All The Fun Things!

Hey you guys! I hope you've been having a nice weekend. I am exhausted, we had a very long brunch yesterday and Delilah slept over last night until just about an hour ago so it is my first chance to relax this week. I've been working really hard to prepare for the street fair but I definitely need a little time to just decompress for a bit. I'm getting a little stressed about the fair but hopefully things will all go smoothly.

I do have a bunch of fun things to share with you today! I have my Trader Joe's grocery haul, this week's planner spread plus a fun planner bonus and some of my favorite pieces of jewelry to share! It's a lot of pictures so I'll just get into it now!

First up is obviously the haul! I grabbed some cabbage, shredded and baby carrots, corn and a cucumber.

I was inspired by Ingrid and grabbed some Lime Fruit Floes as well as some mango (the first time I've ever seen RIPE cut mango!, almond milk, tomatoes, avocado and four giant potatoes.

Up next I have some of my favorite pieces of jewelry that I recently made! My stock is up to about 200 pieces so this is just a tiny fraction of it but I'm obsessed with these pieces.

First up is all of the Navy! I love navy blue as a neutral and used a few different accent colors. I really love it with the copper all the way to the left. Copper and blue are so beautiful together (that color wheel stuff actually works, right?!).

These are some of the pink pieces. I love the pink/purple one to the right.

I am OBSESSED with these. I really love the teal all the way to the left and the periwinkle color of the two on the right. I love the one with the black setting and chain all the way to the right so much. If no one buys it at the fair I think I'm going to keep it!

Up next we have some planner fun!

I finally remembered to take a picture of my monthly spread before I put any financial information in it! I am so in love with this kit from a shop called Planning Roses. It is gorgeous and this is my favorite monthly spread yet. I mostly use my monthly to keep track of my finances and some important things to remember like my friends coming into town and holidays.

This is this week's spread in my planner. I tried something different this week and I really like how it came out. You'll notice the watermelon theme for this week and it sure won't be the last watermelon kit I use this summer ;)

The new 2017 Erin Condren planners are coming out on June 1 and I'm debating if I should order mine now or wait a little bit. I don't need two planners (the new ones are 18 month planners so I'd have two until December) but I also think it would be cool to use one as a scrapbook and one as an actual planner. I think what I'll end up doing is seeing how things go at the fair and whether or not I want to treat myself now or wait a bit.

That's all for today! I'll get a food post up probably on Thursday and then I probably won't be back until next week because it'll be crunch time! I hope you are all having a great weekend and I will see you soon!

This Week

Hey you guys :) I hope you have all had a great week and are enjoying the beginning of what I assume is your three day weekend. I have to work today, boo. That is the only thing I hate about my schedule... I basically never get three day weekends. But I digress. I'm really proud of myself for posting regularly lately and this week was no exception. I managed three posts and I'm so happy about it! Thank you to all of you that have kept up with me when my posts were erratic and irregular... I really appreciate it! I may have something fun planned for you ;) I just have to wait until I get past the street fair to get it all ready. That said I think I'll only be able to swing 2 posts next week because I'll be really busy and I'm sure stressed out getting ready for the street fair but hopefully it all works out in my favor in the end.

Enough of the rambling, here are some things I ate this week!

My mom took Monday off and we had a girl's day and ended up having lunch at a Mediterranean restaurant (not the amazing Turkish one we have been going to) and I decided to have the cold appetizer platter where you can select four things from a list of options. Naturally I got the stuffed grape leaves, hummus, and a double of the shepherd's salad. It was ok but I think I've been spoiled by the other place. The dolmas and hummus were great but the salad was a bit off. I asked for two of the same salad and they looked different and it had peppers in it. My mom also got Shepherd's salad and hers looked normal. It was ok though, I just ate around the peppers.

My new favorite, oven fries with roasted cauliflower and carrots.

Follow Your Heart Vegan Egg test #2!! I wasn't a huge fan of it as just an egg but I wanted to try it out to see how it worked as a binder for zucchini fritters. Flax eggs are perfect for baking but they just don't work for me as a binder in fritters. The vegan egg worked REALLY well! I had a feeling this would be a good use for it and I'm really happy with how they came out. These are baked zucchini fritters with roasted cauliflower and carrots.

I've been enjoying large fruit plates for breakfast and the fruits of choice this week have been strawberries, grapes and peaches. I still can't eat a large volume at once so I basically bring a lot to work  and just snack on it over a day or two.

I treated myself to more veggie sushi from the store and they were just as fresh and delicious! This was definitely a great find and I can definitely see myself getting this as a treat for lunch once a week.

We finally had a vegan bakery open on Long Island a few years ago called Sweet To Lick. Although it is close to me (Long Island is larger than you think so I'm lucky that it is so close to me!) I have only been there three or four times in the past few years which just isn't enough. I decided to go there last night to get some treats because why not. I'm not participating in Memorial Day festivities on Monday because I have to finish my jewelry and my display so I figured I'd compensate with some treats! I got the gluten free mint chocolate chip blondie and the chocolate chip oreo whoopee cookie! OMG you guys I had half of the whoopie cookie last night and it was amazing. I'm glad I splurged on these treats to enjoy throughout the weekend. They started serving lunch too so I am going to have to go there on a Monday and try that out!

So there you have it! This weekend is going to be quite busy with all of the work I have to do and we are having Delilah sleep over again Sunday night because my brother and sister in law have a birthday celebration to go to. Not the best timing but it'll be fine, I'll just work on my stuff after she goes to sleep. Sunday we have a birthday brunch for my great Aunt who is in her 80s and we don't get to see her often so that will be nice. I will be back with a post on Monday and I think it will be more planner heavy since I have photographed a few different things from it to show you. I'll also take some pictures of my favorite necklaces I've made so far to show you :)

I hope you have a great weekend and I'll see you on Monday!

What I Ate Wednesday… on Thursday

Hey you guys! I'm here today with a What I Ate Wednesday… on Thursday. The title technically applies because these are my meals from yesterday… I'm just posting them today! I at some fruit in between my meals but I didn't have a change to photograph it but I figured you know what grapes and peaches look like :) I won't bore you with any more chit chat, here are the meals!

I was craving some avocado toast in the morning so I had it as my first breakfast ;) It was later followed with a peach and some grapes.

Lunch was another Mediterannean-ish plate. It's really not a traditional Med plate but the dolma and hummus make it passable I guess. I just don't know what else to call it!

For dinner I made this tasty giant quesadilla with Ezekiel Sprouted Grain Tortillas, TJ's fat free refried beans, lots of steamed spinach and some more avocado because I was apparently an avocado fiend yesterday.

So there are my eats from yesterday! I have a few pictures of meals for the end of the week and hopefully I can get a few more! I am just getting a bit stressed about the fair next weekend so I guess we'll see how the next 10 days go!

Hope you are having a good week!

Starting The Week Off Right

Hey everyone! I'm here with my Monday grocery haul and my planner layout :) I feel like my layouts get prettier and prettier each week and I LOVE the way this one came out. I'll have to show you an end of the week spread so you can see what it looks like all filled out. It's just tough if I have personal stuff in there but one week I'll definitely make that happen.

This week's grocery haul is from Whole Foods again. I stayed away from Whole Foods for a while but the selection and quality of organic produce is just far superior than any other store near me. It makes the price worth it to me. Hopefully I'll be able to supplement from the Farmers Market when it opens in a few weeks! Here is the haul from this week.

First up is the produce. It is all organic as well. Strawberries, baby spinach, cauliflower, peaches, carrots, zucchini, grapes, brussels sprouts and avocados.

For grocery items I have mushroom broth, Califia unsweetened creamer, multigrain tortilla chips, oat flour, mini chocolate chips, a few Clif bars in case I need a meal on the run and of course some stuffed grape leaves!

This is a little bonus but I was craving banana bread like crazy so I decided to make a loaf. I used Chocolate Covered Katie's Fat Free Banana Bread recipe that I love and it is so amazing. I subbed out regular flour for oat flour and added the chocolate chips and it is incredible. This is gluten free, oil free vegan deliciousness. My mom tried some and she said it was incredible. I love cutting it up into thick slices and wrapping them individually and freezing them. This way I can take a piece out as I like and it won't get stale before I eat it all.

Finally, here is this week's layout in my planner. I'm obsessed with it. I really enjoy the peace and calm of decorating my planner and being a Virgo I love the organization it provides for me ;)

So there you have it! Stay tuned for a day of eats sometime in the middle of the week. Hope you have a great beginning of your week!

All The Randomness!

Why hello you guys! I feel like I've been doing a WAY better job at posting and I hope that you have been enjoying what I've been putting up. I think I've reached a nice balance of food and planner stuff by just showing you my weekly spreads along with my hauls on Monday. I've been thinking about resurrecting my Fun Friday posts but I don't know exactly what I would want those posts to be so I'm going to hold off until I can figure that out.

Before I get into the meals that I've eaten this week that I haven't shown yet I just want to say that I'm really glad I've been sticking to my goals because I'm feeling a lot better in just the past couple of weeks. I've been getting to the gym 3x a week (which is a lot considering I'm not thrilled with my new gym at all) and I've been going on at least 1 if not 2 walks a day when the weather is nice. Cutting the processed food has really helped with my energy, my skin and most importantly my sleep! I'm really happy and I think that posting all of my meals has helped me stay on track and that's pretty great :)

Ok enough babbling, here are the meals from the week!

I had a huge bowl of the Cinnamon Blueberry Flax cereal I love the finish off the box to make room for the cereal I got at the beginning of the week. Cereal with Unsweetened Vanilla Almond Milk is so satisfying sometimes!

I've been enjoying a lot of oats lately and this was the most unique bowl by far. I made stevia sweetened chocolate oats with banana and coconut and it was delicious! A perfect way to indulge my chocolate craving!

This bowl was the result of a huge meal prep session on Monday. I made a huge pot of rice and a pot of lentils and I mixed the two with corn and peas and had that with veggies all week.

Of course I have to have my Mediterranean bowls. I'm out of stuffed grape leaves so I'll have to get some more of those!

This was a little treat I got for lunch yesterday! I was at the store before work picking a few things up that I needed and I didn't have lunch with me so I checked out the sushi and they had these gorgeous fresh veggie rolls. It was 12 pieces for $6.49 which I think is a good price? I don't eat sushi much at all so I don't know but it seemed fair to me, ha!

My favorite meal was repeated several times and that is a big plate of oil free oven fries. I usually dip into my ketchup but I made a big swirl to make the picture more interesting ;)

So there are the meals I've been eating this week! Hopefully I'll be able to do the same next week. I like the idea of a Monday haul, a midweek full day of eating and an end of the week roundup. What do you think about that schedule? I'm not going to commit to anything because I clearly don't do well with that but I think it is a nice variety!

I forgot to mention that I might be a little more scarce the next two weeks because I am going to be preparing to sell my jewelry at a craft fair so I'll be making A LOT of jewelry but I'll do my best to do at least two posts per week if not more!

I hope you all have a great weekend! <3

A Great Day!

Hey you guys. I've been really good about photographing my meals for you lately and yesterday was no exception. I got all of my meals yesterday and I'm going to show you a full day of eating today. Stay tuned for a big ol' photo dump at the end of the week of meals that I've eaten but haven't had a chance to show you. But first, yesterday's meals!

For my first breakfast (ha!) I had some strawberries and a peach. That peach was insanely good and I'm currently eating this exact same meal in larger quantities for a post gym refreshing breakfast this morning.

I made some two ingredient banana oat breakfast cookies to snack on later in the morning for second breakfast. They are literally just banana and oats baked up. I wanted to add raisins but I had none so I added some cacao nibs. They were ok, not as good as I wanted them to be!

Lunch was a huge salad with greens, tomato, cucumber and Ranch Flavored Roasted Chickpeas! You guys, you have to try these chickpeas, they are SO GOOD!

I was planning on having tacos for dinner but I was craving avocado toast like crazy so I made avocado toast on sprouted grain bread, cut up some carrots and had another peach because that first one was so good.

And there you have it, what I ate yesterday! I hope you have a great day and I'll see you at the end of the week to show some more yummy things I've been eating this week :)

Whole Foods Haul and a Birthday Meal

Hey you guys! I'm sorry it has been a little while but last weekend was absolutely crazy. I actually meant to post this yesterday but by the time I finished running around I was exhausted and couldn't be bothered to get my computer out. I worked on Saturday and then directly after work I joined my mom to watch Delilah and the fur babies overnight. About an hour and a half after they came home we all met up at an AMAZING Turkish Restaurant for my Dad's birthday dinner. We have done every birthday at this restaurant this year… it is so good. I have a picture of that dinner I'll include for you at the end of the haul. Anyway, yesterday I went to Whole Foods at the crack of dawn and picked up a lot of great stuff which I can't wait to share! This was followed by a trip to the gym and a marathon meal prep session and then a collapse, ha!

Anyway, enough of my yapping here is the haul!!

First up we have some organic strawberries, spring mix salad and a 5 lb bag of potatoes because I've been obsessed with oil free oven fries lately.

Some more produce includes a head of romaine, a ton of organic loose carrots, a few heads of broccoli, some peaches and some frozen corn and peas.

I got a few grocery items including lentils, sprouted grain cereal, oil free vegan caesar and balsamic dressings, sprouted grain tortillas, That's It bars in strawberry, cherry and mango, long grain brown rice and some kamut puffs to mix with the sprouted grain flakes.

This was my AMAZING meal at the Turkish restaurant. This is the falafel appetizer which is basically the perfect meal to me. It had some greens in the top left corner which I added a little Shepherd's salad to, some of the best falafel I've ever eaten, really great tahini sauce and some hummus. This was amazing and I gave my leftovers to my mom to bring to work for lunch the next day and she agreed that it was delicious.

Finally I have my planner spread for this week. This may be my favorite week yet, it is so gorgeous! I love looking at it, ha! 

That's all for today! I have a bunch of meals photographed that I'll post later in the week and I'm hoping to do another full day of eating post later in the week as well. I hope you are all having a great week!

A Haul and Some Meals

Hey you guys! I'm back with another haul and some more meals to show you. I didn't get to go to Trader Joe's on Sunday and I really needed some food so I went before work this morning. I photographed the haul and I also have some meals to show you.

First the haul:

For produce I got some baby spinach, cherries, cherry tomatoes, romaine lettuce, lemons, baby carrots, persian cucumbers and potatoes (oven fries!!).

For grocery products I just picked up a few things. I got the crispy chicken less tenders to have in the freezer for a treat, my favorite store bought hummus which is the Mediterranean Hummus, Just Beets (dehydrated beet chips), raw pine nuts (for caesar dressing!) and brown rice pasta.

And now for some meals:

For today's breakfast I'm munching on a ton of cherries and a banana.

Yesterday I had some steel cut oats with peanut butter powder and cinnamon mixed in topped with banana.

Yesterday's lunch was an old favorite… my Mediterranean plate! Persian cucumber, hummus, stuffed grape leaves and some tomatoes.

Today's lunch is a hummus and veggie sandwich on sprouted grain bread.

I didn't photograph dinner last night but it was steamed veggies and tofu with some rice. Tonight I will be making more oven fries :)

I hope you are all doing well and that your week is going quickly! See you soon!

What I Ate!

Hey you guys! For the first time in a long time I finally managed to photograph all of my meals from today to show you! I don't know why I have such a hard time getting every meal of the day but I usually only end up with 1 or 2 and will forget the others. Today I really made sure to get a picture of everything and I'm excited to share them because today was DEFINITELY a good food day :)

OMG for breakfast I had the most AMAZING smoothie bowl!! It was HUGE and I made it out of banana, mango and strawberry. I love this combination so much, it was so sweet and delicious and had no added sweetener of any kind (I don't know why people add sweeteners to smoothies?). I topped it with a little shredded coconut. It's so hard to tell from this picture but this bowl was huge and overfilled. I put some into a travel cup to bring to work to drink later and finished the bowl. It was so much and so filling but I really enjoyed it.

For lunch I got another amazing burrito from the deli next door. This one was similar to the last and it had rice, beans, lettuce, tomato and avocado.

For dinner I had the best batch of oven fries I've ever made! These are oil free made on parchment paper and I must have cut them thin enough that they cooked perfectly and even puffed up a little. I definitely see this meal happened again many times in the near future :)

So there you go, a full day of meals! I'll try to keep photographing my meals as much as I can. I already packed lunch for tomorrow so I know I have that photographed for you. It's the return of an old favorite. I'll be back to show you that and some more yummy meals in a few days! Hope you are all having a good week.

Vegan Egg Review Part 1: Vegan Egg Fried Rice

Hey you guys! I decided to forego my planned What I Ate Wednesday post to FINALLY post an initial review on the Follow Your Heart Vegan Egg that I finally got my hands on a few weeks ago. I think that the way I decided to do it is that I am going to try it in different ways that we would use eggs to see how it would work in each situation. What I decided to do first want to just cook it up and add it into some of my Unfried Rice. I tried a little bit cooked as is (kind of like an omelettey scramble kind of thing) and then cut it up and added it into the rice mixture.

As you can see it looks amazing! As I mentioned I tried the "egg" part first and it was ok. I cooked it according to the directions and when I mixed it with the very cold water the consistency reminded me exactly of the lower fat egg substitute that you can get in the store (basically yellow egg whites I believe). It takes longer to cook and turns out quite dense. I added a little black salt to give it more of the eggy flavor and tasted a little. Like I said, it was ok. I don't know if I was underwhelmed by the actual flavor and texture or just disappointed that my mind was not blown like I expected it to be from other reviews that I had read. Or perhaps it was because I spent almost $8 on it and it just wasn't as amazing as I wanted it to be. Was it good and edible? Yes. Was it mind-blowing… no. That being said, when I added it to the rice it was definitely a nice addition and I really enjoyed the meal!

That is not to say that it isn't a good product because I definitely believe it is. However, I think that it may be better used in different ways and I have a few ideas of how to maximize its potential. I am hoping to try the next dish next week and I will be sure to update you on how it works out!

I hope you are all doing well! I'll be back in the next few days to share some meals with you! Hope the end of your week is quick and painless :)

Trader Joe's Haul!

Hey you guys! I hope that you are all doing well. I got my ass out of bed early today to get to Trader Joe's when they opened because any other time is pretty unbearable. I got some good looking produce as I'm embarking on my own version of a high carb low fat vegan lifestyle which basically means a lot of produce and starches, no oil and smaller quantities of fats. I guess it is a combination of Raw Til 4 and Starch Solution but I'm not really following the rules of either super closely. Basically I just want to exponentially increase the amount of produce that I eat :)

Check out the haul:

So here I got a large bunch of bananas to ripen and freeze for smoothies and banana ice cream, an avocado, strawberries, Persian cucumbers, mangoes, mini San Marzano tomatoes, green onions and 4 huge Russet Potatoes.

I also got some frozen mango, two cans of fat free refried beans, a can of chiles and organic coconut sugar.

I also wanted to show my planner layout for this week because it is gorgeous and I love it. I chose this Succulents sticker kit because for whatever reason it reminded me of Mother's Day (I guess because people typically give flowers and plants for Mother's Day?). I LOVE it!!

So this is all I've got for today but I do have some pretty great meals planned for the week and definitely plan on photographing them so I'll make sure to share! Hope you are all enjoying your weekend <3