NAIL FILES!

Happy Friday, ladies! I'm excited to once again link up with Vicki and Tara for Friday's nail files.



I have been trying for the last week to get in and get my nails done, but it has been difficult. I have a few groupons to some nail salons in town so I didn't go to my usual place (I'm going to get the wrath of my usual nail lady when I finally show up at her salon door step for a mani!). For being one of those "typical", nothing fancy kind of nail salon, this new place was a PAIN to get an appointment at! I had to schedule my appointment five days out! A 'Walk ins Welcome' kind of salon. Can you believe that?! They did a decent job though. The pedicure had a good leg massage, but I was bummed about the lack of selection in Shellac colors. Oh well, I digress.

I hope everyone has an amazing long weekend. I'm headed to a place where the sun is still shining, and its shining hot! I've had enough of this frost, and freezing temps =]

Clean Eating: 1st week is in the books!

And the verdict is: I'm really liking it!

I kept a food journal for the entire week to record everything thing that I shoved in my mouth, and that keeps some level of accountability because I hate the thought of having to write down something unhealthy when the majority of what I have eaten is healthy. It's almost like a math equation. Healthy + Healthy=AMAZING. Healthy+Crap=CRAP.
Here's a little highlight of what I ate this week:

Salmon with a honey dijon glaze and lentils. Honey Dijon and salmon is one of the yummiest things EVER.

Homemade pico & kale chips!

"Summer" wraps: Chicken, apples, grapes, honey, and almond butter

I think I did pretty good! There was a few things I ate this week that aren't pictured here, but these are some of the highlights. I went shopping last Sunday and purchased all the items necessary for the entire week. It cost me around $50 for an entire week's worth of breakfast, lunch, and dinners. However, today when I went to the store it cost me $89 for this weeks food. I think that it's probabley because this time I paid a little bit more attention to the products I was buying.

The whole point of clean eating is to actually eat clean. This means eating things that have no preservatives, hormones, additives, ect. For things that are packaged, the rule is 5 or less ingredients on the box. I've been reading up on clean eating here and there, and that knowledge has made my shopping choices change just in the past week of reading. I purchased free range, organic chicken today as opposed to the regular chicken I usually purchase. The meat alone threw my bill way off today. In the two weeks that I've started shopping clean I've realized some things I want to work on.

• Write a meal plan for each week prior to starting the week (I'll do up my plan on Sundays)
• Write my shopping list down in an organized way by breaking it up by area: Dairy, Produce, ect
• CHECK INGREDIENTS!! Don't just believe that something is clean because it states it has no preservatives
• Read ads from different grocery stores to get the best deals 

I don't want to spend a lot of time planning, buying, and cooking my meals. I have a short attention span and I'm a busy girl with my job so I am determined to keep it that way. I'll tell you one thing: having done all the work on Sunday and reaping the benefits all week is SO awesome. 

I also did cardio five times this week and lifted three days. Next week I'm shooting for four to five cardio days, and four lift days.

I'm also constantly on the hunt for easy and delicious clean eating recipes. Shout it out if you got some or know of some good blogs that have 'em!

Excitement

I've been semi stalking my only girlfriend, who is married to a soldier, for the past week. My reasons behind this are simple. Her husband comes home today. I cannot even imagine the emotion that she is experiencing right now. A check of Facebook a few minutes ago shows a picture of her and fellow Army wives waiting for their soldiers to de-plane. They are eagerly awaiting to see the smiling faces of the men they sent off to war nine months ago. Finally home. Back in their arms. Safe and sound.

My soldier returning home from deployment is on my mind every single day. Thousands of loved ones out there share the same thought as me on a daily basis. At the end of every day you get to tell yourself: Another day done, one less to go. You think in your head: Come back to me, you have to come back.

You've put so much effort into being strong, and continuing on with life even though a large piece of your life is thousands of miles away from you. The weekly or even daily emails you send to your soldier, full of pictures and words that describe what's been going on back home so that he can feel like he's not missing out on life.

You dream endlessly about the day your soldier, the man you love, will return home to you. I've spent so much time playing that day out in my head. What I plan on wearing for that first time I see him, what it will be like when he first walks into the room, and where will we go first when we get into the car? Will it be strange when we embrace and kiss for the first time in nine months? There are so many questions running through my mind. I have a feeling I'll be nervous, but in a good way. It will be a nervous that you get on your second or third date with someone you really have a crush on. Butterflies. I know I will feel butterflies.

Seeing and hearing from my friend this week about her husbands pending return has gotten me all excited. It's a strange feeling that I have never experience before. Being SO excited for someone that it's almost like an excitement for yourself. It's a reminder of what's to come. That you too will have your day. She has put in the hard work of being away from her husband for nine months, and once you do the same you too will be rewarded with a late night waiting in a gym until he de planes. To not be in the same presence as the man you love for (in my case) four months, and still have that feeling of total excitement at the thought of him coming home is exhilarating. It's proof that what we do as milspouses and milgfs is WORTH IT. Hang tough, ladies!

Only about four and a half months left of this to go..

Thoughts for 2013

 Happy New Year!

I'm not one to make resolutions usually, but for some reason the resolution bug has hit me this year. I think the fact that KC won't be home until close to the middle of 2013 has something to do with it and I have always had the plan of keeping myself busy while he is away. A resolution to focus on is a good distraction. Also, I am now a year into my career, and that too has shown me where I'm at and what I want to improve. I've had a year to acclimate myself to being a big kid with a big kid job. Although I think my "resolutions" (I think goals is a better term) are nothing too major, and are few, they have a potential of making big results.

My first goal to work to this year is eat better! I tend to eat out a lot, and go eat whatever feels good at that moment. I'm lucky in the fact that this hasn't turned me into a huge, overweight gal. However, who knows how long til that changes?! With this goal I toyed with the idea of wondering what I defined as "eating better". I looked at possibly doing a Paleo diet, but then realized that is a little too extreme for me. I came across The Clean Eating Diet. I really like this idea. My skin has been a nightmare and a half lately and I'm sure it has something to do with my diet. I used to never ever (not even in high school!) get acne or breakouts. To start getting them when you're in your mid twenties is embarrassing. Clean eating seems like a good step towards a healthier me. Along with eating clean I have decided that for starters I will eat clean during the week and allow myself to have a little bit more lax of food choices on the weekends. Eventually I want to make it only 1 day a week to cheat. I came across the blog 100 Days of Real Food Blog . This blog has some great tips, tricks and recipes for those trying to eat clean. Check it out!

 Second on my list is exercising on a more consistent basis. I want to incorporate weight lifting into the schedule and not just cardio which is what I have mainly been doing. I've never been good at figuring out my own weight lifting workout, but while perusing pinterest one day I saw this pin of a girl who had a killer bod. She was featured on BodyBuilding.com as a female transformation story. Most of the time I see these girls talking about how they lost all this weight and I just don't relate to them. They're usually short and have had multiple babies and that's why they're overweight. Not this girl.

She is my same height and was around the same weight as me. Although I do think she looked chubbier than I do ha! When I began looking at her workout routine and meal choices I thought it looked very doable. So I'm going to try it out and see what happens.

 

   

      2013 Reading Challenge
   

       

         
       

     

        Sarah has
             read 1 book toward a goal of 24 books.
     

     

       

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        1 of 24 (4%)
     

       

          view books
       

 

   

My last resolution for 2013 is to read two books a month. When you're a college student you have no time to read, or energy to read books for pleasure because you're so tired from reading textbooks all day long. Now that college is a thing of my past I will read more. I love reading so why not give myself a challenge. I hooked up with GoodReads to track my progress. This is another great website you should check out. You can keep track of all your books ever read, what you want to read, take the 2013 challenge, see what your friends are reading, and write reviews. Plus, it feels pretty dang good to see the ticker on your challenge go up when you finish reading another book. Any good book suggestions are welcome. I'm still building up my 'To Read' shelf on the website for this years twenty four books needed to accomplish my goal.

I'm baaack! Nail Files..

Just about every few nights for the past ten days I think about how I should be writing in my blog. How I told myself I would start writing more. Shoot, I've even missed out on quite a few Nail Files. I'm usually posting to that link up every other week (Shellac is the excuse for only posting every other week!). Anyway, things have been busy, and life takes me away from this blog often and instead sets me in front of something more urgent at that moment. I'm promising myself (because lets get serious I have a ton of non existant readers out there! hehe) that I will write entries this weekend. I am really pumped to talk about my resolutions for the 2013! I've never been a resolutioner, but this year it was pulling at me so I gave in. Can't hurt, right? Mainly it will just be good to have them typed up in front of me. It becomes more real at that point.


For now though, it's time to get to the important stuff. The reason you came to this blog: NAIL FILES!

Not an amazing looking color on the 'ol digital, but this color was an awesome New Year's Eve choice. It really shimmers in the light and matched well with my sequined top that I wore that night. I was all about the gold and glitter this year. Did you coordinate this weeks color with your NYE outfit?


Happy Friday everyone!