My Wonderful 2010 in Review!

Hello Dearies!

I wasn't able to get my daily blog on yesterday because we went to the local bar to help a friend celebrate his 30th b-day!

Happy Birthday, Steve!

I was good and didn't eat any cake, but I did enjoy licking some frosting;)

This morning my friend (and Steve's wife) Vanessa and I did some Zumba together! I was ravenous afterwards and enjoyed a mixture of black beans, garlic and tomatoes stuffed in a whole wheat pita with a slather of light garlic Laughing Cow and sprinkled with some fresh spinach-I'm melting thinking about it;)

While I'm getting ready for the big New Year's celebration tonight, I was thinking about how good 2010 was to me! Here's a list of why 2010 will be missed greatly! In chronological order:

1. Our trip to Nashville for my friend Carrie's wedding.

Me, my friend Heather, the beautiful bride Carrie and my friend Jessica. All college sorority sisters, roommates at one time or another and all-around awesome girls!

2. Our trip to a KU game during March Madness. OK, honestly it was heartbreaking since they lost to University of Northern Iowa in the 2nd round of the tournaments and they were supposed to win it all! But, B's (yes, my husband's name is just "B") sister lives in Oklahoma where the game was hosted and it was fun to hang with her. Plus, I've never been to a college basketball game before!!



3. I started and finished P90X successfully! I think I dropped around 10 pounds and 10 inches altogether. This is one tough workout and I'm so happy I completed it!

Before (top) and After (bottom) Pictures

4. My bestie Jessica's wedding! I was so honored to be a Matron of Honor on her special day! I can honestly say this wedding is in my top 5 of all time!



5. Living through a REALLY long motorcycle ride with my Dad! My Dad is an avid motorcycle rider and he wrangled me into going on a day trip with him. It happened to be around 6 hours! I was a true motorcycle babe that day! And I can totally understand the appeal of the wind in your hair, although it took me about an hour to comb through it when we were done;)

6. Las Vegas, Baby! My side of the family took a vaca to LV this year! My husband and brother have never been, so it was so exciting to see their faces of amazement and that weird and lively city!

7. My cousin Nick's wedding! 2010 was definitely the year of weddings for B and I! I'm pretty sure we had over a dozen this year! Nick and Tessa's didn't disappoint! Another one in my top 5-that top 5 is getting pretty full;)

B, me, Nick and his beautiful wife, Tessa

8. Our annual Iowa football game! Being a big Iowa Hawkeye fan in Kansas is hard! This is the land of Big 12 and we are Big 10! My husband keeps me watching the Big 12 for KU though;) Every year we go with some family to an Iowa game! Luckily we picked a beautiful day for the Hawks to beat up on Iowa State! LLUUUURRVEE!

9. Annual Girl's Weekend! Living in a tiny town, sometimes us girls need to cut loose and get wild! So a group of girl's from our small town pack up and head to K-State country in Manhattan and eat, laugh, drink, shop and dance! It's a perfect time to bond!

Julie, me, Vanessa and Melissa

10. Halloween! Halloween is my holiday! Ok, I say that about every holiday-hehehe! I'm not one to use it as an excuse to get "sexified" like most women. I also don't want to just go buy a costume-I want to get CREATIVE! My inspiration this year-LADY GAGA! Epic-I know! I got 2nd in the costume contest next to 1st place Homeless and Horny guy-I know, I know-were those judges blind?:) HAHA!

Oh, 2010, you will be missed! But I'm excited for 2011 as well! We have babies being born by friends and family, family moving to town, more friends to meet and more parties to be had;)
Here's to life, friends! I hope your 2011 is an amazing year! Thanks again for reading and I have great plans for this blog in 2011;)

Just Dance 2 Review

Hello Peeps!

Today was another eventful day of painting! Drab.....BUT, we did get the trim done and we've decided to hire someone to texture our walls because of the damage around the windows and doors. There are lots of cracks that we just can't hide anymore. So tomorrow we'll paint our fireplace black (ballsy, I know!) and then we can relax the rest of our holiday vaca!

This morning for breakfast I tried and modified a smoothie recipe from my favorite blogger Gina over at The Fitnessista Blog. Here's my small modifications and it turned out beautifully! It's not pretty to look at, but please don't let that deter you-it's aMazing!!!

Green Goddess Smoothie
1 cup light vanilla soymilk (or skim milk)
1/2 banana
1 C. of fresh spinach
2 T. coconut
1 scoop of vanilla protein powder (this can be omitted if you aren't the protein powder type-although you should be!)
1 t. vanilla
1 serving of pineapple with its juice

Blend together in a blender or with an immersion blender (what I did) and drink up! No need for sweeteners since the pineapple makes it naturally sweet. After drinking this, you'll start your day with almost 3 servings of fruits and veggies! Not bad, Missy! 7 PointsPlus

After Zumba tonight, I came home to eat a crock pot meal already made for me (I Heart Crock Pots!), took a shower and popped in my new Wii game the hubs got for me for Christmas-Just Dance 2!

Source

I've played Just Dance only once at a friend's party and we all had a great time! I love dancing and I thought this would be right up my alley, weather I just want to dance to a few songs or if we are having a get-together with friends, I think this would be a great addition to our games!

The first two songs my husband wasn't around so I did A-Punk by Vampire Weekend (huge fan!) This happened to be a duet-oops! Still a decent little dance. Next was When I Grow Up by The Pussycat Dolls-SNOOZE FEST! I couldn't believe I was doing this-a 5 year old could've done this dance! Then my hubs pointed out the easy rating and how "sweaty" you could get was on each song. OOHHHHH, well that helps a lot!

I have to say that we laughed and had a blast while doing this. There are 40 songs on the game but you can download more when you conquer those 40-SCORE! Plus, all music tastes are represented on this game-well, maybe not country-sorry folks! I WAS disappointed in that some of the songs weren't done by the original artists. Maybe they couldn't get the copyright, but Crazy in Love sung by "Studio Musicians" is just not the same as Beyonce!

B (the hubs) dancing to Sympathy for the Devil

I'm jammin' to Big Girl (You Are Beautiful) by Mika

Overall, I would give this a 4 out of 5 rating. This has the potential for tons of fun and kids would rock at this too! I can't wait for some friends to come over to give the "Battle Mode" a try!

One last item for the day is that I found out that I won my fantasy football league! This may not sound super exciting to you, but: 1. this is my first year, 2. I'm not a football expert nor did I study at all, 3. my first round pick was DeAngelo Williams-FAIL! 4. and I'm the only girl in this 12-person league! HOLLA! Representing for the female-folk over here! My hubbers is even in this league and I beat him out-I never get tired of reminding him of that;)

If you have tried Just Dance 2, let me know what you think of it. Are there any other "fitness" related video games you could recommend?

My Workout Plan

Hello Beauties!
I've received wonderful feedback so far from my first post-THANK YOU to all who read it! I hope you continue to follow me!
Today was eventful because my hubs and I are taking on the task of painting our wood trim and walls in our living room, dining room and hallway. Phew-what a chore! I'm lucky in that my day job isn't open between Christmas and New Year's (you can hate me later;) and my hubs is a teacher so we are both off for the week-time to get some work done!

Gotcha! Hubs pointing at me to get him some paint tape.

Apparently I am the trim queen! Hub won't touch it-so he's all over the walls while I eat bon bons;)

The perils of painting....

Tuesday's are my last cycle day of my Weight Watchers week, so I always plan out my workouts for the week tonight. I thought I would share with you what I do and why I do it.

Wednesday: Zumba, 1 1/2 hours

Thursday: Upper body strength, 45 min. Zumba, 45 min

Friday: Bodyrock workout, 20 min

Saturday: rest day (I might be hungover from New Year's Eve!)

Sunday: Zumba, 45 minutes to 1 hour

Monday: Bodyrock workout, 20 min

Tuesday: Interval Extreme, 1 hour

I hope everyone by now know's what Zumba is. If you follow me, you'll hear it a lot! In short, it's a latin-inspired aerobic dance class. This next week I'll be teaching it 1, learning new songs (I count that as a workout), and taking a class from a fellow Zumba instructor.

Also, if you've never heard of Bodyrock, please go to her site now! This is an AMAZING site of an incredible woman and her husband and they make these easy to follow, short workouts that will leave you begging for your momma! Ok, not quite, but it's an awesome workout-and they are usually around 15-20 minutes! I love short, hard workouts!

My dad and I Christmas eve doing a BodyRock workout in my grandparents living room!

(Forgive my hair, I just woke up!)

Interval Extreme is a new class I'm teaching that will go from hard cardio, heavy lifting and breaks-with the goal of bringing your heart rate up drastically and then lowering it. This burns fat faster and your body keeps burning fat long after your done with your workout-SCORE!

Some of you might be thinking-6 days of hard workouts out-yuck! Believe me, I used to hate working out too! You wouldn't catch me in the gym in HS, barely in college either! Once I graduated college, I was at my heaviest and knew I needed to do something about it. I joined Curves with my bff and went about 3 days a week. Soon this was getting a little easy! I started doing workout videos at home-slow at first and then realized I needed more! So I joined a gym and did a group exercise class-BAM, THIS is what I needed! Kickboxing and step class INVIGORATED me. The group dynamic pushed me more than I would push myself. And it was, dare I say, FUN! Once I moved to my "desserted" little town, I knew I wanted to continue group exercise. Luckily, my small town has a gym! I took group exercises for about a year until my favorite instructor moved. I thought, "I could do that!" So I gave it a go and here I am! It was a scary step that I'm glad I pushed myself into.

If you don't like working out, you just haven't found the right exercise for you. I HATE running-you'll never catch me outside or on a treadmill running for an hour! I think I'd rather pull my toenails off! Wait, don't they fall off when you run? HA!

Let me know what workouts YOU love and why?

Oh ya, GO IOWA HAWKEYES in your bowl tonight!

My cousin Lyssa, my brother Adam, me and my cousin Tori at an Iowa game earlier this year. 

Welcome!

Hello Friends!
Well this is my first post and my FIRST ever blog! YEAH! After reading them for so long and being inspired each and every day by them, I decided to give it a go. This is more for myself, but hopefully you like it as well:)
Let me tell you a little about myself and why this blog is called "Desserted Again." First and for most, I LOVE dessert! It's more than a love actually, it's an obsession!
Also, this blog will focus on being fit, fabulous, and healthy while living in a SMALL town-in which I feel "deserted" in. I mean, I don't have a "city" over 50,000 people within an hour of us! And I live in a town with a population of around 4,000. So, we must make do with what we have!
Many fitness, health and food blogs I read are based out of big cities-New York City, Philadelphia, Tuscon-but what about small town Midwest? I felt a niche and it was calling my name to fill it.
Now, a little about myself. I'm a certified Zumba instructor and group class instructor at our local wellness center. I LOVE this!

That's me in the purple cargo pants! This was at a Zumba Marathon after Thanksgiving I helped instruct.

Along with this, I also try to follow the new Weight Watchers plan (yummy recipes to come!) and am a generally active person. This balances out with my passion for food! Sometimes making it, but ALWAYS eating it! I tend to plan my life around food and I associate myself with others who love food. I'm not for sure if this is a good thing.......

My husband and I are also party-planners and socializers! We thrive in groups situations and love to be the center of attention. Surprisingly, we let each other have the lime light enough that we are each satisfied;)

This is me (center of attention of course) on a stage learning dance moves on our honeymoon in Jamaica (pink halter top).

For my first post, I'd like to share a recipe I tried out for the first time tonight. It's healthy, easy, fresh and DELICIOUS! I was amazed at myself! I got inspired by another blogger recipe and made it my own. This is one of those great dishes that you can tweak to your tastes and what you have in your pantry. Here's my take on it and I couldn't be more pleased with it!

Green Bean Pasta with Shrimp
1 lb. green beans
2 servings of pasta (your choice)
2 servings of shrimp (deveined and tail take off)
1 handful of fresh basil
1 T. Olive oil
1 T. Balsamic vinegar
1 T. low sodium soy sauce

Cut tops and bottoms of green beans off and also slice in half so they are easier to eat. Wash and boil green beans for about 4 minutes until al dente. Rinse with cold water to stop cooking but keep boiled water to cook pasta in.
While pasta is cooking, cut the tails off your shrimp, chop basil and mix dressing.
Once pasta is done, combine all ingredients and top with sea salt and pepper to your liking.
Easy peasy! Hope you like it as much as I did! 8 PointsPlus

Does anyone have any fresh and easy dishes they'd like to share?