Good afternoon Beautiful,HAPPY HUMP DAY! Man, it’s almost the weekend again! Any big plans? I DO! I’m going back to my home town (Wingham, ON – google it..) on Saturday afternoon to hang out with my family, and go to a really good friend of mine’s bridal shower on Sunday. I’ve never been to a bridal shower before, and I’m not sure what all I need to bring besides a gift. The invitation said something about a recipe card, photo or something that Alyssa could put in a scrap book that would remind her of us. I have no friggen clue…. I could give her a really cool paleo recipe? Haha – I’m so clueless… I’ll Google it later and figure it outJI think there are going to be a few people at this bridal shower that I went to high school with and haven’t seen in years. I hate this – it’s so much pressure! I have to figure out what to wear that 1. Doesn’t make it look like I’m obviously trying to look good, and 2. Is something I already own because I just committed to not shopping for the rest of the month, but I’ll get to that in a second. I think I want to wear a dress if it’s going to be nice out, but I’m not sure if heels are going to look too over the top. I could wear a dress with flats, or jeans and heels…. I think this is going to be more of a “spur of the moment” type outfit, which I’m going to have to figure out probably on Saturday morning.Funny story about this actually. So I mentioned I had never been to a bridal shower before and I was telling this to my mom when I was asking her about taking stuff, and in all honesty, I had no idea that people registered at stores of a bridal shower – really. I thought you brought gifts, but I didn’t know that you were to buy specific things picked out by the bride for this particular event. I know people register for a wedding, but I honestly didn’t know people do this for showers. Well, you should have seen how wide my mother’s eyes got when she heard me ask “Am I supposed to bring a gift or something”… Haha, whoops. ANYWAYS – point of the story is that I’m so friggen thankful for said registry because I would have NO idea what to get Alyssa, and I love the fact that I can walk in, tell them who I’m shopping for, say “I’ll buy this and this” and know that no one is getting her the same thing. Way to go whoever thought of the whole concept of registering, way to go.So I broke the news to you briefly about my goal to not purchase clothing for the rest of the month. I had posted my plan on Facebook so that I feel obligated to see my goal through to the end without cheating. I already had one comment saying “That’s only two weeks lol”… well, yes, it’s true. It’s not a long period of time but I do have a problem with buying clothes. I buy clothes every single time I get paid and the only way I can ever save money is to have it automatically withdrawn out of my bank account into my ING savings account, which I have 4 of in order to save for 4 different things (RRSP, Vacation Fund, Down Payment On A House Fund, Louboutin Fund). I’m not the kind of person who can just have money hanging out in my bank account without being able to find every single excuse to go on a shopping rampage, and I need to learn to control the monster within. So I’m starting slowly, and committing to only two weeks of no shopping. I’ve also got myself a free app on my iPad called Mint. It’s a personal budget app, so I can tell where all of my money is going to. Turns out I already spend way more on fast food than I thought. FYI – they classify “fast food” as like, Starbucks and stuff. I don’t eat McDonalds, or Harveys, or Burger King or anything of that sort…. I do sometimes enjoy a good Hero Burger, I love that their meat is 100% grass fed meat from Ontario, and they have gluten free buns!So I think I’ve got everything budgeted out accordingly, but this is my first month so I’m sure there will be some tweaking but I’m hoping to be fairly close as long as I exercise some self-control. I get so proud of myself for conquering debt and that was one of my New Year’s resolutions. I’ve almost got my credit card paid off…. It’s the shopping that gets me every time! Hence why I need to stop for a while, and figure out my finances. I can do this! I’ve been working out a lot this week! Yesterday I decided to do chest and triceps because my legs (mostly hamstrings) and my back felt so sore, so my resistance training workout was cut down in time a bit due to general body pain:***1 DIP AT 100% BODY WEIGHT! I was so proud of this…. It was so hard! I’m sure I looked like I was having an aneurism but I DID IT! Ah! So great to do that!3 sets of:
10 dips with 60lbs of help (I was dipping 90lbs in total)
10 push-ups from my toes (for the first round, knees after)3 sets of:
Chest press with the dual cable cross using 10lbs on each side (this exercise seems hard, but I have really long arms and the whole lever mechanism really does make it harder…)
10 tricep press downs with 27lbs on the dual cable cross30 minutes of cardio.Lameo-workout, I know. It’s such a dinky one that I didn’t even feel good about it (besides the 1 bodyweight dip I did) but it is what it is. Some days are fantastic and others are awful. This was, medium. I knew I needed to play volleyball last night as well, so there was that, AND we did amazing! I was in a bad mood last night for no reason, and got to volleyball and being on the beach made me so much happier. We even won 3 of 6 games! A new record for team To Kill a Blocking Nerd! We played so well, I hope we keep this up!! We played with a new girl because she was subbing for our usual other female and at first I couldn’t really tell if she was good or not, but I eventually got a feel for her game and we went on to do some serious dominating!Super fun!Today I had planned on working out fairly hard because tonight I’m hanging out with my friends to drink wine and watch this week’s episode of The Bachelorette so I needed to burn off the calories before I put them back on again. I started doing weights and my body is a lot sorer than I thought it was! I opted for some cardio instead so I hopped onto the elliptical for 30 minutes and continued reading a book I have on my iPad, and the book (I can’t remember the title) is by Tucker Max. It’s the most disturbingly hilarious book I have ever read, and how convenient that it just lays open for me to read while doing my cardio? It’s fabulous! I haven’t listened to music while doing cardio in a long time! Ok so the book is called Sloppy Seconds and it was a free e-book. I wouldn’t recommend you read it if you’re easily offended.Tonight for dinner, I’m really excited to cook! I love cooking and found that I’m relatively good at it!Not baking however, baking is a whole different ball game and I can’t do it. But tonight, I took chicken thighs out to thaw and I found this delicious looking recipe in my Paleo Diet app!Smoked Paprika Chicken Thighs8 bone-in, skin-on chicken thighs
3 tsp smoked paprika
3 tsp garlic powder
3 tsp ground cumin
¾ tsp ground cayenne
3 tbsp olive oil
sea salt
freshly ground black betterThen you put the chicken in a “shake and bake” bag and put in the rest of the ingredients, shake it all up, put the chicken in a glass dish (I don’t know what the technical term for this glass dish I have is) cover with tinfoil and bake for 40-45 minutes at 425 degrees. Skin should look crispy and delicious. I’ll probably cook potatoes with it, somehow. Maybe I’ll make C rice and me veggies since I don’t think I can also bake potatoes at the same time, our oven is condo sized and does not fit a lot of stuff. I will let you know how the recipe turns out!Anyways, I’m off to buy a bottle of wine for my gathering tonight (as a house gift, not to drink of course!) and some stuff for dinner! Have an amazing night!
Stay sweet.
xoxo