snow, myfitnesspal, and toms

Happy Tuesday! 

If you're in Colorado, you woke up this morning with a soft blanket of fluffy snow covering everything in sight! The puppies woke me up early so I pulled on my boots and hit the shovel. Evil Neighbor Naggie was shoveling outside, too. That betch. On a more positive note, on mornings like this morning, I'm pretty thankful we have a small patio to shovel off, and maintenance to do the front for us! 

I want to share with you a REALLY neat website I've started using! It's myfitnesspal.com, a free calorie counter/diet and exercise journal! For years I have kept a little food/exercise journal. I keep it in my purse and I find it useful to track my eating habits. But this website is awesome! It took like 5 seconds to make an account, all they need is an email address, and it's totally free. You enter your weight loss goals, and it gives you a calorie/day allotment, but it never suggests under 1200 calories. It has a huge food database so if I enter that I ate a "Wasa cracker", I can choose the exact kind and it knows the nutritional information on it. So neat! And it also calorie estimates for energy expended. Like this morning, I put in that I "shoveled snow" for 13 minutes, and it said I burned approximately 83 calories! Neat! And as a funny little perk, you can also add friends on it. A couple of girls from my work are on it, so we can see when someone has done an activity or met their weight loss goals, etc. It's motivation to see when someone else just logged a work out! Anyway, I have been finding this website really useful, and I hope you do too!

Lastly, I wanted to share with you a cool giveaway a fellow blogger is doing. Elizabeth over at Musing Experiences is giving away a pair of Toms! How neat :) I've never had Toms, and I'd *LOVE* to win a pair! They are for such a great cause! The pair I like are the Pomegranate Corduroy ones! They're cute!

Hope everyone is staying safe and warm in all this weather! I am thankful for my home and my living space heaters {puppies} today! My heaters even smell good because they got baths last night!

I am going to have a get-things-done-around-the-house kind of day. Prepping for my big Wine & Cheese party I'm hosting this Saturday! My birthday is next Weds, so I'm having a birthday/Vday party and I'm so excited for it! I got the CUTEST black sparkly poofy skirt strapless party dress yesterday! Can't wait to show you pictures :) Also some On Demand Yoga is on the schedule, and making a Spinach Quiche! Ambitious, I know. 

xoxo

Cheers!

keep on keepin' on!

Hey hey!!! It's the middle of the week and I hope you lovelies are all doing SO fabulous :)

This week has been a nice contrast to last week's craziness. My Monday night shift got canceled, so I only have to work tonight and tomorrow night then I'm done for the week! Two 12 hour shifts and I'm home free, baby :) How different from my five shifts, last week! Goes to show you can never tell when it's going to be busy at work! Those babies are so unpredictable! 

Just wanted to update you on the Half-Marathon training...so far this week I'm 3 for 3 on my workouts! Monday I had my "long run" (6 miles) day, so I ran 5 miles and walked 1 for a total of 6. Yesterday was my leg lifting and abs day - and let me tell you - my butt is soooo sore from that leg press! And my abs are a bit on fire, too! The kind of sore that hurts so good! Today was my "easy run" day (2 miles) and I ran 3 miles and walked 2 for a total of 5. Not too shabby! 

Tomorrow I have good intentions of getting up in the afternoon and doing a good arms/back lifting session, we'll see how that goes ;) I have to say it feels wonderful to be back in the mode of breaking a super sweat every day! The plan to get motivated by this half-marathon is really working so far! Speaking of motivation, while I was running today there were these two ladies chatting in front of my treadmill...with such awesome bodies! They were the athletic yet feminine builds - not super scrawny but not too muscly for their own good. One had the best 6 pack I've seen in a while! So...after my run, where do you think I went? Yep, to the mats to do some ab-work! Haha. We all have to get motivation somewhere, right?

Currently I'm reading the Golden Compass. Tyler and I decided to buy the trilogy His Dark Materials (of which the Golden Compass is the first book) because we watched the Golden Compass the other day, and we were sad to find out that they are no longer making the other two movies of the trilogy due to lower than expected movie sales for the first one. Bummer. And we were so curious about so many things about the movies that we decided we had to read the books to get our answers! They're books I've been meaning to read for a long time, anyways, so I'm excited! Have any of you read these books?

Only two more days til the weekend, y'all!

Cheers to that!

5.46 miles

Okay, folks.

Monday was my first official training day for the Rock & Roll Half-Marathon! I went to this website to create a 14-week training program for the half, and it mapped out what I should do each day up til the run. And what do you know - my first day of training was a 6 mile run! Geez! A few years ago I literally ran 5 miles every day for a year. I missed maybe 2 days of running. It was awesome and I felt awesome. Since my running dedication has ceased, I have run around 5 miles maybe a couple of times a month. So 6 miles didn't really scare me.

But I did work last night, and I did work tonight. So that left me with not a lot of time to fit my run in. I slept for 7 hours today, made it to the gym by 4:20 (all proud of myself, since I don't usually go during my work stretches), and then was kinda mad that I didn't have time to finish my run. I finished 5.46 miles before the clock struck 5:30 (which is my last call at the gym before I have to have to leave to go get ready for work). So, while I am kinda bummed I didn't hit the 6 mile mark, I'm happy that I did a great run today. It felt sooooo good and the endorphins have been working in my favor all night long at work!

So there's your update.
Day 1 = success :)

Cheers!