Oats, Weights, and Beauty

It's the weekend! Hooray!

How was your Friday?? Mine was good. I woke up at 4 as I've done all week (Erik had to go into work at 5 all week so I got up with him). Upon waking up and dragging myself out of bed ... (4:00 on a Friday ... dragging yourself is necessary, ha!) I put on some workout clothes and hit the treadmill. I walked 40 minutes on incline at around 3.8. I like to walk at least 4.0 most of the time and try to push myself really hard but this morning, I wasn't feelin' it so I stuck with a steady 3.8 and still had a great workout in which I was sweating a ton! That always makes a workout feel good.

After changing and getting all ready for work, I had breakfast. I ate my new favorite oats combo. Heaping 1/3 cup dry old fashioned oats mixed with some cinnamon, frozen tart cherries from my mom's cherry tree, a small dollop of peanut butter, 2 packets of Truvia, and a splash of almond milk. YUM! The tartness of the warm cherries and peanut butter compliment the oats extremely well! (Separate from that I had 1 whole egg and two egg whites scrambled).

Work was pretty much normal, just work. It was Friday so we got to wear jeans and that's always nice. After work, the husband and I chilled for a little bit and I had a piece of toasted sprouted bread with pb and half a banana along with some tea to energize myself a bit before lifting. Tonight I worked my shoulders by doing:

-4 sets of 15 reps shoulder presses; 15 lb dumbbells for 2 and 20 lb dumbbells for two
-4 sets of front raises til failure; 2 with 10 lbs dumbbells and 2 with 5 lbs.
-4 sets lateral raises til failure; 5 lb dumbbells (side note: front raises and lateral raises are hard and they burn!! ha. at first i just wasn't feeling the burn but my trainer, the hubby, gave me some tips that of course made them harder since i was doing them a little wrong ... something that really helped was to keep my head down)
-4 sets of 15 reps shoulder shrugs holding shrug for 10-15 seconds every five reps; 15 lb dumbbells

And now I'm drinking my post workout shake in my Amazing Grass cup ... it makes lifting all worth it I tell you! haha. And a random picture for the road ... Erik thought it would be funny to put his shirt on Adrian (and it was!) Ha. She really didn't even care, but just walked around and played with Rocky like normal. And to end, a little tidbit on true beauty that I read last night:

"Has anyone by fussing in front of the mirror ever gotten taller by so much as an inch? All this time and money wasted on fashion—do you think it makes that much difference? Instead of looking at the fashions, walk out into the fields and look at the wildflowers. They never primp or shop, but have you ever seen color and design quite like it? The ten best-dressed men and women in the country look shabby alongside them."

-matthew 6:27-29; message bible-


HAVE A GREAT WEEKEND, FRIENDS!!! : )

Nebraska, Fresh Fruit and Veggies, Summer

Hello bloggie friends, "real life" friends and brother Delmar (ha;)!

Well, this weekend the hubby and I went to good ole southwest Nebraska to visit my family. After driving six hours through a torrential downpour, including ferocious looking green clouds with a little bit of hail, we made it! (Gotta love those KS/NE thunderstorms).

My mom is pretty much the best gardener I know and it was fun seeing her prosperous garden and all her beautiful flowers and cherry tree. We came home with a cooler that included four dozen farm fresh eggs, some freshly picked and pitted (thanks to my mom and her cherry tree) cherries, frozen sliced peaches, picked frozen blackberries, and frozen corn. (Did I mention that I love good old Nebraska-picked, cut-right-off-the-ear-of-corn-into-a-bag-and-put-in-the-freezer corn?? Because I do! It's way better than any corn you can buy at the store). Anyways ... here's some weekend-at-NE recap pictures. First off, my mom's garden full of wonderful veggies. Freshly picked beets, yellow zucchini squash, red potatoes, cucumbers, an onion, and kohlrabi. (Does anyone else love kohlrabi?? My mom and I were talking about how not many people seem to know what it is, but we love it!) On Saturday night, we had fresh veggies and meat cooked on the Traeger grill (I had salmon and it was tasty). My sissy and I played cards. There were a lot of animals around! First off, my parents cat and dog, Wilber and Harley. Then, my sister's dogs, Charlee and Norm and finally our dogs, Rocky and Adrian. It makes for an amusing time.

Rocky Adrian Big Norm, little Charlee and Harley in the back And finally Wilber (Thanks, Mom, for the pictures I stole from you off of Facebook ; )

The weekend went by fast and here were are in the middle of another week! But flying by or not ... isn't summer great?? ; )

(Note: my promised fitness/water post is still on it's way!) Hope you are are enjoying your summer and indulging in fresh fruit, veggies, and wonderful weather : )

God writes the gospel not in the Bible alone, but on trees and flowers and clouds and stars. --Martin Luther

Blog Update/Recaps, 2nd Anniversary

Hello!

First off, I forgot to mention this quite awhile back, but for Google Reader's sake I will now ... my URL is now www.lesleylivinglife.com rather than "lborger.blogspot.com". It will still show up in Google Reader if you have the old URL but it takes it a couple days to show up ... just in case anyone wanted to know that ; )

Moving right along ... as is already evident, I used to blog pretty much every day and for quite some time now, I haven't been! It was just too much to keep up with because life is busy. I wish I could post more often, as I really enjoy it and have missed it! So thanks to you who are still reading despite my sporadic posting ... I'm sure I've lost some readers due to this, or they just don't comment anymore, buuut such is life.

Some exciting news ... my husband and I had our 2nd Anniversary this past Tuesday on the 23rd. : ) I convinced I'm the luckiest girl in the world! To celebrate, and to get away for a night, we went out of town for a night this weekend. We ate dinner at a place called Stix (we had sushi ... surprise, surprise!), and then we went to the new Transformer's movie. (We liked it, but it felt way too long in my opinion) For dessert before the movie started, we had a cherry pie Larabar. (We got a box of them on sale at GNC) For breakfast, we decided to hit up Panera and we each had a whole grain bagel with veggie cream cheese and an iced tea. It's been a long time since I've had a bagel and it tasted pretty good! Here's our "looking out the windows and almost laughing" pictures ... we didn't even mean to take them that way, it just happened, ha. I think we slept in too late, though, because we've both felt tired all day long. We had a great night, but getting up earlier would have benefited us both throughout the day!

Now for some random quick recaps following-up on previous posts:

-Remember all that talk about my mission to drink more water? And then my goal to slightly change my diet and give myself a workout challenge to tone up by lifting more??

Well, I'm proud to say that I'm now easily drinking around 100 ounces of water just at work every day and I've been lifting almost every night and can definitely see results in building muscle and loosing more fat.

Has it been easy?? Did I feel like quitting?? How have I done it and what do my workouts look like?? More to come later ... (complete with pictures ; )

"One may walk over the highest mountain one step at a time"
-John Wanamaker-

My Dad, Sunday Grill Night

Happy Father's Day!

I called my dad earlier but he was golfing (go figure!), so I'm going to try back later. When thinking of my dad, some of my best (and worst, ha) memories revolve around golfing. I golfed all four years of high school on the varsity girls golf team and my dad is the one who taught me everything I know and he was always my biggest fan! Ha, but just ask him, we argued a lot while golfing together ... I tended to be overly emotional at times! But overall, I'm glad I got to spend all the time with my dad golfing, even if he had to often times force me to practice when I didn't feel like it. Here's me and by the looks of it, I was a sophomore when that picture was taken. And now, even though I live six hours away from my parents, they're always more than willing to come here and help us with anything we need done. When we moved into our current house, my dad very graciously and happily drug his wet saw all the way from Nebraska to Missouri and spent several days laying tile in our basement and helping us paint.
Before ... (The pictures say '05, but they're lying ; ) And after:All thanks to my wonderful dad!!
And here he is painting ... his specialty! Actually, he has many specialties ... a few of them are painting (walls and on canvas! he's also a very good artist), and fixing computers ... if something's wrong, he can fix it! I'm very thankful to have such a great dad!

Next ... some food!! Sunday's have unofficially become grill night at our household and tonight we grilled turkey burgers and chicken. For supper, I had a turkey burger on some toasted sprouted rye bread with some broccoli, corn and peas. Erik and I made the discovery that turkey burgers and rye bread go extremely well together ... seriously, do try it!! Here were our entertaining and funny dogs while we were eating. Rocky was sitting a nice distance away: And here's what Adrian was trying to do (she didn't get to do this long, but I just had to snap a picture of it!) Well, I hope you all have had a wonderful summer weekend! If you're interested ... check out my latest review of Pure Bars here, and have a wonderful evening/day/morning, etc!!

"When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much he had learned in seven years."
~Mark Twain, "Old Times on the Mississippi" Atlantic Monthly, 1874

Pure Bars

PURE BARS

A couple weeks ago, Rebecca from Pure Bars was kind enough to send me a nice full box of bars to sample and review ... I was so excited when I saw them on my front porch!! I'd like to first point out that Pure Bars are, as described on their website, "an energy bar that is organic, raw, gluten-free and delightful! Made with fruit and nuts, it is amazingly chewy and sweet. "

As I mentioned in my last bar review of Amazing Grass bars, my husband and I are very picky when it comes to bars. We're not fond of bars when the first ingredient is sugar and it's extremely processed, and contain five million ingredients, especially when it's a "healthy" bar. We much more prefer bars with few ingredietns that are "real". And with Pure Bars, that's exactly what you get and more! Nutrionally speaking:

These bars are very clean and real, and you can't get much better! Here's an example in the cherry cashew bar: All of the bars had about the same stats, varying a little depending on what type of fruit and nuts were included, and the flavors include:

• ChocChip Trailmix
• Wild Blueberry
• Chocolate Brownie
• Chanberry Orange
• Chery Cashew
• Apple Cinnamon

So how was the taste??

The first bar I tried was the Cherry Cashew bar and was followed by the Chocolate Brownie. My sample included two of each so Erik and I both got to try one of each kind.

Overall, Erik said they were "decent" and "all right" taste wise, and I do know what he means but I think they were a bit better than just "all right". Some were better than others of course, but overall, I'd say they were pretty good. What I didn't really like is that they seemed kind of greasy (for lack of a better word) and I'm assuming that's because they're raw. However, they weren't all "greasy", though most of them seemed to be to me.

Although ... there is one bar that I especially really liked and that was the Apple Cinnamon bar. It had a very strong apple cinnamon sweet taste that my mouth absolutely loved. image link

All that being said ... these bars would be great pick-me-up snacks, especially if you were traveling, or had an on-the-go lifestyle and wanted something quick and easy, and I would definitely eat them again (especially the Apple Cinnamon kind!) These bars would also be great for a raw, vegan, gluten free, vegetarian, organic and/or just about any other diet, and not many bars can say that!

Be sure to check out their website along with Veronica's blog!

So, thanks again Pure Bars for the wonderful sample!

Purely Grilling

Happy end of the weekend/beginning of the week! Weekends always go by so fast. Oh well ... at least I have a good job I don't mind going to every Monday.

First off, the end of my week started off good because I received these in the mail ...... a nice big box full of Pure bars to review. Thank you Rebecca, from Pure Bars for this wonderful sample! (Review will be coming soon ; )

Erik and I have been taking advantage of nice summer weather by grilling a lot. The past few weekends, we've grilled a whole bunch on Sunday evening so that we don't have to make anything for our lunches for the coming week, and it's worked very nicely! Tonight we grilled some pork chops, chicken breasts, and some lean beef. Aaaaand, today was exciting because we got some new purchases for our house. Hooray! Here's some pictures with some of the new stuff. First off, some new lamps and a MUCH needed couch slipcover. (Now we need to get some art to hang on the walls!) Next up, a new kitchen table ... hooray! I was very excited about this and I absolutely love it.
This was kind of a short post buuut Erik and I have to go return a Redbox before we don't feel like it anymore and it's just about bed time for us!

Hope the start of your week is great!

To end, a pictures of Adrian being a baby and sitting on Erik's lap. She was very much enjoying herself, haha.

Puerto Rico, Bread, and Gardens

Let's here it for my 2nd post on a weekday so far this week ... woo hoo! ha.

I've been slacking off in that I haven't even mentioned the weather recently ... I used to do that all the time, lol. Here's all I have to say ... I'm loving this Spring/Summer-ey weather!! : ) (Though I must admit, I wish I lived by a beach ... anyone have one I could borrow? I can't seem to find any in Missouri!) Last time I was at a beach was in Puerto Rico about a year ago on a mission's trip. I sure loved it there! Can I go back, please?Back to reality ... I'm thankful for the beautiful weather ... beach or not.

Now onto some randomness ... I love sprouted grain bread! We recently tried this sprouted rye seed bread. Here are the stats and ingredients for anyone who cares:Conclusion? I liked it but there were a few bites that I tasted the caraway seeds just a little too much for my likings (I don't love caraway seeds, but they're growing on me). I decided I prefer they sprouted barley bread version much better.

Last night, I cooked some chicken breasts buuut we didn't feel like eating them so instead ... we had our wonderful stand-by ... egg sandwiches (did I ever mention my husband makes the best egg sandwiches ever? because he does!!)He cooks the eggs in coconut oil and mixes them with rice and seasonings, and they taste best with a laughing cow wedge spread onto the bread ... mmm!

He was even nice enough (even though he wasn't feeling well) to make one for me, too : )

And last but not least in all this randomness ... here is a picture of my mom's beginning-to-look-pretty-bountiful vegetable garden(Which includes potatoes, cantaloupe, onions, kohlrabi, beets and beans. You can't see the cucumbers, zucchini, summer squash, tomatoes and peppers. I wish I lived closer so I could go veggie shopping in her garden!)

Aaaand here is a picture of some of her really pretty clematis: (click to enlarge ... it'll look even better!) (Disclaimer: I know nothing about flowering or gardening. The only reason I even knew this was clematis is because of the caption under my mom's Facebook "Garden & Flowers" photo album, in which I stole this picture from. But one thing I do know is that my mom is pretty much the best gardener I know!)

Muscle Mayhem and Kona Grill

Hi!!!

Wow, I haven't posted on a week day in a long time! (It's been too long, I know). How was everyone's weekend? Hopefully good. Erik and I had a fun one.

On Saturday night we went to a figure/fitness/bodybuilding competition, Muscle Mayhem, in Kansas City. Since Erik used to bodybuild and actually be in shows (when I didn't yet know him), and since I've never been to any bodybuilding show before, it was interesting to see what he actually did. It gave me more of a perspective on it. It was definitely an experience, I haven't been around the whole bodybuilding thing much, but I'm glad we went. I like doing things I've never done before!
Anyways, it was a lot of fun and it made me want lift more! haha. We've been lifting together now just about every night and I'm starting to get muscles ... woo hoo! ; ) I didn't take any pictures but here is a video of one of the guest Pro posers:
And before the show, we of course had to stop by Kona Grill for some sushi!And here is what I just finished drinking ... the best post workout shake in the world made by the best husband in the world! (yep, that's my husband ; ) There hasn't been much food on my blog lately, mostly becuase I haven't been making anything exciting, ha. Lately, we're all about fast and easy and our meals have consisted mostly of chicken breasts and lean ground turkey (but we like it!). I got my Clean Eating magazine recently though so maybe I'll have to make something fun out of it sometime soon? We shall see!

And last but not least ... some random pictures to end with. Erik just about ready to do some benchin', aaaaaaand Adrian looking out the window:
Hope you've all had a wonderful start to your week!!

And Delmar, if you're reading this ... HI! and, no, I still can't believe Erik said that ; )

"Kindness is more important that wisdom and the recognition of this is the beginning of wisdom"
-Theodore Isaac Rubin-