We're juicing?

image via Pinterest

Something totally crazy and kind of awesome happened today. Paul...my husband, the man that says no to anything somewhat healthy, who once lectured me on why I bought whole wheat flour, and openly makes fun of our vegetarian, vegan, Paleo (you name it) friends....decided that we should go on a 10-day juice fast. February 28th should become a holiday or something in this household because this is that big of a deal.

It all started this morning while I curiously browsed Netflix and clicked on the popular documentary Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead. I'd heard good things and decided to give it a go. Within 10 minutes Paul was already cracking jokes from the other side of the room, I laughed with him. A few minutes later Paul made his way over and sat down next to me (shut the front door, what?), he was totally getting sucked into the story and journey of Joe & Phil!! By the end of the film Paul was 100% sold on juicing & its benefits. He proposed that we try a 10-day juice cleanse ourselves and see how we feel at the end of the fast. I'm pretty sure my jaw was on the floor at this point, who is this guy? Never in my life did I see Paul becoming a potential juicer but here we are! I asked Paul tonight why he wants to give juicing a try...

"I want to feel more healthy in general, to have the same energy I used to have when I was young. I feel so unhealthy and know that I can do so much more to make my body feel good. I'm too dependent on caffeine to find the energy I need and I know that's not right."

We will be following the juice recipes from the Fat, Sick & Nearly Dead documentary and I'm not gonna lie, some of them look preeettyyy rough. Luckily we will be able to motivate each other throughout the 10 days...So here we go! Paul wants us to do something to record the process so I told him I'll be blogging about the journey. Wish us luck!!

Must have fitness apps!

A few weeks ago my dad invited me to run a second 15k (9.3 miles) with him. Read about my first experience here. With each race, whether it is a 5k, 10k, or 15k my goal has always been to beat the time I ran before. Last 10k I was able to take over 2 minutes off my personal best, which is always exciting! With the 15k just 4 weeks away I've been looking for ways to keep me motivated and healthy. I soon came across 2 apps that I have been loving and would recommend to anybody!

Lose it! - In the midst of training for this race, I'm still working on dropping a couple more pounds in the process. I've heard time and time again that logging what you eat daily can do amazing things on its own. The "Lose it" app does just that, PLUS allows you to record your height/weight/age (all of that..) & then what your desired weight would be. From there, you can decide on a time frame of when you want to reach your desired weight and at what rate you want to lose it! With the info given, the app gives a suggested amount of daily calorie intake to reach your goal. You can log your meals, exercise and weight daily while the app calculates everything to keep you on track. I'm 1 week in and really loving how user friendly and motivating it is!

Map my Run - My friend Natalie (who is also running the 15k) introduced me to this amazing app. No more "guess-timating" how long you ran or if you are improving your split times. Map my Run is a GPS app that follows you on your run and is able to calculate the miles ran, calories burned, average mile time, and total time exercising. I love it! I've also noticed that with me knowing that I have something that is "timing" me, I'm suddenly making much more of an effort to pick up the pace.  

our unplanned v-day.

Dang you husband for slowly turning me into a Valentines day sap. Totally against my will I tell you. We weren't planning any sort of celebrations for the 14th (as you can read about here), but apparently Paul had completely different plans. Here's what happened.

1. Slept in till 11am
2. Decided on showering
3. At some point agreed to walk into my office
4. Paul leaves out of the blue, returns with flowers (wildflowers, not roses. Man, he knows me), a cute dress from target & some groceries for dinner & fondu that night. What?! This guy...

Later that afternoon we packed a lunch, drove to Laguna & hiked/picnicked. Not specifically for Valentines day..but it got pretty sappy anyways. The hills in Laguna are too beautiful this time of year, plus we were blessed with 80 degree weather nearly all weekend so that's not too shabby I guess. We brought our SLR along & pretended to be photographers..maybe I will get around to blogging a few soon :) Until then..iPhone's here to do the job.

See what I mean? Common..Laguna or New Zealand?

Valentines..shmalentines.

So..let's talk about that infamous day that people love to love or love to hate? What's your stance on it? Will you be spending it with a loved one, group of friends, or ignoring it altogether? I'm not all that big on the holiday myself..I've never really have. Red roses kind of gross me out & chocolate I can get for myself whenever it calls my name in the target check out line. Dang you Toblerone. every.friggen.time. 

Last Valentines, Paul decided he wanted to surprise me with a fancy dinner at a local steakhouse. I am a fan of surprises, that's for sure. Just the gesture that he thought this all up was romantic enough for me. It honestly could have been iHop for all I cared. And with a $180 dinner for 2 later (no joke) ...I later kind of wished it was iHop. Guess who is the saver & spender of the relationship? It was very sweet & a massive bill Valentines day I will never forget!

Friday we will be heading to Catalina Island for a day trip together, I don't know if it is necessarily "celebrating valentines day" but it could be. I came across a 2 for 1 deal on Groupon and it seemed like a fun adventure. We've been twice before and haven't been back since Paul proposed there 3.5 years ago! It has many memories for us :) I'd love to hear what plans you have for the 14th!

house hunting n wedding junkies

A new place to call home is goal and I don't know about you but something like this really takes a lot out of your day. I feel like I can officially add "house hunting" to my list of enjoyed hobbies. Except for the fact that it's not always so enjoyable. Let's just say that sometimes a glass of wine was in order with dinner a few times last week.

We had hoped that 2013 would be the year of becoming first time home owners and my dreams were aggressively stomped on slightly crushed when learning it was very slim that our 2 years of tax returns would help us get the home loan we were praying for. 7% of the time I hate being a small business owner and this is part of that 7%.. So..I will clarify now that when I say house hunting, I really mean apartment/condo hunting. Which is somewhat less exciting. So ready for this week to be over now. Ok the pity-party is going to take a hike. In more exciting news & for all your wedding junkies, our work was unexpectedly featured on the popular wedding blog Green Wedding Shoes! Click on the image below and see more of Lindsey & Nate's ranch wedding. Probably my favorite of the year!

Pizza can make your day.

Life has felt slow the past couple weeks, we have no back log of projects to work on at the moment and Netflix has become my best friend. Specifically, Friday Night Lights marathons with myself. Yep, big things are happening in my world. Paul on the other hand is in his second week back at school and with classes only twice a week we still have plenty of time on our hands. Time that we have been spending on small adventures. Yesterday we headed to our bank which is off of PCH and instead of heading home right away we cruised the PCH looking for a fun place to grab lunch. We stumbled upon this empty hole in the wall Pizza shack, ordered two humungous (just look at those babies) slices of pepperoni pizza and people watched. Nothing special...but it was. Impromptu pizza lunches can really make your day sometimes. Hope you all have a great upcoming weekend! 

Constant reminders

This weekend we drove down to San Diego where we visited with friends and bounced between super bowl parties. Oh, and my dad also talked me into another 10k. This was my 3rd one in 3 months guys!!  I'm thankful that my dad has inspired me to get out there and start running again, this time I even set a perfect record for myself. That morning we had to leave at 6:00am. It.was.friggin.early. This late morning sleeper was not appreciating the experience at all. I curled myself up in the passenger seat and stayed quiet throughout the drive just watching the sun slowly come up. It's not often that I get to experience sunrises so this was a treat, I pulled the iPhone out of my pocket and snapped this pic. Seeing the beautiful sunrise reminded me of one of my favorite songs by Phil Wickham, in the song's lyrics he says..

"I see Your face in every sunrise

The colors of the morning are inside Your eyes

The world awakens in the light of the day

I look up to the sky and say 

You’re beautiful."

It was a great reminder as we are currently in booking season and setting ourselves up for this coming year. Booking season (November - February ) is a scary time. We spend a lot of time emailing and meeting with newly engaged couples, which can be stressful..2 years later I still get nervous butterflies and sip annoyingly on my latte while waiting for that mystery couple to walk thru those coffee shop doors. 

Ready for a client meeting last Friday!

As corny as it sounds, seeing that sunrise and marveling in it's beauty really put everything into perspective for me as we've been quite anxious about booking out our year in 2013. I love constant reminders that the Lord is in control of all things big or small! Happy Tuesday.