Hi friends. Sorry I left you all in the lurch for a few days — things have been crazy busy with wedding planning, work and the like. In addition, last weekend was Mother’s Day (Happy belated Mother’s Day to all my moms out there) and I took time away from the computer to hang out with the fam. It was quite lovely and a much needed break from the computer and wedding planning. I’m a pretty laid back person and I’ve been trying to be a laid back bride but the countdown is officially on (32 days!!!) and my stress level seems to be rising as the number of days until the BIG DAY dwindle…

Speaking of wedding stuff, this Wednesday (a.k.a. tomorrow) I have my bridal portraits. I’m really excited about these because they’re at our venue and I’m having my hair/make-up trial and getting a mock bouquet. It will be nice to get some of these things settled upon — like how I’m going to be wearing my hair and what my bouquet will look like. I’m also excited to wear my dress for more than 15 minutes at a fitting. It should be fun day!

In preparation for Wednesday, I’ve been trying to eat really clean and limit any extra sodium. This week I’m doing a modified version of the Tone It Up 7 Day Slim Down. Since I took photos of everything I ate yesterday to keep myself accountable, I figured I’d share them with you.

Meal 1: slim down scramble with 1/2 cup egg whites, 2 cups spinach, tomatoes, mushrooms, onions and Mrs. Dash garlic and herb seasoning. I’m started to love Mrs. Dash seasonings. You get lots of flavor without any salt! Right now I only have the garlic and herb flavor but I can’t wait to try some of they others. Do you have any favorites that you’d recommend?

Grapefruit for snack.

Shrimp and black bean salad with red onion, baked sweet potato chunks, radish, broccoli and pineapple balsamic vinegar for lunch. The TIU 7DSD plan doesn’t mention adding carbs to your lunch and dinner but I know my body and I’m ravenous if I don’t have some carbs so I added some sweet potato chunks to this salad.

I snacked on a few berries and Lemon Strawberry infused water between lunch and dinner. The water was amazing. I always forget how much I like lemon in my water.

Dinner featured a big salad, similar to what I had at lunch with sweet potato chunks (from the same baked potato), radishes, peppers, broccoli and sprouts. I had a veggie burger and balsamic sautéed kale on the side. Notice how my salad plate turned into my dinner plate and my dinner plate turned into my salad plate. I typically always use a salad plate for my dinner plate because it’s a great way to keep my portions in check, which is something I struggle with.

So there you have it, my slim down eats as of late. I’m planning to eat very similar today and I already have my salad for lunch prepped and ready in the fridge thanks to the Salad in a Jar salads I made on Sunday evening. Woot woot!

Hooray for being prepared. It really is the key to eating healthy.

Have a lovely Tuesday friends.

I hope you guys like muffins!

Last weekend I bought two containers of strawberries from the farmers market. I was only going to get one but Isaac convinced me to get two, which is fine because I love fresh berries. They’re the perfect snack and also great as a topping for things like yogurt, salads, cereal, oatmeal, cottage cheese, pizza… the list goes on.

All that said, I still felt like we had too many strawberries for two people to eat in a week so I decided I needed to bake something with them. That something turned out to be these strawberry chocolate chip protein muffins.

I actually made two batches on Friday night when I was testing the recipe — one with chocolate chips and one without. Isaac says the chocolate chips make the muffins so I’m sharing that version of the recipe with you all today.

Truth be told, I think these muffins might be the best protein baked good I’ve ever made. They’re light and fluffy, you can’t taste the protein powder at all and the strawberries and chocolate chips add the perfect amount of sweetness.

I wanted to try to make these sugar-free, besides the berries and chocolate chips, so I used a little NuNaturals Stevia MoreFiber Baking Blend. If you don’t have this blend you can always use packets of stevia or another sweetener of choice. As for the oat flour, you can make your own by processing raw oats or just buy it. I used Bob’s Red Mill.

Happy Monday friends. I hope you had a great weekend. Mine was nice with tasty Indian food on Friday night (at the new spot in Carytown, Curry Craft) lots of wedding planning stuff, a trip to the farmer’s market, a visit from my mom and a little baking/cooking. Not too shabby.

Some green goodness was involved as well…

Sunday morning I woke up craving something green for breakfast but I didn’t feel like breaking out my juicer. I decided to try making a green juice smoothie in my Vitamix. I usually use frozen bananas and almond milk as a base for all my smoothies but I wanted this one to be more like juice so I stuck with a pear and water.

The Vitamix did a great job of pulverizing everything which resulted in a smooth textured drink that’s not only detoxifying, but alkalizing and energizing as well.

I know there are benefits to both juicing and blending, but this type of green smoothie is great for a few reasons:

• You don’t have to clean a myriad of juicer pieces (Score!)
• You get all the fiber from the fruit and veggies so your blood sugar won’t spike
• The smoothie is thicker and a bit more filling than a juice (IMO)

I paired the smoothie with a few mini protein muffins for breakfast and it was the perfect boost of energy to start my day, but I could also see this being a great mid-afternoon snack. And for all of you that may have indulged in one too many margaritas yesterday in celebration of Cinco De Mayo, this would be a great recovery drink this morning. Just throwing that out there.

Only 45 days until the big day! I seriously can’t believe how fast the time has passed. It seems like just yesterday Isaac proposed.

A few weeks ago I mentioned sending our invitations out and since everyone we’ve invited should have received them by now, I thought I would go ahead and share them with you guys.

A little background info: Our invitations were made by Lindsay of borrowed and blue homemade invitations and were part of the perfect wedding package that Isaac and I won. I reached out to her a few months ago and after quite a few emails back and forth (I just looked at our thread of emails, there were 64) we settled on the design and wording.

Lindsay was amazing, to say the least. I picked a few invitations that I liked in her Etsy shop and gave her some ideas of what I wanted and she quickly came up with something Isaac and I both loved. She was also a big help when it came down to the layout and invitation etiquette. I had lots of questions!

The theme of our wedding is what I like to call rustic chic, which I think the invitations align with quite nicely. The colors match our wedding colors, a palette of corals (ombre down to ivory) and tiffany blue, the color of the blue Ball mason jars.

We were super impressed with Lindsay’s work. Each invitation was handmade and you can tell that Lindsay has an eye for design and pays attention to every little detail.

The little twine bows are a small detail, but one that I absolutely adore. They give the invitations something special, while tying the whole package (invite, accommodation card and RSVP envelope and card) together neatly in a cute little bundle. Lindsay hand-tied each bow and they all looked perfect.

My other favorite piece of the invite is the envelope liners. Lindsay sent me quite a few options that worked with our colors and as soon as I saw this marigold print I knew that’s what I wanted. It’s so pretty and matches great with our colors.

I also love all the fun fonts that Lindsay choose to use. Usually I’m not a fan of changing fonts too often in a document but I think it works really nicely for drawing attention to the important parts of our invitations — like our names and the venue.

The other pieces of the invitation include coral envelopes for the RSVP cards as well as accommodation cards with hotel, transportation and wedding website details.

We decided to go with fun wording for the RSVP cards. Instead of “Accepts with pleasure” and “Declines with regret”, ours have “Can’t Wait to Celebrate” and “Sad to miss all the fun”. I thought this was a cute way to lighten things up a bit.

I used pretty wedding cake stamps for the outside envelope. None of the post offices near us carry wedding themed stamps so I ordered them online through the USPS website. While getting the cake stamps, I also got the little heart ones for the RSVP envelopes, since they match well.

In terms of prepping the invitations… I was lucky because our address was already printed on the RSVP envelopes and the back of the actual invitiations (as a return address) by Lindsay so all I had to do was hand-write each guest’s name and address. I also had help stuffing them from Isaac’s mom, Ellen, and my cousin/bridesmaid, Brooke, so that process went by relatively quickly. I think it probably took about 3 hours in total. Not too bad.

And now the invitations are out! It’s been super fun getting the RSVP cards back in the mail each day. We’ve been enjoying the little notes that our guests have written to us.

So yeah, things are feeling REAL now!

Whew! This week has been a whirlwind of traveling. I was in Durham, NC for the first part of the week for a marketing conference with Relay Foods and then headed out to LA on Wednesday evening to attend the Jamba Juice Fit Trends Expo, an event showcasing the latest trends in fitness.

The Fit Trends Expo was held at the Annenberg Community Beach House in Santa Monica and included a morning packed with different fitness classes, samples of new Jamba Juice products and the opportunity to workout with a special celebrity guest, Venus Williams, and her personal trainer, Samantha Monus!

Yes, I met an Olympian. Yes, Venus is super tall and in amazing shape. And yes, her outfit was super cute — it’s her own line, Eleven by Venus.

Pinch me!

Throughout the morning we did a bunch of different workouts including Physique 57, CrossFit, Piloxing (Pilates + Boxing), Bokwa, Broadway Bodies and LaBlast.

I enjoyed all the workouts but here are a few of my favorites:

• Physique 57 - As you all know I just started to really get into barre workouts this year. I have been dying to take a Physique 57 class (we don’t have any studios here in Richmond) so this one was right up my alley. Even though we didn’t have a barre, Sarah had our glutes and thighs burning!
• Bokwa - This dance workout is similar to zumba, but all the moves involve drawing letters and numbers with your feet. I’m not very good a choreographed fitness classes (it takes me a while to get the moves down) but this one was really easy to learn and super fun.
• Pop Pilates Workout with Blogilates - Cassey and I have been internet pals for a while now and I LOVE her workouts so it was awesome to finally get the chance to meet her in person.

You’ll be happy to know that she’s just as energetic and as sweet as she seems in her videos.

If you haven’t checked out her videos before, go check out her blog and YouTube Channel now! Her Pop Pilates workouts are usually intense and burn like crazy, but you still keep going back for more because she’s so fun and motivating. I highly recommend the Drive By Inner Thighs Challenge.

I also really liked working out with Venus’ trainer, Samantha Monus. Livestrong.com covered the event and had a chance to interview Venus and Samantha — be sure to check out their story with 5 Fitness Tips from Venus Williams.

Between the workouts we refueled with samples of different Jamba Juice products including their new fruit and veggie smoothie flavor, Tropical Harvest, which has mangos, peaches and passion mango juice blended with juices from butternut squash, sweet potato and carrot.

You all know how much I like my root veggies, so of course, I was excited to try this one! In addition to the smoothies, I was also super pumped to try their other products like the steel cut oats, trail mixes and apple chips.

When not working out or grabbing Jamba Juice treats, we were taking fun photos…

Banana Man was a big hit and loved posing for pictures.

Anne, the Fit Bottomed Girls, Cassey, Banana Man, me and Elizabeth.

How adorable are Chuti Tiu’s flower-power workout tights? Might just have to make my first purchase from Lorna Jane soon.

During one of the breaks, Tony Horton stopped by to say hi to everyone!!! No big deal.

It was so fun to meet him — he’s just as ripped in person and meeting him totally made me want to start P90X again. I had to stop last year due to my knee injury but I loved the program. I’m pretty sure my knee would be able to handle the workouts again so maybe I’ll try one out this coming week.

After the workouts, we had lunch and Q&A with Venus. She’s vegan so there were plenty of veggie options and everything was healthy and delicious.

After lunch we headed back to the hotel. I had some work to catch up on so I hung out in my hotel room for a while and then journeyed out to Urth Caffe for tea with Monica the recipe creator and trainer behind Moni Meals a.k.a. Kate Hudson’s twin.

Moni is another blogger friend that I’ve connected with online (check our her fitness tips here) but hadn’t met in person yet so it was a blast to meet up and chat with her. Her arms = my wedding day arm inspiration.

Anne raved about the Urth Caffe green tea latte so I had to get one, obviously.

I got it made with soy milk and it was sweet and delicious.

After tea, I grabbed dinner to-go at True Food Kitchen and headed back to the hotel to get some work done.

This salmon salad was so fresh and tasty. I seriously love how easy it is to find healthy food in California. Why can’t Richmond have more restaurants like this AND sunsets as spectacular as this…

Oh California! I’m already excited to visit again sometime soon.