Thursday Tryouts: Pilates & Finding Balance

This week has been a strange for me. Due to a slow season for my type of work, we were given the entire week off work this week. It has been strange not having to wake up or having to get out the door at a certain time. Despite my efforts to continue with my normal sleeping routine, it seems my body or rather my mind knows I do not have work and tries to sneak itself more hours of sleeping. At first I was frustrated but then decided that as long as I

What is a Blog Hop?

When I first had the thought of starting a blog I spent quite some time debating about actually doing it. I told myself more of all the reasons I shouldn’t start a blog rather than all the possibilities that it might present. I was anxious writing my About Me page, and even more hesitant when I finally signed up on WordPress.com.

From Couch to …. My Reveiw of C25K

Welcome to my weekly Thursday Tryouts link-up! A weekly post I share with you my thoughts and experience of things I’ve tried out. Whether you had a positive or not so great experience, feel free to link up your own blog posts of tryout shares by adding your link to the link-up button at the end of this post. Plus don’t forget to mention the link-up in your blog post and link back her Now on to my topic for today!!

Thursday Tryouts: The New Coming to My Life

I know I’ve been quite quiet as of late! I promise I will be back more frequently soon! I haven’t had much time to sit down and type out the ideas I’ve had for the blog lately. This is mostly due to moving!

I had originally thought I had until mid-December but instead I had to get all the bins out the door by today actually! Plus the BIG yard sale I’ve been decluttering for is also this weekend! So there has been a lot of organizing of boxes and packing them up to make it easier to put out items on the day of the sale based on categories and pricing. This allows me to set-up more quickly and avoids missing the potential sales that can come from the early birds!

Anyways! I wanted to make sure to at least not miss an entire week of blogging, especially my Thursday Tryouts! Sadly I don’t have a full detailed post on a new try-out, but here are some new things in my life.

New this week:

• I moved! Originally I was living with my dad, who just bought a house with his girlfriend. YAY for them! I had planned to move out with them, but after some thought and realization I was always at my boyfriend’s house anyways I am now officially moved into his bedroom with him!

• I got an internship! If you follow my Weekly Chase posts (I’ll be back at this next week by the way!) you know that one of my weekly goals has been to be active in my job hunting. This has been something I’ve been really reluctant at getting too and since I’ve been offered full-time at my current position I actually decided to postpone my job search. However, I got an e-mail regarding a position I think would be great experience in exactly what I desire as a career path! Although it is an unpaid intern position I have been offered the position and have excitedly accepted! I’ll be doing both full-time employment and part-time internship.

• I’m working out! Another Weekly Chase goal I’ve been aiming at! I have been working out for awhile now, but not as consistently as I’ve wanted. So this week I actually started PIYO and have a really good feeling about the program!

• I ran a virtual 5k! I’m actually signed up for the Cupcake Day Run on December 15, which I had planned to be my first virtual 5k. Then I saw Eat2SaveYourLife’s blog post about the Gratitude 5k to be held on Thanksgiving! So I decided to jump on that one and stay healthy on the holiday.

• I won a giveaway! Thanks to Amber over at Eat2SaveYourLife who not only made the virtual 5k on Thanksgiving with a great Gratitude bib idea. She also, along with her co-hosts and sponsors, hosted a giveaway for the virtual 5k and guess what!? I WON! I was so grateful, excited, and honored somehow! I’ll be getting a pair of France 2 sunglasses (I see a Thursday Tryout post in the future!)

Thanks all for stopping by the blog today! Luckily the sun goes down earlier this time around so the yard sale will have to be packed on up by 5 p.m. leaving plenty of time for me to get some writing done to get back on track with the blog for next week.

Feel free to share your tryout posts, whether you wrote them on Thursday or not! I would prefer them to be at least from this week, and please mention the link-up and your host (me♥) on your blog post.

What is something new from your week?
Have you done a virtual 5k or won a giveaway before?

Hydrate With Plant Nanny

One of the habits I’ve been trying to adopt for awhile now and feel I have finally gotten a hold over is drinking enough water throughout my day. I’ve never really been a big fan of water. It always tasted so bland to me, and I never enjoyed that empty taste unless I was really thirsty or probably dehydrated. I always thought people who drank water with meals were boring. Why would I want to ruin my tasteful foods with the non-tasting water! I only drank water at restaurants when I didn’t want to spend more money on a beverage.

I don’t even think I was ever really sure how much was enough. It wasn’t until I started to get into fitness that I started to look up these nutritional facts and realized that hydration was vital to a healthy body. So I started reading more about water intake and almost every fitness blogger I enjoyed following stated that the recommended intake of water was half your body weight in ounces.

GASP! Half my weight in ounces sounded like a lot! Especially because I quickly realized that I barely drank any water! I mean literally some days I can almost say that I didn’t have a cup of water for the whole day. Maybe at times I even managed to drink NO water all day! I usually always opted for soda and juice. It’s not like I never drank water, sometimes I even craved water. Despite it being a bland drink for me, at times it was often refreshing. Mostly this occurred on hot days, so perhaps I was just dehydrated. Oops!

When I started exercising more I started to drink more water because I knew it was good for me in my fitness progress. I would drink before, during, and especially after working out. Still though I was not drinking enough water! So I educated myself to motivate myself. I looked up the benefits of water. I even seriously looked up how to increase my water intake. This might sound silly. I mean all I had to do was drink more water! I knew that, but the task seemed so complex and difficult to me at the start.

So I looked it up to see how other people could drink so many ounces in a day. I found myself becoming that “boring” person I’d roll my eyes to at the dinner table, opting for water with meals and not only when I didn’t have extra money to spend. I finally started using one of the reusable bottles that had been untouched around the house. I made sure to fill it everyday before I left to school and drink it on the way. Luckily my university had several water refill stations so I used those during school.

I was drinking more water everyday now, but how much I wasn’t really keeping track of. I had seen many girls on Instagram posting about water tracking apps they were using. I tried a few but none of them stuck until I found Plant Nanny. I was immediately attracted to this app. because of the cuteness!

Who remembers Tamagotchi!?

You get to choose from several different plant types and plot them in a pot. Once planted you “feed” your plant daily by feeding your body with water. If you consistently drink adequate amounts of water your plant will grow until it’s big enough to be placed in “your garden.” Then you get to start over with a new type of plant! This definitely brought me back to my days of playing Tamagotchi!

But beware as if you neglect your water intake and don’t “feed” your plant it will wilt and eventually die. This actually happens rapidly in a day or two of inadequate water intake! Really puts in perspective how important drinking water daily is for you!

Plant Nanny really helped me start up my water intake habit. The app even has a feature to set reminders to tell you your plant is thirsty if you don’t drink water for a certain duration of time. I think this was a great try out and I am glad to have found the app. I think it can be a fun, engaging, and effective way to help you develop good water drinking habits.

Do you drink enough water daily?

Does half your body weight in ounces of water sound excessive to you?
How do you keep track of your water intake?

Join the link-up! Click the link below to add or view other bloggers’ Thursday Tryouts!

 

 

My Entrance to the Blogging World

 

Today is Thursday, November 18, 2015. Not only is it the day for my Thursday Tryouts Link-up, but it is also my Spotlight Date in the Run Away Bridal Planner Blog Hop! I would love to welcome you all to my little space in the online world. Today’s tryout is about my initial entrance to the blogging world and my ongoing journey into building this space I have created online.

5 Great Link-ups to Join!

Happy Friday all! Today I’m joining another great link-up I’ve had the opportunity to find thanks to Happy Fit Mama.

There are so many great link-ups! Some are parties for a day, some weekly, and others specific monthly ones. I’m glad I found the idea of link-ups from the start of blogging because they really help with post ideas and inspiration. Plus, are a fun way to connect and meet other bloggers!

I wish I could join them all each time, but to be honest link-ups are plentiful! Some days I just like to focus on one thing. For example Fridays there are quite a bit of link-ups I’ve found I’ve liked. Last time I tuned in for

Thursday Tryouts (#3) – BUTI Yoga

Welcome all to my Thursday Tryout Link-up! A weekly link-up where I aim to share a new adventure I’ve tried out and the experience I had. Feel free to join me every Thursday by sharing a try-out you have had (whether it was a great or not so great experience!) Perhaps you’ll save someone from a bad experience or inspire them to give something new a try they wouldn’t have otherwise!

Today’s post is focused on a new form of Yoga I recently tried, BUTI Yoga. Let me start off by saying I’ve never really thought of myself to be a “yogi,” and still don’t because I don’t practice it very often. I’ve always found yoga to be challenging, but relaxing at the same time. I enjoy the soothing music that the instructors play during class, although I almost always am tempted or do fall asleep when we are given minutes to lie on our mats. The first time I took yoga, I was completely lost as I’d never taken classes with many first timers. So the instructors would just throw out all these yoga name titles that I had no idea what they meant. Chaturanga, Vinyasa, Upward Dog, Tree, and I don’t know what else. These names and poses may seem

Thursday Tryouts (#2) – My New Way of De-Stressing

I thought that once I graduated college I would feel less stressed. Goodbye lengthy reports, tedious homework, daunting exams, and never ending overnighters! I was excited when the time to graduate finally came for many reasons. Let’s be honest though, sleeping like a normal person was definitely at the top of my thankful for being done with school list!

Thursday TryOuts (1) – Halloween Horror Nights

My very first Thursday Tryout post for my new link up! I mentioned before how exciting Halloween is for me in a previous post. I am a super fan of horror/thriller movies and even books! Plus I have a huge sweet tooth, so yes I am all about Halloween!

Another thing I am into is roller coasters! So the thought of a theme park FULL of Halloween fun, really excited me! I had been to Knott’s Scary Farm before with some friends.  Sadly to my dismay I wasn’t all that impressed. The decorations were mediocre. I wasn’t startled or spooked once. In fact I ended up accidentally tripping one of the ghouls that tried scaring me by sliding in front of me! Of course the rides and being with friends made the experience a fun one, but I had been very excited for the “scary” part of the experience. Since my experience wasn’t all that “horrific” and the ticket prices for these events started to rise, I avoided any further interest in attending the Halloween theme park craze.

That was until my friend and I went on a horror movie binge one year and then saw some of the movies we had been watching advertised as mazes and scare zones at Universal Studios Halloween Horror Nights.