Life Lately

Happy Monday!! There isn’t an outfit post on the blog today because with DC’s frigid temperatures and crazy strong wind, the last thing I wanted to do was go outside and snap photos. The first thing I wanted to do was curl up under the covers with a book and chai, which is exactly what I did after a killer early Saturday morning barre class. I’m seriously still sore and moving very gingerly.

Since I couldn’t shoot outfit photos this weekend, I thought I’d take this post to share a recap of my weekend and update you on my new favorite things.

Friday was pretty uneventful, I got home late from work and didn’t feel up to really cooking dinner. Trader Joe’s Vegetable Spring Rolls to the rescue! They had been on my “To Try at TJ’s” note on my phone for a long time and picked them up last time I was at the store. Dipped into Trader Joe’s Sweet Chili Sauce, they were exactly the low-maintenance dinner I needed. Packed with kale, edamame, carrots and other veggies, these spring rolls are also relatively guilt-free.

Saturday included the aforementioned tough barre class followed by laundry (I lead a very exciting life) and more cleaning, which also means listening to podcasts. I also made and photographed this week’s food and cocktail recipes and let me tell you, shooting recipes is no joke. My kitchen looks like a disaster area after a shoot so after shooting, I had to clean my kitchen. Oh the glamorous behind-the-scenes of blogging! I was so engrossed in my work that I didn’t even notice the snow – until I happened to look up and see my street was starting to look like a winter wonderland. I was one happy girl!

After spending almost all day inside, I walked over to a friend’s apartment for game night. We played “This One Time I…” also known as “the game of ludicrous life choices.” I’d highly recommend this game (Would also recommend you pair this game with wine or beer), it kept us in stitches and at one point, I laughed so hard it hurt. Or maybe that was from barre? Either way, you will be crying from laughing when you play this game. It was the perfect low-key Saturday night.

Sunday morning once again saw me at the barre to work off the wine and pizza from the night before. Early in the afternoon, I met up with Rosa for a photography lesson. In 2016, I made “Go from automatic to manual” on my list of New Year resolutions. I’m sad to say I completely and utterly failed at this resolution. I have a full-time job so about 95% of my blog photos are taken on the weekend. Thankfully, my apartment gets a lot of natural light, which is perfect for shooting food and cocktail recipes. But still, these shoots are a lot of prep and can sometimes each take up to an hour. Not to mention the pile of dirty dishes I have to clean up after. With my limited time, it was just too easy to stick with my camera’s automatic mode instead of tinkering with its aperture, shutter speed and ISO among other things. This resolution fell completely to the wayside. I love my camera and playing around with styling shots so I resolved that this was going to be Resolution #1 for 2017. Rosa’s photography class was incredibly thorough yet broken down into manageable sections that were easy to understand. I’m a visual learner so I appreciated the graphics explaining the theories of photography. I left our lesson feeling excited and brave enough to play around with my camera’s manual mode. If you’re looking to jump into photography, I highly recommend Rosa’s lesson.

After the lesson, I came back home to meal prep for the week and write this post. But first I flopped down on my couch with my fuzzy blanket to start reading one of my favorite food blogger’s new cookbook, The Dude Diet. If you aren’t familiar with Domesticate Me! by Serena, go bookmark it now! Serena shares healthy (and healthyish) dishes  while also delightfully oversharing hilarious shenanigans. You laugh, you cry and you get a good-for-you recipe. What’s not to love? I’ve been following her blog for years so I was excited to see her cookbook come to life!

Feeling inspired, I headed into my kitchen to prep breakfast and lunch for the week. I saw a Tasty video for a turkey burrito bowl and decided to give it a whirl. I’ve been in a lunch rut lately so I was pretty pumped to try out a new-to-me recipe. Of course, I gave my own spin on it and will report back to you. If you have any desk lunches that you love, please comment below!! The desk lunch struggle is real right now.

I’ve been trying to go to sleep earlier (Read: not at midnight) but did not get off to a great start last week. I had a hard time falling asleep even with melatonin and just turning my brain off. And then I had nightmares two nights in a row. The first time I was chased by ninjas and the next night, chased by a serial killer. No clue. Needless to say, I didn’t wake up feeling ready to conquer the day and the anxiety about not being able to fall asleep was, in a cruel moment of irony, keeping me up at night. That’s when I remembered hearing about a meditation app on the Happier with Gretchen Rubin podcast. Figuring it was worth a try, I downloaded Headspace and pressed play on the first meditation exercise. It was the best night’s sleep I’ve had in weeks. I’ve been using it for a few days now and sleeping like a baby. Download it now!!

Phew that was a long post (Are you still with me?)! I hope you had a great time in the snow this weekend and if you’d like to see this type of post more on DC Girl, let me know.

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