Maxin’ and Relaxin’

So I have now started this blog post four times over.  I started writing about how I am dealing with my recent injuries (some self inflicted and some injury based) and what I had been doing lately as a result of said injuries.  Except that every time I read it over I realized that really I was just whining for 500 words and there ended up being a lot of “select – delete” happening so I figured how about I take a different approach.

So instead of complaining about how bummed out I am, how bored I am or how frustrated I am I figured I would write something a bit more uplifting and try and force myself to look at all of this with a positive light. So I figured I would make a list, as that is normally how I would explain something to myself any ways..yes I know weird but sometimes for ideas to sink into my stubborn head I have to “explain them to myself”.

So the positive that has come out of my body being held hostage to pain:

1. I am lucky enough to have a body that is normally mobile, healthy and pain free.
2. I got to, seriously, learn what it means to do nothing and recover – even if this is the most boring and frustrating lesson of life.
3. I got to spend a lot of time with my kittens and they are hella cute.
4. I had the opportunity to cruise the internet and find a million new gluten free, nut free, dairy free recipes.  Basically my meal prep for the next month is taken care of.
5. I am learning to respect my body, not just expect from my body.
6. It made me write this list.

Often times when things aren’t going your way it can be extremely difficult to stop and take stock of all the good around you.  Sometimes it can even be difficult to be grateful for all the strength and flexibility you once had (and will hopefully have again if you take care).  So it was actually a good exercise for me to sit here and think up some of the positive and some of the things I am grateful for and to have been apart of.

What are you grateful for today?  Take a second and write it down somewhere, you might need to stop and look back on it one day when everything seems to be going every way but yours.

Happy Thursday Everyone.

Weekend Recap and Star Wars

So this past weekend was the first weekend in quite some time that my husband and I weren’t traveling somewhere and boy was I excited to do that. It has been great going around visiting and having some time out of town but it was definitely nice to just take a break from all the driving and catch up on some house work and visits with friends in town.

A couple months ago the Museum of Aviation started the Star Wars exhibit. It is an exhibit that started in Montreal and has been touring around using the topic of Star Wars to dive into how individual identities are made, and I have got to say it was way more interesting than I could have imagined. I am not all that “nerdy” of a person in general (at least I like to think I am super cool) but when it comes to Star Wars I nerd right out, need I remind everyone of my wedding cake toppers.

So the exhibit was great, and I strongly recommend it to anyone in the Ottawa area or if it comes your way. They really thought of everything and made it interactive by getting each visitor to make their own Star Wars identity and then emailing you a run down of your character once you had completed the exhibit. It was a lot of fun and made going home and watching some Star Wars even more exciting.

To finish off the weekend I was up early on Sunday to meet up with my girlfriend and head over to the Farmers Market as is our Sunday ritual. Right now the market is just bursting with all sorts of food, it is so great seeing how I basically don’t need to go to the grocery store and I can buy all of my produce, meats and dairy from the farmers themselves and it just feels so great.

I hope you all had great weekends and happy Monday!

Weekend Round Up – Camping Edition

This past weekend marked our annual camping trip with some of our good friends.   So we packed up our car and headed out to Algonquin park to get in some good old fashion nature.

Friday evening our friends made us some delicious supper while we finished setting up our tent and started getting in some R&R.  We all agreed that on average we end up eating way better camping than we normally do at home.   Amazing what you can whip up on a camp fire. 

Our weekend was filled with relaxing, reading, swimming it was great relaxing fun.  I figured the best way to capture the rest of the weekend was to share some photos.

Sad to see the weekend go, but so stoked that we were all able to have a rain free, sunny weekend.  I hope you all had the chance to treat yourself a bit and soak in the sun and now back to the grind stone.

Happy Monday!

Quick Weekend Update

This weekend was probably the first weekend in about three months that I didn’t have any plans and let me tell you it was absolutely amazing. It was great just to hang out with my husband, going on some brisk walks, running some errands, cooking, watching movies and playing some games. It was a pretty uneventful weekend but I think it was just what I was looking for.

Even though I didn’t have any big plans for the weekend my body still made sure to have me up and ready for the day at 7:30 A.M. all weekend which gave me some time to get up and do yoga in the living-room and to get a head start on my weekly meal planning. It was great to have such a relaxed weekend because this week is going to be a bit nutty as I am starting to get my legs ready to be leading a group of runners starting April 1st.
This weekend I also set a personal goal for myself. I decided that for the next three weeks I would steadily increase the frequency of my yoga practice. I have been pretty good at making sure I practice 2 times a week, but I want to recommit to making it into an actual yoga studio. My home practice has been very helpful in making sure I practice more than once but I find that it is not as satisfying as actually going into a yoga studio. So over the next three weeks I am going to be creative and flexible in finding the time to attend yoga classes. I will most likely continue using my yoga DVD’s when I am feeling pressed for time, but the goal is to make my yoga practice more of a daily activity than it currently is.

I believe that my renewed motivation to get things in order and to work at focusing on positive change in my life is stemming from my excitement and anticipation of spring. I have been gearing up for household organization projects, finishing projects that were started five years ago when we bought our house, as well as personal body and mind organization. It is something about the spring that gets me excited to be as productive as I can possibly be, now I just need to make sure I follow through with all my grand plans.

On a bit of a side note, I know I missed posting a workout for last week but I test them out before I post them and with just having started a new phase in my personal training my whole body has been sore (in the good I went to the gym way) enough to not want to use exert myself if I didn’t absolutely need to. But this week I will get out a killer upper body workout for everyone regardless of how much my muscles complain.

Happy Monday everyone! I hope you all had fabulous weekends!

Weekend Round Up

This weekend was fairly low key. It was also my husband’s birthday celebrations! We had a few friends over had a ton (probably too much) of snacks and all shared in some celebratory bubbly.

I had also purchased a disposable camera for this event so once we get that developed we will see if there are some gems that can be posted.

But this weekend I was given a USB full of additional vacation photos that I can share with all of you.

I hope you all had a great weekend, and for some of you I hope you are enjoying Family day and staying warm today.

Happy Monday!

Summarized

This weekend started out with many plans upon plans, errands and visits with friends. By Saturday afternoon my body and brain had seemingly called in sick and rest was what I needed.

Although I started to feel a bit run down after a particularly hectic month of November I did get the chance to see a girlfriend and her soon to be little one’s nursery. Saturday afternoon I had the chance to go over to another friend’s house to meet their tiny new person. Unfortunately, I was too captivated by her perfectly round head and her adorable little button nose to remember to sneak a picture of her, but I am sure I will have many more chances to do that later on.

With lots of baby visits this weekend and other running around by the time 4:30 PM hit Saturday I was ready to take a nap. The husband and I ended up returning home and watching some Christmas movies, which I promptly passed in and out of consciousness during.

Saturday also consisted of picking out our Christmas tree, and making four massive lasagna’s. I could only get three of them in the photo.

Sunday before heading over to the Winter Market (indoor farmer’s market for the month of December) I woke up nice and early to decorate our Christmas tree.

This was also the first time I attended the Winter Market.  A girlfriend and I meet up and went over to the market together.  It was most of the regular Farmer’s Market vendors plus some extra bakeries, and crafter style vendors.  It was such a pleasure.  It was really nice to be getting my food from actual farmers again, and it was really nice to be inside away from the cold weather.

After last week and having to go to the regular grocery store I definitely did some stocking up, especially on things like carrots they just don’t taste the same even if you get the organic ones.  And I went for a new purchase, I decided after a summer of seeing the Yak booth it was time to see what it was all about, after a nice discussion with the vendor I bought a pound of ground yak.  Once I get around to cooking I will let you all know how it goes, apparently it is a very lean meat so we will see.  interested to see how that turns out.

All in all this weekend was fairly wonderful, and I definitely caught up on some much needed relaxation.

Hope you all had wonderful weekends also.  Happy Monday! 

Some Fresh Air

It is always nice to get out of the city and get back to some nature. This past weekend was our yearly camping trip with some of our friends from Toronto. Unfortunately, due to the wedding this year we were a little slow on booking our campsite so we weren’t able to get the same awesome site we normally get, but we definitely lucked out with the second choice.
This year has been a pretty dry one here in Ontario so unfortunately there was a fire ban during our camping trip but this didn’t stop us from having a great time. We just put some camping lanterns where a fire should have been and dressed up warm at night. Even though we made the best of it, it was really weird to hear the campsites around us go quiet the second it became a little dark out, when normally people would have been roasting marshmallows around the fire.
Camping was a lot of lounging around, laughing, swimming and relaxing on the beach. It was a perfect weekend after a busy year. We even got to chase a fox off of our site, and befriend a little chipmunk that we named Dale.

As per usual we tried to keep our meals as fancy as camping allows, from steak and potatoes, Tilapia and delicious egg white, spinach and feta sandwiches. The four of us like to keep it classy while camping.

The tilapia recipe used was a favourit of mine. I had tried it before at home, it is plain baked tilapia with some delicious cherry salsa. I first found the recipe on Martha Stewart’s webpage, and then made some of my own modifications.

Baked Tilapia with Cherry Salsa:

4 tilapia fillets (4 to 6 oz)
2 cups of pitted and chopped cherries
1 tbsp finely chopped cilantro
1/2 chopped red onion
Juice of half of lime
1 jalapeno seeded and diced

Preheat oven to 450 degrees, lightly spray baking sheet with olive oil, and place tilapia fillets.

In a small mixing bowl combine cherries, cilantro, red onion, lime juice, and jalapeno. Make sure everything is well mixed, and allow it to sit while the oven preheats, and the fish cook.

Cook fish for 7-10minutes, be sure not to over cook, remove from oven and serve with cherry salsa over top.

Happy Monday Everyone!!!