Dotty...and Splotty

One predictable element of my taste in clothes is a long-term relationship with polka-dots.  My obsession is so apparent that during my summer in Italy, my dear little friends who hosted me would run around stores and say, "Meghan!  This is polka dots!  You should buy it!" 

 I miss Italia!!!

As I once again deliberated how to dress for spring in winter weather, I decided to give it the ol' polka dot try:

I bought this lovely halter top years ago at Macy's.  I was about as budget conscious then as I am now, and felt super guilty about spending SO much money on a top that I couldn't say, "Ah, but it will go with everything I own!"  But I'm glad I did...

..because shortly around the time I bought it, I saw a picture of Audry Hepburn wearing the very same thing in a biography my brother bought me.

Source/buy the book on Amazon!

So there.  If anyone gives me grief about this top, I will tell them they are jealous of my Hepburn-like beauty.  And my cooking skills, too.

I paired the top with a white skirt (before Memorial Day, I know), a teal cami (skirt and cami from Express), black leggings (Romy), a black blazer (Issac Mizrahi...I think? for Target), my favorite black pumps, and a super fake pearl necklace (Target).

You may laugh at my frugality...but here's one of the big reasons I like to dress cheap when I can. 

I ruin stuff.

Like the day I wore this super cute outfit.  I was also being super healthy and brought a yummy salad to work:

Planning ahead...make 2 days at once to save time!

Great idea, right?  Well...it tasted amazing.  But somehow the balsamic vinegar and olive oil didn't play nice with my skirt.  Jerks.

Lucky for me I keep Grandma's Secret Spot Remover on hand at home.  And I'm happy to report that after spot treatment and a regular machine washing, the skirt is almost 100% recovered.

When your Eating Well gets in the way of Dressing Cute, it's time to Think Sharp.

Sunflower Cookies

Hooray!!!  This post appears thanks to my dear friend at Have Kitchen, Will Feed.  She still had it in her Google Reader.  Friends triumph over technology!

A few weeks ago, I read about these sunflower butter cookies on Carrots 'n' Cake.  Now, I'm not much of a baker, but these cookies looked so easy even I couldn't screw them up!  So I decided to make them in delayed honor of my husband's birthday. 

I bought the ingredients to make them on a Monday...but it was one of those very stressful Mondays which give other Mondays a bad rap.  So I put them off for a few days.  Thursday night I finally made Jared's birthday dinner (post on that coming up) and was so fired up about my success that I decided to stay up late to make the cookies. 

If you know me well, this is a big deal.  I wake up around 4am on Fridays, so I was under the influence of serious cookie enthusiasm.

 I had printed out the recipe...and lost it, so my husband looked up the site on his phone and I copied it all down.  (See messy handwriting above.  And don't blame the homeschooling.  My mom tried cursive with me for years.  Sorry, Ma.)

Everyone say "cheese"!

First time I'd ever bought sunflower butter!

So far, so good...

I was STARVING partway through and didn't want to scarf the dough:


About this point, I realized something was wrong.  Everything was all mixed together per the recipe, but it looked SUPER crumbly and dry.


I finally realized what the problem was.  I hadn't added the butter.  I didn't put the butter in my ingredient picture at the beginning, since I figured everyone obviously knows what butter looks like.  And this is the thanks I get.

 

Finally, the missing piece!

Ready for the oven...

At this point it was who-knows-what time in the middle of the night.  My sweet husband actually brought out blankets and his pillow and was sleeping on the floor by the kitchen for a while to keep me company.  I was pretty tired myself:


But it was not in vain!!!


(My mom taught me how to do this with paper bags in case you don't have a cooling rack.)

Yum, yum, and more yum!

Blogger Ate My Cookies/Fitness Face-off Friday V3

Yesterday I posted about sunflower cookies.  This morning Blogger had scary technical issues.  Today, my cookie post is gone.
BLOGGER YOU WERE NOT SUPPOSED TO EAT MY COOKIES!!!

Source

Hmph.  I will have to re-post about them next week. 

Good News: Today is Friday!!!

No time today to post fancy rules and rewards, etc.  The challenge this week:  Do Something New.  For me, this is checking out the nearby barre3 studio with my momma.  I've been meaning to take a class for a couple months now, and some weeks it really seems like blogging is the only way to hold myself accountable for getting stuff done.

You can participate in the challenge this week by doing something new yourself - could be a new class, a new workout move, hiking/running/walking a new route, or taking up a brand new sport.

Let me know what you end up doing!  Have a sweaty-awesome weekend.

One, two, three, CRACK! New egg.

What happens when all your food posts are photos of the food someone else makes?  Do the blogger police come and take you away? 

Well...so maybe not all my food posts are of food I make.  If there's anything fancy or complicated or just plain delicious, unless I took explicit credit it is probably the work of my culinarily gifted husband.

A few weeks ago, he got sick...this was very sad for him, and very sad for me as bachelorette Meghan makes awesome breakfast and a killer sack lunch, but can be kinda hopeless when it comes to dinner and dessert.  (Remember when Audrey Hepburn goes to cooking school in France and she had to spend hours just cracking eggs perfectly?  Somehow I don't think I have that kinda persistence.)

So here's me, making fancy-pants nachos.  I got in vitamin c, fish oil, protein, calcium, and some awesome fats from the avocado.  Cool beans.

The apron says:
"I Kiss Better Than I Cook"

I didn't even set off the fire alarm!!!

Chillin with the latest copy of Shape magazine...

By the time my perfectionist self had laid out the above photo set-up and gotten a good shot...the nachos were kinda cold. 

This is why I prefer to try dressing like Audrey instead of cooking like she did in Sabrina to win over Humphrey Bogart.  (Plus my husband is like a thousand times better looking than Bogie.  No contest.)

"I hope I get it...I hope I get it! How many people does he need?"

This outfit makes me look like I'm trying out for A Chorus Line: 

Shoes & shirt: Old Navy.
Tank: Gap. Skirt: Ross.
Leggings: Romy.

What I'm really trying out for is a spring where the thermometer passes 60 degrees once and a while...

The Best Laid Plans

For anyone who doesn't know...I am a planner.  I like to have spreadsheets and calendars and schedules and more spreadsheets.  I did theatre for years and was no good at improv.  I even have a spreadsheet where I plan to update other spreadsheets.  But the good news is, I am not God...so even (or, perhaps, especially) when my plans go awry, God has got everything covered and I'm reminded that it really wasn't up to me in the first place.

Stuff Jared bought for the race...

Here's some things that did not go as planned for my first half marathon:

• My husband got sick the night before and couldn't run with me.
• The weather was drizzly and rainy.  (The meterologists did plan this, but I was counting on pretty sunshine.)
• The race really started at 7:30.  I thought it was at 7 and went to the bathroom and had my gel and warmed up and then got to stand around in the rain for 30+ minutes.

Making breakfast pre-race





• I ran into some friends, including my boss' boss and one of my old students.  (Well, not literally ran into them.  Although I wouldn't put it past me.)
• I left my time chip with my husband, so he had to time me with his iPhone.

On our way...

• The first 2 miles were the worst.  I did mile 1 in 11 minutes and was despairing of coming even close to my time.
• I really enjoyed running the hills. 

• Singing the victory song from Finding Nemo makes me run better.

Coming around to the final curve...

And the thing I least expected when planning for this race?

I finished in 2:04:15.  More than 10 minutes faster than my goal time.





They gave me a cool medal which you can't see cause I didn't turn it the right way for the photo.  Oh, well.

Came home and recovered:

I ate pizza, too.

Should have stretched longer...feel like an old lady today.

And the cool shirt!

All in all, a pretty darn awesome experience.  Thanks to Leslie for her tips on running your first half, my friends and family for all the encouragement, and my sweet husband Jared for getting me motivated in the first place, and encouraging me to run alone when he couldn't join me.  Next one we'll do together, Babe!

Daily Dilemma: My Fruit Doesn't Look Like the Magazine

While reading my Women's Health the other day, I came across this awesome spread telling me I needed to eat more purple fruit:

Lately I've been eating lots of bananas, dried cherries, tomatoes,and avocados (fruit, my friends!), but purple has been a bit lacking from my diet.  So naturally, I was going to take good care of my health and expand the horizon of our fruit basket (which is actually a red colander).

In a perfect world, I would go to Whole Foods or PCC and buy beautiful organic fruit.

In the real world, I'm on a budget.

So I went to Costco with my mom last week...and we spilt a carton of good-looking plums. 

At Costco...with an all fruit & veggie Jamba

 However, these plums were not as nice as they seemed.  After a few days, they began to mock me and my budget.  Some refused to ripen.  The others got mushy and wrinkly.  As a whole, they refused to demonstrate flavor of any kind.

So how did I respond?  Did I sit and weep?  (No, but I've cried over weirder stuff.)  Did I toss the plums into the trash?  (Gah what a waste of money.)  No.

I chopped up the little blighters and made them into a totally edible purple fruit salad.

Totally Edible Purple Fruit Salad:

• 5 rather dismal plums
• 1.5 cups frozen blackberries
• A few tablespoons 100% fruit blueberry jam
• A few teaspoons ground cloves

Chop plums.  Mix other ingredients.  Tell plums they better be nice or the blackberries will prick them to death.  Separate fruit salad into 3 containers to take to work.  (Packing a slice of brie to go with each isn't a bad idea.)

And voila!  Dilemma solved.