My Christmas List 2011

You all know that the thing I most want for Christmas is this...

Fingers crossed!

In terms of tangible items that I told my family I'd like, here's my list.

Amazon Kindle.  I'm kind of behind the curve on the Kindle, but since I actually did read a lot this year, I think it would be fun to have one.  I am not that familiar with all the differences in the Fire and regular Kindle, but I trust Santa to figure it out.

New running shoes.  My Asics are in desperate need of replacement.  I know a new version has come out since last time I bought some, so I'm hoping for these Asics GT 2160 in the purple color.  Cute, right?

Wire whisk attachment for my Kitchen Aid stand mixer.  My mixed just came with the standard attachment, so this would be a nice alternative and good for whipping things.

Photojojo IPhone lenses.  My husband is skeptical about these, but I think they look really cool and want to try them!

Vegetable Mandolin.  Even, thin slices.  Sign me up!  I just hope I don't lose the tip of my finger...

Pretty camera strap from Etsy.



Camera bag.  I actually asked for a similar one from the same Etsy shop last year.

A nice light box.  I have kind of a crappy one I made and this one seems so much nicer.

That's about it.  Obviously, I'd trade all these objects for a healthy pregnancy, but these would be a fun diversion!  What's your hot ticket, must have item this year?

Adventures in Basal Body Temping

Hey all. So here's a bit of an update on TTC.  I'm still trying.  Still not pregnant.  Still frustrated.  Yeaaaaaah.

I decided to try something new this month, just for kicks.  Basal Body Temping.  I've avoiding this method thus far in our attempts, because I heard it can be tough with a lot of variables that can influence the accuracy, such as alcohol, not taking the temp at the EXACT time every day, etc...  But, I decided to give a shot anyway, because what do I have to lose?

Basically, (this is just my interpretation of how it works), you get this special Basal Body Thermometer that measures your temp down to the tenth degree.  Before you get out of bed everyday, you take your temperature by just sticking the thermometer in your mouth like a doctor would.  You wait til your thermometer beeps, get a reading, and then record it on a chart (some thermometers come with charts, or you can find one to download online).  On your chart, when you see an increase in temp, it is supposed to indicate when you have ovulated.  So in theory, if you keep doing it, you're supposed to see a pattern of when your temp raises each month and the couple days before that are when you should try (baby dance, as they say). 

Here's an example of a chart:

(source)

Here's my first month...

Not very pretty is it?  I'm actually pretty confused in looking at this on when my real "spike" that I ovulated was, since there were kind of two on here.  I got a positive OPK (ovulation predictor kit result) kind of in the middle of the first spike, and the other spike was a couple days after that.  They were both gradual, not a sharp spike like the example graph.  Also, I was under the impression that your temps usually stay elevated after you ovulate (from what I read) and I was surprised to see mine kind of dip back down to about where they were in the follicular (before ovulation) phase...  So yeah, I'm confused.

I did happen upon something when locating information for this post...  Apparently the Basal Body Thermometer I've been using sucks...  It was a Walgreens one, and a lot of people complained about it here.  Awesome.  So I might have wasted a month with a crappy BBT....

Last night, I bought a new one...

Hopefully this one is better.

Really, all of this doesn't matter that much, because as usual, we can really only try when Greg is home, which is never as often as we should be trying.  In a perfect world, he'd have two weeks off at the right time of month and we could try all during that time to optimize our chances.  I don't see that happening any time soon.  I think I just feel such a lack of control over it all that I am willing to do anything to feel a little more like I have a handle on things.  Also, if my chart is right, maybe something is wrong with me and having charts to show a doctor will help them figure out what it is so that I can actually get pregnant.  That's my theory.

In the meantime, I'll just look at other people's cute babies, and hope that I turn into a success story like they did!

Wyatt is so cute and tiny :)  I loved holding him!

Thanksgiving Part Deux

Even though Greg and I each had a couple Thanksgiving dinners between eating on the actual day and some leftovers my mom sent home with us, we hadn't yet had our Thanksgiving dinner together.  I told Greg last week that I would make him some of his favorites for dinner sometime this week, so last night I did just that.  Greg's Thanksgiving favorites are really the mashed potatoes and the green bean casserole (which we actually don't do in my family).  Feeling like we might need a little Umami in there, I decided to make an entree to go with it- Mushroom Wellington ala Vegan Faith.

I changed it slightly by using small white and baby portobello sliced mushrooms instead of the big portobellos and sauteeing them with the spinach, onion, garlic, and wine.  This made them all kind of liquidy (I may have gotten slightly heavy handed with the wine) and I kind of had to drain everything before adding it to the puff pastry.  For creaminess, I opted to add some goat cheese, which I thought was a great addition.  I also had too much filling to fit, so I reserved some and made a gravy out of what didn't fit in the pastry, by adding a little flour and stock to the pan and stirring with a whisk.  I had a few snafus with the puff pastry coming apart on me, but eventually, I got the whole thing assembled, in the oven, and it came out great!

I used baby red potatoes for my (s)mashed potatoes and I always use frozen green beans for the green bean casserole because I think canned ones are gross, even though Greg disagrees.  Don't ask him about the time we were at Costco and he insisted on buying the giant can of canned green beans.  Ewww.

Anyway, we both loved the meal and I was glad to have a little bit of Thanksgiving with my husband.  We're very used to holidays apart after ten years together with this lifestyle, but try to make an effort to set aside some time for ourselves to celebrate together.

Do you ever spend holidays apart?  How do you handle it?

Tweeting And Trotting

Happy belated Thanksgiving!  I'm back in Hilton Head to spend the weekend with my family.

I took a half day on Wednesday, headed home to pack up, and gobbled down this salad of spinach, goat cheese, pear, walnuts, and vanilla balsamic, before hitting the road for the 3+ hour drive to Hilton Head.

Traffic wasn't to terrible, and I arrived in time for dinner with my fam, which was a nice bean pasta soup my mom made.

And some easy cresent rolls on the side.

Oh and we got into the pumpkin cheesecake early.

We turned it fairly early because we had to be up early on Thanksgiving for my Turkey Trot!  After being indecisive about running and racing ALL YEAR long, I decided to go ahead and do this race, since I had a great time running it last year.  Last year I was already entrenched in marathon training and ran the 10K, but this year I opted for the 5K, deciding I wasn't quite ready for 6+ miles just yet.  3.1 sounded fine though.

I had the typical pre-race breakfast.

It was much colder this year, so I was kind of bundled up pre-race and cold in my shorts!

My parents were good sports for hanging out in the cold with me!

I think the cofee helped!  We amused ourselves by watching many people ready to run in costume.

We loved this guy in the full turkey suit!

I really had no plan for this race.  I know my running has been sporatic all year, and looking at my only other two 5K times, I estimated I'd fall somewhere in between 33 and 27 minutes- my other two finish times.  I guessed I'd finish in about 30 minutes...  I really didn't care.  I actually forgot my Garmin in my jacket, so I didn't even time myself.  Really, I was just out to have fun and get a 3 mile run in before consuming mass amounts of Thanksgiving food so I didn't put any pressure on myself to PR.

I underestimated myself.  I felt pretty good on the out and back course, and just ran as fast as I was comfortable with.  I ended up finishing with a gun time of 27:33, which is a 5K PR for me (my previous best is 27:48)!  I also love that this race gives medals!  Fun to add another one to my race bling :)

After some water and a small hunk of bagel, we snapped some quick pics with the blow-up turkey, and headed home for breakfast.

My mom whipped up a frittata with goat cheese, spinach, pepper, and mushrooms.  We had that and leftover crescent rolls with Nutella, and some fruit.

While eating we saw in the paper that Old Navy was open, so we headed over there to check it out after breakfast.  I got a pair of jeans and a pair of running crops for pretty cheap!

Mini-shopping trip done, we headed home to start the turkey/stuffing prep.  A little story behind my turkey, I won it from EarthFare (Huntersville) on Twitter!  It was a fresh, organic, veg fed fella.  Thank you EarthFare!

Clyde looked on with interest as my mom cleaned it.

Once the bird was prepped and in the oven, we decided to head out on a walk on the plantation trails to enjoy the beautiful weather.  It was in the low 60s, sunny, and generally gorgeous.

I love these bridges over the marsh to the island in the plantation, gorgeous...

About 3 miles covered, we headed back and actually changed into bathing suits to go to the pool for a dip!  The pool is heated, and it was a little chilly, but not too bad!

Mom and I finished making dinner after our dip.  The EarthFare turkey came out great!

We made turkey, stuffing, sweet potato, mashed potato, mac and cheese, green beans with almonds, and cranberry (from the can- love that stuff).

With more pumpkin cheesecake for dessert.

Thanksgiving is by far Clyde's favorite holiday.  He knows the word "turkey" because it's his favorite food.  He made out like a bandit.

A great day was had by all, even Greg, who was stuck in Houston and didn't make it home.  He was invited to a friend's house for some food and had a good time too.  We're planning on a mini Thanksgiving of our own next week.

Hope your Thanksgiving was as great as mine!  I'm thankful for all of you who read and support me, you guys rock!



Scenes From the Weekend

To answer your comment questions, yes, I liked Breaking Dawn.  Some parts gave me chills (wedding) and other parts were cheesy (wolf pack scene), but overall I thought it was pretty good.  It's been so long since I read the books now that I kind of wish they'd just wrap it up and can't believe it'll be another year til part II comes out though!  I'm also addicted to this song...




Most of my Saturday (aside from my morning run) was spent at Kelly's new house "helping" (if you call standing around drinking beer and watching Kelly cook, helping ;) with their move.  Mostly the guys did the burly work and the girls hung around her gorgeous new kitchen. 

See, guys working, girls standing around...

Eventually we all assembled back in the kitchen and started chowing down.

Kelly made pulled pork sandwiches with mango salsa and black bean soup.

We ate, drank, and talked, and watched Rascal with an empty PB jar...

Then he got to lick about 10 soup bowls...doggie heaven!

I called it a night fairly early, so I could get home to Clyde and check on him.

Sunday, the weather was warm and Clyde and I took an hour long walk.

I don't think we'll have many more days like this, I can feel fall pulling away...

My walk was followed by a trip to a new brewery: The Noda Brewing Co.  My friends and I had heard about it from a bartender at Big Ben last week and wanted to check it out.

Graffiti on the backside of the brewery.

I scoped out the choices and asked if they had a sampler.  They said they're working on that, but would give me a sip of each one so I could decide what I wanted. 

I ended up liking the porter best, which was called Coco Loco and had chocolate and coconut flavors!

This actually shocked me, because usually I hate dark beer!

You can tell they're still working out the kinks, but I liked the place.  There was a good crowd of people there watching the Panthers game, and also a brewery tour that the girls opted out of, but the boys really liked.  I hope they add food eventually, we need more breweries with good food in Charlotte. 

That's pretty much the rundown of my weekend.  I think I need some downtime now!

Things I'm Into Lately

Hi there!  Hope everyone is well.  I've had another busy weekend over here!  I went to see Breaking Dawn Friday night, ran, went to a move party, visited a new brewery in Charlotte, and of course, snuggled the pup lots.  It was nice!  I figured I'd mix things up and give you a rundown of some stuff I'm into lately.

Chocolate Peanut Butter Hot Cocoa

I found this stuff at Target recently and it's awesome.  I still like to drink something warm in the morning, even though I've been off caffeine for a while (because of TTC), so this is a great alternative.

Butternut Squash

It's officially my favorite squash.  I especially love it cubed and roasted or in this soup.

Clyde's boots

Even though he won't keep them all on at once, they are truly adorable!  Here he is with one on...

Chobani Mango

I'm not even a huge fan of mango and this stuff is awesome!

Indian food

I'm totally addicted to Indian food lately.  I've had it out twice in the last week and then made myself some at home tonight.  So good!

Beer

The fall weather has really put me in the mood for beer lately! 

I'm bummed that pumpkin beer season is over though :(

Running

Well kind of.  November has been the month with the most consistent running I've done all year since my marathon in January.  I decided to just go for it, since being paranoid about running has gotten me no where with TTC.  I've been running at least 2-3 times a week all month.  And I signed up for a Turkey Trot!

What are you into lately??