Holiday Temptations

Unfortunately for me, baking is probably one of my favorite hobbies. I'm good at it, it relaxes me, and I like keeping my hands busy. The unfortunately part comes when I'm trying to lose weight during the holiday season. Right now I'm resisting, and have plans for it to all go to work with me on Monday, but we'll see if I can hold out.
I am however in the middle of the Holiday Bootie Buster Challenge though and am putting down my workouts for the week!

Saturday: 2 miles and then 15 minutes rowing machine (3)
Monday: At home leg weight workout. Lots of squats and leg lifts and some abs (1)
Wednesday: 1 hour of spinning during my lunch hour (6)
Thursday: 5 miles at the Drumstick Dash here in Indy with my mom (5)

I'd have liked to have more points this week, but my legs were hurting this week, so I took friday as a rest day. Today starts a new week though! Hoping to beat my points from last week though I've got a challenging week as I leave for St. Louis for a conference on Wednesday-Sunday. Favorite event of the year, but it is really early mornings and really late nights!

Links to what I baked yesterday...all of it delicious, please drool!
Apple Streusel Cheesecake Bars (a family favorite!)
Cinnamon Bun Popcorn 
Peanut Butter Chocolate Bugles (amazing!! Wish I had thought of it first! Mom and just piped plain PB though, no extra sugar)
Salted Caramel Butter Bars 

All of it delicious. Trying to decide still what to make for a cookie exchange I have coming up. Not sure if any of these will make the cut!

Working on my Holiday Fitness!

I struggle with workout motivation like nobody's business. Every night I set the alarm. In the morning it goes off and I think to myself " oh no way, I can't do it" I then instead tell myself I'll workout after work. I spend all day planning this until it gets to be 5:30 and I want nothing more than my sweatpants and some OnDemand tv. Sound familiar?

I'm really at an unhappy place with my body lately and so started to the internet for some motivation and found two blogs I need to brag on.

1. So as I mentioned, getting my butt to the gym is an eternal issue for me. I feel good when I do it, but getting there is a challenge. Thanks to a twice a week spinning date with some ex-coworkers I've made some progress, but this blog has really helped. For some reason just reading her posts gets me motivated to get moving! I've also signed up for the Holiday Bootie Buster Challenge as a motivation keep my bootie going during the holidays. Running a 4.5 mile race on Thanksgiving with my mom with some motivation from HBBC! http://www.runtothefinish.com/

2. Just as I struggle with working out, I have the same nutritional issues. I ate whatever I wanted growing up thanks to years of dancing and have realized the health implications that it can cause. 100 Days of Real Food has really pushed me to rethink the way I eat in a no-nonsense way. I'm starting with small changes, and have gone from about 48 oz of diet soda a day to now only about 8 a day. My plan is to officially be weaned off next week! I've also started to revamp some of my recipes to include much less processed foods. http://www.100daysofrealfood.com/ 

I'm most definitely a work in progress, but stay tuned as I provide more updates for this side of my journey to 30 and journey to health!My first HBBC update will be posted on Friday!

Kentucky Beauty

So I was blessed to spend a long last weekend at the cutest little lake cottage in Taylorsville, KY. The manfriend and I discovered it on a Living Social deal while we were contemplating vacation and it was a perfect fit for what we were looking for. The scenery was perfect in late October and I got to spend a few days relaxing. Here is the top 5 best of the weekend!

5. I finally watched The Godfather. We had some rain on our trip so we watched it on his computer. Oddly enough I had a hard time watching the movie, the suspense was killing me, I just knew more people were going to keep dying. But glad I can say I've seen it.

4. Polishing off some good books. I read The Best of Me by Nicholas Sparks and finally finished Water for Elephants. I'm a reading machine and could have holed up all weekend with a book and a blankie that we like to call Big Red :)

3. We cooked some great meals together. I made us a homemade barbeque chicken pizza pictured below and we had some great pork loin and potatoes another night. So nice to have the time and energy to cook a delicious meal together.

2. The Makers Mark Tour! We took one of our days and ventured out and our first stop was Makers Mark. It helped that the day was gorgeous, but the grounds were beautiful, the tour informative, and we dipped our own bottles of bourbon. Just a great day spent with the one I love!

1. The view from our hot tub! We did spend a lot of time in this hot tub as it was perfect crisp and fall outside with a lovely view!

Manfriend was having some back issues or we would have done some hiking too. If anyone is looking for a super relaxing long weekend. I highly recommend Edgewater Resort !