Protein Pancakes

So as a little background while I had been in grad school and working full time between 2009-2011 I unfortunately put on a bit of weight.  I was working a super crazy schedule with many 12 hour days and going to grad school part time, so in my free time I just became lazy and did not work out.  Well somehow it took me a while to realize just how much weight I had put on, until I went to an event in January and saw pictures of myself from the event and was not happy.  I went on Weight Watchers for a 5 months and lost a ton a total of 14 pounds.  I was super proud of myself and everyone kept telling me how great I looked.  I then went on an 8 day trip with my husband and parents to an all-inclusive resort in Jamaica and let loose.  I gained back 4 pounds and since then I've  been maintaining from that point. Well, now I think I'm ready to lose the final 10 pounds that I had originally gained while in school. So here we go, this time I'm going to try it on my own though and use what I learned from WW.  So there are a few good websites out there that have low calorie recipes that are delicious. So today, I'm going to share a recipe I got from one of these low calorie cooking sites.
These are called Peanut Butter Banana Protein Pancakes and I found them on the Slender Kitchen Website.  I made a couple of changes but basically these are the pancakes Kristen makes, but I think both versions are great.  Now, of course these don't taste exactly like regular pancakes and you have to enjoy the taste of banana.  If you do like banana and you're looking for a lower fat version of pancakes these are a great option.

Peanut Butter Banana Protein Pancakes
as adapted from Slender Kitchen
Makes enough for 1 person - 3 large pancakes

Ingredients:
 
1 banana that is browning slightly
1 tablespoon Chocolate PB2
1/3 cup Liquid Egg Whites
1 tablespoon ground Flax Seed

Instructions:

I prefer to put all ingredients into my Ninja Blender and blend them all up.  It saves time and makes the concoction much more blended than I could ever get it by hand.
Then heat up the fry pan over medium heat and spray with cooking spray. 
Once the pan is well heated pour 1/3 of the mixture into the pan and let fully cook on that side, about 4 minutes.  Remember, cooking times may differ so keep an eye on the pancakes and look for the edges to begin to bubble up.
Once fully cooked on one side, flip the pancake over and fully cook on the other side.
When both sides have been cooked, slide out of the pan onto a plate and continue with the next 2 pancakes.

I like to eat these with some Sugar Free Syrup.  Enjoy!

Game Day Outfits

So even though college football season is more than halfway through, I figured better late than never!  Here are a couple of outfit ideas for when you're cheering on those Seminoles and you still want to look cute. Here are two outfit options I put together so you can still look good and have fun tailgating. 

FSU Game Day Outfit 2 by weekendwishlist featuring red long sleeve tops

Little Mistress yellow striped dress / Izabel London red long sleeve top / Tory Burch shoes / Rachel Zoe messenger bag

FSU Gameday Outfit by weekendwishlist featuring a pendant necklace

Weekend in Review

So again we had another pretty calm weekend.  Since we were out of town last weekend, we just took it easy.  

Friday night, we had a bunch of friends over for dinner and a night of playing the game Cards Against Humanity.  I had never heard of this game before, but it is hilarious and kept us playing for a while.  For dinner, we served a trio of meatballs, a basic salad, roasted asparagus, pasta and red velvet cupcakes for dessert.




We served 3 kinds of meatballs: Martha Stewart's Honey-Chipotle Turkey Meatballs, Martha Stewart's Chicken Parm Meatballs, and our own recipe for regular beef meatballs in red sauce.  The Chicken Parm meatballs were the hit of the party - everyone raved how good they were, so I would highly recommend them.  I will also admit, I cheated on the cupcakes and used a box mix.  I just didn't have time to make cupcakes from scratch.  I did make the icing though, which also explains why it is looking so sad. 


Saturday we spent the day running some must needed errands, isn't that what your Saturdays seem to become when you get married?  Then Saturday night we of course had to go watch the FSU vs Miami game.  We went to the old official FSU game watching spot, Mellow Mushroom.  It seemed like a lot of people had the same idea so it was a lot of fun to have so many other FSU fans to watch with.  We won, so that was a great night!  Sunday morning I spent at the gym, which always makes you feel good after.  That afternoon I had to a ton of laundry, which is never fun though.  Sunday night I met a friend for dinner at a local restaurant called Barcelona Wine Bar in Inman Park.  This place was crazy for a Sunday night due to them having half priced wine bottles.  It is a tapas and Spanish wine bar and the food here is really good and if you're a vegetarian, they have a ton of really good options.  My friend who I went with is a vegetarian, so we shared a bunch of their vegetarian tapas.  We left completely stuffed and all caught up after gossiping over wine for hours. 

Hope y'all have a good week!

All Hallows' Eve

So in the spirit of Halloween, I figured I would show you some of my previous costumes

 The year we went as the old TV show GUTS contestant and referee

 The year I dressed up like an Olympian Badminton player

 The year we went as Garbage Pail Kids (I was Haggy Maggie and D was Itchy Richie)

And then of course the year we chose our favorite cartoon mice to dress up as - I was Danger Mouse (the really old British mouse detective) and D was Mighty Mouse

As you can see, we're really into homemade costumes... But Riley is a little pickier, this year she was a bucking bronco:

Happy Halloween! 

Polished

One of my friends recently brought to my attention how often I change my nail color.  I used to work in an extremely buttoned up industry so felt as though I had to keep my nails pretty bare or at least natural colors.  Now, I work in a much more laid back environment so I am able to express myself through my nail colors.  I change my nail color every two weeks, sometimes if I feel extra frisky I will change it weekly.  So I figure I would post some of my favorite colors right now, and there are a lot!  But I feel like you need to wear colors you love because you're going to see it every time you look at your hands and everyone else will notice too.  So here we go...

 So starting with the lightest colors.  From left to right (all Essie):
Nice is Nice, Pilates Hottie, and Steel-ing The Scene
The last one is a mix between gunmetal and silver and is really nice for nighttime.  Both of the other colors are light lilac colors and are just super girly and pretty.

 Onto the blues & greens, from left to right:
OPI Can't Find My Czechbook, Essie Mint Candy Apple (seriously my most favorite of all probably), Essie Going Incognito, Essie Butler Please.
These are definitely not neutral and all are pretty dark, but they are just seriously great looking colors.  I also think all 4 of these look great on all skin tones.  I know they're not typical fall colors since they are so bright but I really think they look great at any time of year.

 My reds... For some reason it is really hard for me to find a red nail polish I like.  From left to right (all Essie):
She's Pampered, Times Red Square, Showstopper, Bahama Mama.
The last two are pretty dark and I prefer for my toes.  Showstopper also has a shimmer to it that I love.  The first one is a super bright, happy red that I wear whenever I want to be girly and classy.  Times Red Square is just a super classic, deep red color that is perfect with some dark berry lipstick. 

 So these are some of my favorite pinks.  I have a ton more, but I tried to limit it to just a few. From left to right:
Essie A Crewed Interest, Essie Cute as a Button, Essie Splash of Grenadine, and OPI Party in My Cabana.
Love these - all are super pretty.  The first one is pretty sheer so if you work in a corporate atmosphere where you need to tone down, this is a perfect color.  The third one is a super girly pinky-purple that is so cute on my toes.

 Onto the super dark polishes.  I'm not a fan of too dark of colors, but these 3 I love.  From left to right:
Nicole by OPI Show You Care, Essie Lady Godiva, and OPI Siberian Nights.  The first and third colors are really deep purples. These almost look black but I love them both.  Show You Care looks especially nice with a clear or pink glitter coat painted over.  The middle one is a dark brown that looks just like dark chocolate, it is the epitome of fall colors. 

And finally these really just don't have a category.  All are Essie, from left to right:
Buy Me a Cameo which is a shimmery, pinkish bronze color.  This is a great option if you want a natural color that is not the usual pink or beige.
Next is the First Base Base Coat, which is the best base coat I have used.  It goes on so smoothly and dries really quick.  Plus, I never need to use a top coat with this.  It somehow keeps my nails from chipping, which is a feat in itself.
Lastly Shine of the Times which is a clear glitter polish.  I use this to paint over other colors when I want to add a little pizzazz. 
Seriously how great are the nail polish names?  I so wish I could come up with names for nail polish because it must be so fun!  On my local radio station they actually played a game the other day called "Name of a Nail Polish or Name of an Adult Film".  It was pretty funny because I never noticed how many nail polishes have such scandalous names.  Do you have a favorite nail polish color?  I hope I'm not the only one who is constantly changing my nail color!

Beach, Bells and Bagpipes

So this past weekend, two of our friends got married in Pensacola, Florida. 

Two other friends of ours were nice enough to welcome us all to their family's beach house in Destin for the Friday before the wedding.  We of course accepted with no pause and Friday morning we awoke and were on the road by 8 am on our way to Destin.  For some reason our GPS decided to take us the longest way possible, but nothing could ruin the day.  The weather was perfect, which I unfortunately did not prepare for, so we had to run over to a super cheesy beach shop to pick up a $10 Destin outfit.  Everyone else started arriving shortly after so we all went for a walk along the beach and just hung out on the back deck.

For dinner that night we stopped by a really good seafood restaurant called Harbor Docks.  If you're in town for a visit, you should definitely stop by there.  They had a bunch of daily catches that could be made a few different ways and a long list of sushi. I went for the sushi, and it was really delicious and super fresh.  The rest of the night we spent back at the beach house drinking wine and just chatting away.  Saturday morning we all got up and went for brunch at a local place called The Pancakery.  This is another good choice if you're in town, but be forewarned that there will be a long wait on the weekends.  We waited for about 35 minutes but the wait was worth it.  They have any kind of pancake you could think of, different types of batters and a very long list of toppings to choose from - even M&Ms if you wanted.  After brunch we went back to watch some football and then had to move on to Pensacola for the wedding.  The wedding was lovely.  They got married in a small, historic church in downtown Pensacola and then the reception immediately followed at a restaurant on the water.  Everything went well with the wedding with just one little hitch - unfortunately someone locked the church doors so the bride couldn't come in when it was time.  Finally someone realized and ran to unlock the doors for her.  Other than one little delay, everything else seemed to go smoothly and we all had a blast.

After the wedding our group decided to check out a local pub we had been talking about all weekend long.  So one thing you should know about my friends and I, we are all in our early 30s but sometimes I think if someone listened in on our conversations they would think we were a bunch of 80 year olds.  So Friday night when D and I were laying in bed watching TV we were flipping through the channels and saw a local commercial talking about the $0.18 soup at the pub that is the same price as when the pub opened its doors in 1977.  We thought we had to have misheard that but of course we had to tell everyone about it the next morning so we literally brought up the $0.18 soup about 30 times during the day so after the wedding we had to stop by to check it out.  So we walked over from our hotel to McGuires Irish Pub and bellied up to the bar where we ordered some drinks and a bowl of the $0.18 soup.  It was delish! We had an interesting time at this Irish pub.  First off one of my friends decided to share some steak with a group of random guys who were sitting behind us.  Then as we were getting ready to leave a nice man walked in and started playing his bagpipes.  All in all it was an interesting evening.  Sunday morning we basically woke up and had a 6 hour drive back home so the day was spent mostly with sitting in the car unfortunately. 

Everybody's Working for the Weekend

It's that time again.  The end of the week, the day that you've been waiting for all week long.  So, hopefully you're going to have a fun weekend, so to start the weekend off right, here is just an interesting picture.  It was taken two years ago while D and I were in New Orleans for a weekend.  We were just walking around and saw this interesting pair hanging out in the main square.  At first D tried to be sneaky and take a picture of them while they weren't looking, but they saw him and invited him to come over and take a close up with the stipulation that he send a copy to the gypsy's mom so she knew her daughter was OK.  D agreed and took the email address and took the picture. There are always interesting characters to make interesting stories from NOLA!

Hope you have a silly, fun weekend!