Tuesday stuff!

Here is small selection of the random mumbo-jumbo running through my brain this Tuesday morning…

• I don’t know if people were able to detect it in my posts over the past few weeks, but I’ve been a bit of  a stressball.  I had been planning a surprise baby shower for one of my best buddies – and co-worker! – Lindsay.  I have been known to blow surprises in the past, and this one seemed especially hard to keep, as I see Linds every day in the office and it was SO.SO.HARD. to not talk shower all day long.
• Good news: the shower was on Saturday, and I somehow managed to not let the surprise slip beforehand!  Phewf!!  It was a great gathering with great girls, good food, and lots of fun.  Thank you to everyone who came to shower Lindsay & ‘Baby W’ with gifts & good wishes, and thank you to all the lovely ladies who offered to bring food, as well as Stacy for making the cake!  :)
• I’m going to try not to talk too much about Jimmy Fallon today because I have a whole post dedicated to him coming up in the near future, but I have to say I’m SO excited to get home after work and watch my first PVR’d episode of The Tonight Show!!  It’s all I can do to stop myself from hitting up his YouTube channel to see how the first night went!  From the little bits & pieces I’ve gathered on Facebook & Twitter, it sounds like he did an amazing job – never a doubt in my mind!

• As you all know by now, my trend this winter on my Mondays off has been to spend the afternoon in the kitchen making a big pot of soup and trying my hand at making different breads/rolls to have for suppers all week long.  Some have been successful.  Some have been failures.  Last week’s Rosemary & Feta whole wheat beer bread ended up being chucked after a few days because I put too much rosemary in it and after several slices, the thoughts of it made me cringe. 
• Yesterday, I went with a tried-and-true soup favourite, my mom’s Cream of Broccoli recipe (mmmm soooo gooood!!), and after leafing through my Better Crocker cookbook, I decided to test out the Easy Garlic Cheese Biscuit recipe.  I’m a total newbie at making my own breads, rolls & biscuits, so I wasn’t sure how these would turn out, even though they were being touted as “Easy”.  First hurdle: Recipe called for 2 cups of Bisquick, which I didn’t have and our little local store also didn’t have.  I lamented this to my mother, and she laughed at me.  She explained that Bisquick is just the dry ingredient base for biscuits - “Look up the plain biscuit recipe, and you can make your own ‘Bisquick’.”  Hmm.  Learn something new every day… Anyways, these really were super easy.  And they tasted amazeballs.  And I kind of maybe ate four of them.  Which means that I probably shouldn’t ever make them again…

• Speaking of recipes… I’m a bit of a recipe hoarder.  I print out and write out recipes that catch my eye all the time, and then take them home and jam them into a binder on my shelf in the kitchen.  The recipe binder was a total mess, and had been for years.  So bad, in fact, that “organizing my recipe collection” was one of the items I put on my 101 List all those years ago… and a job I never completed.  Until this weekend.  I went searching for that Cream of Broccoli soup recipe, and ended up completely re-organizing the recipe binder.  I didn’t get it done before the cut-off for the 101 List, but it feels good to know it’s finally all organized, dividers properly labeled, and little notations made on the recipes I’ve tried!  Go ME! ;)
• Have I mentioned yet that we’re going to Disney on Ice on Friday night?  My sister & her family, my mom & I.  And I’m probably a tad more excited than a 30-year-old should be for Disney on Ice.  But I’m admittedly very excited.  This will be the first “ice show” I’ve seen live that is not a hockey game!

• Oh… I guess I should review my “cheat-free weekend challenge” which I mentioned I’d be doing.  My coach Jared, after hearing me lament for weeks about how I do so well all week long with eating clean & healthy, but fall off the wagon on the weekends, suggested I try going one whole weekend without cheating.  Of course, it ended up being a weekend that featured BOTH Valentine’s Day AND Shower Food.  But what’s a challenge if it’s going to be easy, right?  I wouldn’t say I was 100% successful, but I was proud of myself for staying away from the candy on Friday (especially since my instinct is to throw a V-day Pity Party for One and surround myself with junk); then on Saturday I know I ate too much, but I didn’t have any chips, cake, cupcakes, cookies, or very many of the dips that I didn’t make.  (I knew mine were made with low-fat sour cream and cream cheese and served with semi-healthy crackers, so I tried to stick with them.)  I aimed to fill my plate with fruit & veggies as much as possible.  I wasn’t perfect.  Far from it.  But it was still a vast improvement over the past few weekends.
• We’ll try again this weekend…
• Oh, and we’re just not going to tell Jared about the 4 Easy Garlic Cheese Biscuits (or, 600+ calories) I consumed yesterday.  oopsies.  But it was Monday, not the weekend, so they don’t count towards the challenge.  Right?  Right.
• On V-Day, I got an extra sweet little surprise when my friend Stace sent me a message to see if I’d discovered the Valentines she’d hung on my front door handle that morning.  You best believe I jumped up and ran to the door to grab them right away – as Stace said, just like a kid on Christmas morning!  It was so cute – two little packages of Hershey Kisses, one from Maddy and one from Tanner, with a little Kissing Booth picture of each of them attached.  Absolutely made my day!!  And then later on that day, my mom called to tell me she forgot to give me the box of chocolates she’d got for me, but that she’d save them for me for some time when I’m allowing myself to “cheat”. haha!  I’m very blessed to have friends & family who think of me on my least favourite day of the year!!
• I don’t know what’s wrong with me this year, but I STILL haven’t been able to get into the Olympic groove!  And time is running out!! It seems every time I turn on the TV, I can’t find events that interest me, or they are re-runs of which I already know the results.  I’m still trying to keep up-to-date on what’s happening, but it’s far from the passionate following I had with the Vancouver Games.  I feel disappointed in myself.

Well, I think that’s all I’ve got for today!  Hope you’re all having a wonderful Random Tuesday. :)