WIAW - Food, Jelly shots and Floods

Well, our weekend started off great with some super fun pre-wedding celebrations. Josh's grooms men visited for the Australia Day long weekend... Many jelly shots were consumed Friday night, we proceded to dance the night away in the city and eventually made our way home early Saturday morning.

I woke up a bit later on Saturday morning feeling pretty darn good for the amount of jagermeister and vodka jelly shots I had. I only drink once every few months - if that but I have noticed since I made dramatic changes to my health and fitness I don't get hangovers anymore... does anyone else get this benefit?

Saturday morning - the crew (majority hungover - lol) battled some torrential rain to the suit store for the final fittings before the big day, which is March 9th for anyone wondering. Don't the boys look soo cute!

The rain did NOT let up. An ex-cyclone had made it over the coast up north and was giving everybody hell in our state. Sunday we started hearing news of locations around the state flooding and the crew decided to pack up and make their way the few hours home before the roads flooded... Lucky they did.

The news started bringing us information of this, above is a very scary picture of Bundaberg. This is actually the home town where I lived for the first 21 years of my life. Many places that are so familiar to me were completely underwater - my school, the places I worked and many of the roads I drove day after day. It was completely surreal to see these pictures flooding Facebook and the news. Luckily Josh's parents and my parents live just out of the affected areas of flooding and their only problem at this time is that they are isolated at their homes. A lot of my old school friends were not as lucky and had to be evacuated.

Luckily news today states that the floods are slowly receding (thank goodness!), cleanup has begun and Josh is part of an emergency crew that is travelling the five hours up to Bundaberg to begin restoring power to many of the affected homes. As you can imagine this brought my weekend to a very sobering halt.

I hope you guys don't mind me sharing this with you... I know it is a bit of a downer but I really want to try to make this blog personal and share things that are significant to me. Thanks for reading anyway.

Now let's get onto onto my eats, these are actually from Monday (we had a public holiday so YAY for no work and for natural light at home).

Breakfast - The boy made me the most delicious cappuccino and I whipped up a batch of Heather's blueberry cobbler protein pancakes which were amazing!

We had a very late lunch salad. Iceberg lettuce, carrot, tomato, radish, beetroot, grilled chicken and crumbled goats cheese. This was actually my first time trying goats cheese and it was a really delicious alternative to the feta I generally stick too. 

Josh wanted a 'takeaway' style dinner so we had sweet potato fries and chicken burgers which was made up of melted cheese, tomato, lettuce, mayo and a grilled chicken patty on turkish bread. This beats Maccas anyday!

And that's about it! Happy WIAW guys and go visit Jenn if you want to join in!

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My Workout Schedule

As previously mentioned in my January Goals (read about them here). I wanted to sort out my workout schedule so I was improving (or at least maintaining) my fitness and strength without tiring myself out.

For anyone interested, P90X is strength building workouts and Insanity is very high intensity interval cardio (both produced by Beachbody). Doing a mix of both has been sooo beneficial to my strength and fitness - I can honestly say that I have never been this physically fit ever.

Over the last 4 or so months I have been following the P90X and Insanity workout schedules. As a result, I have been get getting too tired doing the 1 1/2 hours of exercise every day. I decided that I needed to change it to only five days a week. I am still performing a hybrid of the P90X/Insanity workouts but not to the volume I was doing before Christmas.

So I've decided three days a week I will be doing the P90X strength workouts and two days a week I will perform the Insanity cardio workouts.

 I have two seven day workout schedules which I will alternate between. This will ensure it doesn't get boring (variety is the spice of life!) and also means I get to focus on all body parts.

If your also a P90X or Insanity fan - please feel free to use my workout plan. I am not a fitness expert in any way, shape or form so just be aware of that.

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Friday Ramblings

• My cat is a supermodel... no joke.
• Deep heat is my new best friend. My left calf muscle has been in cramp mode for the last 2 days. Word of advice don't lather your calf in Deep Heat and then put on tight pants... ever.
• Josh's grooms dudes (plus one associated girlfriend) are coming tonight for Australia day weekend. Cue... drunken rowdiness, BBQ's and suit trying on. Probably concurrently. Should be fun though :)
• Plus I may be making jelly shots - oh no! 
• I hate wedding planning... my procrastination is getting me nowhere though... figures. Doesn't help I only have one free weekend out of six until the wedding.
• Anyone else follow a bunch of fitspos and foodies on Instagram. One second I want abs next minute I want cake. Why do I do this to myself?! (p.s. cake wins.. always)
• Does anybody know where to buy coconut milk in cartons (not cans) in Australia? I want to make the conversion for my daily coffee.. coconut and coffee sounds soo dreamy!
• I am making these for dinner tonight... I can hardly contain my excitement!

Have a gorgeous weekend guys - wish me no hangover tomorrow (usually the result of jelly shots).

Tell me your weekend plans in the comments below! It will be like I am there with you enjoying your fun!

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WIAW - Chocolate Covered Coffee Beans

Hi friends! I can't believe it has been a whole week since I have said hello to you guys!

A week has gone which means it is 1 week closer to the wedding - I think I am subconsciously stressing my brains out. Last night I dreamt that the only food we served at our wedding was watermelon... 

Yup, that's me... I am the weirdo that has nightmares about watermelons.

Speaking of food - lets get onto the topic for the day... and that is what I ate on this wonderful Wednesday!

Breaking my fast on wholegrain muffin topped with hummus, spinach and 1 Egg/Egg White scramble with Salsa. 

Yummy 'jaffa' cottage cheese snack - the combo of 1/2 cup cottage cheese, cacao powder and orange flavoured stevia just makes my darn day! (Individual items because mixed up it kinda looks funky...)

Boring but healthy lunch of mixed veggies, spinach, chicken and eggplant/tomato chutney.

Onto my new love... move out of the way Josh. I am absolutely besotted by these little suckers.
Coffee Beans + Dark Chocolate = Heaven!

A little bit of a seafood feast for dinner - Moreton Bay bugs, Salt & Pepper Calamari and Wombok Asian Salad. Fresh and Delicious and all made by my lovely fiance <3

Happy WIAW!

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WIAW - Surviving the flu

I fought the flu... and the flu won. Yup... just like everyone around me at the moment - I am out of action. I am using up way too many tissues and being way too miserable. 

Lucky I had this to cheer my morning up.

These Banana S'more Protein Pancakes - these were good, these were healthy and they were full of chocolate! I am usually more of a savory girl but Heather's sweet pancakes could make me change my tune. I topped my pancakes with sliced banana, chocolate chips, her chocolate sauce (maple syrup and cocoa powder) and some dried acai berries. Nom Nom Nom.

Lunch was pretty special too - I kept it pretty simple and comforting. Wholegrain English muffin with cranberry jam (leftover from Christmas), sliced chicken boob and cheese - grilled, melty and perfect mix of sweet and savory. Oh.. and a little salad on the side for veggies sake.

I continued my salad trend for dinner (salad leaf, tomato, radish, sprouts and sliced olives dressed with apple cider vinegar and evoo) I also stuffed a slow cooked sweet spud with chicken, salsa, greek yoghurt, shallot and melted cheese. Easy and delicious. 

So what have I been doing in my semi-comatose state? Devouring this book...

I have just entered part two of the book and it is getting juicy! I can't to find out what happens at the end but from the reviews I have heard it is going to be pretty twisted and unexpected. I am already trying to guess and I could help but do a little googling and I found this <- a movie in the works! Yay! I know the movies are never as good as the book but I am still pumped I love seeing how the adaptions compare to the characters as I have developed them in my head. 

Happy WIAW guys!

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Our Wedding Stationary

Today I thought I would share the save the date cards & invitations for our upcoming wedding (less than 2 months to go!). They are stacked and ready to post today!

When the time came to start thinking about and sourcing my wedding stationary, I had an idea in my mind of what I wanted but was having trouble forming a tangible explanation. Although I have a fair bit of experience with graphic design - I didn't want to put that added stress on me to DIY coming up to the wedding - cue etsy!

Etsy, in my opinion, is every brides dream website for all things wedding. It is my constant source for inspiration and guidance.

After just a few hours of browsing stores and doing a few searches. I had narrowed down to a few select stores/designers. After contacting them for quotes and getting an idea of what they did - I decided that Krissy at New Borrowed and Blue would be the perfect fit for me*. She was very flexible with design, really quick with communication and very affordable. We ended up doing our save-the-dates, invitations & helped my sister organised my bridal shower invitations with her too.

Save the Dates

We posted our save the dates about six months before the wedding, I know not all couples feel the need to do these but since we live away from 90% of our guests, we thought it would be a good idea to let everyone know when it would be so they could know to ... well ... save the date.

I ended up getting a PDF printable which was the easiest and most affordable option for us (since the Etsy seller is located in the US postage is just crazy to Australia). I chose the first printing company I found in town and they printed a bunch of copies. I was kinda disappointed in the quality. It wasn't as awesome as I expected but they did the job. Using postcards was very economical too - not only were they fun and simple but they saved cost because they didn't require envelopes.

To look at the full design (I didn't want to reveal my address/other private information) visit the listing on Etsy.

Invitations

I was very indecisive on how to do the invitations. In the end.. I decided to get pdf printable files for these too from the same etsy designer and then sourced a much better local dedicated wedding invitation printer. I highly recommend doing this because they turned out absolutely perfect - they were very knowledgable about paper selection and gave me great advice for sizing and envelopes etc.

If you have a look at the listing for this invitation you can see it is a 3 fold invitation with 2 sections for extra information. We decided on very basic wording (basically the same as the etsy listing) Then we chose to have a custom response postcard.

Then began arduous task of addressing and stamping 50+ invitations. It took me the entire Saturday morning to do this but I am so glad it is completed. All I need to do is pop them in the mail and wait for the responses to come back. With each wedding planning milestone that passes - it becomes more and more of a realisation that our wedding is coming up! I am getting very nervous but also very excited for our big day!

*Just in case anyone is wondering... I am not advertising for this Etsy seller - I am simply sharing my experience for our wedding stationary, providing my own personal advise and opinions :)

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January Goals

First piece of news... Any returned readers might notice a bit of a 'name' change on the blog. I started the blog as Emilie just to add a little bit of anonymity to my online presence. As my blog has grown over the last year or so - I have wanted to share more of the real me aka Emily and therefore I am changing everything back to my name. I doubt this is very shocking or exciting news but I thought I would just let you guys know :)

Second piece of new is... my new about page! Please check it out and let me know what you think.

Now onto my January Goals...

Wedding

• Send out invitations! (this is the most urgent task)
• Find cute bridesmaid gifts
• Meet with our marriage celebrant
• Pick wedding music (a very daunting task given our varied music taste)

Health

• Decide on a P90X/Insanity 5 day workout plan
  (I am currently doing 6-7 days a week but it is tiring me out a little too much)
• Eat clean 6 days a week coming up to the wedding - write out a meal plan/shopping list for the week
  (meal plans are perfect to help you choose healthier options and it also saves money when your grocery shopping win-win in my books)

Life

• Read 1 book this month
  (I just started reading Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn and I am already hooked)
• Set aside one night as date night
  (we have been so busy with work/wedding planning etc that time often gets away from us - so a night dedicated to just enjoying each others company sounds perfect!)
• Make an effort to get my SLR out and about more!

So that is it! I am dedicated the remaining days of January to getting myself (and the boy) organised for the rest of the year. We have a busy 12+ months ahead of us with our wedding coming up in March (plus 2 separate honeymoons - insert happy dance!), a busy work schedule and plans for updates around our home and garden so getting myself sorted out is a definite must.

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Recap on 2012 New Year Resolutions

Here is my recap of how I did with my 2012 New Year Resolutions. If your interested then you can mosey over to last years post to check it out...

2012 Health Goals Recap

1. Keep cooking lots and lots of home cooked healthy meals.
   Success! I did a lot of meal planning during the year and 90% of the meals during the week were healthy home cooked meals!
   
2. Plan our meals in advance so that I can continue to save money at the supermarket and reduce food waste at our home.
   I did really well with this until the last quarter of the year. Wedding planning and end of the year craziness got in the way. While I still cooked at home I just bought basics and cooked very simply instead of finding new recipes :(
3. Aim for 30 minutes of planned or incidental exercise every day to increase my fitness.
   I actually over-achieved this health goal and I workout for between 1 & 1.5 hours a day following a P90X/Insanity Hybrid Workout Plan. Woohoo!
4. Perform my resistance band workouts at least 3 times a week.
   I didn't end up using my resistance bands very much. I much prefer to use free weights, my own body weight or my pull up bar (chair assisted... for now....)

2012  Learning Goals Recap

1. I would like to increase my knowledge and experience in photography. I love photos so much and after Christmas (and a little teensy bit of indulgent shopping) I have all the tools to achieve this goal.
   I have learnt so much about photography in the last year. I absolutely love my Nikon D90 and my 50mm f1.8 lens. I still feel like there is so much to learn though!
2. Learn French! This goal is just something that I have wanted to do for a few years now. I am on the waiting list for our local French night classes so fingers crossed a spot becomes available this year.
   Complete fail - I made it through the waiting list and chickened out. I enjoy my rare spare time too much.
3. Find enjoyment and fulfillment in my job and if I can't... find a new job!
   I still don't absolutely love my job but since a negative work colleague left about 11 months ago it has definitely improved and there is also talk of a promotion... keep your fingers crossed for me :S

2012 Personal Goals Recap

1. Get my procrastination in check and start planning what I want to do we want to do for our wedding.
   MY GOSH. I am definitely not a lover of wedding planning. However my to-do list 13 things left to do and two months left to go!
2. Work with the boy in achieve our financial goals for the year - we are sitting tight this year and saving our pennies like madmen!
   The boy has built this ridiculously HUGE shed in our backyard. We also have been saving for wedding/honeymoon etc so we have saved well but big expenses also means it is spend quite quickly too...
3. Find fun and creative ways to continue to decorate our home.
   Failed this one... I don't think any decor changes has happened at all in the last year.
4. Lastly, to develop my blog to include interesting/useful/fun posts!
   My progress on this lovely little blog of mine is completely dependent on how busy work and life has been. I really enjoyed blogging in 2012 and here are a select few of my favourite posts over the last twelve months...

• Our Engagement Photoshoot (my absolute favourite)
• Camping Trip to Bjelke Petersen Dam
• A-Z Get to know me
• Vietnamese Rice Paper Wraps (my favourite food in the world)
• Trip to Preston Peak Winery
• Blossoming into Spring (such pretty photos)
• Choconana Protein Shake (really yum!)

As for 2013 resolutions. I have decided rather than keeping yearly resolutions - to give myself monthly goals instead so keep an eye out for these soon!

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Christmas 2012 Recap!

Merry belated Christmas to all! I hope every one had a wonderful holiday.

I have had a very relaxing Christmas break - I was on-call for work but luckily I can address any issues from home so it didn't cause much of a disruption to my holidays...

It was impossible to travel for Christmas due to work so my family travelled the 5 hours from their home to ours to spend Christmas with me and the boy. Although it was pretty hot for the majority of the Christmas week it was still awesome to spend time with the fam!

Much to my delight, Christmas started off with a delicious breakfast prepared by my mum and I. Soon to be followed by presents!

Toasted Turkish Bread ~ Roasted Asparagus ~ Roasted Tomato ~ Roasted Potatoes ~ Prosciutto Wrapped Chipolatas ~ Soft Boiled Eggs ~ Cappuccinos ~ Mimosas (my new favourite cocktail!)

After everyone was stuffed and satisfied the gifting began. We all gathered around the tree and distributed pressies! Everyone was thoroughly spoiled including me, Josh gave me a gorgeous Michael Kors watch I have been swooning over and the rest of my family know me so well and I received lots of kitchen things and other cute girly items. I think the cow onesie I gave my sister caused the most laughs for the day. She looked soo funny!

Mid afternoon we decided it was time for a late lunch. We decided to pre-prepare as much on Christmas eve as we could so we pulled out the glazed ham and turkey and cooked a huge variety of veggies to serve with lunch. Another round of mimosas and lunch was ready! Easy peasy and stress free - our aim for this Christmas was to make it as laid back as possible and I think we did a pretty good job :)

Sorry I am a little late with my Christmas recap - I was hoping to get this up before 2013 but its 2am on the 1st of January (whoops)!

As any regular readers may have noticed I may have taken a little hiatus from my blog - seems life just got a little in the way over the past few months but hopefully I will be back with a little more regularity now.

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