I cut down trees, I wear high heal

Well I cannot say I cut down any trees today, but I did move some wood today with the Lumberjack teams at school.  I was thinking about Monty Python all day.  The location of the site was beautiful, and the aspen trees are the color of gold right now giving us students breathtaking views our drive.  

We worked a nine hour day, long but somehow still enjoyable.  I will have many battle wounds to remind me of today for the next week: cuts and scraps on the hands and arms, bruised thigh from dropping a log onto it, ran my ankle bone into a log, and dropped a fat long right onto my toe.  What can I say?  I'm kind of a klutz. 

I have to give myself some props for actually achieving some things on my Project Day Zero list, even though I haven't been looking over it periodically.  I've been volunteering, participating in more club activities, and jogging regularly.  Hooray!

Gym in the early morning. <3

Renewing my ambition!

I finally made it to the gym this morning!  It only took me a week.  Plus I went for a two mile jog this afternoon with a wonderful friend.

Getting back to the gym was an instant motivation buster and I'm feeling back in the game.  As well, I've been playing with 'My Fitness Pal' iphone app to track my calories (the best I can that is...) and I'm loving it.  I hope it will help me with some mild fitness goals.

The same friend (plus another lovely friend) both helped me decorate special halloween cupcakes for an elementary school's halloween fair.

Honestly, it was my first time making cupcakes from scratch and they were amazing!  (And vegan <3)

( Could someone please donate a decent camera? :[ )

I felt horrible about caving in and getting gummy worms for the decorations but everything else is vegan.  

I feel blessed to have such wonderful friends in my life.

Good news:  I survived midterms last week.

Bad news: My workouts were put on hold after wednesday, and ever since I've been slacking off with working out and becoming depressed.  I could really use a workout partner to check in with and help me stay motivated.  

Disregarding that, there was plenty of other good news.  My wonderful boyfriend took me to the art museum last Friday for my birthday.  Before that we had thai food with my dad.  Afterwards we went to a lovely little coffee shop and enjoyed some quality coffee.

Soy Pumpkin Latte!

Other news is that I've been inspired to progress in using more vegan products, such as beauty and skin care products.  I've attempted this in the past but my paychecks could not support it before.  And it makes sense to me to transition into using more of these products, if I don't consume the flesh of animals then I should not use any by-products from their bodies.  I'm still making some mistakes with eating, having cheese every now and then, but I'm still trying my best to adopt more vegan tendencies.  It just feels right to me.  Since I received a wonderful Sephora gift card from the boyfriends parents I'm going to take this opportunity to start investing in some cruelty free vegan make up.


On Sunday one of my friends and I went to the Little Truckee River for 'Truckee River Day' and put a few hours into helping the community with research projects and conservation work.  It was really great to be out there while blessed with wonderful weather and meeting lots of great people who share similar passions.  This was my first time participating and I will have to do this more often! [Pictures soon...?]

Recipe of the week: Lentil-Soup!

I forgot to add the spinach when I served myself the first bowl! (I was pretty hungry at this point.)  So the picture does not do it justice!

Studying

This has been my entire weekend...

It will pay off.

New Recipe Number One

In honor of this cold October day, I decided to make some Three Bean Vegan chili.  

What goes better with chili than cornbread?  

...

Nothing

The chili turned out to be delicious.  I tampered with the recipe, substituted the jalapeño with a can of mild green chili, added some oregano, and chopped two whole carrots and added that it. 

I was a bit disappointed with the cornbread.


I used the Bob's Red Mill package, which may have been the origin of the lack of flavor or it could have been my egg substitution (1 egg = 1 tbsp of milled flax seed simmered with 3 tbsp of water.)


Disregarding the different flavoring of the cornbread, it turned out to be a lovely, and warming fall meal.
 


Chili recipe: http://vegweb.com/index.php?topic=36938.0

The practice 5K

If this was two years ago, I would not be happy waking up at six in the morning on a Sunday.  That has changed over the last few years and in particular the last month.  Yesterday was the Susan G. Komen race for the cure 5K where my aunt and two other friends were brave enough to wake up at an unholy hour to join me.

Sadly, since it was my first 5K, I signed up for the non-timed race because I'm inexperienced and mainly just cheap.  It was my misunderstanding of the situation of the race though, were I thought we would be started after the timed race with the walkers... and boy was I wrong about that!  Since my friend (the one that didn't race) and I wanted to jog we decided to try, but it was just too hard to weave through the large crowd of people.  So this 5K is not counting towards my list, since I walked most of the race and didn't exactly feel accomplished.

The whole experience was still wonderful.  The survivor ceremony was emotional and we walked around and collect free goodies (pens, bracelets, etc.)  It also feels wonderful to know that our registration is all donated to a good cause to help out the brave women who are fighting for their lives.

What lessons have I learned?  1. My endurance is low.   2. I need to remember to use my inhaler before I start jogging and not leave it in the car.  3. Start the race with the rest of the joggers.  4. Always give myself a monthly check (the hard part is remembering).

So my friend and I are committing to jog in the Halloween 5K race (I need a creative costume idea!!) and the Turkey Trot.  I'm looking for some useful and free training tips and plan on being better prepared for the next race!