A Day in the Lifestyle - August
Hello!! Thank you so much for popping in! It's been sooooo long since I've had time to do a blog post. I love the new job I started this year, so I put a lot of hours in. I've also recently been offered a great educational/research opportunity that required us to move, so we put our house up for sale and are now living in the Rochester, NY area!
We are still looking for our new house, so temporarily, we are getting reacquainted with apartment life. It's all part of the adventure!
Morning Routine: You can read my full morning routine here. I am really liking this Dead Sea Osmoter Concentra Supreme Hydration Cream from Ahava. I've been using it morning and night and my face feels great! I haven't been keeping up with yoga since the move, so I need to get that back in my morning routine.
Breakfast: We've been eating breakfast sandwiches all week. Whole wheat English muffin, one slice of Monterey Jack cheese, an egg, slice of tomato and a little bit of avocado. I asked Dan to pick up some Champagne the other night for a drink I wanted to make and he accidentally grabbed Chardonnay, so we mixed it with some guava juice this morning and shared a mimosa...in my tacky little plastic pink glass. Note the card table - we are waiting until we move into the new house to buy new furniture, so...we have sports chairs and a card table right now. And our cool old dishes...
Tea: We have been trying to focus on drinking more water, so we haven't been drinking as much tea. I also somehow packed all our yummy tea from the Tea Smith. But we did find a place with some great boba! It's called Tai Chi Bubble Tea. We went over the other day and tried a couple varieties - so good!
Homemaking: Well, guys, we are in a two-bedroom apartment with very little furniture. Our old TV stand and the beds are the only furniture we have in here. Everything else, we either gave away or it's in storage until we get into a house. But, it's easy to keep everything clean!
It's tiny, but it works for now!
Shopping: We've discovered Wegmans, which is wonderful!
Other than that, we haven't had a chance to do much shopping, except house hunting!
Lunch: We have been working pretty hard to focus on healthy eating, which can be a little difficult in a new place with so many good new restaurants to try. This week, I made tuna-salad-stuffed peppers, roasted baby potatoes, and fresh green beans. I also added a hard-boiled egg, a side of cherry tomatoes, and a small bowl of raspberries. I drizzled balsamic vinegar and olive oil over everything but the raspberries and it was pretty yum. It gets a little boring having the same thing for lunch all week, but it helps us save time and money, as well as stay on track with our meal plan.
Snack: Bizi made brownies, which I had a little bite of, but other than that, I've had one square of dark chocolate per day, and sometimes a banana. I'm hoping to get some baking done once the weather cools down, so I'm looking for some healthy recipes. Or a cheat day.
Drinks: Mostly, we've been drinking water. LOTS of water.
There are a lot of local cideries and breweries up here. Yesterday, we went out to Blue Barn Cidery for their blueberry festival.
Their Liberty cider tastes like a bomb pop! So good. The Blueberry Jam cider was good, as well, but I thought it was actually blueberry jam for sale at first and I was much more excited about that, so that probably tells you all you need to know about me.
Family Time: Dan and I both work remotely. Our oldest four children are grown and didn't make the move with us. The youngest two live primarily with their mom and also didn't move with us. So we are down to ONE full-time child who hasn't started school yet. We know no one - except our realtors, who are awesome, but we don't hang out with them because...weird. (Side note: they really are AWESOME realtors so if you are ever in the Rochester area and need a realtor, I highly recommend these guys.) We get lots of family time and are trying to spend it exploring our new digs. (I just wanted to say "new digs." I never say things like "new digs." I actually don't think I even used it right.)
We've spent a lot of time at Lake Ontario.
We've eaten at some local restaurants. We loved Owl House. Dan chose it for their vegan and gluten free options - we ended up ordering mac and cheese, a burger, and a steak. We're trying, but I guess we aren't quite there yet?
Most of our time right now revolves around house-hunting. Online and in person. Turns out I'm a little picky...who knew?
We've also moved morning workouts to the evening, so they've kinda blended into family time. We have found a nice little pond with a good running trail, so we are back in training. Sort of....we went just shy of two miles yesterday. And there was definitely more walking than running. We use the 5K runner app, so we are telling ourselves that we just walked because the app told us to. Which is BS.
Supper: Again, we've been trying to eat healthier, so I made pumpkin lasagna rolls this week, with steamed kale and cherry tomatoes. We also had polenta with sautéed shrimp. These may not sound super yum, but they were really good. The recipes for these, as well as the breakfast and lunch ideas I mentioned earlier, came from Fit Girls 28 Day Jumpstart, a program I did a few years ago, but still use the recipes whenever we need to get back on track. It's a super adorable book and a really fun program, so I highly recommend it.
Evening Routine: You can read my full evening routine here. I've been using Dr. Botanicals Watermelon Superfood Cleanser and I like it. I tend to get better results from gel cleansers than cream cleansers. I'm also still using this Origins mask once a week, which I've been doing since...I don't know, probably since this mask was invented.
Reading: This used to be part of evening routine because, well, because it is part of my evening routine, but I read a lot, so I feel like it deserves its own section. I've been trying to get more book reviews posted on here, but it's tough when I don't have time for other posts to round everything out. Unfortunately, not everyone wants to read only book reviews (like I would). I'm not going to list every book I've read since I posted last, but here's what I read in July:
You can view all my ratings here. There are also links on that page to all my reviews. My favorite July book was The People We Keep by Allison Larkin. Maybe the best I've read this year. Definitely on my all-time top 10 list. I will be posting more reviews on here, as many of these were ARCs and that's part of the deal. So, if you need some book recommendations, you've found the right spot!
The Last Word:
There's a new show on Prime, The Pursuit of Love, that comes highly recommended for those of us who loved Downton Abbey and The Crown. I'll say I will watch it, but later I'll say I never found time, so if you actually watch it, let me know if it's any good.
Also, if you want to stay up on what's going on in the world today, but don't want to be bored, check out the Skimm. We've been reading for years and love it. It's a morning newsletter that summarizes the news and also throws in some other cool stuff you'll probably like.
Speaking of cool stuff you'll probably like, 90s girls, check this out.
And that's a wrap! Thanks so much for stopping by! Have a beautiful day!