hello 25, goodbye bad habits

Just dropping in for a quick post while I begin the recovery road back from two weeks of birthday celebrations.  It is amazing how easy it is to get in the habit of eating horribly based off 1 or 2 nights of eating fried and chocolatey awesomeness.  I wish it was only so easy to keep going with healthy habits.  Michael and I were fortunate enough to have multiple celebrations with friends and family for our birthdays including a surprise family dinner, beer tasting, wine tasting, and of course great food.

While I have been known to start these healthy regimes and lose them after awhile, I am trying a new tactic of putting it out here where I can feel accountable to someone (even if there are only a couple people reading) and for all you who have been privy to my phases of getting healthy  cough*ErikKara*cough #newlyengaged and are doubtful of my commitment, well to you I only hope that I can come back in a few months and say BOOM.

Yesterday I started P90X again and I really felt so much better about myself afterwards and this morning so if I can just keep that feeling in mind to reach my end goal (actually finishing!) I should be successful.  On the other hand, I can feel a difference between my body now and my body two years ago when I did P90X the first time - hence 25 = getting old.  I have also started a new meal plan that includes mostly chicken, rice, veggies, and other fresh foods and so far I have been thoroughly enjoying how easy dinner is to make now and how great I feel after dinner.

So bring it on holidays - I will be searching high and low for ways to distract myself from all your awesome baked good-ness.

Actually saw this on Pinterest this morning and thought it was hilarious:

Happy Birthday to Michael!

Today is Michael's birthday, my best friend and new husband!  I was lucky enough to get the day off but he was not :( This morning I made him breakfast in bed, made his lunch, AND gave him his first birthday present before work - I am such an awesome wife! But seriously, I had a great time today surprising him by cleaning out the storage closet like he has wanted and cooking him an awesome meal of imitation Chick-Fil-A nuggets (and sauce!) and homemade potato chips!  The chips were from Paula Dean and were super simple and A-mazing, check out this two step recipe, here.  The nuggets were also great but I had a little too much breading to chicken ratio because I forgot to cut down the recipe for just two chicken breasts, whoops!  I found this recipe over on Table for Two.  The only thing I changed was that I marinated the chicken in pickle juice beforehand, something I had read somewhere else and it really did make them taste more authentic!  For the big finale, aka dessert, I made chocolate peanut butter Reeses cupcakes.  I actually made these yesterday because Michael wanted to bring them in to work, and they were a big hit!  The recipe was adapted from Chef in Training - I just love her recipe index!

The big thing I did differently was that I crushed up some Reeses cups and put them in the cupcake batter before baking - mmm :)

Check out the deliciousness in action!

Only put a little bit of batter in the bottom.

Smash up some Reeses

Add the Reeses to the batter and pour more batter on top.

Now on to my most favorite kitchen gadget!

 Homemade PB frosting = awesomeness.

I don't have a frosting piper so I improvised with some advice from my Mom. 

Messy but it worked! 

Perfect birthday cupcake!

Enjoy!!

Bridal Showers and Birthday Parties

This past weekend was a whirlwind weekend, but a great one at that.  Friday started out awesome because I was able to bake some cookies with the kids (recipe to come) and baking always makes me happy.  Friday night Michael and I decided to head downtown to be a more social married couple, but we still ended up hanging out just the two of us at the bar and being home by 10 :) He probably won't like me admitting to that, but it was still fun and we had to get up early the next morning!  Saturday I had the privilege of heading down to South Boston VA for another bridal shower for my friend Jackie - lucky duck!  I got to meet some of Kyle's family, which was great, and meet the wonderful cops of Prince Edward county, not so great...

Anyhoo, after that I drove back up to Richmond to meet Michael and my friend Eddie for the night and we met up with Michael's sister, Sarah, and her husband, Jason at Peter Chang's - which was AWEsome!  Later that night we had a nice time catching up with some old friends and chatting with Eddie, who was kind enough to tell me that he felt he was being yelled at in my blog from the over use of exclamation marks - so in his honor I will be trying to cut down on that - but if you know me at all, you know I like to talk in a loud, excited tone anyway, so what's the difference?  But honest feedback is always appreciated :)

Yesterday, Michael and I drove back from Richmond and drove out to King George to make it to a circus themed 4th birthday party!  It was really cute to see all the kids so excited, and the cake was amazing:

After the party, we made a quick pitstop downtown to jump start Michael's mom's car :) and then to his parents' house to pick up some last minute items for my sister (she's leaving for college in 2 days!) and then we were finally off to our last event of the weekend - Theresa's going away family dinner!  To quote Michael, dinner at the Stoecker household is always "entertaining" and we did not disappoint on this occasion either.  There was lots of yelling, laughing, arguing, and crazy picture taking - and it was a great time.  Theresa is going to UVA (mostly because she I made her) and I am so excited to help move her in on Wednesday.  

After a long but fun weekend, I am relaxing today after a painful but necessary run (Hillary - I hope you read this!) and welcoming our 2nd sale on Etsy!  Stay tuned for tomorrow, I will be posting about the delicious cookies I made last Friday.