get fit ... maybe tomorrow

"I'll workout tomorrow."

"I'll eat better at my next meal."

"I won't buy another bag of dark chocolate peanut M&Ms to keep in my desk drawer at work."

"I need to get fit."

"Why aren't I losing any weight? I mean I only ate half the jumbo size bag of M&Ms and I ran once this week."

This is my daily dialogue with myself. I seem to be full of excuses and putting off the real get down to business attitude that I need to get myself in better shape. I try to justify my bad choices. 

"Dark chocolate is good for you. So consuming mass amounts of it during the week is a healthy snack."

Who am I kidding? My belly flab isn't buying my excuses or my justifications. It's time to get real. Time to cut the bullshit and just do it. But can I really commit? I see a million posts a week about people on the right path to success. Why can't I be one of them? Why am I in this perpetual state of non-motivation? I feel like I can be successful for a day or two and then I just give up. Maybe it's because I'm surrounded by bad choices. My support system is basically non-existent. I'm on my own in a world full of temptations and I have no self-control.

I decided to start running a few years ago as my attempt at exercise. I've completed a few 5K and 4 mile races but I still only run about once a week. You can read more about my running journey here. I mentioned in that post about my eating habits. It's been a about a month since I wrote that and I have started drinking more water. However, I'm not finding that it fills me up and keeps me from wanting a snack. But I have noticed that my face hasn't broke out in teenage acne nearly as often since I started. I've attempted to do better with my fruit & veggie intake. My wonderful Grandma passed down her super blender slash food processor slash better than any piece of chopping equipment I currently own and I decided to make smoothies.

I don't follow any recipes. I just throw whatever I have the blender and give it a whirl. This one was frozen strawberries, frozen mango chunks, half a banana and maybe a 1/4 - 1/3 cup of peach juice (Minute Maid brand). It was divine. Unfortunately I just broke my blender yesterday morning so now I'm searching Amazon for replacement parts ... so much for my smoothie kick :(

What suggestions do you have for keeping to a workout plan? 

What about eating better and snacking?

I could use all the help I can get!

Loving Lately

These past few weeks have been crazy busy. Here's my five favorite moments from the past few weeks via my phone.

1. Got my nails done for Mother's Day. I've been wanting mint polish forever!

2. I took the girls for ice cream. It was A's first real ice cream cone!

3. We went camping, that means s'mores! YUM!

4. I got most of my garden in. Grow little tomato plant!

5. We went to A's kindergarten play. It was adorable. She was the Queen of Hearts.

*Linking up for InstaFriday, Nail Files and High Five Friday

Book Update

I'm making some good progress on my goal of reading 30 books this year. I'm pretty confident that I'm going to make it! We aren't even half way through year and I've already read 18 books (check out my sidebar to keep up with my progress)! My mother would probably fall out of her chair if she knew that. I can't say enough how much owning a Kindle Fire has changed my reading habits. My idea of reading before was skimming through some fashion or food magazines. Aside from my required high school reading, I hadn't picked up a book since then.

I still have a couple on my winter book lists #1 and #2 that I need to finish. In all fairness I've read many other books that weren't on the list and a few that I picked out aren't available at my library for Kindle check-out. I just can't seem to bring myself to buy a book for download. There are so many free options so why spend the money?!

Any suggestions of what I should read next? I'm on a roll!

Do you Nectresse?

Have you seen this on the shelves in the baking section? The bright orange box ... it will catch your eye! Nectresse is an all natural sugar alternative made from monk fruit. It has a slightly fruity flavor to it so I always use it with berries. Here's my favorite way to use it ...

Take some strawberries, cut them up. Sprinkle with a packet or two of Nectresse. Let them sit a few minutes. Add to the top of pancakes along with sliced bananas. Enjoy all the deliciousness that is on your plate. :)

Thanks to Influenster for introducing me to Nectresse. 

*I received a box of Nectresse in my Sugar 'n Spice VoxBox from Influenster. All opinions are my own, even the recipe I did myself because I'm fancy like that. If you want to join Influenster, shoot me an email and I'll hook you up!

Pinned it, Made it

I've been trying to do better on acting on my pins. Teach appreciation is next week so I figured I'd beat the rush at school and do something this week for A's teacher. I found this cute idea from eighteen25.

See the pin

So last night we got busy with tracing A's hand and printing out the tag. Here's how our version turned out.

I had A cut out her own hand tracing and wrote Thank You on the hand and her name. I used a simple piece of ribbon and attached it all to the soap I picked up from Bath & Body Works. The soap was on sale for $3, so this was a super cute and inexpensive gift for her teacher. I loved that the printable came in many colors so A could pick the color she wanted to use (it just so happened to match the soap perfectly).

Drink up OHP style

What I wish I was drinking this weekend from Pinterest ...

Vodka Strawberry Lemonade {see the pin}

Make-ahead mango and raspberry margaritas {see the pin}

Pineapple sangria {see the pin}

To satisfy the chocolate craving, chocolate covered strawberry smoothie {see the pin}

*Linking up with Michelle over at The Vintage Apple