Memorial Day Weekend (AKA work weekend) in pictures

As long as I've lived, Memorial Day Weekend has been known as "Work Weekend" in my family because it is the weekend my family and aunts, uncles, and cousins open up our summer home on Misquamicut Beach in Rhode Island. Since the house is on the beach and the salt water can be really damaging, the big project is usually repairing/replacing boards on both decks and scraping/painting both decks. There's other stuff too, but the decks are the big projects usually. This year was tough since the weather was so great and it was tempting to just sit on the beach. We did get some beach time in though, so it was a great weekend all around! See for yourself...

Things I'm into right now

My blogging friend, Athena, has a regular post called "Things I'm loving lately." I really like the concept, so I am adopting it and calling it "Things I'm into right now." Is that different enough? Well, here we go:

1. Grocery shopping in the morning

  I have made it part of my routine to go grocery shopping every Tuesday morning when Market Basket opens at 7 AM. I do this seemingly crazy thing for a few reasons. One, if you shop at Market Basket, you understand how CRAZY it can be at any other convenient time - weeknights, any time on weekends, etc. Two, Bret and I used to shop together during the weekend and it always seemed like such a CHORE. Trying to figure out when we would fit it in, making the list, and dealing with the crowds was always stressful. Finally, Tuesdays is the one day that I work 9-5 and go to the gym in the evening, so I have ALL that time in the morning to play with (most people would wonder why I don't just sleep in, but if you're a morning person you understand).

2. Softsoap strawberry smoother body wash

 It just smells so yummy and really gets me in the mood for summer!

3. Customer service at Mass Tire and Auto in Canton and Herb Chambers Toyota in Boston
It's always hard to come by good customer service. Today I realized I had a flat tire and of course I was many miles from home in Canton, MA. My tire wasn't COMPLETELY flat, so I was hoping I could get some air in there and call Herb Chambers tomorrow. I stopped at Mass Tire and Auto to see if I could buy or borrow a tire pressure gauge to check it (I've been meaning to buy one). The guy just gave me one for free - totally awesome! Especially since I wasn't even a paying customer there. Then, when I couldn't get a pressure reading, I realized it was probably flat and I needed to put on the spare. Since I of course haven't learned how to do that yet, I called Herb Chambers free roadside assistance who was very helpful over the phone. They sent someone over and they were there in about half an hour. I then called Herb Chambers to make an appointment to come in and get the tire fixed/replaced, and they told me they could probably fit me in that night. Once I got there, I was pleased with their waiting room considering I just wanted to go home. I got to have some hot chocolate:

And I got to sit in these comfy seats that recline a little bit! They were cool, trust me.

I first called roadside assistance around 3:30 and I was out of herb chambers with my tire fixed by 5:40. Not too shabby when you consider I couldn't go over 50 the whole way home.

4. This guy

 My boyfriend, Bret, came home right after work (skipping the gym) to take care of Lily (our pup) since I was stranded with a flat tire. He was also the one who encouraged me to add tire and wheel protection to my toyota care plan - so then I didn't have to pay anything to get it fixed today! Also, he's generally pretty awesome.

5. Good savings at CVS

 I spent $37.06 and saved $37.39. This would have been a lot more impressive had I not bought the Edy's slow-churned and ben and jerry's ice creams which cost $6.29 each! These were a last minute treat that I felt Bret and I deserved after the flat tire mishap.

6. Herbal Essences touchably smooth shampoo and conditioner

 This is different from the one I normally get for curly hair, but it smells awesome, and the smell actually stays in my hair all day! I love that.

What are you loving lately?

Healthy changes

Let me just talk about being healthy for a second. When it comes to the fitness side of being healthy, I've pretty much got it down. I have put fitness into my schedule so that I go consistently to the gym or do something at home 4-5 times a week. For example, last week:
Sunday: Off
Monday: A workout from Women's Health Big Book of Exercises
Tuesday: Two a day workout at the Y (another workout from Women's Health Big Book of Exercises plus Kix class)
Wednesday: The run that I wrote about in my last blog entry
Thursday: Athena's Circuit Training class at the Y (an outdoor bootcamp-like workout)
Friday: TRX class at the Y
Saturday: off

I tend to take my weekends off from the gym, but this usually leads to eating unhealthy as well. Now, I try my best to make healthy eating choices regularly, but I don't believe in depriving myself completely of things that I love. I personally have a big sweet tooth and almost never say no to dessert. Because of this, I try to make most of my meals and snacks healthy, so I can indulge in a little dessert a few (or a bunch of) times a week. Because I am discussing personal change on here and eating healthy is something I constantly struggle with, I will often be documenting some of my healthier choices that I'm proud of making :) I will probably also share some of the delicious baked goods that I make often (usually about once a week). When I indulge in sweets, I like to make it really worth it by having it be homemade!

So, this sunday, I proposed to Bret that we make a little egg scramble/omelet out of some of our leftover veggies. Another couple of big changes I'm trying to work on are not letting produce go bad and improvising meals with things I have lying around. In terms of improvising, I have gotten a lot of good inspiration from my friend Jen's blog, NutcaseinPoint. In my opinion, she is the master of using whatever she has on hand - something this type-A recipe follower is really trying to work on! So, we had broccoli and spinach to use up. We also had goat cheese, parmesan-reggiano cheese, and cheddar cheese curds. I opted for broccoli and goat cheese (I don't like TOO much in my omelets). I was feeling really guilty about not also using spinach because we had a lot left, but I'm not the biggest fan of cooked spinach. Then, I had the genius idea of whipping up a little smoothie with the spinach, using my new Magic Bullet. I also just bought Vanilla Whey protein powder that I needed to try out. So, I blended 2 handfuls of spinach with one scoop of protein powder, 2 scoops of chocolate ovaltine powder, 1 tablespoon peanut butter, and 1 cup of almond milk (inspiration from NutcaseinPoint.) Bret and I split it and it was sooooo yummy. It probably wasn't THAT low in calories, but it had lots of protein from the peanut butter and protein powder and it was a good way to get in a serving of greens (something I'm not great at since I'm not a huge salad fan).

Here's a picture of my meal for you:

 The smoothie was a little green from the spinach, but I couldn't taste it at all! I'll be trying lots of new smoothie recipes with the Magic Bullet so, look out!

Are you good at improvising with ingredients? What are your tricks for using up produce before it goes bad? Any good smoothie recipes you want to share?

A new project

So I totally forgot about this blog until I randomly stumbled upon it yesterday. When I first started it in 2009, it was for a "Personal Change" assignment in grad school, and I didn't really intend on continuing it. Well, when I stumbled upon it yesterday, I realized that if I wanted to blog regularly, the title of "Personal Change" would be perfect for it. I am constantly striving to push myself to be better, mainly by challenging myself physically and mentally in many different aspects of my life. The ultimate goal is always personal change. I hope to chronicle some of those challenges here (and maybe also just ramble about random things sometimes). I can't promise this will be a success, but I will try my best to keep at it. I also learned from my good gym buddy and blogging friend, Athena, from Fitness and Feta that people love pictures in blogs. So, I will also try and get better at photo documentation.

A big challenge that I decided to embark on starting today is to start running a little bit. Now, I love being active in terms of walking and hiking and I love going to the gym and doing things like kickboxing and strength training, but I HATE, DESPISE, LOATHE running. I just find it kind of boring and, yeah, hard and it's just not my cup of tea I guess. However, I am going to be signing up to do a Warrior Dash at the end of the summer which may include some running. It's a 5k but basically in the mud with lots of obstacles. So it's not really a running race by any stretch of the imagination, but I decided I should try and get ready a little bit anyways. Also, I have a dog (whom you'll probably hear about a lot on here) named Lily and taking her with me to run is a great way for BOTH of us to get a good work out and it's a great training/bonding experience. It's nice to not have to go to the gym for myself and then still come home and take her to the park to run around.

I checked out this mapmyrun thingy and figured out that running to the Chestnut Hill Reservoir, running around it, then running home is like 3.1 miles. So, that's what I'm going to work up to. Today, I estimate that I ran approximately 1.25 miles in about 15 minutes. I was going to run a little longer than that but Lily cut us short by stopping to take a poo. Since I then had to stop, get out a bag, pick it up, and bring it to a trash, I figured we would just start the cooldown process. I will probably only run on wednesdays since that's usually my day off from the gym, so it's a good day to just do a little running at home. I may have to figure something else out soon though because it is going to get reeeeeaaaaallll hot and neither Lily nor I will want to run in the sweltering sun. Well, that's it for now. I'll check back in soon with something else CRAZY from my life haha.

Here's Lily and I after our run/walk:

Do you like to run? Do you have any tips on how I should work up to 3 miles? Do you have any tips on running with a dog? Comments please!!!!