Christmas

I started this Christmas post 2 weeks ago! I was going to come back in the new year with a recap of the holidays, but I will finish this Christmas post, and tell you about New Years next!

Christmas was... interesting. Christmas Eve was awesome, we had a great dinner and a great time. We made napkin frogs for the table (lame I know LOL).

Walter helped cook in the kitchen. Christmas dinner consisted of potato salad, pierogies, salmon, lobster, and shrimp.

Nicholas was helping too...until he decided to "pose" for a picture with the dogs. Too cute!

Before bed, Nicholas brought cookies into the living room for Santa...

But on the way, he ate one!

Walter and I posing with the pups on Christmas Eve.

On Christmas, I woke up not feeling too hot. Walter's sister had a stomach virus the day before, and Walter and I ended up both getting it on Christmas. NOT fum. But I made it through presents before going to bed for the rest of the day. Here is Molly opening her own present!!!! She has skills!

And she had on her tacky Christmas sweater

Here is the tree with a ton of presents!

The Day after Christmas, we were hit with a huge snowstorm...and the rest of walter's family got the stomach virus. Here are some pictures of the aftermath. My car:

Walter's car:

And the street with 31 inches of snow!

Christmas was good all in all, but I wish we weren't all sick! I have a weak stomach, so I ate bread, pretzles, and soup through Wednesday. New Years post coming up next!

Santacon!

Merry Christmas Eve! In honor of the holiday, I figured I would FINALLY explain my first cheat day/weekend... Santacon!

Santacon is a Santa themed pub crawl, where people dress as Santas, Mrs. Claus, and other holiday themed characters, and bar hop the day away. It happens in cities all over the world! So on Saturday, Dec 18th, Walter, myself, and some friends headed to Morristown to join in the fun! Here are a few photos of the madness:

In other news, last weekend Molly also got groomed for Christmas and New Years! After she was done we picked out her very own tacky Christmas sweater for the occasion:

She is too much!

Rainbow Cookies

I guess I have been really busy this Christmas season, and it is affecting how often I am posting! Hopefully it will get a little less hectic soon J Ok, so let’s pick up from where we left off.

Monday’s lunch - Progresso can of split pea soup, 2 saltines, and a slice of whole wheat bread.

Snack – handful of trail mix

Dinner – Walter’s work Christmas party! I had one large plate, and filled it with half salad, grilled peppers and mushrooms, and caprese salad. The other half was filled with 3-4 mussels, penne vodka and pasta with alfredo sauce. I skipped the bread basket (yay!) but had half a slice of amazing chocolate cake and a bite of Walter’s tiramisu (boo). I also felt like I drank an entire bottle of red wine myself! I am not the best at small talk, so I sipped on my wine glass most of the night. The second it got low, a waiter came over and filled it up to the brim it seemed like!

Tuesday I woke up nauseous (surprise surprise) because of the odd combo of foods and wine I had (I think it was the alfredo pasta and wine personally).

Breakfast – oatmeal plain (one splenda) and a Clementine. Someone left a bag of them in the kitchen at work for people to take. Score!

Snack – A RAINBOW COOKIE!

Lunch – I went to shoprite and got vegetable noodle soup from their soup bar. It LOOKED like it would be like chicken noodle without the chicken, but no such luck. Too many weird veggies. I ate it anyway and had a ton of pretzel goldfish on the side!

Snack 2 – ANOTHER RAINBOW COOKIE!!! If there is any dessert I would cheat on my diet for (other than choc. Cake), it would be rainbow cookies. They are my all time FAVORITE!!!

Dinner – Soup and Salad. Walter’s sister Christina arrived for the holidays, and she loves to cook. She whipped up an awesome soup filled fresh veggies, lentils, and small pasta straight from her recent trip to Italy! I will try and remember to snap a pic later. I had a small cup of soup, and a huge salad filled with mixed greens, chicken, craisins and feta. I made another one for lunch today!

Dessert  – A Clementine. I was busy working on my homemade gift for Christmas (a painting), and worked up an appetite.

I have said it before and I will say it again… Molly is NOT a morning person. As Walter and I were getting ready she kept sleeping…

And when she caught me snapping a picture of her she protested!

Today was bagel day at work! We get them once a month for birthdays, so I couldn’t skip. Especially when I discovered WHEAT EVERYTHING bagels in the mix! If you ask me, it is the perfect bagel.

I am learning more and more during this dieting thing that preparation is KEY to success. Knowing it was bagel day, I packed 2 triangles of Laughing Cow light Garlic & Herb cheeses. I think they taste SO good, and I used it instead of cream cheese.

 I ended up taking out all of the insides of the bagel, putting a dab of green olive cream cheese (because how could I now) on part, and used one of the triangles on the rest.

 I saved the other triangle and ¼ of my bagel for lunch!

Have a great day!

Christmas Gift Wrapping!

The other night, Molly and I got busy wrapping Christmas gifts:

And then I opened my first Christmas gift! (well, Molly tried to open it first):

 It was a batch of homemade cookies from my coworker!

 And chocolate covered oreos!

 Molly got herself wrapped in the bow...

 And after I tried tying it around her, she had enough!

 But then she gave in.

 She's so cutie!

 After a long night of wrapping, I had this guy. It was SO GOOD!

Yesterday's Food:

Breakfast - oatmeal w/craisins and walnuts

Snack - handful of trail mix

Lunch - pizza (yikes!)

Dinner - Christmas Party!

Last night Walter and I went to a Christmas party over at a friends house. Sadly I didn't take any pics, but it was a ton of fun! I ate way too many chips though! I had 2 cherry vodka and diet cokes, many chips and onion dip, some chips and buffalo chicken dip, and a dinner plate of salad, baked ziti, and lasagna. I brought the salad:

It was a mixed greens salad with smoked gouda, walnuts, and craisins. So good! We also did two white elephants - one new and one regift. I ended up with a DSW gift card and a neck massager. Not bad!

Today is going to be an eventful day. It will officially be my first CHEAT DAY, (even though yesterday's eating was awful), and SANTACON! More on that to come...

Christmas Party Time!

Yesterday was a very busy day! I started off with my now usual breakfast of oatmeal with craisins and walnuts. During lunch, I ran errands, and then picked up Wendy’s to eat at my desk. I got their “you pick two” deal with half a Baja salad (with chili) and a baked potato. Since the salad has chili, it didn’t need dressing, so I used the dressing on my potato! For a snack I had a handful of trail mix during my afternoon meetings.

After work, we had our work Christmas party! I really wanted to be sure I didn’t overeat, or eat unhealthy food, and I think I ended up UNDER eating (mark it on the calendar haha). I had 2 drinks, and I picked something super sweet so I didn’t drink too much (I had a 45 minute drive home!) I had 2 Bacardi peach drinks, one with sprite, and one with DIET sprite! I knew I should have asked for diet from the start! For food, I got a small plate (like a dessert plate size) and filled half with salad, and the other half with penne vodka, a small piece of garlic bread, and a small slice of turkey. I also ate a stuffed mushroom and a steak skewer. And that’s it. No dessert (there was a lot), no other apps, no cheese and crackers, nothing! When I got home I was starving though, so I put myself to bed.

This morning I broke out my new water bottle!

I keep hearing good things about Contigo, and my old water bottle needed to be retired a looooong time ago. So far I really like this water bottle! It has oz. measurements on the bottle, so you can keep track of how much you’ve drank (I am at 36 for the day so far!) You have to push this button in the back to open the mouth so you can drink, which prevents leaking. It just keeps spitting water in my face lol. I think I just need to get used to using it.

Right now I have a work call from 11-1, so I grabbed a snack from the vending machine to hold me over until lunch: 

I was pleased to see that 3 slots in the vending machine had pretzels – there is usually nothing healthy in there. I picked these Honey Wheat Braids. That’s it for me for now – going to listen to the rest of this call, and try to find something healthy for lunch at 1, since I forgot to bring something today. Have a great day!