Baking Baby & Christmas Tree Part 2

Sunday is usually my catch up day and today was no different! I started my day with some coffee with TONS of cinnamon to fuel me through:

I ran around the house pretty much all day and accomplished the following:

• Laundry/ironing
• Dusted the whole house
• Cleaned the kitchen
• Vacuumed
• Lots of baking (more below)
• Choreography work

Frank was not much help, but did keep an eye on me all day to make sure I did everything right ;)

As I mentioned previously, I wanted to bake up some good stuff for some of the special people in our lives. Today, this meant baking up some goodies for Josh's brothers and sister. They are all about to enter into finals week and will need some tasty fuel to keep them going. For them I made:

• Granola (oats, coconut, sunflower seeds, walnuts, almonds, flax, honey, and a little oil baked at 250 for 1 hour):
  

• Mini Vegan Gingerbread muffins based on this recipe. I used flax/water as the egg substitute and added some delicious mini chips:

• I also used Jessica's recipe to make some Double Chocolate Chip cookies. In one batch, I used regular chocolate chips:

• And in the other, I used these dark chocolate & mint chips. Josh said these chips are incredible (I am yet to sample):

I also made an un-pictured set of mini vegan pumpkin chip muffins.

Phew! I packaged up the goodies and will send them off to my awesome brothers and sister-in-law tomorrow!

I also finished decorating the tree:

I like really simple trees and used only silver ornaments.

Josh also finished up the outside of the house that we had started yesterday:

We still need to get a wreath for the front door, but its pretty much done!

Also worth a HUGE mention, I opened my first Christmas gift from Josh's mom a few weeks ago. She got me kitchen towels monogrammed with my blog name:

How freaking cute is that????

Alright, time for some work (blah) and relaxing (hooray!). How was your Sunday?

Gringos & Christmas Tree

Hey all! Hope you are having a fabulous weekend. After teaching Body Attack last night, I came home, took a quick shower, and then Josh and I headed out to dinner with friends at a new restaurant in Mount Pleasant, Gringos. I apologize for the dark pictures.

The decor is simple but fun. Their motto is "Kinda-Sorta-Mexican-ish..." which I love! They have a great menu filled with options for burritos, tacos, salads, nachos, and fajitas. Josh got a burrito with steak and chicken:

I (of course ;)) got a big ole salad with black beans and LOADS of veggies and amazing salsa:

They even have coca cola from Mexico in glass bottles (the recipe is a bit different). Our friend got one:

The food was very FRESH and not greasy. The salsas were awesome- especially the black bean and corn. We like this place better than Moe's and it comes CLOSE to chipotle status. We will definitely be back.

Today, I got up early to teach my Saturday AM Body Step (which was more packed than usual today- hooray!). Afterwards, I went grocery shopping, ate some lunch, and then Josh and I went out to get our tree and a few other Christmas necessities. We stopped at Starbucks on the way and I got my usual (favorite) grande skim misto with three pumps of pumpkin spice:

We came home and got the tree up (but not decorated yet) and decorated the outside of our house. Here is our undecorated tree:

Now its time for some choreography switching and then I'm off to our Group Fitness Holiday party. Let me know what you're up to ;)