Quick Highlights of the Week

Life has been incredibly busy between recovering from Jamers' 30th birthday and planning my friend Ashley's baby shower this weekend, so my apologies for not writing more! Since it has been a few days since my last post, I thought the easiest thing to do would be to give a quick overview of the highlights of the week thus far.

On Tuesday, Karlee and I went to our first career fair together! It was the Andre Carson Career Fair sponsored by Ivy Tech. It was a pretty big turn out and Karlee and I discovered that we are quite the dynamic duo when it comes to career fairs!

Wednesday brought forth another recruiting event, which was a Recruiters Informational Breakfast at Butler University. It gave us a lot of good ideas and got us thinking about some upcoming projects we may want to execute. We also had a delicious breakfast of eggs, sauteed veggies, hash browns and fresh fruit. Really good!

My lunches this week have been nothing but salads, which is fine by me! And as I mentioned in this post, I can't stop eating black beans. I've been putting them in pretty much every salad I eat and also just eating them on their own or as a side dish. In fact, I did BOTH for yesterday's lunch!

Between all of that, I've just been trying my best to get some work outs in and drink plenty of water from my favorite water bottle by Camelbak!

It's very important to stay hydrated when you're keeping busy like I have been this week.

The only other thing I want to post, because I haven't done so yet, is a picture of our new front room in all of it's glory!

New paint, new carpet, new furniture and voila! I can't wait to host the shower in this room in just a couple of days!

Until next time.

Jamieson's 30th Birthday Bash in Detroit!

Hello!

As you may remember from this post, my gift to Jamieson for his birthday this year was two tickets to a Tigers game in Detroit this past weekend. What some of you may not know, because I couldn't blog about it and risk the birthday boy seeing it, is that for months now I've planned to have Jamieson's friends and both of our families surprise him by also making the trip to Detroit and going to the game with us! 

When we were settled into our hotel room, I 'arranged for a cab' to pick us up in front of the hotel. Shortly thereafter, my mother, AKA the cab driver, called me to tell me that everyone was ready and for us to come downstairs. When we got down there, Jamers did not see a cab waiting, but he did see this:

And this was the look on his face!

So, we all boarded the bus and headed to dinner at Red Smoke Barbeque where we enjoyed hearty helpings of ribs, pulled pork, mac 'n cheese and jalepeno cornbread! 

After that we headed to Comerica Park where the Tigers defeated the Cleveland Indians! We had a great time, despite the fact that it poured down rain half way through the second inning! 

The rain was a little unexpected if you couldn't tell by the look on my face, but in the end it made for some great memories. 

We ended the night at a casino where Jamers did not win anything, but a couple of his friends did, so that was cool. We headed to the hotel after that and fell asleep instantly, as we were so tired from all the fun we had!

Jamieson said it was the best birthday he's ever had which made all of the hard work that went into planning the event totally worth it.

Until next time!

Salads Galore

Good evening, and happy August!


I apologize for the lack of writing lately. It's been a busy week and we finally have our new furniture in the front room. 


Backing up to yesterday, I started my Tuesday with some delicious overnight oats that I made with honey-flavored Greek yogurt and it was a definite success! Plus, I topped everything with bananas and strawberries. YUM.

Jamers and I did Jillian Michaels' 30 Day Shred on Monday and after a weekend of drinking and making bad food choices, I really gave it 110%, which was great except for the fact that when I woke up on Tuesday, my lower back pain had returned!


I had to sit on a pillow and a heating pad all day at work yesterday, which meant there was no way I was going to attempt a strenuous workout. I could hardly help Jamieson push (not lift) our new furniture around the room.


Anyway, lunch was a Southwestern salad that consisted of a mixture of spinach and romaine lettuce, cherry tomatoes, black beans, avocado and oil & vinegar. It was a good lunch that kept me full and tasted delicious. Black beans may be my new food obsession!

Back at the Prala household that night, we got our furniture situated and Seth promptly claimed the new swivel chair as his napping area. Kind of cute, but my lint roller is certainly going to be put to good use in the coming future.

I will take some better pictures of the room soon!


After taking a bubble bath and sleeping on my heating pad for most of the night, my back felt immensely better this morning, but I didn't want to push it, so my workout consisted of a 'Friendship Walk' with Brooke and Traci to the Circle and back - essentially our favorite workout activity. We do walk briskly and the hot weather keeps us sweating. Then we all did some good stretching back at the fitness center!


I had yet another salad for today's lunch. For this one I pretty much threw together whatever I could find in my fridge: spinach, cherry tomatoes, green pepper, mushrooms, feta cheese, chick peas, oil & vinegar. For my side I had more green peppers and hummus.

The flavors were a perfect 10!


Dinner tonight was 'Light' Chicken Enchiladas which I found the recipe for in the Food Network Magazine from August 2012. We enjoyed this dish and felt good about our choice to make it (rather than taking our typical Hump Day trip to La Hacienda) because we made our own enchilada sauce from scratch and knew exactly what went into it: jalapenos, garlic, thyme, EVOO, tomatoes and a little salt. 

My eyes were bigger than my stomach, and I only ate one of those bad boys, so you know what that means...leftovers for tomorrow's lunch! And yes, you'll note that we had black beans as a side. I told you I am becoming obsessed.


I hope everyone is having a great week. Until next time!

New Furniture!

I don't have time to write a really long post, but I did want to let you all know that we've purchased new furniture that we'll have in our front room on Tuesday! We were only shopping for a sectional, but we ended up finding a pretty good deal for a set that included a sectional and a swivel chair that we pretty much fell in love with, so we had to do it.

Would you look at that chair?! I can't wait to get lost in it. And here's a photo of the couch:

There's Jamers contemplating pricing. We bought the set from Value City and can't wait to see how it all looks in the nearly complete room! It's finally all coming together.


After furniture shopping, we went to celebrate two of my sister's birthdays. Ashley turned 11 and Stephanie turned 7. Where has time gone? So we hung out with the family for a while and watched the girls open their gifts.

I can't wait to see Steph in that dress. She'll look adorable!


Last night the HR department went out for Kate's birthday and we had a fabulous time! We started at Kilroy's then headed to Cadillac Ranch to dance the night away.

I love my co-workers! 


Today I took it easy and spent the majority of the day at the pool with my mom, just relaxing and catching up. I've been so busy this summer that I've had very little time to go to the pool and I really enjoyed it, expect for the fact that there were a ton of bees! But at least the weather was bearable and the water felt awesome.


For dinner tonight, Jamers and I tried something new: Avocado & Egg Pitas

Recipe (makes 4 pitas)

-1 avocado

-4 T of chickpeas

-pinch of cumin

-salt & pepper

-4 eggs

-4 whole wheat pita pockets

-cilantro, chopped

-lime juice

All you do is mash the avocado and chickpeas together and season with cumin, S&P. Meanwhile, hard boil the eggs, then peel and slice them. Then you just divide the avocado mixture among the four pitas and top with some of the hard boiled egg. Add a little cilantro and lime juice to each pita and you're done!

These were super easy and tasted pretty good! Each pita packed a lot of protein from the eggs and beans, so after eating two each we were pretty satisfied.

Now off to finish the weekend with a little TV-watching and getting ready for the week.

Until next time!

A Day of Celebrations

I'm so glad it is finally the weekend! I'll start by saying I completely over-indulged today and my tummy is paying for it now, but I will get to that more in a moment.


Backing up to yesterday, I started my morning with a whole wheat bagel thin topped with strawberry jelly and a side of banana slices. This breakfast was definitely on the sweeter side, but it did a nice job of filling me up regardless.

For lunch I finished off the chicken salad I made on Tuesday along with some celery sticks and fat free ranch dressing. 


The day kind of escaped me without doing a workout class, so Brooke and I decided to do a brisk walk to the Circle and back. While we did stop to enjoy ice cream cones at South Bend Chocolate Co., we felt it was justified due to the fact that we committed ourselves to walking in the extreme heat. I can't be for sure, but I'd be willing to say we sweated off the calories from the ice cream and then some. Or at least broke even?! ;-)


Last night for dinner I made the Greek Chicken Satay I meant to make on Wednesday. This is the second time this week that I've used our grill pan, and I'm slowly getting the hang of it. I still kind of burnt the chicken and I can't get the smell of it out of our house, but all and all the dish was pretty tasty.

I made couscous and put the chicken on top of it along with some feta and lemon juice. The chicken was marinated in a mixture of Greek yogurt, ranch dressing and chopped dill. I mixed extra marinade into the overall dish, too.


Today's breakfast was just quick oats and a banana, but since tomorrow is Kate's birthday, we all went out for lunch, and lo and behold, we had Greek food at Santorini's Greek Kitchen. It really didn't phase me to eat Greek food two days in a row since I'm such a HUGE fan of it!


We started by ordering one of the restaurant's best known dishes, the saganaki, also known as their famous 'flaming cheese' which is goat cheese that they light on fire (at  your table!) and everyone yells 'Opa!' Quite fun.

Ha, okay that picture makes it look as though there is just a random fire happening, but the other server is behind that pole. 


For my lunch I ordered one of my favorite foods, hummus! I got the small plate along with a bowl of Avgolemeno soup - this was a lemon-based soup with eggs, chicken, broth and orzo in it. Everything was delicious.

The whole group had a great time at Round 1 of Kate's birthday. We're all pumped to go out tomorrow for the real shenanigans! 

So, when we got back to work, we not only celebrated Kate's birthday with angel food cake with whipped cream topping and bananas, but we (somewhat sadly) also celebrated Brooke's last day in the HR department. She is staying with the company but moving to another part of the company and we're going to miss her SO much! :(


The artist of our group, Karlee, painted a canvas for Brooke that contained a 'Cuppie' tree. In HR we refer to cupcakes as 'cuppies'. 


We all signed a branch and called it her 'HR Family Tree.'

We also gave her a card and each wrote a favorite Brooke memory that Kate read aloud to her. There were definitely some tears but overall we're very happy for her and proud of her for being brave and trying new things!


So, of course we also had cuppies to enjoy and I made some guacamole. I didn't think anyone would eat it after being so full from lunch, but the bowl was practically licked clean, which made me pretty happy!

Guacamole Recipe

-3 avocados, seeded and mashed

-1 tomato, chopped

-1/2 of a red onion, finely chopped

-1 jalapeno, finely chopped

-small to medium handful of cilantro, chopped

-1 T. of kosher salt

-a generous squirt of lime juice

Just mix it all together and enjoy with your favorite tortilla chips!

So now you can see how I over-indulged today. I actually didn't eat any of the angel food cake, but that doesn't really make it much better. I think I'm going to have little-to-no dinner tonight, which I realize is bad, but my tummy is hurting! Oh well, I will get back on the wagon tomorrow.

Until next time.

Good Eats

Good evening!


I have come to the conclusion that Tuesdays are not my day to blog. I don't know why, but they seem to be my worst day of the week. I think it's because on Mondays I'm well rested from the weekend and ready to tackle the week. Wednesday is hump day which typically means hump day treats, and that's always enough to make it a good day. Thursday means the the weekend is just around the corner and Friday, well...Friday is Friday! 


Yesterday started with me promptly spilling coffee all over my shirt which resulted in me having to wear my 'super stylish' gym clothes all day. It did not make for a good beginning of my day! Luckily, I work for a company where wearing gym clothes is acceptable (and more importantly, I was lucky to have gym clothes on hand to wear,) but I hate looking sloppy and unprofessional for the entire day!


But the main reason I didn't get a chance to write yesterday was because Jamers had to work most of the evening, which meant I did not have access to the computer!


So today I'm back in action, and so are my overnight oats! I've had them for breakfast the last two days in a row, and oh how I've missed them.

I shared the recipe with a co-worker today, and she is looking forward to making them, too!


Karlee and I did Zumba during lunch today, and it was SO much fun! Our instructor, Jenny Anchondo, brought her mom to class and we all had a blast! In fact, her mom said we were the most fun Zumba group she had ever been a part of! We were good and sweaty by the end of the hour, but the good news is that Kar and I have our dance moves down pat for when we all go out this weekend for Kate's birthday. (Stay tuned for that!)


Last night I made a big batch of chicken salad for Jamers and me to bring for lunch the rest of the week. I love making this in the spring/summer months because it's SO refreshing. 

Chicken Salad Recipe

2 cans of cooked chicken, shredded

1 stalk of celery, chopped

1/2 bunch of green onions, chopped

1 apple, chopped

2 C red grapes, halved

1 1/2 C of pecans, chopped

1 C of olive oil mayo

1 T of curry

Mix everything together, and serve on toast or with your favorite crackers!

Voila! Lunch was delicious. I ate it with a side of chips and homemade salsa from a recipe I found here on Pinterest. Seriously. Make this salsa today! You won't regret it.

I came home and started dinner thinking I was going to make Chicken Satay with a Ranch-Greek yogurt sauce but I realized it had to marinate it for several hours so I got it marinating and instead decided to make some Chicken & Red Bean Gumbo.

I had a recipe to follow from one of Sandra Lee's cookbooks, (I'm slightly obsessed with this woman. Yes, I realize it's extremely weird!) but I ended up just kind of throwing things together with my sous chef, Jamieson. :-)

Here's were the basic ingredients:

I cooked the red beans and rice separately from the chicken, kidney beans, diced tomatoes and chicken broth. Then I mixed it all together and served it with warm, crusty bread.

It actually turned out quite well for basically having thrown it together!

I can't believe tomorrow is already Thursday! This week is flying by and before you know it, the weekend will be upon us. Hooray!

Until next time.

New Carpet & A Special Birthday Gift

Hi, everyone!

It's a very happy day in our household, as we finally have new carpet in our front room and dining room! This may not seem like a big deal to most, but after dealing with awful, dirty white carpet for almost three years, this is quite the event. 

As you can see, Andy was pretty excited himself. I don't know if his excitement stemmed more from the new carpet or from the fact that the carpet installers were gone and he was no longer locked in the bedroom wimping.

Call me weird, but I am really looking forward to being able to see vacuum lines again - they are oh so gratifying!

Breakfast today was nothing special. Oatmeal, banana and coffee. Tomorrow I am finally bringing back the overnight oats! I've missed them.

At lunch I did Pilates class and it felt great. Tammi continued with more back strengthening today, which I really appreciated. I love leaving that class good and sweaty - never fails.

When it was time to actually eat lunch, I finally finished up the Greek Spaghetti & Meatballs from last week's post, which was really just orzo and marinara at this point because Jamers had eaten all of the meatballs. I ate a side salad as well as cottage cheese and a fruit medley.

After coming home and enjoying the carpet a bit more, I got to work on dinner. I threw together a dish I thought would deliver on both flavor and crunch. It doesn't really have a name because I've never made it before, but it was just Johnsonville Apple Chicken Sausage with brown rice and grilled veggies.

The veggies included both red and green peppers, red onion, zucchini and squash. All I used to season them was EVOO and S & P. I used an indoor grill pan on all of the ingredients (aside from the rice, of course) to get tasty grill lines like this:

 

I mixed it all together and this is what I got:

Are you drooling yet? Because you should be! This, along with a couple pieces of baguette bread, made a perfectly pro-portioned meal. Jamers devoured his after his softball game!

So, I think I may or may not have mentioned recently that Jamieson will be turning the big 3-0 in a couple of weeks (August 5th!) so I surprised him tonight with a special gift. My husband is originally from Toledo, OH, which means he is a big Detroit Tigers fan, so I got us tickets to a game on August 4th! I have never been to Comerica Park myself, and I know Jamers is always down for a good ball game (esp. when it's the Tigers!), so I thought, why not?! He seemed pretty pleased with the gift. :-)

Hooray for surprises and weekend 'get-a-ways!'

Until next time.

Carpet is gone

The remodeling of our front room continued today with ripping up the carpet and padding as well as painting the trim and front door. Thankfully, Jamieson's parents were so kind as to come down from Toledo to assist us with the work!

It was not pretty underneath, and now we have nothing but concrete in our front room and dining area until the carpet is installed on Monday. In the meantime all of our furniture is being housed in the garage and Jamieson has a truck load of disgusting, 20-year old carpet to haul off. 

Ah, the life of do-it-yourselfers. :-)


Our trim and door look awesome. Instead of dingy, smokers' off-white (which is weird because the previous owners did not smoke,) we now have a crisp, fresh coat of stark white paint that makes a huge difference and completely lights up the room!


Andy was as confused as he always is when we're doing projects. But he did enjoy the cool concrete floor in the heat of the summer.

Speaking of Andy, the poor little guy seems to have something wrong with his left ear. When I pet him of the side of his head earlier, he yelped really loud and then would not let any of us touch his ear without crying. :-( We'll have to get him in to see the vet in the next couple of days. I can't imagine what is wrong, but I just hate to see my precious boy in pain!


After we were done working for the day, Jamers and I took his parents out to dinner at Chatham Tap. We were also celebrating my father-in-law's birthday! The weather was actually quite nice today, and not the unbearable humidity we've had for the last few weeks, so we ate on their patio and had a great time!

Of course we all had to share an order of their amazing fried pickles, and I opted for the Smoked Gouda Apple Melt with fries. Everything was wonderful.

Then we went home and had German Chocolate Cake to celebrate both Duane and Jamieson's birthday. Jamers turns the big 3-0 in two weeks! I can hardly believe it.


Well, after a hard day of work, we're enjoying some R&R on the couch, so until next time!

It's the Freakin' Weekend!

Welcome to the weekend, folks! I think I read this somewhere on Pinterest, (where else?) but isn't cruel how Monday is so far away from Friday, but then Friday is so terribly close to Monday?! Oh well, it doesn't keep me from being excited every single Friday, this one included. 


I realize I'm a bit behind on my posts. Yesterday was a busy day that didn't end until close to midnight and, sadly, left very little time for writing. Backing up to dinner on Wednesday, we ate a beautiful meal that consisted of an Italian dish with a Greek twist, Greek Spaghetti and Meatballs! 

One would think there was a special occasion going on at our house with that table setting, but it was just your typical Wednesday evening! The dish was made with lamb meatballs and orzo as opposed to the usual meal and pasta used in spaghetti and meatballs. As you can see to the far left, Jamers and I buy feta cheese in bulk Costco and use it in practically everything we eat...

There is really no reason for the above photo, other than to showcase the cuteness that is my husband!


In traditional Jamieson fashion, there was enough food to feed an army which meant there were plenty of leftovers, including some for my good friend, Rob. :-)


For those who read the blog and may not know Rob, I feel I should explain why I am constantly bringing lunch to this person. Rob is one of my co-workers, (more importantly, one of my good friends) who never eats unless food is brought to him. He's one of two men in our ~10 people HR department, and all of us girls are constantly getting after him for not eating lunch. So I decided to take some action by just bringing his lunch to him (sometimes), and low and behold, it works! 


Anyway, on Thursday I finally got back into a fitness routine, thank goodness!


I began the day with my 'Elvis' special, PB & B on a bagel thin. A Tabby-pleaser as per usual!

The quality of some of my photos are quite poor, my apologies. Sadly, this girl is not getting a new phone anytime very soon. Apparently I need to believe the rumors of an iPhone 5 coming out soon and just hold out for that. C'est la vie.


I went back to Boot Camp yesterday, despite the back problems it caused me last week. Warm ups were outside and it was not pleasant. I'm not going to lie and said I gave 100%, but at least I finished class this week. We did stations again, and I'll admit that I had to lower my weight on some of the stations. For example, the leg press had 180 lbs on it, which I can usually do, but I cut that in half yesterday. The pain just isn't worth it!


I'm actually looking into restructuring my workout plan and I'd ultimately like to get to a point where I can get up and workout in the morning before going to work. That is a huge commitment that I've never really been ready for, and I'm still not ready but Jamers and I have definitely discussed the idea. I just think it would be a good start to the day and I'd love to not spend my afternoon in the office looking like a sweaty mess. But, hey. That's why we have a gym where we work, right?


Anyway, after Boot Camp I was hungry as always and I was rather pumped for my tuna salad lunch with Triscuits and (duh!) black grapes!

A big YUM. 


After work I went to my friend Jackie's house to finally see her new baby girl, Isabella, who was born on May 17th (my mom's birthday!) We spent some time catching up and chatting, and since I was in the area, I stopped at Yats to get dinner for Jamieson and me. 


For those who live in Indy and haven't dined at Yats, you're missing out to say the least. They serve Cajun Creole awesomeness that is perfect on nights like last night when we FINALLY got a big thunderstorm and were in need of a little comfort food!

I realize my plate looks like cafeteria slop, (ha!) but that divine cuisine is actually Chili Cheese Etouffee with crawfish. Plus, their bread cannot be beat. I don't even know what they do to that freaking bread that makes it so good, but it is heaven. 


So that takes us up to today, FRIDAY! My breakfast was boring: Quaker Quick Oats with a banana. But the exciting part was that I failed to set our coffee pot timer at home and I was in such a hurry that I didn't have time to wait for it to brew...sooooo, I stopped at Starbucks!


This is a true treat for me, as I generally can't justify spending $4 on a cup of Joe but desperate times call for desperate measures!

I treated myself to a Grande Skinny Vanilla Latte and I enjoyed every last drop! 


Pilates was on the schedule for today's fitness class, and it was great! Tammi, our instructor, has been incorporating a lot of back strengthening exercises in the last couple of weeks and her timing couldn't be better for me, for obvious reasons.


When I got done working out I ate some of the leftover Greek spaghetti and meatballs for lunch, along with some cottage cheese and a tomato. For whatever reason I forgot to take a picture.


Tonight was fun because we had our friends, Ashley and Kurt over for a calzone dinner from Puccinis. They had an exterminator coming out to their house so they, along with their two dogs, had to be out of the house for a couple of hours. What better excuse for them to come over to play for a bit? It was good to catch up and watch their dogs and Andy act ridiculous. 


So, now we're in full-fledged weekend mode. Relaxing with a couple of cocktails and watching the Tigers game/blogging. I hope all of you are enjoying the start of your weekends!

Until next time.