It’s freakin’ friday; no. 10

 

Whoo-hoo! Last week was our biggest week yet with 61 blogs participating! That’s awesome, guys! I want to sincerely thank each and everyone of you for supporting my blog & this blog hop and I really hope for your continued participation!!

 

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This week’s featured blog is Our Life In A Click. Over there, you will be sure to find a tonnnnn of photographs, and they are awesome! My favorite part is that she also has tutorials and the pictures are so good, that she doesn’t really need that much description on what to do! Don’t forget to swing by!!

 

You must follow my blog in order to join the blog hop. It's like going to someone's house and eating their food, but you're not even friends with them! So please, follow me via GFC, when putting your link in the blog hop.

Provide the link to your main blog site. One of these days, I'll do a blog hop for more specific sorts of posts, but this one is a general blog hop for meeting new people around the blogging community.

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And if I feature a blog, please follow that blog as well. Its kind of like a giveaway by joining, and then reward is being featured. So this last one is not required, but its definitely greatly appreciated.

 

On a completely different note…

This is probably the coolest thing I have ever seen, and I totally want to recreate this!

30 day shred; day 2

Hey everyone! I just wanted to talk about 30 Day Shred a little more. There were some thing I wanted to discuss before, that I completely forgot about…And I wanted to discuss my progress just a little more.

Okay… so if you go back and review my post from Day 1, I went on-and-on about how amazingly hard it was. I would just like to say that today was much easier! I was pretty scared because it was so hard the first day, but I got onto Sparkpeople.com and read some reviews that real people posted. A lot of them said that they couldn’t get through the first day either, but by Day 4 or 5, they had no issue getting through. Whew! I feel much better now.

I will agree that Day 2 was even much easier, considering the fact that I’m still sore from Tuesday. I’ll probably be even more sore now, but that’s okay because that means I know it’s working. I can’t wait to see my progress once my muscles aren’t sore anymore! Maybe I’ll even move up to 5lb. weights in a week or so.

Okay, so some of the things I want to further discuss about the video.

There’s one spot that absolutely pisses me off. During the lunges, Jillian is going over the modified version, and if you look into the background and check out the chick doing the advanced version, she’s taking a break! She’s still living the weights, but she quits doing the lunges! Jillian goes on and on during the video about not taking any breaks, and then I see that. It’s just aggravating.

With that being said, I once again like the rest of the video.

Some of the reviews I’ve read, complain about Jillian not doing all of the exercises. This is my response to that. I don’t mind it because she’s with the two in the back explaining there moves. How many times have you watched a workout dvd and you’re just supposed to figure out how to copy the modified motions? She also takes a couple moments to demonstrate how not to do the exercise, which I find is also very helpful.

Okay… so I’m done talking now. If you’re looking for something to help  you get in shape, I’m hoping these reviews are helping and I definitely recommend that you go out and pick up this DVD. Its only about $5-$10 depending on where you get it. I picked mine up for $9 at Wal-Mart.

Now I’m going to sink in this chair, and never get up because my calf muscles are in a huge knot! Okay, just kidding… I’m going to try a warm shower and some muscle lotion… But I hope you all have a good day!

Apple & peach oatmeal

I was inspired by all the oatmeal circulating in the media lately. McDonald’s now offers their fruit & maple syrup oatmeal. I’ve seen lots of fruity oatmeal recipes in blogland. I’m watching The Martha Stewart show right now, and they’re talking about how you should eat oatmeal every morning to save your heart. Lots of oatmeal.

I went to the snow yesterday, before we got the worst of this stinkin’ blizzard, and purchased some of the necessary ingredients.

• 3/4 Cup Water
• 3/4 Cup Milk
• 3/4 Cup Oatmeal
• 2 teaspoons brown sugar
• Desired amount of maple syrup
• 1/4 Apple, chopped
• 1/4 Peach, chopped (I used frozen peaches, so I just took 2 slices and chopped those)
• Dash of salt
• Cinnamon, if desired

1.  Heat the water, milk, and salt to boiling.

2.  Add your oatmeal, and reduce heat to medium. Let sit, stirring occasionally, for about 5 minutes.

3. Remove from heat and add all of your other ingredients. The heat of the oatmeal will soften your fruit.

4. Move to bowl and top with cinnamon.

5. Enjoy!

Look at that picture… I put on a little too much cinnamon. It was okay though! It was still delicious!

Now, I made my own brown sugar for this, because I was out. You can do this by putting granulated sugar in a bowl with a small amount of molasses, and mix with a fork. One website I found said about 1 teaspoon for 1 cup of sugar.

Oatmeal is a very healthy breakfast, but when I plugged this into Recipe Analyzer, it was kind of high in calories. Now, I like my oatmeal pretty sweet, so I couldn’t imagine taking out the brown sugar or maple syrup… but that’s an option if you’re looking to reduce calories. Also, make your oatmeal with 1-1/2 cups water instead of splitting the liquid into water and milk.

Southern banana pudding

What better thing to do on a snow day than make banana pudding, right? (I still need to make banana pancakes! I’m thinking breakfast!!) I’m pretty happy with how it turned out, especially because it was the first time I had ever made it. I used this website for guidance on this recipe.

Ingredients:

• 2 cups milk, 2% or higher
• 2/3 cup sugar
• 3 tablespoons cornstarch
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1 egg
• 1 egg yolk
• 2 tablespoons butter
• 2-3 large bananas
• desired amount of vanilla wafers

1.  Spray a 1-1/2 quart casserole dish with non-stick cooking spray.

2.  In a medium sauce pan, whisk together milk, sugar, cornstarch, salt, egg, and egg yolk. Once well combined, set burner to medium. Heat, stirring slowly, until thick and bubbly.

3.  Remove pan from heat and add the butter and vanilla extract. Whisk until completely melted. Pour into a separate bowl and cover with plastic wrap to cool slightly.

4. In your casserole bowl, place a layer of sliced bananas and vanilla wafers. I crushed the vanilla wafers in my hands so there was crumbs and some larger chunks. Slice your bananas to their desired thickness. (don’t mine my casserole dish. It’s not dirty, its old and stained…)

5. Pour about half of your pudding mixture over the bananas, then lay down another wafer/banana layer topped with a second layer of pudding. Top with whipped cream if desired. Cover and refrigerate for about 4-5 hours.

6. ENJOY!!!

Looky at what I found yesterday!

I found the 30 Day Shred dvd that I wanted! Yay! And I just finished day 1. OMG! For being a 20 minute workout, it is tough! & I am definitely out of shape. More than I even thought. I haven’t watched The Biggest Loser, but if that’s how she works them, then I am surprised they don’t have heart attacks on the show! I stopped at one point because I was getting a tad dizzy. I’m not saying that you shouldn’t do it because it’ll make you pass out. I’m saying do what you feel comfortable with but it will definitely be a challenge.

Okay, so if you now nothing about this DVD… It’s about 20 minutes long, and split into 3 circuits consisting of 3 minutes strength training, 2 minutes cardio, and 1 minute of abs. You will need a set of weights, that are appropriate strength. You might even want to have a couple sets. I purchased a set of 3lb weights, but for one or two of the exercises, 1lb weights would have been ideal. It’s also set up into three levels. If you’re in decent shape,  you should probably go through the levels the way they are intended for 30 days… 10 days each. If you’re like me, you’ll want to just move on when you feel comfortable. They even have a lot of the exercises broken down into modified and challenging…. so I’ll do the modified exercises first…

PROS: I like that this workout contains classic exercises… jumping jacks, push-ups, crunches. It seems like a lot of workout dvd’s these days have all sorts of different moves that leave you think “WTF am I doing?! Does this even work?”. I also like that it is so challenging, so you feel like you’re getting a great workout. I was sweating, my muscles still feel weak (even though I finished about 15 minutes ago), and my heart rate was raised. Even after finishing this program, this dvd will still be useful when you’re short on time.

CONS: This is very challenging. I almost wish it had a level 0 for those of use who are extremely out of shape!