Christmas tree | Fitness is Sweet

For Blogmas today, I thought it might be fun to do a link-up I’ve never done before. Thinking Out Loud is a series where you basically group together a whole bunch of random thoughts. Thanks Amanda for hosting!

I’m pretty sure I somehow managed to get gummy priobiotic up my nose. And now it’s burning. How does that even happen??
I made my friend pumpkin bread with brown butter maple icing for her birthday. I’ve never browned butter before. It was cool to see all the changes it went through and it was a bit of an anxiety inducing process because I was worried I was going to burn it. Once it was done I was so sure it was burned but it wasn’t. The brown butter icing was AMAZING. It makes such a difference to brown the icing! I had a little leftover, and my family and I spread the icing on cookies. So good.
It’s actually so nice to be home. St. Louis was a fantastic experience but California is such a great place. Even better, all my people are here. Basically all of my high school and all of my college friends are in this area. And seeing my hometown for the first time in a while makes me see it in a fresh light: it’s a cute town among majestic hills. Missouri is pretty flat, you guys.
I really, really love routine. So coming home with no job or school was a tough transition. However, I have a TON of work to do for my online Microbiology class, and I have the hardest time getting anything done at home. The time just evaporates. Tuesday I spent the day at the local library and just got SO much done, and it felt great. I even packed a lunch, which was a nice return to routine.
Trader Joe’s Cranberry Chèvre is amazing. And it went perfectly in my pear salad. SO creamy and delicious. The blueberry chèvre is also amazing.
I FINALLY found the new Halo Top! I’m so excited. There are only 3 of the new flavors I can eat (lunch allergies+wheat) but that is exciting enough for me! I was a little disappointed by the oatmeal cookie; it didn’t have quite enough cinnamon-y flavor. The sea salt caramel and black cherry were really good too, though I only tried a bite of each. The black cherry was a surprise, since I’m not usually a fruity ice cream person. It will be awesome with fudge sauce.
I’m not really sure what’s going on when I eat gluten but it’s definitely something weird. After avoiding it for over a year completely thanks to a chronic stomach illness, I’ve had it a few times now and had varying reactions. The first 2 times it made my super sleepy. So I figured, hey, I guess it doesn’t hurt my stomach at least, so that’s cool. But then I had some Monday (not a lot) and had a peculiar reaction. I got really hot and my throat felt a little tight. I thought it was somewhat in my head but my mom said that my face was really red. Huh. Then I spent the night dreaming I had the stomach flu, and I’ve only had those dreams in association to eating gluten, haha! Then I felt sort of sick and sort of shaky the next morning, though luckily it didn’t stick around. So I guess a little gluten causes a little flare? Strange.
We finally have our tree all done up! This year we decided to go with an almost all animal ornament theme. Because to be honest, we have a crazy amount of animal ornaments. The new addition this year was a Budweiser clydesdale, a little nod to my time in St. Louis!
I’m on a major Flapjacked muffin for breakfast kick. I ordered these in bulk, so I guess I don’t feel the need to limit my consumption? That and I’m sick to death of yogurt. For now at least. Plus, healthy chocolate for breakfast? How can you go wrong??
I really love San Francisco, especially during the holidays. I missed my city. St. Louis is nice, but very different. I’m hoping to go up more during the holidays this year, especially given I don’t have finals and such to worry about.
I am having an absolute blast doing Blogmas. It does take more effort for the most part to do each post, but it’s so worth it. It brings me back to the type of creative blogging I really love but don’t normally have time for, and it forces me to be creative in the kitchen. Which really is a win-win for everyone.

What are you thinking today?

Hey guys! Since 12 Days Of Christmas is going on, I haven’t had much opportunity for a normal post! I wanted to catch you all up on some things and eats!

First, here’s a Turkey Trot photo! The biggest reason I chose to do a Turkey Trot 10k specifically was to increase my ability to eat. I think that may have been counterproductive-I am incapable of taking a race easy and pushed more than I was planning, which ended up kind of killing my appetite. Not that I still didn’t stuff myself! But I swear I must be getting old-I feel like it takes less and less each year to fill me up. Bye bye teenage metabolism…

I had a healthy dinner of cheesecake on Thanksgiving before being dragged out “Black Friday” shopping. I put that in quotes because it wasn’t even Friday so you really can’t even call it that. I of course went with the blessing of my parents-to be honest I didn’t want to buy anything but it was a chance to hang out with some friends form high school who I basically haven’t seen in 2 years. It was crazy-at the mall we ran into SO many people from high school! That was fun! But after being awake at 5:30 for the turkey trot, shopping at 1am was the last thing I wanted to do. And my feet were demolished-they’ve been bothering my lately in eh arches, and standing around a lot on the day of a race was not good.

Here’s Friday breakfast-ambrosia and an english muffin.

A lot of time yesterday was spent prepping things for 12 Days of Christmas, including tons of baking.

Then, it was time to get a tree! Whole Foods has a ton of beautiful, full, healthy trees, for a very good price. They were probably half of what we’d pay at a lot.

Here’s the winner!

We could tell how fresh it was quite easily-we’ve never had a tree anywhere near this heavy before (meaning it’s full of water). My dad can normally manage the tree on his own, but this time I had to help him carry it and load it onto the car-putting those Crossfit skills to work! Push press to the top of the car?

I also bought some dorm decorations-a mini tree that came with lights, plus this cute little poinsettia! We can’t have poinsettias at home since they’re poisonous to cats (and my cats like to eat flowers), but there are no cats in my dorm!

This means we’re going to have 3 plants in our tiny dorm room, so it’s basically going to be a forest.

In the evening, I had the pleasure of going to a class at my old Crossfit! It was great. So, so great. I miss that gym so much. I can’t even explain what is so different, but they are so much more my Crossfit family.

The strength portion was bench presses. I haven’t bench pressed in a good 2 years. And even then I’ve only done it like 2x. Needless to say my bench press was pretty weak. I’m not great at arm strength things in general-my legs much stronger than my arms.

The WOD was 400m run-12 deadlifts and box jumps-400m run-10 deadlifts and box jumps-400m run-5 deadlifts and box jumps. It was a good and fun one! There’s no question my box jumps have improved-this height seemed a bit scary for a WOD before I left but it was no big deal this time! Maybe what I don’t like about my school Crossfit is that not a lot of the WODs involve lifting really heavy. Who knows. I actually stayed a little late to help them build a giant structure to hang 15 foot ropes from-which was an interesting process to say the least!

Then, it was dinnertime!

My grandma is the best-she made a ton of butternut squash soup just for me! It is absoutely amazing topped with creme fresh and cranberry orange relish. So. Good.

Plus some other leftovers!

Then, one of my best friends came over to help me bake the Healthy Polka Dot cookies. We had a blast. I totally winged the recipe (I guess you guys probably don’t want me to tell you I had no idea what I was doing and said YOLO multiple times when adding ingredients), but it came out PERFECT. Exactly what I was hoping and more.

Selfie with a dirty blender.

Confession-we weren’t really sure what the texture would be like-we thought it might turn out more like cake, so here’s a shot from the outtake reel:

I mean, they did make perfectly fine mini cupcakes, but I preferred the cookie form!

Then, we went and saw Catching Fire! I’m not sure how I rallied myself for a 10:30pm movie, but the movie was really good!

I actually went to the midnight premier of the first Hunger Games! I read the books a while ago, and the 2nd and 3rd book kind of blurred together in my mind, so I wasn’t exactly expecting the ending, but I really liked it! Although cliffhangers? Not cool. (At least I considered this a cliffhanger.)

Well, now we’re all caught up! I have a track workout and weights planned for today-I’m not the Jingle Barbells workout-and then dinner with another friend later! Hope you all are doing well!

Best movie you’ve seen lately?

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