My next challenge - Planks!

My BFF, Tracey, challenged me to do this with her, so here we go! One month of Planks - starting at 20 seconds on day one, and ending with 270 seconds by months end! Let's do this!!!

Having the motivation of my friend will be awesome! We plan on doing our planks together on Saturdays, or using FaceTime so we are together for support! We will finish this up well before Christmas and be rocking some rock hard abs for the holidays!

And my next challenge will be...

30 day Push Up Challenge!

http://www.fitsugar.com/30-Day-Push-Up-Challenge-30974208

I really enjoyed the 30 day squat challenge. It gave me a daily fitness goal and the feeling of satisfaction after finishing each day was awesome! So here I go again, this time push ups! Interesting part about this challenge, is that it requires 4 different types of push ups, so that should keep it fun!

I have been known to "drop and give me 20" in hotels, at friends houses, etc., so I imagine I will be doing push ups wherever and whenever throughout my day to get in my daily goal - just like doing squats while at the hair salon with hair dye soaking, right?

Join me?

This rainy day was perfect for making a meaty mushroom sauce!

It's raining....in September! Wow. Unusual for California, but oh so nice! It was refreshing to wake up this morning to a wet sidewalk and the smell of rain in the air. Planned on doing lots of errands, or seeing a movie, or at least making it over to Whole Foods for some groceries. None of those happened. Stayed home all day relaxing, reading, watching tv, just chillin.

Then dinner time arrived.... hmmmm...thankfully I had started to defrost some ground beef earlier this afternoon in case we didn't make it out to a movie and dinner. I truly love going out for a date with my Handsome, but we also love having days spent at home together doing nothing. So, I glanced through my kitchen, saw that I had a touch of Arrabiata sauce leftover, mushrooms, shallot, fresh herbs from my garden (rosemary, oregano & basil), a can of diced tomatoes, and a spaghetti squash.  Score!!! A nice meaty mushroom sauce over Paleo spaghetti (aka spaghetti squash), some leftover green beans, and a lovely glass of Mill Creek, 2009 Zinfandel from Sonoma County - which we picked up the other night at UnWined.

My Saturday evening is now relaxing, and delicious! Maybe a few episodes of "Orange is the New Black"???? Cheers!

49 and Feeling Fabulous!

It's always interesting to celebrate my birthday. I love my birthday. I love everyone's birthdays! Love celebrating with family and friends! I really enjoy getting the chance to go out to lunch, or have dinner together, or have some sort of celebratory get together with my friends and family. I am not one who worries or frets about getting older. I'm lucky, I know. With lots of family and friends having milestone birthdays in recent years, I have been able to see how people react to turning a year older. Some seriously don't enjoy it, others embrace it and look forward to the future with gusto, while others seem to get depressed well before the actual birth date. Maybe next year I'll react differently when I turn 50? I doubt it, as 40 and 45 didn't phase me. I truly feel fabulous. I am healthier than I have been in years, and am lucky to still look pretty good for 49!

In honor of the end of my 40's, I decided to challenge myself with a 30 day squat challenge.  Should prove to be an interesting adventure. Day one was easy for me. We shall see how I'm feeling by day 30. I'm curious to see if I can stay dedicated to making the time each day to accomplish this goal. Perhaps it will lead to a push up challenge? Or a crunch challenge? 

Wish me luck! Join me!

It's been quite a year...

I haven’t updated my blog in over a year. My apologies! I truly hope to take the time to update more often during the coming year. Hopefully I’ll post lots of food pics, funny stories of life, love, and trials, and events or fun trips that I go on. Hopefully not too many sad or health related postings, but those do occur and are part of my life and I’m not ashamed to share them.

This post is going to be full of photos from throughout the year, as I feel that is one of the easiest ways for me to document what I’ve done, what I’ve enjoyed, and who I’ve spent time with.

I read more books in this past year than I have in the past few years. I really enjoyed the book that my son, Sean, gave me for Mother’s Day 2012 -  “The Fault in our Stars”, by John Green.

I also really enjoyed “Gone Girl”, by Gillian Flynn, and I am looking forward to reading the second book in the series.  Maybe I’ll read it after I finish reading my current book, “Wool”, by Hugh Howey. 

I ate a Paleo diet for a full year (almost 2 now) and I continue to believe in it whole heartedly, and I feel great!  My goal is to use this blog to post more pics of my meals and spread knowledge about the health benefits of eating Paleo.  

I finally truly sorted through my closet last July, and donated 16 bags of clothes and 20+ pairs of shoes. It felt great! I then turned all the hangers in my closet backward, and will donate any clothes still hanging backward this July (as I wore items and washed them, I hung them up facing the normal direction).

Part of getting older meant purchasing my first of many pairs of reading glasses. Ugh! Next trip to Costco, I will be purchasing one of their 6 packs, no doubt!

My wonderful nephew and niece came for an overnight visit in August and we had a blast playing, reading, eating, and enjoying good times! 

 I reconnected with and saw a few high school buddies that I hadn’t seen since graduation 31 years ago, or not very much over those 31 years. 

 Tesla Model S came into my life and changed me forever! What an amazing car! 

I walked my first 5K fundraiser walk,  

and my 2nd!

Fantastic experience and one that I look forward to doing again this year!

Carl and I enjoyed lots of great local wine tasting! So lucky to live within 40 minutes of many great wineries! 

Carl and I celebrated 29 years of wedded bliss. Looking forward to planning our 30th. 

 I had my 2nd colonoscopy in May. Such a crazy experience. Had my first in February 2012 and they found one precancerous polyp. Since it was my first colonoscopy they couldn’t tell how long that polyp had been present, and therefore, whether it was fast or slow growing.  So lucky me, I got to have another colonoscopy this year. Again they found one precancerous polyp. It was very tiny. So, they determined that mine are most likely slow growing and I therefore get to wait three years before returning again. I am very thankful that my GP was on the ball and had my initial tests done that showed I needed a colonoscopy even though I was only 48 years old. Polyps would have more than likely been cancer, and not precancerous, if I had waited until I was 50 to go. Blessed, indeed!

We visited Santa Monica for the first of many trips in January 2013. Carl accepted a new job at Riot Games and thus began our new adventure of him telecommuting! I love that I get to travel there with him when I can and get to see our daughter who lives in Irvine, as well as other family that live in Southern California. Our son is also there for the summer taking classes and doing an internship at Riot, so I get to visit him too! It’s a beautiful, relaxing city and I’m enjoying exploring! 

We traveled to Stockholm for a conference and watched the Superbowl on a computer, in a hotel room, at 3:00 am, trying to keep our cheering to a minimum so we wouldn’t awake our neighbors! So much fun, and a great memory to have! 

I enjoyed goofing around on Pinterest - http://pinterest.com/tracyequinn/boards/ and posting some pics, sharing some recipes, and gathering lots of “recipes I’d like to try making”! 

All in all, it has been an amazing year, filled with travel, friendship, family fun. I truly feel blessed to have been able to share it with my best friend, my husband, Carl. Thank you Handsome!