Pure Bars, GF, and Life Changin’

Hi Friends!

Yes, I am still in my pj’s at 10:30 am…living the spring break dream 🙂 I went out for a drink with a friend last night and came home around 11:30; one glass of wine and a bedtime past 10 p.m. really takes a lot out of me! I need to get my drinking tolerance back up to 2 glasses of wine…1 is a bit sad for a 20-something year old 🙂

Moving on… the other day I got a package from the wonderful people at Pure Organic with samples of each of their bars

I love these bars, the ingredient list is all natural and organic stuff that I’ve actually heard of. The bars taste great without being too sweet or processed. My favorites are the Chocolate Brownie and Wild Blueberry but I am super excited to try the rest. The Chocolate brownie really tastes like something sinful and I love that it has rice protein added for an extra dose of protein 🙂 If you love them, too, or want to give them a try, go here to get a coupon to buy one get one free! These bars are also fitting in with my new gluten-free diet:

I have decided that despite numerous negative blood and endoscopy tests for Celiacs Disease, it’s hard to ignore the similarity between gluten-intolerance symptoms and my own tummy troubles. I know that I cannot tolerate malt, beer is the worst, and I know I shy away from pasta and bagels, so why not give GF a go? So far it’s been fairly easy but I haven’t had to eat at too many restaurants yet. I am hoping to do a two week gluten detox and then reincorporate a few items (regular oats, soy sauce, etc) that I don’t think have been the cause of too many problems. The best benefit of the diet so far?? Stopping my cracker cravings 🙂

I am also using my spring break as a time to make a few changes and get myself geared up for the second half of the semester. This hasn’t been the best few months of my life so I want to start changing my outlook and the way I live my life to really enjoy each day. Having that in mind, yesterday I had coffee with my best friend, Kristina, also a grad student who is in a Masters in Social Work program (really similar to my Masters in Counseling Psychology program) and we were having a vent-session about the stress and frustrations of our way of living. Instead of getting down I decided we needed to come up with a list or game plan to make things better. Here’s what we came up with :

The Goals and Aspirations that will make things better:

1) Boot Camp–we’re trying to sign up for a bootcamp at our gym…we’re on the waiting list right now but it’s pretty full. To ensure we have a fall-back, I am going to get in touch with my best friend that is a personal trainer to see if she could write us up a workout or two 🙂 We have 3 full months before it’s beach time 🙂

2) New Cars ( Very long term goal, enter contests or win lottery!) We each have cars that are money-pits and it doesn’t make commuting to school any more glamorous. We both know that he aren’t going to be able to afford new ones for a while, but hey, a girl can dream 🙂

3) Get a Tan with out getting skin cancer ( Take Vitamin D and get lotion that tans our skin) Living in the Northeast means that winters are long, dark, and a bit depressing. We need to start getting that feel good energy boost of having a tan without the cancer causing effects. I did a little resarch this morning and found self-tanners that will work with both of our skin types (Bare Escentuals for me and Jergen’s for Kristina) We’re going to take vitamin D supplements each day in hopes to get the mood boosting effects.

4) Plan 2012 Trip to Fresno ( Lean to be quilters so when this work gets to hard we can open up a shop) We want to go to California when we graduate grad school or before. Since my aunt lives there and owns her own quilt shop, we thought it could be a cheap way to kick off our trip…and maybe we could even learn to be quilters are a fall-back plan 🙂

5) Cooking classes! ( Either at William and Sonoma or Euro Stove) We both love food and cooking so this can be our hobby and stress-relief. We both are in need of something to do that is just for us that is separate from grad school, jobs, and any type of stress.  Workout out is necessary stress-relief, cooking classes are an added bonus 🙂

I think we’re off to a good start; we have plans in place and steps to get there 🙂 Hopefully I will be a fit and tan chick real soon! Until then, have a great day everyone!!

lots of love,

Em