Goals to Stick To

It's almost 2012 and everyone keeps making their lists of resolutions so I figured I'd hop on and write mine down. Usually I write down my resolutions and keep them to myself, but I never end up keeping them; once I get this stuff public I'm stubborn enough to keep up with it so I'm enlightening you all to my 2012 goals.

I've noticed I always make extremely vague resolutions (i.e. I'm going to get healthier, save money, etc.) but I never have a battle plan to follow to make this stuff happen. This upcoming year I'm a clean slate so I'm going to make my plan and stick to it. Though I won't punish myself if I fall off the bandwagon once in awhile, I'm only human. So here we go!

• Get toned and be proud of how I look. I plan to go to the gym 5 times a week, go to every Zumba class, (hopefully) get in touch with a trainer, and try kickboxing at my gym.
• Run a mile every morning before work. Simple, no explanation needed except I need to haul my butt up at 6 AM to get it done.
• Eat healthier. Vague I know, but the plan is detailed. I want to cut down on eating meat, eat only lean meats (i.e. chicken breasts, lean cuts of beef), and reduce my red meat intake. Eat less sweets which is very very hard when you enjoy baking so damn much. Eat less processed food. I also need to introduce myself to fish again which doesn't make me jump up and down, but it's a healthy meat so I've got to try.
• Blog more. Simple and to the point. I need to not ignore my blog for over a week.
• and the big one. Put myself first. I've written about it before and I'm sticking with it this upcoming year. I'm so blessed to be where I am, happy and single, and I need to keep me first.

Hope you're all making a good list of things to do for this upcoming year! I'll be posting about my New Year's celebration in 2012!

Christmas 2011

Hey there lovelies! I hope you all had an amazing Christmas this year! I know I'm exhausted from my celebrations and ready to sleep until New Year's Eve comes around.

Friday my mom and I got off work early so we could go to lunch with our bosses at this fancy-smanchy restaurant. Everybody loves free food, especially me :) After lunch my mom and I went home and started doing chores around the house since we'd be gone all weekend. Exciting huh?

Saturday we went down to my grandma's house for a big family celebration and boy was it crazy. The amount of food was staggering. The dining room table was covered in savory food and the kitchen table was swamped with desserts. I'm talking 3 different kinds of pie, cookies galore, petit fours, and many many more. I of course brought my array of treats so I didn't help matters ha! I was good and didn't snarf down platefuls of food and kept to the healthy (but still delicious) food that was there and avoided the dessert table as much as possible. I wasn't so overcome with food lust to remember that the more I eat the more gym time required. After the fun started to settle we hauled our butts back home to relax and watch Christmas movies. My dad always requires us to watch A Christmas Story which I hate with a passion dislike, but then we went to our more classic ones like How the Grinch Stole Christmas and I got them to watch the Disney version of The Christmas Carol, which they loved. Eventually I went into my room to watch another non-Christmas movie and then promptly passed out. Normally I stay up super late watching Christmas movies and then wake up at like 3:00 AM and scare the holy crap out of my dad who doesn't realize I'm awake. Call me a little kid, I don't care, I enjoy wringing every last minute of Christmas out.

Unfortunately my mundane work schedule killed my Christmas tradition because I actually passed out (gotta make up that sleep) and slept until 7. We went through our stockings and I got some pretty cool stuff I've been wanting FOREVER. Like an iPhone armband so I can go running, a new running jacket, earbuds to workout with (see a theme here?) and some other neat stuff like makeup, an iTunes giftcard, and movies. After the Christmas morning chaos my parents left for another family thing while I stayed home and relaxed. I walked my butt over (gotta keep the exercise up) and rented the first season of The Vampire Diaries and stayed up until 4 AM watching it non-stop. Crazy right? But I had an awesome Christmas relaxing watching a new show and wasn't tempted by insane amounts of food, all in all, a good day.

Monday my brother, sister-in-law, and niece and nephew drove up and visited us and let me tell you, I didn't get to go to the gym, but my niece and nephew certainly kept me moving. It was so great to watch them open their presents and immediately ignore us all to play with them. This was by far my favorite day because I got to spend it with a bunch of people I love.

I forgot to get pictures of all my events, but that doesn't matter because I had an amazing weekend with people I love and that's the greatest gift I could ask for.

Christmas Baking Part 2,3 & 4

I survived my weekend!
It was definitely eventful; crazy mall shopping, smashing 4 different cookies into one baking day, being almost run over a few times while trying to buy flour. I'm exhausted, but happy to be done with it all.

Now, on to the baking!

I originally had a plan to bake 2 kinds of cookies Friday night, make peanut brittle Saturday, and 2 other kinds of cookies Sunday. Well, that plan didn't pan out quite so well. Friday night my mom and I braved Target to get that out of the way and we were out until almost 10. Staying up and baking was out of the question when I would be up early the next morning to make brittle, shop, and go to a birthday party.

So on Sunday I was up and about for about 8 hours baking. Boy are my feet unhappy!

But the end result was pretty yummy!

Butternut balls

Peanut brittle

Gingerbread cookies

Shortbread with raspberry and white chocolate

Again I forgot to get pictures of the cathedral windows, whoops! Hopefully they'll be in the final box of all the treats that I take down to my relative's house for Christmas.
I'm also missing sugar because with all that baking crammed into one day, I just didn't have the energy to make another cookie. I figured I had enough sugar that nobody would miss the sugar cookies.

As for the shopping experience, holy bajeezus! Target was crazy busy and I was already exhausted from working all day. Navigating that store with a big crowd of people while cranky from work didn't make for a pleasant shopping trip. Nevertheless, we made it through and thankfully didn't have to make the trip on Saturday, which would have resulted in mass injuries from my cart ramming into shins.

The mall wasn't much better, though I was without a cart which helped some. It was pretty busy, but not as bad as I was expecting, which I think is what saved my sanity. I was able to indulge myself in a new pair of jeans and running shoes which were necessary. Merry early Christmas to me!

Christmas Baking Day 1

It's officially the Christmas season in my little world. I started my marathon baking last night and won't be stopping until Sunday. Phew! I've deemed these last days before Christmas the homestretch and boy is it getting craaaazy around here. Tomorrow I have to get ALL of my Christmas shopping done and my mom and I already have a war plan game plan for where we're going and what we're buying. Yes yes, I am that crazy person that shops that weekend before Christmas, hopefully I make it out alive.

Anyway, on to the baking!

Last night I made my delicious fudge and cathedral windows (aka rocky road)

All the ingredients for last night's candy making

The makings of delicious fudge.


I couldn't get any pictures of the finished cathedral windows

because it's still setting in the fridge. I promise I'll

post a picture of it.

Tonight I'm making butternut balls (no snickering)

and shortbread cookies with raspberry and white chocolate. Yum!

Weekend Recap

Happy Monday! Maybe if I say happy Monday enough it'll actually be happy. Wishful thinking on my part ;)

I hope you all enjoyed your weekend and didn't get mowed down by Christmas shoppers while doing your Christmas shopping. I'm dreading Saturday when I'm getting all mine done. My mom and I are going to be those women that power walk through the mall to get everything done. But enough about this upcoming weekend.

Saturday my mom and I started our new workout schedule. I was supposed to do a kickboxing class that morning buuuuuut I was far too lazy to get out of bed at 7 to get there on time. Instead we did a mile walk at a decent time and then went to the gym for weight training and zumba class. Lemme just say that working your upper body and then going to zumba class isn't a smart choice; my shoulders are killing me! Nevertheless, I powered through zumba with aching shoulders and a hurt foot (I'll spare you the gory details of that).
My full workout went like this:
10 x 3 tricep extensions
10 x 3 bicep curls
10 x 3 pec flies
10 x 3 weighted crunches (this machine is beyond awkward)
10 x 3 shoulder presses
10 minutes on the elliptical
1 hour of zumba

See why I ache? I don't remember the weight I used on the different machines so next time I put myself throught the tortue again I'll make sure to remember them.

Sunday I had zumba and more weight training on the schedule, but since I couldn't put a shoe on I decided to sit it out and relax at home. We watched football instead and smelled homemade chicken noodle soup simmering all day long. Yum!

This week is the start of my Christmas baking so once Thursday rolls around I'll start posting about delicious Christmas treats that negate my hardwork in the gym haha.

Chickening Out and Birthday Surprises

Happy Friday! It's almost the weekend thank goodness!

I said I was going to a pilates class at my gym last night and well....I didn't end up going. Working out Wednesday made me super sore so yesterday just wasn't the day to start a new class I've never been to. Instead I went home and caught up on all my recorded shows. Unfortunately last night's class was the last pilates class and I'm hoping it was just the last one with that instructor. This weekend though is the start of my mom's and my workout plans. The poor thing has no idea what she's getting into *cue evil laugh*. I'm also (hopefully) doing a kickboxing class tomorrow morning, but we'll see how I'm feeling at 7:30 am.

As for birthday surprises, it was my mom's birthday Wednesday and my brother, stepdad, and I had a nice surprise for her. My brother came up to surprise her and make her dinner and my stepdad and I were in charge of making sure she didn't know. Unfortunately my mom doesn't do well with surprises and tried to weasel out hints from me all day at work. I had to keep telling her to leave it be and just wait, which she'd do grudgingly for an hour or two before she started pestering me. When we came home my brother was hiding and jumped out at her and the look on her face was priceless. She was so happy and it was well worth the hours of pestering I endured. We made her a delicious dinner of roasted chicken, garlic bread, angel hair pasta, and steamed asparagus. Sadly I didn't get any pictures of our delicious dinner as I was too busy carving up chicken and making 3 things at once lol. All in all it was a great way to celebrate my mom's birthday.

I'll be back with an update on if we survived our new workout routine. Have a good weekend!

Getting Back Into the Swing of Things

Happy Wednesday everyone!

As I've said before I recently moved back in with my parents which involved long weeks of packing, hauling stuff to the new place, and exhaustion. Unfortunately that also meant I had little time for anything other than work and sleep, which means no gym for Brittany. Once we finished the move I was determined to haul my butt to the gym, but my brain ended up doing more work thinking about it than my body did doing it. For example, yesterday I was going to do a mile run in the morning before work; I woke up, weighed the pros and cons and ended up falling back asleep. This morning though I was determined to haul my butt out of bed and get moving. And I succeeded :) I was also going to do a zumba class at my gym tonight buuuuut it's my mom's birthday (happy birthday Mom!) so I'm skipping out on that for a surprise celebration instead.

I've always been super active so it's been weird sitting around doing nothing so I've written up a workout schedule (I'm a nut for charts and schedules). I'll be reporting back at least once a week about how tired my out of shape butt is.

Another thing I'm getting back into is healthy food. I've been lazy and haven't eaten well, plus I've been bored which equals lots of munching. Baaaaaaad bad! So I've been watching what I've been eating (let's not talk about the tuxedo cake that keeps taunting me to eat it at home) and so far I've done pretty well keeping to good portions. And yes, I do treat myself because life is boring without some delicious peppermint Joe Joes (Trader Joe's oreos)...go out and buy these, they're AMAZING!

So these are some of the stuff I ate yesterday. 1/2 good, 1/2 not so great.

Greek yogurt for breakfast, 3 cuties for a snack, 2 Joe Joes, and hot chocolate (it's Christmas time give me a break).  I also had a Subway sandwich for lunch and some whole grain Cheez-Its (buy these too, they taste the same as regular but better for you).



An About-Face

First off I want to apologize to everyone for my insanely depressing Christmas post. I was going through a rough patch and Christmas took the brunt of my depression. I finally realized that I can't give up on a happy holiday that everyone else is celebrating. Not to mention that the reason I was depressed was pointless and I just needed to march on through. Anyway, I'm back to my normal self and will continue to post happier Christmas posts.

This weekend my parents and I decorated the house and went to buy our Christmas tree. My first pick ended up being the perfect Christmas tree (takes a bow). Once we brought it home I had a nice fight getting it into the stand and then watering it, but we got it up and decorated which is what matters! We also went and bought almost all the stuff I need to do my insanely large amount of baking. Want to know what I'm making? Of course you do! This year I'm making:

• Butternut balls (no jokes people)
• Gingerbread & sugar cookies
• Shortbread with raspberry and white chocolate
• Fudge
• Peanut brittle
• Cathedral windows

Once I've spent the weekend slaving away making everything I pack them up in boxes and send them off to friends and family. It's one of my favorite traditions I do every year.

Sunday I went to San Jose with my mom to take my grandma out Christmas shopping. I just about killed everyone in the mall. The downside to Christmas is all the crazies out in the malls that feel it necessary to run me down with their 30 bags of stuff. But I helped pick out some fun gifts for my niece and nephew and got to spend time with my grandma and mom which always brightens my day. After that fun adventure I came home and promptly died on my couch.

And here are the pretty decorations around my house...the tree thanks to moi.

And the lights in my room.

Hope you all are enjoying the crazy Christmas season!

The Misery of Christmas

Odd title right? Well this year Christmas isn't wanted around here. Between the crazy move, getting kicked down, and basically being told I'm not wanted around here, who wants to fake being happy when everyone else is already over the top happy? Well not me. It's December 1st and by now I'd have all my Christmas decorations up, listening to Christmas music, and watching all my Christmas movies, but have I? No. I put lights up in my room and some ornaments and I'm at the point now of just taking them down and saying "screw Christmas" this year.

And what upsets me even more is that I'm depressed about Christmas. Whenever something I've been anticipating for awhile comes around and I'm upset/depressed and I can't control it, I go into a crazy panic. I'm talking staying-up-all-night-freaking-out type panic. But there isn't any way I can change this. Sure I can try and force myself to enjoy the season, but what the hell is the point? It's not like my house is a plethora of Christmas cheer anyway. I rarely see friends to cheer me up. And when I do interact with anyone it's at work and trust me, that's not too cheerful.

So I'm just going to drag my depressed self around glaring at the insane Christmas decorations and being a real-life Scrooge. Yay for a whole month of irritation!