A Fit and Spicy Life

During the peak of tomato season I think I could live on caprese salad, fresh mozzarella, perfectly ripe tomatoes and a drizzle of delicious aged balsamic. Can’t you just picture yourself sitting in some Italian town eating this and drinking a glass of wine…

Now let’s come back to reality: work, life, etc. But you can easily have that same experience right in your home (maybe with some ear plugs) with this Quinoa Caprese Salad. A great vegetarian friendly salad that is perfect as a meal or with something grilled.

What takes this salad to that thisissogood level is balsamic glaze. I had a bottle from Trader Joe’s in the pantry ready to go but you could make your own by reducing high quality balsmic until it is thick and syrupy.

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With the craziness of the past few months I had skipped out on a few rounds of Bootcamp and I quickly figured out. I missed it! A lot. I love Tina’s workouts, they keep me challenged, motivated and really do make me look forward to going to the gym. When the next round of Best Body Bootcamp was announced I signed up again.

It starts on Monday and I can not wait to get back to structured workouts. Especially in my new gyms (Anytime Fitness and Experience Fitness) and still getting to focus on yoga. Best of both worlds!

What I am looking forward to:

Supersets. My favorite way to group exercises!

Changing up my cardio.

Pushing myself! Stepping outside of half planned program and really focusing on lifting weights!

8 weeks of hard workouts!

I will be checking in weekly with thoughts, favorite exercises and how I am doing.

The winner of the Target gift  card was Matt, I will contact you. Enjoy!

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We have officially been in the house almost 3 weeks and it is starting to feel like home. After about 4 days we were completely moved in, rooms painted, things put away and we were starting to hang art (I know we are crazy, but I am really organized and things were pretty easy to get in the house and put away).

This was the perfect house for us. From the moment we walked in, we know it was supposed to be our house. And the funny thing about it is that it wasn’t even on the market when we saw it. It was a friend of a friends and the previous owners had tried to sell it for almost a year in 2011/2012 and they decided to take it off the market. Our friend mentioned it to us and we had our realtor get in contact with their realtor and set up a showing.

The day we saw it (mid February) was a really cold day, lots of snow on the ground and we still knew that we wanted this house. It was a great layout, in a convenient location for both Scott and I, & on a really nice amount of land.

We put our offer in, negotiated a bit and then went through mortgage hel$. Worst experience ever. Scott and I had both owned before and it was never this bad. Lost documents, discovering identity theft, sending in documents 3 different times, having more information request days before closing and having our closing moved from a Monday, to a Wednesday to a Friday. But now we have keys in hand, are mostly settled, have a few rooms to go furniture shopping for, & our first party is on the calendar for July. It feels so good. My stress level has returned to a manageable level and I feel settled for the first time in years.

I won’t share every little detail about the house but here a few of my favorite features:

Kitchen, lots of counter space and updated appliances!

Living room fireplace, I can’t wait to decorate it for the holidays!

The pool it has been too cold/rainy to use yet, the dogs have been it in though

We are on about 2 acres, it goes way back and we have a decent front yard too. Less than 2 miles to Target, grocery stores, shopping etc but a very country feel.

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