To Do List Tackle

My morning was such a whirlwind! I was up at 6:00 AM knocking off tasks from my To Do List. I’ve made a pretty good dent so far!

Exercise
Spray tan
Drive Mal to golf
Blog
Clean apartment
Lululemon
Health post
Health invoice
Pick up/drop off dry cleaning
Get bridesmaid dress hemmed
Buy hand-weights
Shower gift
Grocery shopping?

Workout

Before I did anything else, I hit the gym for a much-needed workout.

Thank you for all of your words of wisdom regarding my exercise guilt. It’s comforting to know that other people experience the same type of feelings. I guess I’m normal!

I spent 60 minutes at the gym this morning: 30 minutes strength training, 10 minutes on the elliptical, and 20 minutes walking on an incline on the treadmill (incline: 5.5 – 7.0, mph: 3.8 – 4.2).

Back, Biceps, and Triceps

Bench Press: 3 sets, 10 reps, 20-25 lb. dumbbells
Bent Over Row: 3 sets, 12 reps, 12 lb. dumbbells
Chest Flies: 3 sets, 12 reps, 20 lb. dumbbells
Seated Reverse-Fly: 3 sets, 15 reps, 12 lb. dumbbells
Concentrated Biceps Curls: 3 sets, 10 reps, 15 lb. dumbbells
Triceps Dips: 3 sets, 20 reps, body weight

Breakfast

I’ve been dying to try the empty nut butter jar + oats trick, so I was psyched when I realized that we were just about out of peanut butter this morning.

I made banana oats to accompany my empty peanut butter jar.

Holy yum! I loved finding “pockets” of peanut butter on random bites!

With iced coffee…

To my iced coffee, I added vanilla soy milk and NuStevia. I usually don’t like Stevia, but this brand didn’t have that weird/bitter aftertaste.

NuNaturals actually has an entire line of Stevia products, including baking products.

I’m excited to try the Cocoa Bean and Vanilla extracts in my baking experiments.

Spray Tan Fun

I have a photo shoot with Shape magazine on Monday, and since there has been ZERO sun in Boston this summer, I decided to get a spray tan this morning. I am much too pasty to appear in a national magazine!

I’m a total spray tan rookie, so I checked out tips online before going to Glow this morning. The spray tan process is really quick and painless. I was in and out in about 15 minutes!

I also took some “before” photos to compare the contrast of shades. Hopefully, I don’t blind you all with my ghost-colored legs!

I need to let my tan “soak-in” for a few hours, so I’ll snap some “after” photos a little later. I guess the spray tan gets quite a bit darker the longer you wait to shower. So far it looks pretty good!

Lunch

After dropping off Mal, I sat in traffic for a solid 45 minutes (damn 93!), so I was good and hungry by the time I arrived home. I whipped up a tuna sandwich on toasted Arnold Sandwich Thins.

I mixed Claire’s relish and salty pepper Somersaults into the tuna. The combo was seriously delish!

We don’t have a single fruit or veggie in our refrigerator, so I made due with what we had. I added half of an Odwalla Wholly Grain fruit smoothie to lunch. I figured that the tropical blend of orange, pineapple, and mango juices was a good substitution for fresh produce.

This particular Odwalla drink packs 32 grams of natural whole grains into each bottle. The entire bottle has 400 calories in it, so I poured half of it into a glass and added a splash of water and some ice.

The taste was refreshing, and, of course, it’s a delicious way to incorporate healthful whole grains into your diet, but I’m not sure I’d buy this particular flavor very often. I tend to get a good amount of whole grains in my diet each day, so I don’t really need to add more. If you want to drink your whole grains this smoothie is a great option with 6 grams of fiber and 6 grams of protein per bottle.

National Hot Fudge Sundae Day

Today is National Hot Fudge Sundae Day! Who would have guessed?!

Here are a couple of recipes to help kick off the holiday:

Hot Fudge Sundae Shake
Mint Hot Fudge-Brownie Sundae

Moja Love

MojaMix received quite a bit of traffic from from the giveaway the other day, so they decided to implement a 10% discount on all orders. Just use the code ?carrotsncake? at check out. The deal is good until the end of the month, so be sure to jump on it!

A Delicious Life Balance

Check out a post about Carrots ‘N’ Cake on Do You Digg It!

Tackling my To Do List continues!

See ya later!