Well, I'm officially part of the quarter century club. Today is my 25th birthday! I have to say, I'm pretty happy with where my life is at. I know that my life now is a result of all the decisions and choices I've made throughout the years, so although I wouldn't take things back, there definitely are things that I wish I knew when I was younger... say, 10 years younger. I started to consider the top life lessons that come to mind, ones I now truly understand and try to live by. With that being said, here is a letter to my 15 year old self: Nicole, There are times in life when people give you advice, whether it's solicited or not. Sometimes you listen and really consider what they're saying; sometimes you listen and ignore them; sometimes you simply don't pay attention at all. This is ... [Read More]
Archives for August 2012
A Soup & Salad Kinda Night
After living with a cold-stricken man for the past week and trying to resist the bug, I've officially caught an annoying upper respiratory thing. Whomp. While I'm confident that I can overcome cold #237 of my life (okay, perhaps that's a dramatic overestimate), it never feels good to have a pounding headache, itchy throat, and feel exhausted for no apparent reason. I love to relax for a couple hours, but beyond that, I seem to have a tough time just hanging out. I suppose I just like to be busy and productive. But today, I resisted the urge to push myself to do a lot and kept it pretty low-key. And keeping it low-key means no-fuss meals like tonight's dinner, soup and salad. It took all of 5 minutes to put together, and was a healthy under-the-weather meal. Every ingredient happened to ... [Read More]
Hiking Iron Mountain
"Somewhere between the bottom of the climb and the summit is the answer to the mystery why we climb." - Greg Child Last night Adam surprised me with an early birthday gift -- a CamelBak for use during my outdoor workouts! It's a backpack that you fill with water and can continuously drink from. This was a perfect little gift, as I'm always thirsty and drink an insane amount of water, especially during exercise. What a smart man I married! Wanting to put my new workout gear to use, today my little family and I headed to a nearby town called Poway to hike somewhere we had never been to before, Iron Mountain. In reading reviews of the mountain prior to going, I had seen a few time estimates at 4 hours. My first thought was that there is no way Harley would last that long, as ... [Read More]
Spinach, Goat Cheese & Tomato Ravioli
Hi friends! Oooh, I have a yummy recipe to share with you today! Here are three things I'm loving on this Thursday: #1 - Stumbling upon NBC's Olympics website and discovering that I was able to live stream the women's gymnastics all-around competition this morning. Sure, it sort of spoiled my watching it on TV tonight, but it was cool to be able to see it while it was happening. Gabby Douglas is so damn cute! This distraction may or may not have decreased my morning work productivity. ;-) #2 - Yasso frozen Greek yogurt bars: I spotted these babies for the first time at my food store and nabbed the strawberry flavored ones. At just 70 calories a bar with no fat and 6 g of protein, these bars are tasty and might be my new favorite nighttime snack. #3 - Last but ... [Read More]
Wake Up (Your Body) Call
"To have a friend and be a friend is what makes life worthwhile." Fun fact: Today is National Girlfriends' Day. Shout out to my amazing girlfriends, love you ladies! I often like to start off my days with some movement. Sometimes it's just a few yoga poses (I talked about my favorite ones here), other times I take Harley for a nice long walk. And then there are days when I like to get sweaty first thing in the morning. Today was one of those days, so I did the following easy breezy workout. The idea is to do a very quick cardio routine, with your heart rate up the whole time. With some quick stretching immediately following, it'll take around 15 minutes and is a nice way to get moving before heading to work, class, or wherever your day takes you. Whenever I hear someone say they "don't ... [Read More]