computer and I realized somehow 3 hours had gone by and I hadn’t touched youtube (except for yoga) or Netflix. I seem to fall into the routine of coming home, getting something to eat and watching something online just to kill time. I was pleased that I actually got some things on my to do list taken care of and was being productive. This in turn, led me to writing for a bit, which I also need to make more time for.

Finally I caught up on some Youtube people I follow, such as HealthNut Nutrition and my coaches Alessandra and Josh. I was so thankful to still have power and be nice and warm and cozy in my leggings at home with the heat on. You can definitely take those things for granted each day.

I saved my salad for dinner in case we did lose power since salad is cold food. Thankfully we made it through the night and still had power. I decided to have some hot tea later as something warm because all the cold food and sitting around was making me more cold it seemed. I wanted something to watch and I dug into my recorded DVDs pile and pulled out Parent Trap. It was nice doing some foam rolling and laying on the floor as I watched.

Shortly after 8pm, Brian made it home on the roads and I read in bed for a while until I fell asleep.

Saturday morning, Brian took me to my car and it surprisingly didn’t have much snow on it because the snow was so heavy, it just slid off. There was some ice but it was quick to scrape that off and get going. I had a massage Saturday morning and then ran my errands, did some cleaning around the house and took some photos outside because the snow was very pretty.

Later in the afternoon, I headed to a pampered chef party. We made a skinny mac and cheese and some mini bundt cakes. Both were delicious. I only had a bit of the mac and cheese as I try to limit my dairy consumption and it had milk in it. There are so many cute kitchen items and I think I need to set up a wedding registry with them. I am buying a couple little things I want to add to my growing kitchen collection.

It was nice to have a little bit of social time and then head home for the night.

Sunday was a day for working out, doing laundry and running errands. I also built a snowman quickly. He was kind of lumpy and not very round, but still the snow was awesome for a snowman.

Brian was even able to come back home around 4am on Sunday so I let him sleep in and then we hung out in the afternoon. I also really got into baking and tried out a new vegan cookie recipe I found on Pinterest. They came out kind of chewy but still good.

All in all, it was a great productive weekend. Now it’s time to get back to the work week and month end tasks.

What do you do on a snow day?

Date Night, Olympics and Ice

February 12, 2018 by Alicia Leave a Comment

This weekend was a good balance of busy and relaxing. Brian got home from work Friday afternoon and for once had 24 hours off, which actually turned into more than 24 hours off and sleeping 2 nights at home. He hasn’t been able to sleep at home for the night in quite a while, so it was a nice surprise. Friday night we actually went out to dinner at a hibachi place. Brian even got cleaned up and found some clean and nice clothes to wear. I am trying to convince him we need to have a shopping spree for him for some clean aka non stained clothes. Maybe next month for his birthday.

We then came home just in time to watch the Olympics opening ceremony. We watched for a while and then got tired and went to bed around 10. I had a pretty good night’s sleep and got up around 7 to eat a quick breakfast and decided to head to the gym. My squats are improving at the gym and I can tell I am getting stronger which is exciting.

Once I finished up at the gym, I came home to take a quick shower and then Brian and I headed out to meet my friend for some brunch. I had a giant brunch consisting of a waffle, 3 eggs and bacon. It was quite delicious and I polished off my plate.

After talking for a while, we decided to continue our adventures and do a bit of shopping. We managed to go into Target and I only picked up 1 thing not on my list. Target was a madhouse at 2 in the afternoon on Saturday though.

We ended our shopping at Michael’s, where me and my friend wanted to buy the whole store but limited ourselves. I’ve been eyeing some pens for bullet journaling for a while and finally decided to get them with a 40% off coupon too!!

Brian and I arrived home and I got out some chicken to thaw. I roasted some sweet potatos and then Brian sliced the chicken and mixed it with some bbq sauce. Since we didn’t marinate it, it didn’t soak up much of the flavor, but it was still tasty. We ate while catching a bit of the Olympics.

After eating, I finally got to do some work on my computer and finish up some laundry. Super exciting Saturday night activities I know!! I then finally got back to reading. This last week was so busy and I didn’t get as much reading time. I have noticed that reading before bed really helps me to relax so I am trying to incorporate it more and plus reading some books for fun is always nice.

Sunday started out icy and I tried to head to yoga, but my car couldn’t make it up the hill and so I was backing up and brakes were not working and I got myself stuck in a ditch, although thankfully the snow in front of the ditch saved my car from any damage. I really only got the passenger back wheel stuck in the snow. I immediately called Brian and he and his brother towed me out. We then tried to go down the hill but we noticed there was an accident blocking the road so no yoga for me. I do have to say though I didn’t freak out as much as I would have thought so that was good. Oh and while I sat there stuck, I watched the plow backing up the hill, so you know the roads are bad then. I seem to always be 5 minutes ahead of the plows…

So I stayed in and I did a Yoga with Adriene video on youtube. I then decided to bake some muffins as I had just enough almond butter left. I worked on my computer for a while and had a relaxed morning watching Netflix. The last week was so busy I haven’t watched much online and it was nice to have some downtime.

Brian was still around for lunch and by noon the roads were better so we headed down to Spiedie and Rib pit and I got a large salad and some fries and Brian got a sub.

After lunch, Brian headed back to work. I spent the afternoon chilling out. I did get some travel plans in place for upcoming trips in the next few months and did some reading. As much as I like staying busy, I also need to balance that with some down time and Sunday was just that.

Did you watch the Olympics opening ceremony?

Is there snow and ice where you are?

Superbowl Sunday in Pictures

February 5, 2018 by Alicia 1 Comment

Hello everyone!! How was your weekend? We got some snow here most of the day Sunday, but luckily I ran my errands on Saturday. I also had a wonderful massage on Saturday. I had my masseuse focus on my neck, shoulders and back and the 50 minutes felt like 10…seriously the time flew by. My shoulders really needed that focus though and I think it helped my workout for Sunday morning.

Since Saturday was just my usual shopping, I thought I would talk about Super Bowl Sunday since I actually took some photos.

My morning began at the gym shortly after 8. I wanted to get out early before there was too much snow and I am glad I did. The roads were a bit more slippery by the time I came home, but then I was mostly in for the remainder of the day.

hip thrusts to end my workout, this was the toughest part after being so tired already

Other than the fact that we went out to lunch down the hill at Moe’s. I can’t remember the last time I had Moe’s and I was really hungry Sunday so I ate A LOT. I went over my macros a bit for the day…

Brian was home for the day and that was a nice surprise. Also his mom and the dogs came down for the weekend. I didn’t even know until a few hours before their arrival, but it turned out to be a good weekend with them visiting. Brian smoked and then fried some wings for our super bowl feast.

super bowl sunday — our glasses kind of match now

In addition, we had speidies and pizza. I was pretty full after snacking all afternoon…but I did like the cheese pizza and ate a couple slices. I think finally after that, my hunger was at bay.

I’m not a big super bowl watcher, but it was nice to relax with Brian on the couch and watch. Also since the Eagles were in, it was a bit more exciting, having lived in Philadelphia. I enjoyed watching the half time show and through the third quarter, then Brian had to head back to work on the very snowy roads and I was for some reason wide awake when it was after 9pm, so I decided to make my bed and write this post. With the snow and all, I already knew I wasn’t going to be going to the gym in the morning. Hopefully the plows will catch up overnight and I just have to work to rearrange my workout schedule this week and watch the weather. Currently it’s saying 5-8 inches of snow Wednesday!! But they originally said only 2 inches for Sunday and I think we definitely got more than that with the steady snow all day, so it’s always hard to tell.

And I had to stay up to see how the game ended, watching the score online while I listened to podcasts. What a tight game it came down to. That last minute!! Go Eagles!!

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