Thankful Thursday

Lately I have been feeling very unmotivated and uninspired - I am definitely in a funk and not quite sure why. But in an attempt to lift the funk, I would like to take today and make it Thankful Thursday so that I can call my own attention to all of the wonderful things in my life :o)

I am thankful for...

1. My wonderful husband

2. Our crazy fur-babies

3. Our home

4. Our families

5. Our friends

With so many wonderful blessings in my life, it's hard to accept being in any type of funk :o) Hopefully this reminder will lighten and lift my spirits, so I encourage you all to do the same. I know we have a holiday dedicated to this sort of thing, I just don't feel like one day a year is enough to call our attention to all of the good things in life. More often, we should take a moment out of our busy and hectic lives to remember what's really important.

Take 5 Bars

I find it kind of humorous, if not ironic that I am posting this right above an Exercise/Weight Loss post - no less, here is an amazing dessert recipe that I just had to share with you guys :o)

My team at work, will use any excuse to have a party. One of our co-workers is leaving us, and so I volunteered to bake a treat for the group to celebrate his last day. I saw this recipe over on Heather Drive and just had to give it a try. Of course they are absolutely delicious, so thank goodness they are going to work tomorrow otherwise the humor and irony I spoke of earlier would not be so good lol

Don't they look simply delectable?!?! Let me tell you, they do taste as good as they look!!!

Mu husband's favorite candy bar is the Take 5, and he loves anything with pretzels in it especially desserts (he's a sweet and salty kinda guy). So, I suppose I will be spending the remainder of the evening trying to keep him from eating the entire batch ;o) Yes, they are that good!!!

Enjoy!

Ingredients:
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 & 1/2 sticks unsalted butter, at room temperature
1 cup light brown sugar
1/2 cup granulated sugar
2 large eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
12-ounce bag semisweet chocolate chips
1 & 1/2 cups mini pretzel twists, coarsely chopped
1/4 cup chocolate chips, for drizzling (optional)
1/4 cup peanut butter, for drizzling (optional)
1/4 cup pretzels, crumbled, for topping (optional)

Directions:
1. Preheat the oven to 350°F. Spray a 9×13 pan with cooking spray.

2. In a bowl, whisk the flour, baking soda and salt. Using a mixer, beat the butter and both sugars at medium speed until light and fluffy, about 1 minute. Beat in the eggs and the vanilla extract. On low speed, beat in the dry ingredients just until incorporated. Stir in the chocolate chips and pretzel pieces.

3. Spread the batter evenly in the pan and press it down evenly with a spatula. Bake for 30 minutes, until golden brown. Transfer the pan to a rack and cool completely.

4. In separate sandwich size baggies, melt the chocolate chips and peanut butter. Cut off a small corner on each bag and drizzle the chocolate and peanut butter over the top of the bars. Sprinkle the extra crushed pretzels on top. Let set and then cut into squares.

Couch to 5k

Since I've recently updated the look of Domestic Diva, you may have noticed some new features on the blog - including the 101 in 1001 page tab. In my list of goals I mention my desire to drop some of the extra lbs I've been carrying around, and in an effort to accomplish this goal I have decided to take up the Couch to 5k running program!!!

This program is designed to take the non-runner (me) to a 5k runner (wanna be me) in a matter of 9 weeks, based on the concepts of interval training and gradually building ones stamina.

This week commenced week #2 of my program, and so far I must say that it is going quite well. During the first week my quads were definitely feeling the effects of my new workout routine, but after a nice weekend of r&r and some lovely doses of extra strength Tylenol I was feeling much better :o) This week was also much easier than the first week, I could feel my stamina improving already. In fact, my clothes are fitting better, the scale as budged slightly in a downward direction, and I am even feeling better physically! All in all I am very happy with this program and hopefully it keeps up, or rather I keep it up ;o) Stay tuned!

Week 1 ~ Total Weight Loss: - 4lbs

New Look

What do you guys think???

A lot different and a lot more colorful than the previous monochromatic design - still playin around with Blogger's new design features. But since it's summer, I was feeling the need for a little more color :o)

Bottom line - do you like the new look???

The World

I have been meaning to complete this project for a while now - last year for Christmas, we got the idea to make my dad and step-mother a "newlywed map" (even though they're not so much newlyweds anymore) to document their travels together (they own a timeshare and are big travel buffs). Since I was ordering the supplies online, I decided to order some extras to make one for ourselves and have just finally gotten around to doing it!

The cliff notes: adhere a map to a foam board, frame it, and stick pins in the places you've traveled together!

Here is a list of the supplies that I used and the approximate cost:

• 36"x 24" world map (executive version) from Mapcenter.com = $12.99
• 1 box medium map tacks from Mapcenter.com = $4.79
• 36"x 24" piece of foam board = $6.99 (with 40% off coupon at Michaels)
• 36"x 24" frame, glass removed = $34.99 (on sale, 50% off at Michaels)
• Spray adhesive = $3 (with 40% off coupon at Michaels)

The total cost for this project was approximately $70.00

Not too bad considering these things sell, already assembled, for over $150 in stores :o)

Unfortunately at the moment, most of our pins lie within the continental U.S. (we have only been married for 2 years ;o) - with the exception of Mexico where we went for our honeymoon, and Canada since we attended college merely 20 minutes from the border. Of course, now that we have this lovely map to show us how much of the world we still have yet to see I hope to be adding more pins very soon ;o)

Total Eclipse

The big day has come and gone - the midnight premiere of The Twilight Saga: Eclipse was late Tuesday night early Wednesday morning. It was a wonderful night filled with great friends, good food, and an awesome movie!!! We gathered at my place around 7pm for dinner and then left for the theater around 9:30pm, which worked out perfectly because we only had to stand in (an actually very short) line for about 20 minutes before they let us into the theater to sit down!!! Last year for New Moon we had to stand in a very crowded and chaotic line for nearly 2 hours before they let us into the theater - I guess they got their shit together this time around :o)

Here are some pics from the party setup

the food table, complete with themed snacks

romantic red velvet cupcakes with movie pics

Jacob and Edward chocolate covered strawberries

vegetarian vamp veggies tray

werewolf kibble

blood red punch

red, black, and white candies

the goodie bags table - all assembled and ready for the guests

 the contents of the goodie bags as posted in my previous Twi-hard post: custom twi-shirt to match each girl's personality, Bella's engagement ring pop, blood sucker twizzlers, Twilight body spray, Edward Cullen bookmark, Eclipse soundtrack, and an Eclipse hand painted wine glass (we give one out at each premiere party, November 2011 we'll finally have the complete set once Breaking Dawn is released!!!)

shot of the room - love how it turned out

 Andrea, in a completely appropriate pose with Edward ;o)

all the lovely twi-hard ladies in their custom twi-shirts
from left to right: Mel "Team Edward, Except When Jacob Is Shirtless", Me "Edward Prefers Brunettes", Carolyn (6 months pregnant with her first baby, a little girl to be named Sophia!!!) "Edward's Baby", Ashley "Edward can Bite My Pillows, Bust My Headboard, And Bruise My Body Anyday", and Andrea "This Bella Married Her Edward"

We had a blast and the movie was amazing!!! Definitely the best one of the series so far - we still have 2 more movies (1 book split into 2 movies) to go: Breaking Dawn I in November 2011, and then Breaking Dawn II sometime in 2012... wow those dates seem waaaaaaay too far away lol But we have the Eclipse DVD release to look forward to in the next few months, so that will break it up at least a little bit.

So there you have it ladies, my 2010 twi-hard event. Hopefully you have at least enjoyed getting to know a little bit more about another side of me from these few posts, I promise to get back to the domestic diva side of this blog asap :o) Now that I have some of my free time and creativity back (at least until November 2011 ;o) maybe we can get some more work done around the house - that upstairs master bedroom is taking far too long to complete, or even make progress on for that matter... my To Do List isn't getting any shorter!