Who’s ready for Christmas??? I know I am! The closer it gets the more excited I get about vacation, spending time with loved ones, playing with Ella, vacation, baking up lots of cookies, nannying, vacation, Christmas movies and music, snuggling up under big blankets, and vacation.

What are you most looking forward to during the holidays?

Speaking of Ella, she was being super cute the other day while I was blogging doing homework.She normally will not get in her crate by herself (I think she’s afraid we’ll shut the door on her if she does :-P) but the other day she crawled right in there and took a nap.

Well, she at least tried to nap. Someone sticking a camera in her face…so she promptly turned around and that was the end of my picture taking.

😉

Oh yeah, my camera is still broken (I somehow forgot to bring it to the shop this weekend), so I have been camera-less these past couple of days. Because of that, this WIAW is a bit sparse. Oh well.

WIAW

Breakfasts

A strawberry protein smoothie. The reason it looks kind of dark is because I added in about a teaspoon of cocoa powder for some chocolate-y flavor and extra antioxidants. 🙂 I also had some toast on the side.

When I came home last Thursday night I saw that my mom had bought a box of Lucky Charms. I quickly became friends with that.

Lucky Charms is still one of my favorite cereals!

Lunches

One super good lunch I enjoyed was a combination of barbeque pulled pork and shredded chicken.

The picture might not be the prettiest thing in the world, but the food was actually super delicious! I also had some mixed veggies on the side.

Another lunch I enjoyed was leftovers from Saturday night’s dinner: salmon, stir-fry veggies (which I just steamed), and wild rice. Yum!

Finally, my mom and I went to Panera Saturday afternoon and I got my trusty favorite: a BBQ chopped chicken salad.

(source)

Snacks

While Costco has some pretty cool stuff, I typically am not too interested in going there. I’d rather do my shopping at a grocery store or something. The only reason I will gladly go to Costco is when it’s sample time. A sample was the reason why we brought these home:

They’re sooooooo good. Other than the fact that they have a whole bunch of mono-unsaturated fats, whole grain, and fiber in them, they taste amazing. The pumpkin is pretty noticeable and slightly sweet, but the salt coating the chips is a perfect counterbalance. I had probably 16.4 servings of these over the course of Saturday and Sunday.

Dinners

As you saw above in lunches, a super delicious dinner I enjoyed this past week was a plate of salmon (the pale pink was from the store; the dark pink was wild caught by my brother, dad, cousins, or uncle…we don’t know who caught what), stir-fry veggies, and wild rice.

The wild rice was surprisingly tasty. It smelled pretty much like earth (which may or may not be a bad thing, depending on your perspective) but I loved the texture and flavor. It was a nice change up from brown rice.

Pizza was also on the menu this week…

And this salad from a local restaurant. It’s just a grilled chicken salad with balsamic vinaigrette, but it is very yummy.

Finally, on Sunday, my mom made a roast, complete with carrots and potatoes. I threw the peas in last minute. Yum.

How very British. 🙂

Desserts

Other than some M&Ms and chocolate frozen yogurt, I had two noteworthy desserts this past week. The first was my attempt at a shake.

This picture isn’t very good (darn that early sunset!), but I basically combined chocolate fro-yo, coffee (my stomach didn’t react to it!), a bit of milk, and some chocolate chips in the blender and this was the result. I’m not a very good shake-maker…oh well, lesson learned. 🙂

And, of course, you already know about these by now…

Workouts December 2-8
Sunday: 40 minutes elliptical trainer
Monday: off (except for the 2012 Closeout Challenge – see below)
Tuesday: 20 minutes jogging + 25 minutes walking on treadmill
Wednesday: 40 minutes elliptical trainer
Thursday: off or switch with Saturday
Friday: P90X yoga
Saturday: 25 minutes jogging + 25 minutes walking on treadmill
Sunday: rest

In other news, I realized last night that my calling these cookies Christmas Funfetti Cookies was actually sort of stealing Pillsbury’s phrasing (Funfetti is a copyright of theirs). While my blog isn’t big enough to catch too much flack for that, I still wanted to change it. Years of university classes have instilled a horror of getting caught infringing on copyright. 🙂 Anyway, I’ve now changed the name to Christmas Confetti Cookies. It’s not that big a difference, but I wanted to just clear that up in case you noticed the change….

Over the weekend my mom and I went to the mall. We had coupons and discounts to use, so we made an afternoon of it. Totally unexpectedly, I ended up with this amazing dress!

(source)

I. Love. It. Although I would have loved it anyway, I think part of the reason I’m so obsessed with it is because it looks like something Sybil from Downton Abbey or Margaret from Boardwalk Empire would wear. Those are two of my favorite shows right now, so the fact that my dress has a teeny connection to them makes it that much better. In my opinion. 😀

What are your favorite TV shows?

2012 Closeout Challenge

So about a week ago I decided to partake in Courtney‘s 2012 Closeout Challenge. Basically, you do 2,012 reps of exercise starting December 1st and going through December 31st. You can read more about it here. I decided to split the reps up between three exercises: squats, pushups, and Pilates roll-ups, which comes out to 22 reps of each every day. Covering most of the bases with those three! It’s going pretty well so far – I’m surprised that I’m not more sore. Maybe I should up the reps…?

Finally, it has been one whole year since my family got Ella! This was the picture my mom saw online that did it:

Of course, I was in England when this all went down (and quite sorry that I was missing the first few weeks of puppy), but I remember the first time I saw her on Skype:

So cute! She was so tiny (my mom held her in one hand to bathe her) and afraid of the iPad, which we were using for Skyping.

Anyway, it’s been such a fun year with my little pup!

What are some of your favorite pet memories?

That’s about all I have for today – have a wonderful Wednesday!