Yoga at home

Hi guys!

How was your Halloween? Mine was low-key and lovely. We went to Georgetown Cupcake and got some Halloween flavors, which we enjoyed on the bench outside the store. GT Cupcake is our "thing" - we have extraspecial love for their cupcakes. My husband proposed with GT Cupcakes last summer, and they made a return at our wedding:

So they were the natural choice for Halloween sugary treats. 

(Spooky cupcake pic, right?)

Today, I had the immense pleasure of going to an actual yoga class. It's been exactly two months - the last real class I went to was the day before my wedding (taught by my mentor and teacher trainer Chanel...and my sister, fiance and new aunt all came with me...an unforgettable class). Today's class was at the gym, and while I'm not a huge fan of gym yoga, it was everything I needed. My hips have been bothering me a ton lately, and #yogaeverydamnday is the only thing that helps. 

(my husband still hasn't quite forgiven me for dragging him to Circus Yoga)

Since I don't belong to a studio here yet, I've been doing all my yoga at home. Doing yoga at home, or "cultivating a home practice" as my pretentious wonderful fellow yogis sometimes call it, is a funny thing. Yoga seems like the perfect candidate for an at-home workout (all you need is a mat), but it's really not easy to derive much benefit from om-ing at home. Before I did my yoga teacher training, I never had the patience to put myself through a practice at home. A few things have made me better at it, and I thought I'd share them with you.

Note: these tips are for peeps with some experience doing yoga. If you're brand new to it, I'd recommend going to a live class. 

-Count your breaths. This might be the most important thing I learned in teacher training. Hold a pose on one side for three (or four, or whatever) slow breaths, and when you get to the other side, repeat for the same number of breaths. I used to count out the seconds in each pose - terrible idea. The minute you start counting the seconds in your yoga practice, it's over. It's one thing to hold a plank for 30 seconds at the gym, but that ish has no place in yoga. 

-Go into the practice with a body part (or two) in mind. I used to get on my mat with no idea what I wanted to work on, and I'd do a Sun Salutation or two and call it a day. These days my body will tell me what it needs, but take a second to brainstorm before you start so you don't get writer's block on your mat (or whatever the yoga equivalent of writer's block is).

-Play some music. I have a yoga playlist, but it gets old, so I use Pandora a lot. A real yoga class is never silent, so practicing in total silence can be weird, not to mention boring. Music helps me stay focused. 

-Forget about a time frame. For this one, you'll really get a lot of different advice. Some people will tell you to schedule it into your day, as if you were going to a real class, and commit to staying on your mat for the entire ___ minutes. If that works for you, do it. For me, I like to commit to only one thing - getting on my mat. In a real class, the teacher is keeping track of time. It's a very different experience when you're keeping track of it yourself. And if you get sick of it after 20 minutes and suffer through the remaining 40, you won't go back for more. I honestly don't know how long I usually spend doing yoga at home - I just do it until I'm over it.

Of course, YouTube has some great videos, and Yogaglo has been my BFF lately. Sometimes I'm not in the mood to do my own thing, and I'm glad for Yogaglo. Other times I stop the Yogaglo video because I'd rather be doing my own thing. Yoga is about going with the flow, literally, so don't put any pressure on it. 

Hope this helps any yogis out there!

I'm off to go to dinner with my hubby and dad, who just arrived for the weekend! 

xo

Seven-ingredient wonder

Hey everyone!

How's your night going? I had a ridiculously stressful day at work. It was a take-a-bath-after-work-because-I'm-too-exhausted-to-stand-in-the-shower kind of day. On the bright side, I'm over the hump and have only two more work days until the weekend. Since this Friday is the first day of the month, there will be free bagels in the lobby Friday morning! I'm (not?) ashamed to admit that I've been excited about this fact for...exactly a month. It makes no sense - I can go out and buy a bagel any time I want one. But that's just not the same as free bagels in my lobby. 

Dinner last night was a simple recipe that turned out to be delicious beyond belief. We finally grabbed the spaghetti squash out of the bowl (the one we bought over a week ago when we went apple picking), sliced it in half, and baked it in the oven until it was soft. That squash was a tough beast to slice in half, though. My husband wrestled with it for 10 minutes, threw it in the oven to "soften" for a while, and wrestled with it for 10 minutes more before it finally gave way. And my husband is strong, you guys.

He scooped the spaghetti out of the squash, and combined it in a big mixing bowl with sauteed red onion, garlic, and the last of a jar of diced tomatoes we bought at the farmers market weeks ago. We threw in some kalamata olives, capers, feta cheese and sea salt. That's it - 7 ingredients. So easy, and so good. Does anyone else get stressed out when they see a recipe with a zillion ingredients? 

See those pieces of red onion? I kept looking at them and thinking the dish would be even better if those were little pieces of prosciutto. But then I wouldn't eat it. If I were making it for company, though, I'd tweak the recipe and make it a 1 on the ham scale. 

Dinner was followed by mini pumpkin cheesecakes, which I might make again tonight, since I have an abundance of homemade goat cream cheese. 

We ordered pizza for dinner tonight, since I was in no mood to cook or even see cooking take place, and it just arrived. 

Have a great night!

xo

 

Suddenly it's winter

Good afternoon! Hope you're all enjoying this Saturday.

Yesterday was about as perfect a day off as I could imagine. We went to the gym in the morning, hit up Joe's and Whole Foods, and then came home and took a 2.5 hour long nap. It was amazing. I don't know if the sudden cold weather is 100% to blame, but I did not feel like being out and about. I spent the rest of the afternoon in sweats, baking/cooking/creating in the kitchen, ate dinner with the husband, and watched Modern Family on the couch for the rest of the night. It made me so happy.

My creations:

A batch of pumpkin chocolate chip protein balls, which were adapted from this recipe.

Some goat cream cheese:

Which I "made" by mixing a log of goat cheese with about a cup of goat's milk.

And two jars full of spicy salsa verde, which we ate with the chicken burritos my husband made:

For some inconceivable reason, my husband isn't as crazyobsessed with this salsa verde as I am. I guess he thinks he has some kind of refined salsa palate because he's from New Mexico? Whatever, I love this stuff. It's an El Salvadorean salsa recipe that I learned at work, and I've been eating it on as much as possible ever since I got up the nerve to try it. It's so spicy that when I rinse the blender out at work after making it, the air becomes spicy and I start coughing up a storm. A little dot goes a long way. 

The cat stared longingly at our plates from across the counter:

It was a lazy night, followed by a lazy morning. We bundled up in all the warm clothes we could find and walked down to the farmers market for some radishes, and then into DSW so I could get some warm shoes. My Uggs are on their last limb, and I realized I'm lacking in normal shoes.

I feel like I should be lazy on weekends more often. Ever since we got here our weekends have been packed full of errands, but relaxing allows me to recharge before the start of another work week.  

Have a great Saturday night!

xo

Things I'm Loving Thursday

Hey everyone!

I am so, so happy it's "Friday" (my days off are Friday and Saturday). This week was extra challenging for no particular reason - it was just one of those weeks that really dragged. I was at the Virginia location one day this week, and I'll be there for two days next week. While the commute sucks, it's nice to spend a few days a week out there. It breaks up my week and it's a change of scenery.

After work hubby and I went to Costco, then braved the cold (50*...I'm scared for winter) and walked downtown to Potbelly for a date.

As soon as we got there we saw a huge sign advertising their delivery services. Ugh. Guess I should have checked online first. 

In blog news, I'm starting a new segment: Things I'm Loving Thursday. I love reading other bloggers' Friday Faves, and thought I'd switch it up a tiny bit and post mine on Thursday.

In no particular order, here are some things I've been loving lately.

-The way my husband checks off ingredients in the cookbook as he adds them:

I just think it's really cute. 

-Tart cherry juice at night:

I'd been wanting to try tart cherry juice forever, but it's pricey and it never made the cut when I'd weigh potential impulse buys. A few weeks ago there were a couple bottles on the free-to-staff shelf at work, and I did the excitement dance all the way home. We ran out of the first bottle and bought a second one from Joe's for a better price, and we've both been drinking it almost every night. If you're interested, you can read about the alleged benefits of tart cherry juice here. I can't say I've noticed any effects from it (and if I did, I'd be more inclined to chalk it up to a placebo effect), but it's delicious nonetheless. 

-This awesome post about buying a home in your 20s. I think we're already failing at tip #1, but there's some great advice in here. (Thanks for the blog traffic, Miranda!)

-Good to Great. I grabbed this off the bookshelf at work, and I've been totally engrossed in it. I love it so far. I'm not a CEO (or anything even remotely close), but it's making me see my company, and every other company I've worked for, in a whole new way. I love books that make me smarter with every page. 

-Feeding my cat chicken.

I'm the worst for doing this, since I'm only encouraging begging, but she loves it and it's so cute. 

-Our wedding photos! They finallyyyy came, and I can't stop looking at them. Perfection. 

What are you loving lately?

Have a great night!

xo

Return of the baking itch

Hey guys!

First things first - I have to show you my breakfast this morning (and for the next two days, since I bulk-made three of them):

That hideous, leprechaun-esque thing is my breakfast cookie, which I mistakenly added way too much spirulina to. I tried to scoop some of it out before I added the wet ingredients, but the damage had been done. My family is used to seeing me eat disgusting-looking health food, but this particular monstrosity is a stretch, even for me. It was actually delicious, but I stuffed it in my face at top speed and prayed no one would walk into the break room and spot me eating it. Lest I be the laughing stock of the entire company. 

Now onto something a lot more appetizing - I've got a recipe for ya! My latest baking creation: the apple raspberry crumble. 

When I was in high school, I had a real thing for baking. I took a bunch of cake decorating classes and used to bake things at night and take them into my homeroom the next morning. I haven't been crazy about baking in a while, but last night I had the urge, and I rolled with it. 

This particular recipe is a little healthier than the stuff I used to make in high school. Don't get me wrong - I do not think desserts have to be healthy. That's kind of not the point of dessert (I don't ever need to see a whole wheat cannoli, for example). But since this was just a random Monday and no special occasion, I added almond meal and subbed coconut oil for butter - both excellent sources of healthy fats. 

I combined 2 cups oats, 1 cup almond meal and 1/2 cup brown sugar, plus cinnamon, sea salt and vanilla in a bowl,

mixed in about 1/2 cup coconut oil, and pressed half of it into the bottom of an 8x8 pan.

Then I washed, peeled, cored and chopped three of our apples, and layered them on top of the crumble. 

I remembered the raspberries we had also picked, and I wondered if they would be a good addition, or if it would seem like too much. I considered this for about one second before dumping the berries on top.

I wish I could say these were the berries we picked, but no. Those berries were eaten within a day. These berries are frozen from Joe's, and still delicious. I packed the remaining crumble on top and popped it in the oven at 350 for about 30 minutes.

The finished product:

As I'm sure you can imagine, 24 hours later and it's almost gone. Why did I use the 8x8 pan instead of the 9x13?! ("There are only two of us" - what a rookie baking mistake).

That's all for now. I'm already planning my next apple recipe. I'm thinking muffins. 

xo

Why is everything cable?

Hello world!

I've had an exciting day. After a week of deliberating, what-ifs and soul searching, we brought home our first fur-baby!

We went to the shelter last weekend for an open house event, and had no intentions of leaving that day with a cat. We weren't prepared for one yet, but we wanted to check out the shelter anyway and see if it was a place we'd want to adopt from when we were ready. We found this little girl, and I fell. in. love. She's super tiny, even though she's a year old and fully grown, and she's sweet and friendly. She was a stray, and she's already had a litter of kittens! Admittedly, I have a soft spot for black cats - my first fur-baby is a black cat. 

We wanted a week to think about it and prepare, and during that time we got some supplies from Petco, even though we weren't 100% sure we'd get her. We also did some budgeting and looked at how much this endeavor would cost us. We realized it would be about as much each month as we're paying for cable, so we made the choice to cancel the cable - a decision I was (shockingly) totally okay with. I love my T.V. time, but I've actually watched almost no T.V. since we got the cable. We didn't have it for the first couple weeks here, and I guess I learned how to self-sooth in other ways, because once we got it, I barely cared about it. I'm not saying we won't get it again sometime in the future, but for now, I can totally live without it. Rescuing a kitty > Bravo. Internet, on the other hand, I need. Good thing that's a lot cheaper. 

It's kind of funny - ever since we knew we'd be moving down here, every conversation we had about things we'd need to buy came back to cable. I'd mention an expense, and my husband would say "well, that's cable, right there". A gym membership? That's cable right there. Dinner out? That's cable. Regular eyebrow waxing? Cable. And so on and so on. 

When I looked at the cat expenses, I showed him the number, and he said "well, that's cable". This made me laugh. "Why is everything cable??" Somehow it became our own personal form of currency. 

Anyway....our kitty's name is Dolce, and she's currently busy exploring her "forever home" - as the women at the shelter call it. 

She won't stay still for a picture, so that's the best one I got. 

That's all for now - I'm about to run to the store and get her some food. I'll try not to photobomb you all in future posts...even though we all know the internet was made for pictures of cats. 

xo

Apple picking and WIWF 10/18

Happy Friday!

Our apple picking trip, which we had planned for last weekend, finally happened today. We woke up early and drove out to Gaithursburg, and after a long drive down a bumpy and hilly dirt road, we found the orchard:

I guess this is what the area looked like before they plopped D.C. down on top of it? 

My outfit today:

Jeans: 7 for all man kind

Shoes: Toms knock-offs from a random shoe store in NYC

Cornflower blue t-shirt: $10 on sale at Nordstrom

Sweater: Top Shop 

We grabbed some apples and followed the signs for raspberry picking. I didn't think October was raspberry season, but some of the raspberries on the bush weren't even ripe yet. 

I was pretty happy to find them, especially since raspberries are the only fruit I can eat "raw". I normally only like fruit in the form of smoothies, juices and baked goods. 

We stopped in the little barn/shop on our way out to pay, and picked up a few things in addition to our apples and berries. 

Sweet potato chips, radishes, a spaghetti squash, a raspberry cheesecake brownie, two honey sticks, and our fruit. I definitely want to make those mini apple crisps again, and we already found a recipe for the spaghetti squash.   

That's all for today - see ya tomorrow!

xo