Snowed-In Weekend Catch-up!

So I pretty much got snowed in this past weekend but I honestly have no complaints about it! Sure, all the snow, ice, and freezing temperatures aren't always ideal but I believe I'm exactly where I'm meant to be right now, snowy circumstances and all! Which means I'm going to make the best of it regardless if I'm not able to go do much with all this crazy weather. 

Since I wasn't able to get out much this weekend, it was focused mainly on spending time with family! I can't even stress enough my gratitude that I'm able to live within a square mile of my closest family members. The support system I've grown up with is an incredible blessing! 

As Lent started this past week, our family tradition is usually to do Lent dinners every Friday. We're not Catholic but my church and family still observe Lent in honor of Jesus. These dinners are just about us getting together as a family, appreciating all that we have, and focusing on God.

So on Friday we had a scrumptious dinner of grilled salmon, pierogies, cheesy roasted cauliflower with bacon, and I brought my famous roasted vegetable salad! Well, famous in my family at least! Seriously, if we're ever having a family get-together I'm told to bring this, and people tell me they look forward to it. 

It's usually different every time because I just use whatever I find but it always has the roasted brussel sprouts and carrots as the base! This week it had carmelized onions, yellow peppers, tomato slices, chopped walnuts, grapes, dried cranberries, and sunflower seeds. I honestly just looked in my pantry for what I thought would be good, and went with it! I found some sweet potato chips that I was dying to put on but I didn't know how well that would go over with the majority. If I had been making it just for myself, those chips would've gone on in a heart beat! 

On Sunday, I made a mini version of this salad just for myself :) 

I first roast the brussel sprouts, carrots, and onions in a pan on the stove until they get nice and crispy! I season them with a little bit of olive oil, salt, pepper, and garlic. 

Then, I topped it off with some balsamic vinaigrette. 

Anyway, back to Friday night. After dinner, Hannah and Lola (Layla's half-sister) stayed over for a girls' night sleepover! We were planning on going to an early morning spin class Saturday morning but that ended up getting cancelled. We woke up to a full-on blizzard starting! It was crazy and snowed several inches in about an hour. 

Amanda's meeting ended up getting cancelled because of the snow storm so the three of us found some workouts on OnDemand to do together. It was a lot of fun laughing at ourselves because some of the moves required a little bit of coordination and long story short but we were not always the best at it...

After showering, having coffee, and a lazy morning just hanging out we went up to visit with my grandma in the afternoon. My cousins Jake and Ben (Hannah's younger brothers) decided to join us so we made it a family trip. As a pleasant surprise, my dad was already up there plowing and shoveling her driveway so it was like a mini family reunion! We all sat and visited with her for a couple hours which was really fun, and great time spent together. She's still not able to get out much with the chemo treatments because her immune system is pretty compromised. We have to be careful with any germs that we might spread around in the family. 

For dinner I didn't feel like cooking much so I broke out the old stand by: chicken postickers from Trader Joe's. I seriously love these and probably make them at least once a week when I don't feel like cooking much! I usually add in broccoli or brussel sprouts (often times both!), and make it into a little stir fry. It's delicious! 

What I do is I follow the instructions on the bag for cooking the potstickers. When I get to the part after they have browned and you want to add water and turn the heat down to let them steam, that's when I add the brussel sprouts and broccoli. That way, it all steams and cooks together. Then, when they're cooked I take the lid off, crank the heat back up, and add some soy sauce and garlic so that cooks together for a couple minutes. Voila! Total cooking time is less than 10 minutes. 

Oh and I tried this new tea this weekend and it was tasty! I wasn't sure how I'd feel about chocolate tea but I really liked it. I probably had about 2 or 3..possibly like 8 cups throughout the weekend to keep warm! 

And if you needed any cheering up with all the snow, ice, and freezing temperatures well here are some cute Layla pictures! But then again when are they ever not cute?! Yeah, I know #crazydoglady...

She's had little motivation to get up at all this week with it being in the negatives most mornings when we wake up. Usually she'll either crawl back in to my bed and go to sleep or go in Amanda's room to sleep for a couple hours before she gets up! 

Or she comes downstairs with me while I work out and likes to keep me company, and by that I mean she just sleeps on her bed. Such a ruff life!