Here’s a photo montage of the activity over the last couple of weeks:

(Blurry ’cause I had to take the pic through the window!)

Sorry that last picture is really blurry. It was getting dark and didn’t want to blind the babies with a flash!

I can’t wait to see these little suckers all grown up, but they are incredibly cute right now!

Anyway-

Not much to report today. Had a green monster for breakfast and a veggie burger for lunch (Morningstar Farms Garden Veggie burgers are my new favorite!). I had a meeting this evening after work, so I didn’t really eat dinner, but I did have some left over green monster from breakfast.

In other news I harvested a salad from the garden today (garden update to come in the next few days). The lettuce is quite bitter, probably because it’s been growing in the heat. Here it is:

That’s going to be lunch tomorrow, supplemented with some spinach, broccoli, cucumber and a tomato. Can’t wait!

And just for kicks, here’s a picture of Obie watching American Idol with his new favorite friend “monkey”

See you tomorrow! Peace!

What is INSANE! you ask? This is INSANE! :

So my BFF called me about a week ago and said “Have you seen the commercials for that new Insanity workout? If I buy it will you do it with me?” I said “Sure! I’ve seen the commercials…it can’t be that bad, right?” WRONG! He got the dvds in the mail on Thursday and we did the Fit Test on Friday. OH.MY.GOD. Let’s just say I haven’t been able to move for the past two days. And that was just the Fit Test-not even a regular workout. (It didn’t help that I ate 3 donuts for breakfast that morning!) We are going to start the workouts on Monday. So I’ll probably die.

And here’s where I get brave. We took pictures of ourselves and took measurements before we started and I’m going to keep up with my INSANE! progress here. (Yes, every time I type INSANE! it will be in all caps and with at least one exclamation point) So here I am in all of my INSANE! glory:

Stats:

Weight: 128-ish

Fat: 24%

BMI: 22

Arms: 11″

Thighs: 21″

Hips: 32″

Waist: 38″

Bust: 35″

We’ll do the Fit Test again at day 15, so that will be the next time I post an INSANE! update. That is, if I’m still alive.

On to other topics, I did make a deeeelicious dinner Friday night! I call it “Quinoa with Roasted Vegetables.” Creative, I am. It was super easy to make. I chopped up a bunch of vegetables that we had in the fridge, threw them on a pan with olive oil, salt and pepper, and roasted them in the oven at 425 degrees until they were tender. I used carrots, broccoli, onions, fresh corn and squash:

While that was roasting I cooked up some quinoa. First I soaked it in a pan for about 15 minutes. I read somewhere why you should do this, but I can’t remember. I always do it though.

Then drain that water and add back to the pan twice as much water as quinoa. Bring it to a boil and then reduce to a simmer until all of the water is absorbed. I added salt and pepper at this point, then mixed all of the vegetables into the quinoa and voila!

(I forgot to take a picture before I started devouring it. This is about half-way through!)

The BF added soy sauce to his, but I ate mine plain. Great either way. Quinoa is super good for you. One 1/4 cup serving (dry) has 172 calories, 2.8 grams of fat, no saturated fat, 3 grams of fiber and 6 grams of protein.

Well, I’ll be back later with a weekend update and a garden update. Happy Mother’s Day!

A few days ago I noticed a small little brown bird (a female house finch) sitting on the hanging basket on my front porch. I watched her for a few minutes and she jumped down into the flowers in the pot. I pulled up a chair (yes, I am that much of a nerd). Then I proceeded to watch her fly across the street to our neighbor’s yard, land on their palm tree, rip the fibers from said palm tree, fly back to our hanging basket and jump inside. She was building a nest! On our porch! So I could watch! (Well, probably not that last part) I’ve been peeking into the basket every day to check the status of the nest.

Pictured above is the nest on day 2 of Nest Watch 2010. Not quite a nest shape, but it’s coming together. You can see that the birds found some stuffed animal stuffing. Wonder where they got that?

And here is the nest on day 5 of Nest Watch 2010.

 How gosh-darn cute is that?! Their nest is so perfectly nest-shaped. It’s unfortunate that my plant is probably going to die as a sacrifice to this cuuuuuute thing. The flowers would be a nice background for the photos to come! And I’m sure my neighbors are going to love that I will have a dead plant hanging on my porch!

Stay tuned for the next installment!

Soooo, yeah. Here’s a quick garden check-in for the past 2 weeks:

2 weeks ago I harvested my first radish:

And then I harvested 7  more. There are still a bunch left growing in the garden. I also had an epic broccoli FAIL! I left for my mini-vacay to Myrtle Beach and when I came back one stalk of broccoli had gone to flower…BOOO! I went ahead and plucked the other one out of the garden before it flowered, but it was so small it wasn’t worth eating. Next year I will need to plant the broccoli earlier, before the weather gets too hot.

This past week I have had a bunch of these little guys in the garden:

Hopefully they will keep any pests away!

The tomato plant is preparing for fruit. Oh I can’t wait to eat some deeeeelicious tomatoes!

The lettuce is getting pretty big:

Since I had two empty squares where the broccoli was I went to Lowe’s on Sunday and bought a Japanese eggplant and some basil plants (to enjoy with the tomatoes, of course!) And BONUS-the plants were buy one, get one free!

Here’s a pic of the whole garden at week 7:

And totally unrelated to the garden…here’s a pic of my FAVORITE bush in our whole yard:

I believe it’s an indian hawthorne and it’s sooooo pretty for about a week every April. This picture doesn’t do it justice. It’s right next to my rain barrel so I get to enjoy it every time I fill up my watering can for my garden. Too bad it’s in our backyard where nobody else can see it!

Well, I’m feeling quite lazy today so I will be back tomorrow some food photos from the weekend. I cooked an AWESOME meal on Sunday. I think I’m also going to start updating with my fitness goals. Hopefully I won’t chicken out!!

Peace.

I didn’t have to work Thursday or Friday, so I used that time to make the cake for the party on Saturday. I am soooo glad I had so much time. It allowed me to do some extra things that I wouldn’t have been able to do otherwise. Here it is:

Obviously, it was a pirate themed cake. On the right side of the picture you can see the birthday boy’s own personal pirate face cake-just something for him to destroy. I had the best time making this cake. I loved doing the little detail work, like on the pirates on the ship. It was kinda relaxing for me. It took a while to make the cake and it was very stressful (as it always is) when I got to the party and had to assemble it with an audience. The party was fantastic! The parents did a wonderful job with the snacks & food and the birthday boy got lots and lots of presents and hugs and kisses.

After the party the BF and I drove down to Myrtle Beach for a short little weekend getaway. We’ve both had a very hard year so far, so I felt like even if we could just get away for a day it would probably help.

We stayed (at the recommendation of a friend) at the Long Bay Resort. Because of the time of the year the rates were fantastic. The resort had lots of amenities like a lazy river, indoor and outdoor pools, roof-top activity area and a kids water-park type play area. The best amenity for me though was this:

The resort has its own Starbucks! Both mornings the WONDERFUL BF went downstairs and got me a Chai Tea Latte with soy milk. What a way to start the day!

Our room was a one bedroom condo. We had a nice little ocean view too!

I can’t say enough nice things about this resort. The staff members were excellent. The rooms and grounds were well-kept. Sunday morning we were awakened at 7am by a kid tap dancing (literally-tap shoes and all) in the room above us. When knocking on the roof didn’t help, I called the front desk and the problem was resolved in 5 minutes flat. (I mean, seriously, what parents let their kid tap dance in a hotel room kitchen at 7 in the morning?!)

As far as the activities for the weekend go we spent Saturday evening at Broadway at the Beach shopping, eating and walking around. Sunday we spent the morning at the Bass Pro Shop and the Tanger Outlet Mall. The BF bought me a bunch of new running clothes!  After lunch we went back to Broadway at the Beach and walked around some more and then hung out at the hotel until dinner. It was a weekend full of NOTHING and it is just what we needed! This morning we packed up the truck and headed home. I was sad that the weekend had to come to an end, but I was excited to see the pups! The dogs were soooo excited to see us (They stayed with their grandma this weekend). I’m sure that they had a blast there and they both probably gained 5 pounds from all of the treats they got!

Today has also been a day of doing nothing. When we got home the BF had to go to work. The dogs have slept all afternoon and I have (instead of doing laundry) watched mindless TV. What a great mini-vacation! I have a feeling we will be doing this more often. It’s so refreshing to not have to worry about all of the little things. Every time I started thinking about work, I told myself-NO! It can wait until Tuesday. I laughed so much this weekend my face hurts!

I hope you have had a nice relaxing weekend as well. This week for me is about getting back into a healthy routine (the food I ate this past week/weekend has been anything but healthy!). I am hoping to post about lots of runs and workouts and lots of healthy food!

Cheers!

It wasn’t the greatest run, but gracious, I’m glad I did it. I didn’t have that overwhelming sense of guilt all day because I didn’t exercise (like I had almost every day last week). I think I’m going to have to have my left knee looked at because I had to stop twice today from the pain. *sigh*

Anyway-Here’s what I’ve been up to lately:

(Photos courtesy of my SIL)

Sooo..in my spare time I bake. I love making cookies and cakes, especially for my friends and family! My friend and I have a small business. One day we’ll let it grow up to a big business, but we both have really busy schedules, and she has two kids, so it’s hard to bake as much as we want to.

These were for my SIL’s BFF’s baby shower. I used some of the designs in the baby’s nursery as inspiration for the cake and cookies. I had so much fun making the cake! I think it turned out pretty good, except I don’t know what is up with the sloppy icing job on the front of the cake. Yikes!

The cookies were fun too. Each favor bag had 2 cookies, in one of three designs: a flower, a tree or a birdie. I think the birdies were my favorite of the 3 cookies. They had the cutest little heart wings. I will definitely be using that cookie cutter a lot!

This week I will be working on my BFFs’ baby’s first birthday cake. It’s going to be complicated so I’m going to work on it little by little this week. I can’t wait to show you the finished product!

Have a great night! Cheers!

This week I have noticed that some of the seeds I planted last week have sprouted-spinach, carrots and lettuce. The original lettuce is getting much bigger. I’m a bit concerned about the onions. They don’t seem to even be growing. I guess I don’t really know what they should look like; I might look into that tonight. Here are some exciting things that I found this week:

Strawberry! A little deformed, but still loved.

Radishes! Most of the tops of the radish roots are sticking out of the soil. I guess this means that they are ready to harvest? Another research project for me.

Not much else new this week. The tomato plant has some flowers on it and the peppers and cucumbers I planted last week seem to be making themselves at home. I’m sure I’ll be pulling some of the radishes out of the ground this week…how exciting-my first harvest of the year! I will need to decide what to put in place of the radishes when they are out.

Next week’s garden update will either be early or late depending on my schedule. We will be out-of-town on a mini (much-needed) vacation on Sunday!

Happy gardening!