I’ll let you have one guess of what I had for breakfast today…

Here’s a hint – I’m apparently totally predictable and boring.

Yep, folks another day of oats, wheat berries, almond milk, naner, cinnamon and PB. Shocking, I know.

JUNE

In an effort to actually give you something new and exciting I’ve decided to just go for it and run the OC Marathon May 3rd. Why the hell not, right? I would love to run the San Diego Rock N’ Roll Marathon (May 31st) instead. I’ve heard it’s a really fun & flat (my fave!) race, but that would not work out with my crazy June schedule.

So that only leaves  9 weeks until the race! Since my first attempt at the full Feb 1st I have really slacked offlet my self take it easy on long runs. Last Saturday 11 miles was hard! Plus the OC Mary supposedly has more hills than Surf City. Boo. The moral of the story is: I need to get it together. I am figuring out a training plan today!

We don’t have exact dates/flights/details set yet, but here is a rough draft of  how crazy June is for me!

My Life in June 2009:

June 1st -> go to New Jersey for Ben’s brother’s graduation

June 2nd -> graduation

June 3rd? to ??? ->drive to Florida from NJ

June 5th to ? ->Marco Island, FL – Ben’s family has a time share & go this week of June every year

June ? -> back to California

June 18th or 19th -> drive up to Paso Robles

June 20th -> WEDDING!!!

June 21st -> Leave for honeymoon (TBD)

I was doing something with my camera in the afternoon and didn’t take a pic of a bowl of cereal for an afternoon snack.

Dinner was a boring salad

and leftover tofu & brussel sprouts with ww couscous.

I am doing something wrong. I need to save money for my upcoming events but it’s hard to get in the habit of sticking to a specific budget and get all the things I need. This is what I just bought at the store – it was $50. This is just for the ingredients I need for a special recipe for tomorrow and a few other staples. Boo.

PS- I ate a bunch of those grapes for dessert right now

Ben and I are talking about where to go for our honeymoon. We went to Costa Rica last year and absolutely loved it!!! So, I kinda want to go back to a Central American country or South America. We have a bunch of travel books for everywhere from Fiji to Paris & totally can’t decide.

The only limitations are:

- We want to go somewhere with beautiful beaches (so that rules out some  places right away).

- We don’t want to go somewhere we’ve already been

That leaves us with so many options! It’s been very fun to research all these places, but I can’t decide! I have always wanted to go to the Galapagos or Peru (Machu Picchu). He would love anywhere in the South Pacific.

Q: Have you been anywhere that you totally recommend??? What’s your dream vacation?

My dream vacation would be combine beautiful nature, relaxation and exploration in far off countries. I like to go to more than one place when I’m on vacation and kind of hop around different cities/areas/countries. I need a vacation bucket list! For our honeymoon I definitely want to go somewhere tropical.

Cooking 101:

Lesson for today – Don’t forget that you put something in the broiler.

Happy Thursday I didn’t feel like running again today!? But this day just called for an easy 4miles and I was glad I did it.

Before I ran I had a few handfuls of Shredded Oats

Breakfast was same-o

Mid-morning colorfulness

Lunch – This is where the burning happened…

While I was putting it together I mindlessly ate a serving of these suckers – my  mom bought them and they’re addictive!

I had this soup from TJ’s. There is no point in having low sodium soup when you have to add salt to make it taste good!

Here is my super burnt english muffin with cheese

Hey, it’s not that burnt – see the bottom!

I ate lunch a little early today and was hungry for a BIG snack around 3pm. Bagel with PB&PB (pumpkin butter) – it was perfectly filling.

I also received a package in the mail from POM Wonderful and drank a bottle of the course of the afternoon review coming soon!

Dinner was my favorite meal – sweet potato, brussel sprouts & tofu (that can be switched with salmon depending on my mood).

Normally I cut brussel sprouts in half to roast them, but these were so small I didn’t have to.

I love roasted brussels and seriously eat a pound of them every time I made them. It could be worse, right?

Now I am desparately chewing gum and trying not to think about sweets!!! This is going to be a rough 40 days. Ben, who knows my addiction to sugar very well, asked me, “What if you lose your will to live?”

Let me just make this clear – me giving up sweets is like an alcoholic giving up drinking. I have a history of alcoholism in my family and have the same addictive tendencies, plus I use food as an outlet.

Happy Humpday This morning when I woke up I did NOT want to run. I don’t really know why, I just didn’t feel like I had a lot of energy, but I knew if I skipped out I would regret it later & wouldn’t have time to do it. So, I set out on a 7 miler. I am not going to lie and say that I loved every minute of it – the first 3 miles were mentally tough since I wanted to stop, but I did it.

Before I left I had a piece of bread w/ PB. Normally I would have some handfuls of cereal that would not get pictured!

Breakfast -

Q: What is missing from this picture???

A: brown sugar.

Normally I sprinkle brown sugar on top of my oats, but since I am staying away from sweets for the next 40 days (!) I thought I should take the sugar off my oats. I am not going to avoid all foods with sugar in it, since my goal is to avoid sweets like candy, cookies, ice cream, etc – not all sugar.

After breakfast I was still a little hungry (or maybe actually thirsty) and had some blueberries.

(I also had a few bites of scrambled eggs I made for my bro.) Lunch was salmon salad made with this packet. I love that you don’t have to drain the can and get fish juice everywhere!!!

I had it on an english muffin with an apple and salad on the side

My blog-aversary is coming up and I wanted to do a give away contest, but Lindsay at The Love of Oats beat me to it  I may have to wait for a belated blog-aversary contest since I don’t want to be a copier. But, I do want to participate in Linday’s contest!!!

I started the day with a huge bowl of cereal. After I eat the biggest bowl of cereal I am not as full as when I eat a normal bowl of oats. Oats are so much more filling. Since I was still hungryI had a piece of bread with PB.

What a pretty lunch! Look at these strawberries and blueberries

I also had a PB and pumpkin butter sandwich. I don’t really like this bread, luckily Matt likes it and I’ll get some of my fave Costco bread and let him finish it.

The King cake came with a baby to hide in the middle. Different groups have different traditions, but my friend says the person who gets the baby is the King or Queen for the day and has to bring the cake next time.

Here’s my piece, it was basically like a loaf of cinnamon swirl bread – and just okay.

A little later I broke out the yogurt/pumpkin butter/cereal combo

Dinner was chicken and brocoli salad and the biggest sweet potato ever!!! I had VitaTop and a few pieces of chocolate for dessert, oh, and maybe some dessert sherry

Happy Fat Tuesday! I am excited because I have a co-worker/friend from New Orleans (she came out to CA after Katrina) and she ordered King Cake from a local bakery for everyone in the office. I have never tried it and didn’t even know about it until last year when NPR did a story on it

Here’s what Wiki says about it:

A king cake (sometimes rendered as kingcake, kings’ cake, king’s cake, or three kings cake) is a type of cake associated with the festival of Epiphany in the Christmas season in a number of countries, and in other places with Mardi Gras and Carnival. It is popular in Christmas season in France, Belgium and Switzerland (galette/gâteau des Rois), Portugal (Bolo Rei), Spain (Roscón de Reyes and in Catalonia called tortell), Greece and Cyprus (vasilopita) and Bulgaria (banitsa). In the United States, which celebrates Carnival ranging from Pensacola, Florida to East Texas, centered on New Orleansit is associated instead with Mardi Gras season traditions.

The cakes have a small trinket (often a small plastic baby, sometimes said to represent Baby Jesus) inside, and the person who gets the piece of cake with the trinket has various privileges and obligations.

This will be my last hurrah before Ash Wednesday tomorrow. I am giving up sweets and meats. This is going to be the hardest Lent in a long time! I remember when I was a kid I gave up candy and right after Ash Wed. we started our chocolate bar sale that lasted for weeks! The entire school and my house smelled like chocolate (which is obviously my fave!). It was torture. I froze a bunch of chocolate bars and ate them for months after Lent was over.

I am going to try and restrain myself from gorging on dark chocolate today and take it like a lady. No promises though

Did I tell you guys I got a ticket at the Surf City Race expo last month? It is for 42 freakin’ dollars! On top of that I have some medical bills that are adding up! Hello, I have a wedding to pay for. When it rains it pours! It just feels like I am hemorrhaging  money right now! Grrr. Here are my eats from Monday. I didn’t look at my 21 day challenge to plan out my day and it ended bad I don’t want to be super controlling of my day, but at the same time I have learned from last week that planning my meals does help when I go to the store (& saves money!) and helps when I get home after a long day. By the way, the Lean Cuisine Mac n’ Cheese is super gross and I was hungry 10 minutes later & for the rest of the afternoon – hence eating 2 Kashi roll bars yesterday (only 1 is pictured)! There are other random snacks that are missing too. From now on nothing goes in my mouth without a pic so help me…

After many requests for a sneak peek of wedding dresses I’ve decided to go for it and share a few of the dresses I’ve tried on! I have made Ben promise that he will not look at the site so he won’t see me. I don’t plan on getting any of these dresses, but you never know if there is a disaster with my dress and I have to quickly buy off the rack or something!

At this point I have been to about 7 dress shops – these are some random picks from the ones I’ve tried on. I was willing to try any style on at first because I didn’t want to rule anything out until I tried it.

A ballerina style ball gown with a halter neckline:

Strapless ball gown – it was super pretty in person:

Mermaid style with halter neckline:

Strapless ballgown :

and the back:

Me being silly:

I think I have my mind made up about the dress. My next project is bridesmaid dresses!

Q:Does anyone have good tips on finding cute & inexpensive bridesmaid dresses?