round two...

of eating better! here goes nothing.

this only needs to last until kristyn's wedding. i don't want to lose weight (i don't have weight to lose, i'm a skeleton) but i want to be healthy. i see the women i work with, and they look haggard and they aren't even 50 (i say this with all the love in my heart, they're great women on the inside!) granted they've all smoked their entire lives and i've never had one, but i'm tired of feeling tired all the time. i can feel the changes in my body from eating PDs every day and not getting as much exercise as i used to. i never really even exercised, but running around campus all day, or even running around the theatre, chasing 15 year olds, was better than the nothing that i'm doing now! 

so here's the changes i'm going to try to stick to: 

- i bought a blender and i've found some awesome recipes for super healthy smoothies. 

- i'm going to take the dog for a 1 mile walk at least twice a week. 

- do more yoga.

it's little stuff, but i just need a little kick in the butt to be more active (dancing around my kitchen only does so much). 

so here goes healthy kick #2!

oh, and about the smoothies: i bought almond milk, bananas, strawberries, peaches, honey, and whey protein. i made one tonight. whoa, so good!

another culinary adventure. and v-day

i surprised rylan with a trip to chipotle for valentines day! anyone who knows rylan, knows that its a huge deal. the closest one is in jacksonville, fl which is about 2.5 hours south of us. i didn't tell him where we were going, i just plugged it into the GPS and away we went. as the address popped up, his only response was "the last place i would've ever guessed is jacksonville".  he was pleasantly surprised, and very well fed. that made it so much easier to drag him to j.crew (hey, it's my valentines day too!) the rest of jax was kind of a bust, but at least we ate like royalty! 

he bought me mama mia. his only remark was "nothing says i love you like buying you a movie i hate". ain't he romantic?! i, on the other hand, bought him a kevin smith dvd and an awesome shirt from threadless with movie spoilers on it. but i didn't have a smart ass comment to go along with it.

i made chicken wrapped in bacon. the way into his heart is to wrap food in bacon. words cannot express how totally delicious it was. and theres this cheese sauce to go with it. outstanding! and i made another gooey butter cake. i've determined that i can make anything as long as all i have to do is mix stuff and then throw it in the oven. 

a little bit about our adventures in the kitchen lately.

i'm home alone this evening, so i decided to bake. jamie (one of my awesome bosses) talks about his mama's million dollar pie, so i thought i'd at least look at the recipe. well it looked pretty easy and tasty! i had to go buy a 9x13 pan which i am assured i will use again in the future (quite debatable). so far i have chopped pecans and made homemade whipped cream! all i can say is i'll never buy cool whip again. that stuff is good y'all! i just got the crust out of the oven and it's cooling. so far, so good.

the other night i baked chicken. you think "okay, no big deal" but for a girl who can only boil water, it was kind of a challenge. i wasn't aware you had to cover it in foil. it came out pretty dry but rylan seemed to love it. and then i tackled giada's lemon pasta. holy cow thats so good! i was quite pleased with myself.

rylan made awesome chicken parmesan the other night. and when i say awesome, that word doesnt even begin to describe how good it was! i've been begging him to make it again, but alas, he is quite content with hamburgers and tacos. 

although im not always a fan of sweets, since i tend to crave salty foods when i'm hungry, i do prefer baking desserts over making dinner.  my mother has been so proud of me lately that she offered to buy me a food processor. now what the heck am i supposed to do with that?! i really want a mixer. a pretty red kitchenaid one. it would look so awesome on my kitchen counter!

eating well... well, maybe.

so i'm sitting here watching oprah talk about living her best life and i'm getting all inspired and stuff. i take notes! i write down what we should not be eating and what kind of vitamins we should be taking. that dr. oz knows his shit, y'all! i start looking into getting a juicer and the benefits of drinking green tea vs. rooibos (red) tea. i make a healthy shopping list consisting of walnuts and blueberries and salmon and multivitamins (make sure its got iron in it!) 

and then rylan comes home from school and says he wants to go get burgers for dinner.

well there goes that idea out the window! maybe i'll start the healthy thing tomorrow... but i'm still thinking i want a juicer! that stupid infomercial gets me every time! 

our new years was a quiet one. we're not big party people (i'm sure you've figured that out by now) so we spent a nice quiet evening on the couch in our jammies with champagne.  so heres my soapbox about new years resolutions: why do you have to give stuff up for new years?! you have 365 days a year to kick your dirty habits. january first is just one of many days when you can start anew.  so i'm going to try to do more! i'm going to embrace my vices and then some. like, instead of lose weight, i'm saying eat more dessert! HA! i realize i sound like a total hypocrite after going on my oprah health kick, i have no excuse :)

we went ice skating on new years day. well, okay, I went ice skating. rylan crawled along the wall and then sat down the rest of the time. i hadnt ice skated since high school. i had a blast. i wasnt good but neither was anyone else. it was nice to get out with friends and do something totally different. and the best part: they played hangin' tough! we walked over to five guys burgers afterwards and had yummy yummy burgers!

fa ra ra ra ra...

we had a warm and wonderful christmas! but i'll start at the beginning...

3 days before xmas, a small jewelry sized box showed up under my tree... hmmmm

christmas eve started pretty early for us. i volunteered us to wrap presents at the mall for habitat for humanity.  wrapping presents is one of my favorite things about the holidays, so i thought this would be perfect for us, plus they were short handed of volunteers on xmas eve and we didn't have anything else to do. we got home and rylan started talking about our yearly tradition of opening one present on on xmas eve. so i picked one out for him and then (being a typical girl) grabbed the small box.  i opened it up, and he had bought me tickets to see twilight at 7:30. now i know im totally geeking myself out by admitting this, but i loved those movie tickets more than i wouldve loved jewelry! hahaha (oh and by the way, for inquiring minds, rylans early gift was the dark knight on bluray).  i made pot roast for dinner! it was awesome, if i do say so myself. i guess i can add that to my list of things i can make.

we got up early this morning to open gifts.  we made out like bandits, considering we didn't really know what to ask for.  rylans parents bought us a 32 inch flat screen high def tv (awesome!).  rylan got me an ipod dock with speakers for the kitchen. blaine and ginger got us gift cards to 3 different hamburger restaurants around town, as did nicki and jim.  andrea got me a "wicked" puzzle! we got books and clothing. excellent! excellent! nicki and jim adopted us for the second christmas in a row. we headed over there around 10:3o am. we ate good food, enjoyed wonderful company, and played wii bowling until my arm almost fell off! i'll admit it didn't feel like christmas without our own parents, but they are the best second family we could ever dream up! oh and to get back to my first statement about warm, it was 79 and sunny in good ol' Savannah today. if we didn't have plans with the hansens, we'dve been at the beach! 

hope everyone had a very merry christmas!

dear santa,

all i want for christmas is a new job.

xoxo chels

okay so the tree is up, and i'm waiting for one more package to come from a mysterious place that rylan cannot know about (yet!)... after i wrap that, i'm all set for christmas, with 2 weeks to spare! i think thats a record for me.  

i love this time of year. in my opinion there is nothing more beautiful than christmas lights. even the ugliest house looks nice with some lights up. okay thats a lie, some people go overboard and get tacky! those inflatable things that people put in their front yards are heinous. my parents neighbor in phoenix has the worst yard! i think you can actually see it from space, and thats not a good thing. we've noticed a lack of outdoor christmas lights in the sav. people are really big on wreaths and bowes, but not lights. 

thanksgiving and so forth...

the tuesday before thanksgiving, rylan and i left for nashville around 8am. armed with some maps, printed directions courtesy of google maps, and an awesome GPS (thanks nicki and jim!) we were almost positive we would not possibly be able to get lost. and we only made one wrong turn in the middle of atlanta! the drive was uneventful and the dog sat quietly in the backseat the whole time.  we made it to nashville by 3:30.  aunt jen and uncle tim took us on a beautiful hike to stretch our legs. we got to the top of the hill right at sunset, it was incredible. i now know the meaning of "purple mountains majesty." at this point, after being there for about two hours, lola had become best friends with their dog, moby (he's a poodle mixed with that bishon-frizzy kind of dog).  aunt jen made a delicious london broil for dinner, and then my cousin emalie and i went to see twilight (for the second time). fantastic movie.

wednesday morning i could not sleep in, i was seriously up by 7:15. so i curled up on the couch and read a book until everyone else got up around 8.  mom and dad got to nashville (from paducah, ky) around 10:30. my aunt mary jean and uncle kevin (from atlanta, ga) got there around 1:30.  uncle tim went to pick up aunt kathy (from cleveland, oh) and my cousin tommy (hartford, ct) at the airport. my aunts started cooking right away and rylan and i kept getting volunteered to load and unload the dishwasher, as well as peel potatoes and onions and apples and anything else that could've been sliced or diced.  that evening, all 12 of us headed to buc di beppo for a big ol' family dinner! **side note: we all got together not only for thanksgiving, but because it was my aunts 50th birthday, and she is technically the baby of the family** after dinner we headed back to the house for some birthday cake that my mom made! delicious. then we played cranium, which was hilarious. 

thanksgiving day was pretty mellow. rylan and i spent the morning avoiding the kitchen, but somehow we still got volunteered for the same jobs as the previous evening.  i would just like it to be stated for the record that i do not enjoy cooking. but since im a huge fan of eating, i guess i had to do my fair share.  it was beautiful and warm and sunny out so we all grabbed whatever lawn chair we could find, pulled them into a semi circle in the middle of the backyard, and we all worked on our tans for a while. it was gorgeous, we dubbed it "the nashville beach."  the meal was fantastic (it was all the peeling i did, i swear it was!) and i couldnt have asked for a better family than mine to spend thanksgiving with! after dinner we played apples to apples.  

friday everyone slept in. we all avoided "black friday" shopping.  the women of the family went to the spa for a refreshing morning of facials! i think i might have to do that more often! as we were pulling out of the parking lot, alison krauss (country singer, sings with the grand ole opry and her band "alison krauss and the union station") was pulling in. no one else in my family listens to country, so i silently flipped out from the back seat.  that evening we played rock band with my cousin philip. he is 16, cutest boy alive (zac efron hair) but im pretty sure hanging out with his lame-0 cousin (that'd be me!) was not on his list of things to be doing on a friday night, but he humored me well, he even let me sing! poor child.

saturday mom, dad, rylan and i went to cracker barrel for brunch and then went to downtown nashville.  i'm assuming this is common knowledge by now, but in case you don't know, i live for country music. we passed by the ryman auditorium and went to the country music hall of fame! they had an awesome exhibit about hank williams and the williams family legacy. i must admit, im not a huge hank jr fan (bocefus, who gives their child that kind of a nickname!?) but it was very interesting to read their story... i can now understand why people think country singers are so redneck. thank hank for that! then we walked down broadway, which is home to a ton of honky tonk bars and record stores. i was totally in my element (minus the bars).  we went into the wild horse saloon and my dad and i shared a beer. that evening we went to the mellow mushroom for pizza with my parents, aunt jen and uncle tim, and emalie and philip. 

sunday we went to paducah, kentucky for the day to visit pop. im absolutely convinced that he is the cutest old man ever. my cousin jarrod brought over his 2 year old daughter annsley. rylan was totally smitten with her, and vice versa. they flirted! it was so cute. i also got to see my uncle dave, who i hadn't seen in years.  we made a trip to walmart while we were there, cause there is really nothing else to do in paducah, trust me on this.  stopped over to see aunt carol and uncle gene for a few minutes. she just had major back surgery, but she looked like she was recovering very well! 

monday we were supposed to head back to savannah but i just couldnt bring myself to leave yet. so we stayed an extra day in nashville. we found a jcrew (hallelujah) and then we went to the opryland hotel.  it's right next to the new grand ole opry.  it also snowed. i like snow about as much as i like cooking (if you've been paying attention, you know thats now a good thing).  my mom made yummmmmy enchiladas for dinner and we had a nice quiet evening.

yesterday we drove home. besides the phone call from my mom telling rylan they found jack white's house, nothing exciting happened. i finished a whole book in one car ride (im a dork!). 

i was so not ready to be back at work today. one week away from those old bitches was definetley not enough. they are still fighting about the same stuff... it gets old so fast.  BUT i came home to clean laundry and christmas decorations!! i love when rylan is off from school :) our house looks beautiful, so here's the secret: live with an art student!  it's only dec 3, so i got at least 22 more days of beautiful christmas lights!!!!!