Lately...

1. It's snowing out right now! I might be one of the only people who actually looks forward to snow. I always feel guilty showing how excited I am when the flakes start to fall as snow is my boyfriend's least favorite thing, but I think it is just so magical!! We are only supposed to get a little bit tonight- 3 inches max, but I always keep my fingers crossed that we get more than the estimate. I want a snowy winter this year, not a lame winter like last year, it has already been better, but still hasn't been enough for me. Don't tell Ron :)

2. There is less than a month to go until I turn 30, which is so scary! I waver between not caring at all, and mentally freaking out about this. I just feel so young still. I thought that by the time I turned 30 I would have things figured out and feel like an adult, but that doesn't seem to be the case. At least I'm more mature than I was as a 20 year old!

3. My best friend and I are going to be doing the 21 day detox in the January issue of Whole Living!! Starting after my birthday of course. I've never done a detox before, but this one sounds like its actually doable for me. You can eat real foods, and a good amount of food too, unlike one of those juice cleanses. Not that I'm knocking those, it's just something that realistically I don't think I would be successful at. I just LOVE to eat too much. This detox has you eliminate some things- processed foods, added sugar, dairy, gluten, alcohol and coffee, but you can still eat fruits. veggies, nuts, and later on seafood, eggs and tofu. I don't think it'll be easy- especially giving up coffee for three weeks, but I believe I can do it. At least I'll be able to drink tea still.  I'll update you further later on in February!

4. So I saw something on Pinterest about paying yourself a dollar for each day you workout as a motivator. I think I'm going to put this into practice. When you reach your monetary goal, you can treat yourself to something you've been wanting. I think it'll help motivate me to get to the gym on those days I feel like slacking. Sometimes you just need a tangible goal to reach.

5. I went out to breakfast twice this weekend and it was the best! I love sitting down to a delicious, leisurely breakfast. Saturday my best friend and I had breakfast in a diner, and I had awesome French toast with a side of bacon. On Sunday, Ron and I went to breakfast at a little place close to us in CT where I got a mushroom, spinach and cheddar omelet with homefries and homemade toast. It was so wonderful. The unlimited coffee never hurts either :)

6. Last week I made tacos, a couple of chicken and veggie stir-fries, a chicken fajita bowl (so yummy I didn't even miss the tortilla), and then today I made pork Milanese using a Giada de Laurentis recipe. It was probably one of the best pork dishes I have ever personally cooked! I'll post recipes for these meals this week!

Lately I've Been...

Lately I've been thinking of how I need to stop neglecting my little blog here! I've been cooking and cooking and cooking but am always so concerned about trying to get a good picture of my food that I get frustrated and end up not blogging at all. I've decided to relax and not stress about the perfection of the pictures (since I'm still a very beginner photographer, although that's something that I really do want to work on), and the perfection of what to say about the recipe, and so on and so forth. I just want to enjoy this space, be able to record a good recipe, and also be able to use this space as a place to talk about other things that are going on in my life- things I'm enjoying lately, books I'm reading, things I'm obsessing about on Pinterest, etc. I just want to be a little more relaxed in general.

So that said, here are some things I've been doing recently.

1. Reading Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn for my book club and loving it so far!! I'm all for suspense and thrillers so I'm super excited about this pick and I've read so many good things about this book!

2. Trying to put some of my Pinterest pins into action (if you are on Pinterest and want to follow me, you can find me at www.pinterest.com/emilycirrus/). My first project was inspired by a few coffee bar pins. I thought this was a great idea and perfect for me because I love coffee, and I had a perfect spot for this in my kitchen already! It never occurred to me before that I didn't have to have my coffee maker on my counters! Not only does it look much better, it saves counter space! It is still a work in progress, but it's getting there! Oh... Also, I finally got a magnetic knife rack!! I've been wanting this forever! My boyfriend and I went to ikea on New Year's Eve and finally bought one! I also bought some nice, plain white dishes! Such a bargain :)

3.I'm starting to work out regularly again after the laziness of the holiday season! One of my New Year's resolutions is to work out at least 3 times a week. So far I met my goal last week, and as long as I work out tomorrow, I will have met it this week as well! Today I ran for 2.5 miles (at 6 mph)! It was hard, but I did it and I feel so proud of myself! Now that I have an iPhone it is even better to run because I can listen to Pandora radio! Today I listened to Cold-Hearted Snake radio- Paula Abdul, Madonna and Janet Jackson all made appearances! Also, I made a Green Monster for the first time last weekend to have after my workout... I used unsweetened vanilla almond milk, vanilla Greek yogurt, banana, peanut butter and spinach. I loved it!!

4. This week my menu consisted of Skillet Pork Chops and Rice with Parsley Butter, Mushroom Bacon Swiss Burgers with Curly Fries, Lemon Chicken with Potatoes au Gratin and Dirty Risotto! There wasn't a bad recipe in the bunch, but my favorite was probably the burgers... What can I say? I love a good burger!

5. I tried Panera's new big kid grilled cheese last weekend! Soooo good! How can you go wrong with three types of cheese and bacon. Yum!!!!

I hope you enjoyed this little update! I have a feeling the blog is going to be more like this in the future. Don't worry though! Recipes will be included still :). I will post those soon!