Hello friendssssssss!

How was your Monday? Mine actually went pretty well! I’m semi bummed though, it’s windy, raining and freezing = no outside run. Boo.

So I read this great blog post on Glamour.com by Margarita Bertsos today. She was recently given the opportunity to workout with Jillian Michaels of the Biggest Loser (ok, I know I write about Jillian like twice a week – I love the woman!) and she wrote about what she learned from her workout. Among her points was, “Don’t waste your time at the gym.” Not, ‘don’t waste your time by going to the gym’, rather, ‘don’t waste your time when you’re at the gym.’

Jillian helped Margarita realize that if you’re going to be at the gym – you should be completely present and devote 110% to your workout. I find myself guilty of not giving it my all at the gym sometimes. When I’m working out outdoors I feel like I really push myself by tackling hills and challenging courses, but at the gym, I could definitely kick it up a few notches. Raise the incline on the treadmill a tad higher, increase the resistance on the elliptical just a little bit more…do my arm circuit with 8 pound weights instead of 5…(hey, I have small arms!). So anyways, I thought it was a really good post about pushing past the limits we sometimes set for ourselves and don’t think we can get past. I’m going to try and step it up this week at the gym – I’ll let you know how it goes!

FOOOOOOOOOD. This afternoon I headed down to our work cafeteria (I just typed school cafeteria!) with the intentions of getting a nice, warm bowl of Chicken soup…however, when I got there it was slim pickins’ and the soup not looking too good – semi cold and all the good stuff was picked out – yuck. So instead I got a turkey sandwich with all the fixins’:

• Turkey
• Whole wheat bread
• Pepper jack cheese
• Honey mustard
• Red onion
• Cucumber
• Yellow banana peppers
• Pickle

There was an excessive amount of turkey on this sandwich, so I took some of it off – but other than that, really, nothing beats a good old turkey sandwich. I’m convinced that Pepper jack cheese is just the freaking best – I LOVE it!

For dinner, I tried a new recipe – Falafel a la Hungry Girl.  I’m going to be honest – I like the Hungry Girl daily emails that I get, however I really dislike how a lot of their recipes call for something like “2 tablespoons of Duncan Hines Cake Mix.” Well, what am I supposed to do with the rest of the cake mix? I feel like with a lot of their recipes, I’d have a lot of random ingredients leftover that I wouldn’t use again and that’s just wasteful. That said, I was very pleased to open up my Hungry Girl email today and find a recipe that was totally doable – Falafel balls! I LOVE FALAFEL. I’m just going to throw that out there. They are so delicious and so I was p-u-m-p-e-d to try this recipe! It did not disappoint!!! Mmmmm this was a really easy recipe to follow and the falafel came out just right. I paired the balls with a spinach salad with shaved red onions and a cool, cucumber-yogurt dressing. Here’s the recipe (I more or less followed it – minus the dill in the dip/dressing because I despise dill.)  Falafel Pita Pickets with Dill-icious Yogurt Dip.

Tonight I get to do laundry, pay some bills and clean the house – Yay! Just kidding, sometimes you gotta do, what you gotta do.

Question: Does anyone have any good remedies for dry.as.a.bone. hair? Ugh, my ends are shot! Luckily, I’m getting a trim tomorrow, but I need to start super conditioning ASAP. Let me know if you’ve tried a product that worked well for you!