Drinkin' the CrossFit Koolaid?!

Side Note: Our new hard drive has officially arrived (eeeeh) however, I have yet to find the time to transfer everything over. And of course, I can't just throw stuff on there, I need to go through the last 5+ years of junk before I finally clear up some space to start posting pictures again. But until then, here is an interesting update about our lives lately.

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Yup, I've officially joined the dark side. Well, not officially I guess, more of a "I'm trying it on for size, but black is totally my color". And yes, I am bringing the hubby with me! Actually it was him that talked me into it, so when I am cranky next week you will all know who to blame : )

So here's the deal, H and I have tried a few workouts before. I got through two thirds of P90X to get in shape for the wedding (best shape of my life btw - just saying) and I really loved it. What I didn't love was Tony Horton's goofy phrases and annoying Andrea who every time she was in a video I felt like telling her to go eat a burrito! Plus the yoga video was just awful, one and half hours of the same-move-over-and-over. But, at the end of the day, I saw results. I also recently tried the T25 series with Shaun T. Must say, he is a way better coach than Tony in my opinion, but after the first 5 weeks of the Alpha program I was feeling a little underwhelmed. Don't get me wrong, the workouts kicked my butt, but I am not sure how the end result would be mainly because there was no lifting. The workouts are high intensity, 25 minutes, major cardio, and what's better than spending 25 minutes a day to work out and actually seeing/feeling results?

Apparently CrossFit.

For the last year, H and I have had multiple friends joining the CrossFit Cult trend and they all have wonderful things to say. They have been trying to get us to join for months now and our whole excuse was it's too much money and too much time. Until we saw this Groupon deal that would allow us to try out our local CrossFit, which as luck would have it is where our friends from work go, for only $40! We toyed with the idea and then we thought of Pepper. Yea she's a dog, but we love spending a lot of time with her. We have put so much time and energy into training her that we didn't want her to become neglected. However, she is not a puppy anymore, she just turned one last weekend and we are starting to give her more freedom. So maybe if we are gone an hour and a half at night we can leave her out of the crate and see how she does. I know, famous last words, but the gym is only 15 minutes from the house so we would be gone two hours max. I guess we could at least try it out right? Plus we have friends that do CrossFit and have dogs, if they can do it, then why couldn't we?

Groupon purchased!

We had our first meeting yesterday with one of the coaches. He showed us around and gave us a look into what CrossFit is all about. He seemed really knowledgable and excited about the gym, which in turn made me excited (not sure how H felt about the whole thing) and told us we are going to officially start on Wednesday. Yup that's tomorrow - que my totally freaking out face!

So we will see how it so goes. We apparently have to "test out" of individual classes which consist of learning all the lifts/moves before we are cleared for group classes and that should take about a month. I am totally fine with that because the longer I have before I make a fool out of myself in front of my friends, the better! Needless to say from time to time I will be posting about my CrossFit experience. 

Who knows, maybe I will love it, maybe it will be awful, but at least I am giving it a try!

JP

Red Velvet Crinkle Cookies

This post is something that I was going to blog about a while ago, back during the Holidays, but never really got around to it. I am a believer of living life not just writing about it, so when the time came to post this I was just too busy getting us ready to go to Florida for Christmas.  Needless to say, the post never happened and these beautiful pictures went to the wayside. However, since I am anxiously awaiting my new hard drive, I figured this would be a good one to tide readers over for a little while. 

Oh, and note to self... while these cookies are seriously amazing, they do not keep very well in a hot car for a two day drive. We got to Florida and they were complete mush, still delicious, but not nearly as pretty as they are here : ) Enjoy!

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These might just be my favorite cookies...

So gooey and delicious.

Of course, very festive for the Holidays.

and seriously super easy to make!

I got this recipe somewhere on the Food Network website, however, it was for chocolate crinkle cookies, not red velvet. For those who don't know, I am a sucker for anything red velvet : ) My amazing girlfriends even ordered me red velvet cupcakes for my Bridal Shower from my favorite bakery in the city - Martha's. Oh, that place seriously Heaven. It's this little hole in the wall store in the middle of Forest Hills, Queens. And yes, it is so worth the trip out to Queens. I am still grateful they were able to make that happen, love you ladies! 

They know that red velvet is top on my list of favorites, and after making these cookies, it will most certainly be on yours too! Like I said, this recipe originally called for chocolate in the form of a cake mix. I have made the chocolate version too and the cookies are really good, just not nearly as good as these (in my biassed opinion). Ok here goes,...

Ingredients: 

- 1 brick of cream cheese (8 oz)

- 1 stick butter at room temp (unsalted)

- 1 egg

- 1 tsp vanilla

- 1 box moist red velvet cake mix

- a bunch of powdered sugar to roll the cookies in and for dusting (yea, I know not too technical sorry!)

Directions: 

- Cream together the cream cheese and butter until smooth

- Beat in the egg and then the vanilla extract

- Beat in the cake mix (you can just dump it in all at once, but just be sure to watch for fly aways)

- Cover dough and refrigerate for at least 2 hrs

- Preheat oven to 350

- Roll dough into tbs sized balls and then roll them in a bowl of powdered sugar making sure to cover completely

- Place balls on an ungreased cookie sheet, a inch or two apart, and bake for 12 minutes

- Cool on a wire rack and then sprinkle with extra powdered sugar if needed

Note: the cookies will look slightly underdone when you take them out of the oven, this adds to the fudge-like gooey deliciousness!

Enjoy!

JP

This Busy Life of Ours

Ok, so many of you know that things have been slow around here. Mainly because of a shortage in memory on my computer. That hasn't changed. In fact, I tried to get around this problem by taking photos with my iphone to post about some updates we have been doing around the house and then the unthinkable happened... H dropped my phone destroying my screen.

Technology - 2     JP - 0

I have also been MIA lately because H and I went to Denver to visit our good friends who moved out there last year. It was awesome to spend some time with them but we were secretly using them for a place to stay while we took advantage of the great mountains. Shh.. don't tell them : )

H and I both snowboard and our good friends both ski so it was a great opportunity to hit the slopes together since we haven't been able to do that for a few years now. When we all lived in NYC, we took bus trips up to Vermont at least twice a year which were always a good time. We would get on the bus at 4am, head up to Okemo (which was my favorite), ride all day, then hop back on the bus by 4pm to come home. Man I miss those days. Now, we have to plan a whole weekend to get up to a decent mountain, which isn't a bad thing, just not as easy as a day trip. In a few weeks we are actually going to a friends house in the Poconos to board/ski with a bunch of people, should be a good time. But nothing like riding in the Rockies!

H and I went one other time to Colorado and hit up Copper Mountain - it was amazing. Like nothing we had ever seen before. Needless to say we were psyched to get out there again and check out a few other mountains. This time we went to Keystone and Breckinridge. Both stellar mountains if you ask me. Though, I spent more time catching edges and rolling down the slopes than actually riding, I still had a blast! What made it better was being able to go with two of our best friends. If you ever have a chance to get out to that side of the world - do it, I promise it is worth the trip!

So after an amazing trip to Denver, H and I came home to ANOTHER Nor'easter! Yup, that's right, more snow. I can't tell you the last time the East Coast got this much snow in one season. But one good thing about all this snow is getting another paid day off from work : ) So even though technology is fighting against me, mother nature is going crazy, and our lives have been busy busy busy - we are still enjoying the ride.

Hopefully I will get my phone fixed (and/or a new hard drive) to post a few photos of the house updates soon. But until then, I am just gonna sit back and enjoy my day off. Anyone else doing anything on this snowy day?

JP

No Free Space = No Blog Posts??

Sooo, we have had a few issues lately with our computer. Well really just one issue - no memory space.

We currently use a Macbook (which H and I both love by the way) and have had it for about five years. But, I think it has finally seen its last byte of free space. Womp womp. I have been asking to get a terabyte external drive for some time now just to house our photos and our digital copy movies, but we just kept putting it off. I think it's time we byte the bullet (don't mind me, I am a total nerd). Anyway, I have tons of photos from the past few weeks that I have been patiently waiting to blog about.

Like the fact that we painted our front room to prepare for moving the old furniture there so it is out of the family room. The family room will soon house the new sectional we just purchased. In fact, the front room is looking like he most finished room in the house and it was totally free! You, heard me, free! Long story short, we used left over paint from another room and moved all the furniture from the family room up to the front room, added some artwork to the walls that we already had and BAM - finished space. Granted, it is not what we want in the long run since we want the space to have built-ins along the back wall and a nice large desk, but for now it works. It is looking kind of eclectic these days, but I really like the space and did I mention it was free! Free = Happy Hubby. -- ONE

Or that we actually had our couch delivered, but it was marked up in a few places so we are patiently waiting its replacement. Yea, that was disappointing. But at least we got to keep it until the other one arrives. Slowly but surely that room will come together. -- TWO

Oh, and Pepper passed her Canine Good Citizen Test and Star Puppy! I am seriously one proud mama! I have a few videos on the camera of her doing some tricks that I wanted to post, but alas, no space on the computer means no uploading videos either. -- THREE

I have also been baking up a storm. Including what I just made this morning - chocolate dipped biscotti.. I am seriously killin' it in the kitchen! -- FOUR

Well, there you have it 4+ posts that I am anxiously waiting to write about since all the photos are locked away on my Nikon. I might just have to break out my iphone camera in the mean time and post via the Blogger app. Patience is not my strong suit so let's see how long I last.

Check back for updates (hopefully soon) about all the things that have been going lately.
JP