Spicy Salmon Bake

How is it tuesday already? No seriously, Thanksgiving is two days away. We don't go out to eat because 1. I love to cook. 2. It's was cheaper. That said I have an awesome dinner idea for a baked spicy salmon.

Top it off with fresh ground black pepper. Serve it up with a side salad and corn tortillas and enjoy.

Cooking one meal for all

What? Can this truly be done? But I am eating healthy and my family won't eat that. Does that sound familiar? I  as well as many others are  so guilty of this. I am on a diet so I have to cook different for me then what I do for my family. Although that may not always be possible because of health issues or allergies. I get that. In our case this is a non issue for the most part except we don't eat pork. I am allergic so we don't have it. Davis does eat it when his mom makes it but I will not cook it at home. Other then these reasons why is it that when we are on a "diet" we always think that we have to cook 2 seperate meals for your family and then for you?  Davis and I started working out together in September of this year. Before that I was cooking separate meals why? Well it's just what you do when one go on a diet right. Wrong. Or even cooking different things for your family just because your eating healthy and they are not. Yeah make total sense to do double the work. Huh? No makes no sense at all. Some kids are picky or allergies come in and play role but if there is no reason why you all can't eat the same meal simplify your lifestyle and your cooking it will be just that much easier for you to stick to a lifestyle and not a diet.

This is Davis and I when we were dating aww we were babies.

 

 

On our trip to California in 2010

Before our Church Wedding in 2011

6 Months post baby. Yup not pregnant here. This was such a low point for me. But I am happy to have moved past this.

Now since Davis is as committed as I am to our new lifestyle it is so easy to cook. We have our set meal plan, We eat the same food. Cooking is a breeze and packing his lunch takes minutes not an hour at the end of my long and crazy day. I just take my cooked brown rice, pick a protein and some fruit and nuts get his Shakeology ready and I'm done. In the morning he grabs it and goes. It really takes the guess work out of it. He has lost a little over 20lbs in 2 months! I am so proud of his hard work and change in his eating habits. He was a huge fan of soda and gave it up cold turkey. What a champ.So go ahead and try this make a meal that is clean and healthy and cook it for everyone in your family. Guess what if you make it there is a good chance they are going to eat it  just because it's cooked and they are hungry.

Christmas Bucket List

I am so excited for Christmas this year, last year Charles was a little tiny thing and slept the whole time. Now he's all over the place playing and walking. He gets excited about presents and opening them. I can't wait to see the look on his face once we get our Christmas tree set up and decorated. We want to start a new family tradition now that he is getting older. We have decided to stay home and have my family over for Christmas Eve dinner and my sister, brother in law and niece will be staying the night. We will do a movie night with pajamas and popcorn and drinking oh my. So I thought I would share our Winter bucket list.

His first Christmas looking so chubby and cute.

Santa's Favorite little helper. Now he goes around saying Santa!

1. Go check out Glendale Glitter.12/13/13
2. Play in snow. 12/13/13
3. Donate clothes, toys, and food to local charities.
4. Make gingerbread house. (I'm already thinking of the cleanup.)
5. Decorate the house. I may Have added a few things here and there. No tree up till after Thanksgiving!11/30/13

Charles helping decorate our his 1st Christmas Tree

6. Sip on hot cocoa by the fire.
7. Buy something red. New nail polish maybe??? I think yes.
8. Try something new. I totally had a strawberry funnel cake where have these been all my life! 12/13/13
9. Cook a new meal
10. Take the long way home.Every way is long to us we live almost and hour out of the city.
11. Play the Christmas vacation drinking game.
12. Have a Chick-Fil-A peppermint milkshake. After I finish my Challenge group of course.
13. Make a christmas craft.
14. Watch some holiday movies.11/28/13 Elf. Last Holiday and Christmas Vacation.
15. Camp in the living room.
16. Make Homemade Pizza
17. Bake GiGi's sugar cookies
18. Go to dinner with our my sister, brother-in-law and niece.

My niece & nephew, Charles & I at dinner.

19. Host a brunch
20. Have a picnic. Done 11/25/13.
21. Take a family photo.
22. Bake christmas cookies

23. Write a letter to Santa
24. Pay a visit to Santa
25. Have a day of nothing but family time.
What are your family traditions or are you making new ones?

Baby Meals

I am always on the search for new meal ideas for Charles. He is not a picky eat so it's not to hard to feed him. But coming up with meals is not always easy so I thought I would put together a few of his meals and hopefully inspire you to try some of these with your little ones. Charles loves sweet potatoes he has them a few times a week. I bake them on my meal prep days and just have them ready to go. I use them for his breakfast our current family favorite is Turkey bacon, sweet potatoes, eggs and a little bit of cheddar all scrambled together and stuffed in a corn tortilla.Recipe is adapted from Schue love  It's awesome. I always put a little homemade salsa on it and  inhale it. On and there is Pediasure in his cups. Per his G.I. we are trying to get him to gain weight. That will be on another post about our struggles with his weight.

Ezequiel Cinnamon Raisin, Peanut butter, and peaches.

Eggs with Spinach, Ezequiel bread, Kashi Warm Cinnamon cereal, Apple sauce.

Sweet potatoes with turkey bacon, eggs and cheddar, and Apple sauce. 

Chicken Del Sol over brown rice, peaches with pineapples.

Gardein Mandarin Chick'n I added veggies, and served it with brown rice.

Campanella pasta with spinach, Cantaloupe, Sweet potato, Apple sauce and Simply Cheetos Puff's 

He is a lean and tall baby, but don't let his size fool you he can chow down like the best of them. Hope this gives you a few ideas on what to feed your little ones.

Homemade Salsa

This is a super easy homemade salsa I always have this in our fridge. It's only 3 ingredients and water. It's packed with flavor and super easy.

 You will need 4-5 roma tomatoes, 6-8 jalapenos depending on how spicy you want it. Water and a little garlic salt. I wash the tomatoes and jalapenos and get a pot. fill the pot with water over tomatoes and jalapenos. Cook it on medium high for about 25 minutes or until soft. Then carefully put the tomatoes and jalapenos it in a blender and add a few scoops of the water that they cooked in. Blend it up until you get the consistency that you prefer I do it for 45 seconds with my ninja blender. Pour it into a heat resistant dish add garlic salt to taste and enjoy.

A little about us

                   This is Davis & I on our combined bachelor and bachelorette party in the woods. 

This will be a blog about our Financial and Fitness story. My husband Davis who is in communications our son Charles Davis the V. The fifth yes you read correctly. More on the name later I promise. Our puppy Chloe and her craziness and myself a stay at home momma and new beachbody coach. The adventures that we will get into in our first home and figuring  out and navigating our life as a ever growing family our fitness and financial  freedom. It's something we are extremely passionate about and want to inspire others to change their lives and get in shape physically and financial.

 Baby Charles  was born on my 25th birthday. So amazing to share the same birthday as my little baby boy. He was 6 lbs 10 oz. and 19 3/4 inches. He might have been little but was born with a great name Charles Davis V. 

This is a current family picture minus Chloe. 

My reason why

I am a momma of a one year old little boy. Charles is my life. Words cannot express how much I love him or my husband. After the birth of my son on my 25^th birthday via emergency C-section I was in the worst shape of my life. I am 5’4 and a half.  When I got home I weighed 224 lbs. I went in weighing 212. I spent the first 2 months of his life feeding him and making sure he was taking care of. I am still breastfeeding and he is almost 13 months. I completely forgot to take care of myself. I would eat anything. Because well, with breast feeding the weight will come right off. MYTH. It does not it takes work, hard work to get it back. I didn’t start getting into shape until July of this year. Our birthday was only a few months away and I didn’t want to look bad at my one year mark. That’s when I found Kati, she is my Beachbody  coach. She is amazing super supportive and helped me get where I am today.  I started eating better and then started P90X then Shakeology. In just four months I had lost 30lbs. Then I joined a challenge group and am down 40lbs. I am not where I want to be yet but I am getting there. I want to be your coach and help you get your dream body. Here I will be blogging about our family and our lifestyle. You can expect honesty and accountability. You will be finding recipes, financial tips and how we are getting out of debt we just finished Financial Peace University the Dave Ramsey class. Fitness info galore, and fun with family and friends.  Now my reason behind my motivation is my family. I want to be here for them for a long time. I want to keep up with my son. He is already a bullet and so smart. I need the best chance to keep up with him and I intend to give this my all. 100% on my part are you ready to give your all? What is behind your drive? I would love to know.  Here are some photos  from my life and my current progress.   

 

D.I.Y. Body Scrub

Hi my name is Gabby,I had a baby and got stretchmarks. Well to be fair I had some prior to baby. I tried my hardest to always put on belly lotion while I was pregnant.But  I  still got a few from Charles and then more from the tugging on my skin from the C-section. I have been using oils and lotions to help the appearance of my stretchmarks but by far the best thing I have done is this body scrub. It's a combination of things that I had at home and mixed them up and started using it in the shower. I interned with a skin specialist moons ago and I took inspiration from there. This is the recipe I have used I use what I have but I'm sure you can substitute for what you have on hand. First off I go to Starbucks inside of my local Target. No seriously that's were they lovely workers give me their ground up used coffee. Seriously and free. You can use it for your garden too. They always give me a huge bag. It's awesome. I then take about 4 cups if the coffee and put it in my mixer.

Then I gather the rest of my ingredients: Baby oil, Olive oil, Kosher salt, Turbinado Cane sugar, Vanilla extract (I used Imitation because that's all I had.) and you will need some jars and a measuring cup and measuring spoon.
I take about half a cup of kosher salt and a little over 1/3 of the cane sugar in the measuring cup and put it in the mixer.

Then add 2 tablespoons of  baby oil and 3 tablespoons of olive oil. I add the vanilla for the scent only just because I got strong grounds. and I only used a tablespoon. Then I mix it all up I have a Kitchen aid mix and use speed 2 I don't usually go any faster cause this could get messy. In about a minute it's done.

Then I scoop it out and place it in some old jars. I put one in the shower and the other two in the fridge so they don't go bad. The jars last about 2 weeks each depending on how much I use and how often. I always apply it on wet skin and in a circular motion for about 2 to 3 minutes on my stretchmarks. Then wash it off. When I'm out of the shower then I just put on lotion this scrub has really help me.

My finished body scrubs. Happy scrubbing.