Marinated Balsamic Veggie Salad

In true me style, I fashioned myself a little bowl of veggies without really knowing how it would turn out. I'd say about 90% of my recipes are just "let's throw this all together just to see what happens", and roughly it works about half the time. The other half ehhh not so much!

This recipe wasn't so much of a risk but it turned out well anyway! I wasn't sure how it would do with the dressing sitting over night but it was one of those times that I didn't feel like bringing 500 tupperware containers to work for my lunch since I already had so many others to bring in that day. So I told myself that I would let the vegetables "marinate" to make it sound more like I knew what I was doing. I know, such a science right? So to avoid using a separate container to keep the dressing in, I just added it on the veggies the night before and let it sit until lunch the next day.

For the vegetables I cut up two pearl tomatoes (little bit bigger than grape tomatoes), one mini cucumber, and an orange bell pepper. The ratios of vegetables doesn't really matter, that's just what I had on hand! Then, I used a tablespoon of light balsamic vinaigrette to cover them and mixed it all together.

It was the perfect side salad for my lunch! Very light and refreshing. I haven't been keeping track or calculating but it's safe to say that it was under 100 calories but that depends on the dressing you use, mine is only 25 calories a tablespoon!

What are some of your favorite recipes to throw together at the last minute?

Another "Eggcellent" Weekend!

Whoops I've definitely been slacking on posting! I have a bunch of different little ones that are in the making but I just realized now that I haven't posted anything since last Tuesday. It just felt like it hadn't been that long since I've technically been working on different posts all week! 

I have an exciting announcement, though, yesterday Amanda got: 

Chickens! Did you figure it out by my oh-so-clever-but-not-really post title?!

I told my one coworker this morning and her immediate reaction was "to eat them??" Nah, they're for laying eggs! My aunt has some in her backyard and it might sound unusual to have them while living in a small suburban town but I think it's pretty cool. I wasn't too crazy about the idea at first since I didn't know what would happen when we'd eventually move or if they'd bee too high maintenance or noisy. Plus, I don't eat that many whole eggs (just the egg whites normally) so I didn't want all the eggs to go to waste. 

Amanda's birthday is around the corner, though, so I decided to be a good sister and caved so she could get what she truly wanted this year. I mean I finally got my dog so I honestly don't really mind at this point! As long as I have Layla I'm happy haha! Which means yesterday we had a whole family outing to a chicken farm! And when I say chicken farm I mean this farm was swarming with chickens of all breeds and ages. I never knew there could be so many different breeds of chickens but there are dozens! 

These were some of the wee little baby chicks that were so cute! 

We ended up getting four adolescent chickens and all of them were a different breed that will lay different colored eggs. That way we'll be able to tell which of the chickens are laying eggs if there comes a time when they're too old and no longer laying. Don't worry, I'm not going to allow Amanda to send away the old ones! We'll just build another coop next door so there will be a retirement place for the older ones :) 

Count on me to be the one person who gets too attached to their chickens haha! Also, the condition that I gave Amanda if she got the chickens is that I got to name them. I told her I'd pick the most ridiculous names I could think of and she wasn't allowed to change them. 

So far we have: 

Bubbles

Mercedes

Garthetta (Garthie for short)

Yes, Garthetta is not a name. But my cousin Hannah has an obsession with Garth Brooks the country singer and kept telling me to name one of the chickens Garth. Well since that's a boy's name my aunt joked around and said to call her Garthetta to make it a girl. So that's how that came about and we'll call her Garthie as a nickname! I know we're ridiculous! But I love it so it's sticking. 

So far Amanda has approved of the names but we're looking for a fourth! I told my friend Megan she could have the honor of naming the fourth so we're waiting to see as they get older which names fit each of them. We're open to any suggestions and the more fun/crazy/random, the better! 

Right now they're set up in Layla's old crate on our sun porch. It worked out because Layla hasn't needed her crate since she was about 6 months and the chickens can't go outside yet since they're not old enough. My dad is building the coop for us so in the next month or so when they're able to go outside, their new home will be ready! For now, they're fine in the dog crate with everything they need. 

Layla absolutely LOVES them so far. I swear there's no one or nothing that she doesn't like! As soon as we got them set up yesterday, I had her come out because I want her socialized to them as soon as possible. That way she'll always have a good reaction to them, won't hurt them, or won't get too excited or curious about them. All I did was allow her to come to them on her own, sniff around their stuff, and then opened the door for her so she could see them. After she seemed comfortable, I took one out and let her sniff it up close. I made sure to be calm and neutral about it so she could read my take on the situation. If she sees that I'm calm and comfortable then that's how she'll react to them too! I don't want her to get overexcited with them and think they're something to play with or worse to chase or hunt. 

This morning she was super cute. As soon as I opened the door from the living to go on to the sun porch to let her outside, she went right over to the crate, jumped up so she could put her paws on the table, and then wagged her tail!

On another happy note, I was able to run outside again this weekend and today, too! The best part was I was able to take Layla with me this morning. It's finally gotten to the point where most of the ice is off the sidewalks so I feel comfortable taking her with me again. Before it was too much of a hassle to negotiate myself through the dark with the ice let alone have her to possibly slip too and take me off balance.

We did a nice easy run this morning since the poor thing hasn't been able to come with me since probably the first week of January or so. It's been so long that I've completely lost track! We did between 2-3 miles and she loved it! As soon as I told her we were going for a run this morning her little ears perked right up. She got absolutely filthy with all the water and muddy patches but I just toweled her down really well and wiped her clean with wet paper towels. I didn't mind at all because I love being able to take her running with me! Plus she has to go to the groomers soon anyway so I'll let them take care of the deep cleaning!

I'm going to work on getting some other posts up soon but I hope you all had a great weekend and wonderful start to the week! 

I finally got to run OUTSIDE!

So I just got back from a lovely three-day weekend, and feel very much refreshed! Sometimes it's great to just plan out a mental health day especially since I'm going to have a next couple of busy weeks at work. But what I was most excited about this weekend was that I got to run outside! Oh, and that we have another doggie in the house :) except unfortunately that's not permanent. We're just watching a friend's dog! 

His name is Denver and he's made an appearance before on here since we watch him probably a couple times a year. This time he's staying for two whole weeks! Which will more than likely turn into three but I have no complaints because he's a sweetie! And a lab which happen to be my favoriteeee! Shhhh don't tell Layla. 

Ok, back to running since this post is called how I got to run outside and not "how I'm a crazy dog lady: evidence #3,098". 

It was definitely still cold Saturday morning but the sun was out and not a cloud in the sky! The sidewalks and roads seemed to be finally clear so I knew there was no way I was NOT going to not take advantage of that. Single digit degrees be darned! I was going to run outside!

And I did and it was glorious and the best 45 minutes of my weekend! That is honestly how excited I was to be able to run outside and in the sunshine! I just doubled up on the under armor, had on extra socks and gloves, and I was one happy runner. 

It really didn't seem that cold once I got started, and the sun warmed me up. I will admit it was a little rough in the beginning because I have kind of a cold so the congestion was a little hard to deal with especially once the cold air started to loosen things up even more and there was just a lot going on sinus-wise (TMI? oh well I think we're at that point together now).

I didn't plan out a specific mileage but decided to just kinda run wherever I felt like. I planned on doing about 45 minutes because I figured that would ease me back in nicely, and prevent me from turning into a complete popsicle. It was the perfect amount of time spent running! 

On Sunday there was once again another blizzard that then turned into another ice storm sooo there went my plans for running outside the rest of this week! I'm not going to let it get me down but rather just focus on making up more indoor workouts! 

I watched the snow safely from inside with a cup of hot chocolate to stay cozy! 

Then, Denver arrived on Monday morning! Amanda had spent the weekend visiting her friend, and then brought him back with her so he could stay with us. Layla was over the moon to see him as I knew she would because she loves everyone! Amanda and I joke around that Denver is the male version of Layla but it's so true! They're both so laid-back, friendly, playful and sweet! 

I love Denver but I told Amanda that if he's staying with us for that long then we're going to have to do a sort of "doggie boot camp" because he's a little rough around the edges training-wise. I'm not claiming Layla is perfectly behaved or anything but I am pretty proud of how well she does for only being a little over a year old. Denver is nearly 4 but there are a few things that I'll be working on with him while he's staying with us. He's not badly behaved at all there are just certain areas that he could use a touch more discipline and consistency. Just small stuff that I usually take for granted in Layla since she's already learned it. 

I also had to share this video because Layla can be such a nut sometimes! Her and Denver had been playing most of the afternoon so he was trying to take a break but Layla was having none of that! She kept jumping around him in circles trying to get him to play with her again. I couldn't help but laugh because she's such a goofball!