Oikos Giveaway!

Good afternoon bloggies, it’s time for another giveaway!

I definitely wrote this last night but was in such a sleepy rush I forgot to post it! Ah! I spent most of the day at the Disney Expo with Ashley & Ryan we also hit up Whole Foods and LuLuLemon, those girls have an addiction.

I am EXHAUSTED and need to rest (maybe a little nap?). So here’s the giveaway information, full day recap tonight!

As you know, the other day, I mentioned that Stonyfield had sent me coupons to try their greek yogurt, Oikos! Well I totally and honestly loved it. So yummy!

They want to share the Oikos love with you all too!

The winner of the giveaway will receive an Oikos reusable tote as well as:

One free 16 oz. Oikos coupon and four free 5.3 oz. sized Oikos coupons.

Free greek yogurt and a cute tote. Love it!

To enter: Just head here to learn all about Oikos and tell me one fact about greek yogurt/Oikos! I would love if you tweeted this giveaway, or mentioned it but it’s not another entry in and it’s not mandatory, but if you’d like to mention it somehow then that would be great!

EDIT: I forgot to mention this is only open to U.S. Residents! Sorry my international friends.

I will choose a winner at random on Tuesday, January 12th!

Check out Stonyfield, they are a really awesome company. I just saw Food Inc., and it made me love the company even more!

Enjoy the rest of your evening, I am about to go soak in an epsom bath to soothe my sore legs and then crawl back into P.J.’s. It’s going to be a chill night in this house!

Also, are any of you in Orlando and if so are you going to the blog luncheon?? Let me know, I would LOVE to meet you!

Katy

Productivity..yay!

This had been a much better day so far!! I got to bed at a decent hour and got nine hour of sleep and woke up at eight! I would love to get up earlier, but that is much better then 9:30.

I got right to brewing some coffee and putting together a delicious breakfast.

Stonyfield contacted me and asked if they could send me some coupons to try their Oikos line of greek yogurts! I LOVE greek yogurt, and I haven’t tried all of their Oikos flavors yet so I jumped at the chance!

I tried the vanilla this morning for breakfast. Considering I had my breakfast dreamed up since yesterday I was super excited to finally put it together.

First I put some Oikos in my big red bowl.

Added a chopped up nectarine.

Added some chopped up strawberries and some warm cinnamon heart to heart. Mmmmmmmm!

I tried just the Oikos first and it was really delicious. Just a subtle flavor added to it, not overpowering at all. I really loved it and the texture was different then other greek yogurts I have had. Very yummy especially with berries and cinnamon cereal. This breakfast fueled me through my morning and workout!

So did this coffee.

All together.

I can’t workout right after I eat so I ate around 8:30, watched Regis & Kelly, got ready and headed out by 10:30.

Grabbed one of my magazines I have yet to read:

I then headed to the gym.

My Workout:

-30 minutes on the elliptical

3 sets and 15 reps of the following(all machines):

-Lat pull down

-Chest Presses

-Horizontal Chest Presses

-Sitting row

Total Time: 45 Minutes

______________________________________________________________

Whittle My Middle

When I got home I started the Whittle My Middle challenge thanks to Angela! I am a few days late, but I want to do it and last month I let starting late stop me from doing it all. Not this time! I followed her workouts and here’s how it looked:

Front Plank- 60 seconds

Side plank- 30 seconds each side

Torso Twists- 25 Reps

Plank ups(w/out leg ups): 10 reps

Boat Pose: 3 sets 10 reps Bicycle- 40 Reps

This was SO hard!! I know that’s the point but ouch. I could barely do side planks. I have such a hard time with those. Hopefully in a couple weeks I will be able to do them.

I took before pictures, but I won’t be showing those until I take the afters!

______________________________________________________________

To reward myself for a productive morning, I made a productive lunch:

First was this side dish(recipe at the end) :

This was SO yummy, like a grown-up broccoli and cheese so good and good for you!

Along with a huge sweet potato and the leftover slice of pizza. I ate 3/4 of the potato cause it was quite large but this was such a yummy lunch!

Grown-Up Broccoli & Cheese

One serving.

Ingredients:

-1/4 of an onion cut and broken into strips

-Cup of fresh spinach

-1/2 cup of broccoli

-Large clove of garlic, minced.

-Crumbly blue cheese

-Salt

-Pepper

Directions:

Have your pan on medium-high heat.

-First let the garlic brown in a little EVOO (be careful not to burn the garlic or it will get bitter).

-Next, once the garlic starts to brown add the onion strips along with some salt.

-The onions will take a bit to caramelize but keep moving them in the pan.

(it took about 15 minutes for the onions to get cooked down enough)

-Once the onions are caramelized and soft a bit, add the broccoli.

-Add a little more EVOO and salt and pepper as the broccoli cooks.

-Once the broccoli is heated through add the spinach and stir together.

-Toss the spinach with the onion and broccoli mix so it cooks down with the onions and broccoli.

-Once cooked down serve onto a plate and sprinkle with a small amount of blue cheese or any crumbly cheese.

Done!!

Super yummy, the onions get so sweet and the blue cheese works so well with the sweetness of the onions and the spinach is infused with the garlic and onion sweetness.

Nom nom nom!

Katy

Rough day.

So today has been a rough day! Just some stress, and found out my Dad won’t be able to make it for my graduation..all the sitnkin’ flights are full! BAH! SO I am a little bummed about that, but hopefully he will be able to come another time and spend a whole weekend here.

For breakfast, which was almost lunch because I almost forgot to eat breakfast! Aye! It was one of those days..

I ate some blueberry Oikos with some Kashi GoLean crunch mixed in.

Yummmm!

For lunch I had leftovers from last night. Some filet mignon, mashed potatoes, and asparagus! I heated up the filet in the oven with the rosemary which I then broke up into the mashed potatoes. Our apartment filled with the gorgeous aroma of rosemary and the potatoes tasted wonderful with the crunchy bits of roasted rosemary!

I sent out my super secret santa gift(which may get there late..oy!!) and then headed home to get ready for Adam’s Christmas party.

After the day I had I was just not up for dragging my DSLR to a party with people I mostly didn’t know, so I let myself take a night off!

I ate a little bit of 3 layer dip with chips, and some veggies with dip as well. I also ate some AMAZING baked brie(we got the recipe, might be making that really soon! I kept going back for more, especially with some drizzled honey. YUM!!!!

As my main course I ate some filet mignon and a lobster tail, with a side of two large shish-kabobs of veggies. Onions, zucchini, peppers, and mushrooms. Yum!

I also sipped a couple glasses of wine throughout the night.

I had a really great time, and was glad I started to feel comfortable really quick. Now I must get to sleep, I graduate tomorrow bright and early. I have to be there at 7:30 and my graduation is at 9:00! YAY!!!

Have a goodnight!!!

Katy

A sweet sense of Serendipity.

Tomorrow, I am homeward bound. Not like the movie, although that’s a great movie. Shadow was my favorite. Anyways, I am heading home from New York tomorrow!!

We overslept pretty late this morning! I woke up at 10:30 and fell right back to sleep. We finally got out of bed at 11:30! YIKES!! We went to bed late so it was good to get enough sleep, but still.

Since I knew we’d be eating lunch soon I started my morning with a strawberry Chobani. Just enough to hit the spot until we found our lunch local.

We headed to Museum of Modern Art(MoMA) since my mom has a membership there. On the way we took pictures..

Isn’t my sister pretty?

This just looked neat.

Radio City music hall!!

Got balls? I mean ornaments..

My sister and I.

The treeeee! Oh, and Rockefeller Center!

The skating rink..bahahaha look at the guy at the bottom. He totally ate ice right before I took this picture. He was totally fine, so I don’t feel guilty for laughing.

We made it to MoMA and headed straight to one of their cafe’s “Cafe 2″ it’s on the second floor. We decided to share an Antipasti tasting(choice of three).

We chose the beet salad with fresh ricotta and aged balsamic, roasted brussels sprouts with shallots, chestnuts, and rosemary balsamic, and the white bean salad with roasted mushrooms and shaved pecorino.

We also shared the duck prosciutto and arugula salad. The menu told us it also had seckel pear, humboldt Fog goat cheese, candied pecans and sherry vinaigrette.

We also shared the mushroom tart.

To drink, I chose a glass of the Nero d’Avola 2007. My sister chose the Valpollicella 2008.

Our Antipasti tasting..

Yumm! I am not a huge ricotta fan, so the beet was just all right. My sister liked it a lot. My favorite were the Brussels, oh man am I going to try and recreate this. SO yummy!! The balsamic and rosemary worked so well together. We have fresh rosemary in our “garden” so it will be perfect for that. So yummy.

The salad was delicious. I love cheese, and this stuff was pretty potent but so good! The dressing helped relieve some of the bite from the arugula and I think there’s no better match in greens then candied nuts, cheese and pears(or gala apples)! SO yummy! The duck prosciutto was pretty good as well, it added a nice salty bite to balance all of the other flavors. The flavors worked so well together. Delicious!

The wild mushroom tart was so amazingly mushroomy, obvious. But it was SO warm and comforting. This was delicious!

Reading the menu, I got SO excited! I love how much food excites me. I was like a kid in a candy store(although we did go to a candy store later).
I appreciate the attention and care they put into their food at the museum. It was delish!

I was playing around with the camera.
We then headed into some galleries that included Monet.

It was amazing to be standing so close to his work. We didn’t spend a lot of time in MoMA this time, but I will be back for sure.
I have to bring Adam back for this at least..

The Tim Burton exhibit!! Okay they absolutely positively did not let us take pics. This was farther away. My sister was trying to take a picture of just the entrance of the exhibit with her phone and they told her no. But oh my gosh guys, really really neat! If you are a fan of Tim’s at all, or at least enjoy some of his work you will love this. It has so much of his work from the time he was just a kid. Even seeing school papers he wrote in class, it’s just really incredible what has been saved. He has a twisted mind that one, but it’s so cool to get a look inside even if only a little. Kind of creepy, really cool. We even saw things used in his movies, like the dolls that catch on fire in “Charlie and The Chocolate Factory” when they are first walking in. Also, what they used to make “A Nightmare Before Christmas” and “Batman Returns”. Ahhh! You will just have to come see the exhibit, it’s open until next April!

We check out some amazing photography exhibits but it was getting late (and dark at 4:30) so we headed out, I will for sure be coming back! I loved it.

When we got near the plaza we ran into a movie premiere!!

It hadn’t started yet..but check out the red carpet!

Press..

I thought it was pretty cool!

But we had other places to head to.

Serendipity 3!!!!!

The movie was really cute. I have wanted to come here for so long! I have been to NYC many many many times. My mom and sister lived here in 2007 so for a year, this was home! We had made reservations once but they happened to be CLOSED right before I got there! Sad! Luckily today was my day.

Serendipity-“The art of finding the pleasantly unexpected by chance”. Gosh I love that! I had a very serendipitous experience.

    

We sat upstairs!(They sat upstairs in the movie!!!!)

We were a little hungry so we shared clam chowder, and french fries. What can I say. They were both delicious!!!

I ordered the most famous item on the menu(with a twist!)

They had a frozen MINT hot chocolate, instead of just the frozen hot chocolate. This was quite the experience.

Hey, there’s green in my dessert! Fresh mint.

No, I’m not yawning. My sister thought it looked like I was a giant about to eat that man in the first picture. So we literally tried for 5 minutes to take the last two. It sounded much like this:

Jen-”Move forward, not that much move back, move a little more forward, move up, up more, up more, to the side, open wide, open wide!!!”

It was really funny, and sort of awkward. But I think it was a semi-success.

We walked around more, and ended up at a bar. It’s a lot of fun to do non-touristy things in NYC, like head into a local bar it’s like a whole ‘nother world!

I first had a “Black Velvet” which is Guiness with hard apple cider. We met up with some of her friends at another bar but I just sipped water, I am tired of beer!! Although I had one when we moved to “Brother Jimmy’s” not the one she works at, but one nearby. There I had a Blue Moon. I made sure to sip water along with each beer this time.

I ate this as my late dinner, some amaaaaazing macaroni and cheese, a small piece of fried chicken, and two hush puppies with maple butter. Umm, yeah. It was awesome!! I love my southern comfort foods. Brother Jimmy’s does it right!

She wanted to go see some other friends, but I opted to come home. Thankfully she walked me back. It’s now 3 AM and I am still up!!

“It’s 3AM and I want to go to beeeddd!” (kudos to whoever names that band.)

I’m off to bed, my body is going to be soooo off when I get home! But I had a wonderful time. I really truly enjoyed the visit with my sister and I can’t wait to come back already and I haven’t even left yet!

Tomorrow I am getting up early to pack, and get ready to head home. I am grabbing a taxi at 12:15 when my sister leaves for work and my flight leaves at 2:20. I should be posting during that time since there’s wifi on the flight! I love that I can be productive when flying!!

Good night, morning !

Christmas in Cocoa!

Well, it’s now officially Christmas at the mall in Cocoa! I am on three hours of sleep right now so today is going to be interesting! Mall work goes from about 6PM-5AM. Luckily we were able to leave early since their are two “shifts”. We lasted until 2:45 and decided we would rather drive home awake, then push it and drive home exhausted.

I had a small plastic bag of Pirate’s booty right when we got to the mall as we were checking and replacing lights on the garland. I sipped on my 32 oz. of water as we worked as well. Mmmm H2O!

I also snacked on some monkey munch/puppy chow(whatever you choose to call it!):

Yumm! My wonderful friend Ashley brought a huge bowl of this stuff for us to munch on. Chocolate, peanut buttery goodness!

I also snacked on a few pieces of halloween candy throughout the night, about 4 pieces throughout the night. It was a LONG night so it was a nice sugary pick me up.

When we first got there we had three hours of prep work which involves “fluffing” garland, finding which lights work and don’t and replacing the lights that don’t. My pictures came out blurry, but here are some from the work room..

Yep there’s a whole lotta Christmas going on..

At about 8:30 we broke for dinner which was GREAT because we were starving. The group decided on pizza from the Sbarro in the mall, my only request was that there be veggies on the pizza. Luckily, Adam was ordering so he made sure to get one and even more fortunately I had some other veggie lovers to share with!

Plus another piece half the size of this one.

Okay it literally had just come out of the oven when we got it and my veggies tried to escape my ravenous attack. They lost the battle. I scooped the veggies back on and as unattractive as it looks it was yum! They had green peppers, a little brocc, red peppers, onion(notice an Italian theme with the colors?), and mushrooms! Mmmm! I wish their were more veggies on the pizza but it was better then having no veggies at all!

I brought some POM tea for a pick me up with dinner. I have never tried POM tea but it was yummy! I bought two of these during a sale at Publix so I have another yummy one waiting in the fridge for me. I loved the fruity green tea taste, it was a nice treat.

I also hated the pizza..obviously..

Throughout the night we prepared garland to hang..literally all night! Thank goodness though, the time flew by so fast. I literally couldn’t believe how fast time was passing by. At around 11:30 we hit a wall though and my friend Gayle I were pretty much garland buddies the whole night and we needed a coffee break. The only place to really get coffee that late(the DD wasn’t 24 hours..sad) was 7-eleven. We grabbed our friend Andy and drove down the road and made a coffee run. I ended up drinking an unpictured vanilla iced coffee. It was SUPER sweet! I’m not used to drinks that sweet, but it did the job.

Then during break around 1:45 I dug into this and shared with Adam:

He was really excited about this flavor, so was I! It was yummy with a very subtle sweetness. You would expect a little more tartness from a pineapple yogurt but it had just enough. It wasn’t my favorite flavor so far, I liked it..but Adam LOVED it!

We decided to head out at 2:45 since it was just us two driving home and we didn’t want to wait until we were super tired to drive home. Better safe then sorry, right? So we headed home. Luckily I think the coffee took 3 hours to kick in because we were talking the whole way home!

It was my first night home alone in our apartment all night, I ended up turning all the lights on and watching the recorded episode of SNL with Taylor Swift. It was one of the funnier SNL’s I have seen in a while! I think she did great, I especially loved “The Monologue Song”.

Long story longer, I couldn’t fall asleep. I was up until 6 AM..the sun was rising! I fell asleep watching Friends on my laptop. I woke up bright and early at 9:45 and couldn’t fall back asleep. At least I will be able to fall asleep early tonight?

For breakfast I had another breakfast cookie..yummm! I was sadly..and I mean sadly..out of bananas! It was still good but I missed the nanner yummyness! I added half a cup of 0% plain chobani and some more mushy strawberries.

Messy, yummy breakfast!

I then moved over to the coffee station, especially since..if you look at the clock..I had been awake 4 hours prior. Mmm coffee..

I am hoping to get out of the house today..Adam may not be as excited about that he was up until 6 as well, but stayed in Cocoa..and was running around all night. 12 hours! We shall see..wish me luck?

So that was a random job, but those decorations have to get up there somehow. What’s the most random job you’ve ever done?

Katy

P.S.- I just updated my about me section! Go check it out!

P.P.S. – Don’t forget to enter the giveaway! You have two days to enter!

My first giveaway! Yay!

I’m a little pressed for time since I am going to try yoga at home. I got the room heating right now! But I figured why not make this small post worth it?

Remember how I received an amazing package of Chobani yesterday? Well it’s super yummy, I enjoyed another amazing flavor today(will post about my day later! Well, I am slowly getting hooked..I love Greek yogurt!

Oh and another reason why I love Chobani? Because they want to share the love with you too! That’s right..you can win a package of Chobani greek yogurt to enjoy!

…my first GIVEAWAY!!! Can you tell how excited I am? This is a huge moment for me. Hold on..a moment please..

…

…

…

Okay I’m good. I had to soak up the moment.

To enter this giveaway all you have to do is visit Chobani’s Website and tell me what flavor you would choose and how you would eat it(with granola, in a smoothie, etc.)! You have until Tuesday to enter! I will choose a winner Tuesday afternoon..so spread the love! Twitter is not letting me in my account at the moment, so I need your help to spread the word! Oh..and some more exciting news…..you have TWO chances to win! I am not the only blogger having a Chobani giveaway this week, Anne from fANNEtastic food is as well! Head on over to her giveaway post and enter there too! You now have two awesome chances to win some delicious Chobani yogurt!

See you later tonight! Good luck!

Katy

Going greek!

..yogurt that is.

First..I must recap yesterday. As I last left you I was feeling numb and it felt as if my lip was HUGE! I could barely pronounce my “r’s” and had to carefully speak as not to bite my cheek. Yikes! I mentioned yesterday that I was told that caffeine may help. My dentist had no clue what the hygienist was talking about, but I decided why not give it a shot?

A little DD iced coffee(YUM!) with skim milk and sugar.

At this point my tongue was still 78.7% numb and so most of it felt warm and tasteless. I know, warm..weird huh?

I sucked that sucker down before getting to our small group. Dinner was awesome, although..again..couldn’t taste much:

Yes, yes..that is a Coke.

I used to drink A LOT of soda, but the last few months I just haven’t desired to, and I didn’t really last night but I wanted to test the caffeine theory. This was one of those mini-cans the “100 calorie” can of coke…and I couldn’t really taste it.

We had another wonderful salad with pears, dried cranberries, and walnuts I believe:

Then the soup..oh man the soup! Joyce(our wonderful cook and hostess) prepared “Christmas Soup” since it’s been cooler out.

As some fellow bloggers would say..holy yum! This had italian sausage, cheese, tomatoes, noodles, spices. I don’t have the ACTUAL recipe as you can tell, she hasn’t given that up yet. I will try and get it because it was so warm and so comforting!

As I sat in group I felt tingling, and more tingling..until within 30 minutes of dinner my numbness was completely gone!! I think the caffeine totally worked! Next time you go to the dentist try it and let me know if it works for you!

For dessert(that I could actually taste!!!) I had two chocolate chip cookies..with some lowfat milk! YUM!

I needed those cookies. It’s been one of those weeks..

When I got home a couple hours later I had another one of these:

This morning started with coffee and a mix: the Stonyfield strawberry probiotic, and plain yogurt:

Then added some flax and this granola:

It was what I was craving, yumm! But wore off after 3 hours of teaching. I always get hungry around the same time. Having to watch twenty first graders at all times doesn’t a lot time for a snackie. I only have three weeks left(not including having the week of Thanksgiving off). YAY!

My lunch saved my tummy:

Joyce felt bad that I could barely taste the soup she sent us home with leftovers! I had soup, a string cheese, one half of a sandwich thin(both of which were put into the soup), and a yummy cranberry applesauce with fiber! Filling and delish! I finally have been having exciting lunches!!

Now let’s get back to going Greek..

Let me just say that in the last few months I have fallen in love with Greek yogurt! As I child I mainly ate the flavored yogurts we so love as children! Some that even came in a plastic tube! But now I look back at those nutrition labels and the stats just aren’t pretty.

Greek yogurt to me is a thicker, tangier, more satisfying version of regular plain yogurt. Sure, sometimes it’s not as friendly on the purse strings but it’s a lot more substantial then regular yogurt with twice the protein! So worth it!

Why am I talking about Greek yogurt so much? Well..because..Santa came:

..in the form of a delivery man!

Chobani has sent me a sample of yogurts to try and review for the blog. MY FIRST PRODUCT REVIEW!! I am was smiling ear to ear as I tore through the box..gently..and unloaded these beauties:

I received:

• 2% Plain
• Vanilla
• Pineapple
• Pomegranate
• Strawberry
• Blueberry
• Honey
• 0% Plain
• Peach

It was all I could do not to open up each flavor and try it..I had to choose one for my afternoon snack. What to choose, what to choose?

If you know me..you know: I. Love. Honey.

I have mentioned this before but it’s silly how much I love it! I had high hopes for this yogurt. I was pleasantly surprised! Trust me I am not just saying it. I will be 100% honest in my reviews. I expected honey at the bottom, but it’s already mixed in! The sugar content is a little high but that’s mostly because of the honey. With 16g of protein packed in this little container, it was worth it! I have over-honeyed plain yogurt before and this had the perfect amount of honey sweetness! I will be buying this flavor again! Can’t wait to try all of the other flavors!

Here are some other reasons to love their Greek yogurt that I found on their website:

• All natural. No preservatives. No artificial flavors.
• No synthetic growth hormones.
• Includes five live & active cultures, including three probiotics.
• Made with real fruit.
• Twice the protein of regular yogurts.
• A good source of bone-building calcium.

It was the perfect snack since I get home around 4 and usually don’t want to eat anything to large since dinner isn’t too far away!

I am excited to try the other flavors!

Well, I’m off to figure out dinner and try and fit in some yoga. I am going to try and get Adam to try some poses since I may be able to convince him to come to class with me! We’ll see..

In other fitness related news I think I may be able to run Saturday morning, I am starting to feel better so yay! I know you haven’t seen many veggies or fitness here yet but to be honest:

a)I need to go grocery shopping

b)I have been sick and haven’t been able to really work out. I am hoping that’s over and that downing Emergen-C every day will finally cure me!

I am hoping we have frozen veggies in our freezer cause they will somehow be making an appearance in dinner. I miss my veggies!! I feel like I just want a huge salad right now, but we are out of lettuce. That’s what happen when your week has been as busy as ours! Oy..now time to relax, make dinner, and catch up with my husband and the blogworld!

Katy

Like this post? Don’t forget to subscribe either by a blog reader or e-mail! Check the RSS-Feeds link in the upper right hand corner above my picture! Thanks friends!