Monday, May 25, 2015

(Holiday) Weekend To-Do List

Happy Memorial Day weekend to all! Hope everyone enjoyed a bit of summer fun on this holiday weekend (and also took a moment, or several, to reflect on the meaning of this day -- to veterans and to those who have lost loved ones, it is so very important).

My weekend seemed to fly by rather quickly, a good mix of silly fun and downtime:

1. Now that Mad Men has completely wrapped up (I've been avoiding spoilers, but I guess people liked the finale?), I decided to see what all the fuss is about. I've been looking for a good juicy summer binge series, and this seemed as good as any. And hopefully I'll finish it quickly enough that people will still humor me while I dissect all of the details (if not, there's always Tom and Lorenzo). I'm only a couple of episodes in but so far, so good.

2. This weekend I decided to give myself a little tough love about my eating and exercise habits of late (too much of one, not enough of the other). Last year I really worked hard to make eating better and working out consistently a priority, and by the time I ran my first half-marathon in January, I felt better than I ever had in my life. Unfortunately, the past few months have seen me getting a liiiiittttle lazy -- not a complete backslide into bad habits, but enough "I should treat myself" and "I think I need sleep more than a gym session this morning" that I can feel (and see) some extra pounds. I've been getting my workouts in and eating clean for the past few days and I can already feel a difference (even if it is just losing a little water weight, it is awesome motivation to keep going). Whew.

3. I had a pretty fantastic day shopping at the Orlando Premium Outlets on Sunday (following all of my rules from last week's post). I didn't buy too much (my favorite purchase, a super cheap J. Crew Factory School Boy Blazer, turned out to be a bust -- it had some damage I didn't notice when I was in the store, so back it goes), but I had lots of fun checking out the sales and people-watching. The play-by-play (including favorite and least favorite finds) is on Instagram -- check it out if you like shopping and humor, and shopping-related humor.

4. It wouldn't be a holiday without a barbecue, and I got to enjoy a classic holiday weekend shindig with friends. My apartment community has a gorgeous (and rarely used) outdoor summer kitchen, so we grilled some tasty chicken and steaks and had a bit of a potluck. I was a bit annoyed to find some brats in the complex damaged our fire pit, preventing us from making my favorite summer dessert (S'MORES!), so I decided to bake these adorable s'mores cupcakes instead (some people are just so damn creative in the kitchen -- definitely need to try out more recipes from The Baker Upstairs!)  -- mine were almost as cute and very tasty.

Note: for some reason, whenever I decide I need to clean up my diet I have this urge to start baking all kinds of goodies for others. I'd like to think it's because I'm a nice person, but part of me thinks it is a way of testing my own willpower -- sometimes I just make it so damn hard for myself. I had a bite of a cupcake just to make sure I wasn't serving my guests garbage but let them finish off the batch and sat there feeling just a tiny bit smug that I wasn't eating dessert (so dumb, right?). I have food issues, y'all -- anyone else do weird stuff like that sometimes?

And suddenly, it is Monday night again. Sigh. I could use one more day because you'll notice I didn't mention a damn thing about doing any laundry, cleaning, or anything useful around the house. Whoops.






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