26.2

I don't think I could possibly be more proud of Zach, who completed his first marathon yesterday in 3:50:55. I'm in awe!

Special thanks to his training buddy Mark, who put in many hours and miles with Zach leading up to the race. If it weren't for him Zach may have tried to make me do the marathon, and then our kids would have been marathon training orphans.

And a special shout out to our trooper kids, who kept up as we raced through Dallas to see Dad on the course three times, and endured my insane dash uptown to get change for a $20 bill so that we could park and get there in time to see him cross the finish line.

Zach is doing fairly well today, mostly due to the fact that he subjects himself to a 20 minute ice bath after long runs. (Brrrrrrrrrrrrr. And Ouch.)

According to Nike Plus he burned 3300 calories on the run. We had a nice spread for dinner last night -- steak, roasted Brussels sprouts with balsamic vinegar, pureed coconut butternut squash, and zucchini cashew soup. And then, cake.

I still can't believe he did it!

Drew's sour face is because "Dad is smelly."

Amazing job. Amazing.

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Workout of the Day

Insanity: Asylum: Strength

The challenge for me for the next week to 10 days is working out by myself while Zach recovers! This is not generally a big deal, but it becomes a bigger deal when it is 20 degrees outside and I really don't want to get out of bed. This year's "fall" has been unbelievably mild, and up until yesterday I was running around in a cut-off shirt and shorts. No more! Back to sweats and sweatshirts for a while.

Clean eating for your skin!

I have a soft spot in my heart for entrepreneurs. People who have the creativity, desire, and guts to create something out of nothing. People who have the discipline to be their own boss.

Opening your own business (particularly a brick and mortar with overhead, employees, and inventory) has to be one of the most terrifying, exhilarating things a person can do. To take a passion and create a business is, in my opinion, one of the most awesome things a person can do.

(Shameless plug alert: I'm so super proud of my entrepreneur friends Lisa and Wendy, who own two of the cutest nail salon and boutiques in Austin, Embellish...the only place I ever get my nails done. If you're in Austin and haven't gone to Embellish yet, go make an appointment. Today!)

A few weeks ago my friend Kara invited me to her house to hear a presentation by her friend Keri, who started her own business creating hand-crafted, organic skin care products. A cosmetologist by trade, Keri's business began when she became disillusioned with the skin exfoliants and moisturizers in the market that contained petroleum and artificial abrasives. As an alternative, Keri started creating natural sugar scrubs for her clients. Eventually the scrubs became so popular that Savvy Boheme was born.

Clean eating is all about giving your body nutrient-rich food it recognizes and can properly process. I think many of the problems we face today with food is that the chemicals and additives are foreign to our bodies and we cannot process them. Eating chemical-laden food results in inflammation, digestive issues, obesity, and who knows what else.

Keri explained that our skin works the same way. When we pelt it with harsh chemicals and strip it of its natural oils, skin can't function properly. She said that your "face is structured like a brick wall, composed of brick (layers of dead skin) and mortar (oxidized oil). The bricks and mortar need to turn over regularly to promote a beautiful complexion."

To remove the bricks and mortar, you need oil, an exfoliant, and a moisture barrier -- just like what's included in the Savvy Boheme Facial Trivium:

Those squares are what's called African Black Soap, then the black container is the raw coffee sugar scrub, and the Raven's Balm moisturizer.

I've admitted previously that I know nothing about skin, and up until this point my facial regimen has consisted of cutting Olay Daily facials into quarters, scrubbing the makeup off, and slapping on a little moisturizer. Couple my amateur facial regimen with a wicked "picking" habit and for the past few months I've looked like a teenager in the midst of a acne breakout. Not to mention my skin tone was just kind of...dingy.

I came home from Kara's Savvy Boheme house party and broke into my Facial Trivium set. You're supposed to use the African Black Soap in combination with the sugar scrub, and then you dot some of the Raven's Balm moisturizer on afterward.

Y'all, this regimen has totally spruced up my face! First of all, I love that coffee sugar scrub so much. It smells delicious (when I remarked at the party that it smelled so good I could eat it, Keri told me that technically you could because it's food grade), and the pleasant little scrubbing it gives my face feels fantastic. That moisturizer smells great, too, and it's a weird combination of thick but light on your skin. Hard to describe!

For quite awhile now I've been getting the dreaded "volcano zits," you know the ones that you want to squeeze so bad even though you know you shouldn't, and then you do and nothing comes out and then you just end up with a 10-day struggle with a nasty looking zit on your face? Well I haven't had any of those in three weeks. If I do have the start of a zit, it's not big and when I squeeze it (I KNOW I'M NOT SUPPOSED TO SQUEEZE IT!) it comes out easily.

I know it sounds crazy but I look forward to cleaning my face. It's fun! And isn't it nice when the things in life that you just have to do end up being fun?

Volcanoes belong in Hawaii, not on your face! 

And since you know I'm super cost-conscious, you'll be happy to know that the Facial Trivium gift set (pictured above, minus one square of soap) was just $20. Super affordable! I think that this set will last me well over three months or more. I've got my Shakeology for my insides and my Savvy Boheme for my outsides. Clean eating all around!

Keri is so knowledgeable about skin and I completely related to her passion for all things natural. Her business is going really well, and it's easy to see why: she is an awesome lady, a great business person, and her products are fantastic. I want to see her business thrive and grow, and I know that she will continue to have great success.

If you're local, Keri is coming to my house on Dec. 13 so I can help her spread the word even more about her awesome products. Let me know if you want to join us! Check out her website to read more about her company and products and order your own coffee sugar scrub or Facial Trivium set. (Or any of her other stuff! I can't wait to try more!)

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Workout of the Day

P90X2: Plyocide

My lower back is cooperating and I'm back to the grind, workout-wise. Feeling really good! Zach's marathon is 6 days away so he will be taking it easy this week. I'm looking forward to Les Mills Combat, which is scheduled to ship this week. In the meantime I'm mixing up some Les Mills Pump, P90X2, Asylum, and any other workout that floats my boat. 

Slow Cooker Cranberry Applesauce

If you've never fixed homemade applesauce in a slow cooker, get out your "To-Do" list and jot it down right now. The toughest thing about homemade applesauce is peeling and coring the apples, and heck, that ain't so hard. And the payoff of that warm, sweet, chunky applesauce more than makes up for a few minutes peeling some apples.

I'll give you my basic applesauce recipe below, but what I really want to show you is a twist on homemade applesauce that I made a few weeks ago: Slow Cooker Cranberry Applesauce.

One of my happiest days of the year is the day that cranberries show up at the grocery store, and we usually have a bowl of fresh cranberry sauce in our fridge from November through February (cranberries freeze beautifully, so I stock up). I eat it as a side to the Thanksgiving turkey, of course, but also on top of yogurt or with some granola sprinkled on top. (Find my recipe for cranberry sauce here.)

About a month ago when the grocery store was overflowing with fall apples, I decided to make applesauce. It was tremendous, but I had a nagging thought that it was missing something. Something like cranberries!

A quick Internet search turned up several cranberry applesauce variations, but I chose to stick close to my original recipe with cranberries added in.

Here's the recipe to use for basic applesauce, and if you want to add some cranberries, then just throw some in!

Ingredients: 

8 medium apples (Use a combination of Golden Delicious, Honey Crisp, Fuji, Gala, etc.)

1 tsp fresh lemon juice 

1 tsp lemon zest (optional)

3 inch cinnamon stick or about 2 tsp. ground cinnamon

5 tsp light brown sugar (unpacked) - or agave

(Optional) 1 cup of fresh cranberries

1.  Peel, core and chop the apples.

2.  Add the sugar, lemon zest, lemon juice and cinnamon stick, and cranberries, if using.

3.  Set crock pot to low and cook for 6 hours. Stir apples occasionally, apples will slowly become a delicious applesauce. 

Remove cinnamon stick and use an immersion blender or potato masher to blend until smooth or if you prefer a chunky sauce, leave sauce intact. 

So good! Try it this weekend as your after-dinner, cozy-up-with-a-movie snack.

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Workout of the Day
Still nursing the sore lower back, so na-da. Things better shape up soon, because I've got to be in tip-top shape to tackle Asylum 2 as soon as Zach is done with his marathon in a few weeks!

How to Get Soap Scum Off Your Shower

It's time for another installment of "Clean Cleaning," sponsored by Pinterest.

This one's all about the nasty soap scum in your shower. Don't you hate it? I've used all kinds of cleaners on my shower, and none of them seem to do much of anything. I scrub and scrub, and that nasty layer of brown scum remains.

So a few days ago I saw a pin that talked about using a solution of vinegar and Dawn soap on your shower to dissolve the soap scum. Upon further Internet investigation, I found sites affirming the method.

Here's what you do:

Measure 1/2 cup (the recipe actually called for a full cup, but my shower isn't that big) of vinegar and heat it for a couple minutes in the microwave.

Then pour the hot vinegar into a sprayer and add 1/2 cup Dawn soap. Shake it up a bit (it foams a lot!), and then spray it all over your shower. It makes a foamy paste that sticks to the walls pretty well.

Let the solution sit for about 1.5-2 hours. Then hop in the shower and scrub it down with a sponge or scrub brush. (It's always nice if you can combine an actual shower with shower cleaning, since then you don't have to worry about getting your clothes all wet, etc.)

I wish I had taken a before and after pic, but, quite frankly, I was pretty embarrassed about the state of my shower. We're talking pink and brown gunk and a very cloudy door.

But here's an "after":

Big whoop, you say? Well you can actually SEE inside the shower, right? This is a major improvement, trust me.

Aside from the fact that this little vinegar and Dawn solution worked famously, the best part of the whole thing is that it probably cost, what, like 75 cents maybe? A little vinegar, a little Dawn...voila! A clean shower without stinky, scary chemicals. Hooray! Try it out!

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And now another Public Service Announcement:

While we all know it is good to ice sore muscles, please don't overdo it.

Saturday morning I threw my lower back out of whack, which was really depressing to me because I haven't had lower back issues in more than a year. Not sure exactly what did it, but it was some combination of Vertical Plyo, a TurboFire Core 20 workout, and scrubbing the bathroom floor with yet another Pinterest cleaning solution (water, vinegar, baking soda, and ammonia...worked well!). 

I knew that I'd done something to it on Saturday, but Sunday is when it really seized up. It's the worst! Sorry to be graphic, but I could hardly wipe my own butt. I considered asking for assistance, but I thought that might put my husband completely over the edge, so I took care of the situation. 

Unfortunately I'm well aware of what to do when my back locks up, which is an all-day regimen of ice, heat, and Advil. But I fell victim to a flawed sense of reasoning in that if icing for 20 minute increments is good, 40 minutes must be better. It's not better, it's frostbite:

OUCH! Get me some Neosporin, stat! I didn't even know I had done that to myself until this morning when I was trying to do some light stretching and scratched it with that tag on my pants. Shoot, man...what am I supposed to do now? My back is still sore, but I sure don't want to put any ice on it! 

It's funny, I'm almost more wimpy about the skin than I am about the back muscles. I think because I can actually see the hurt skin whereas the muscles are buried under my frostbitten skin. 

(P.S., don't email or comment to tell me that it's not really frostbite...I know because I can't unsee the images I saw when I typed frostbite into Google. More likely it's frostnip, which comes before frostbite. Wikipedia told me that!)

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Workout of the Day

Getting out of bed. No workouts for me till these back muscles quit barking at me!

Edamame Hummus

We're some serious hummus connoisseurs over here. Well, maybe not connoisseurs -- I wouldn't say we're snobby about it, or anything. I guess we're more like serious hummus consumers. We eat a lot of the stuff. I make at least one batch per week, sometimes more, and I feel a little guilty if I fall down on the job and don't have any in the fridge.

I've experimented with several variations on traditional hummus, which is made with chickpeas (garbanzo beans). I've done roasted red pepper hummus, black bean hummus...even peanut butter hummus (thumbs down). But none have stacked up to the original, until now. Edamame hummus was so good it could compete for the title as #1 hummus in the house.

The only reason the chickpea version might edge out the edamame is because chickpeas are cheaper (of course, I love the cheaper option) and faster, because you have to cook the edamame for a few minutes.

But this is a great "treat" hummus, and it even looks green and ghoulish in honor of Halloween today!

Here's the recipe (shout out to my Mom who told me about it!):

Ingredients:
1.5 cups frozen shelled edamame (green soybeans)
2 cloves garlic
1/2 cup tahini (sesame seed paste)
1/2 cup water
1/2 cup packed cilantro leaves
1/4 cup lemon juice
3 TB olive oil
1 tsp kosher salt
3/4 tsp cumin
1/8 tsp cayenne pepper
(note: adjust seasonings as desired -- I added a little more cumin, plus some Tabasco and my customary 1 dollop of plain yogurt for creaminess)

Directions
1. Place edamame in pot and cover with salted water. Place over medium-low heat, bring to a simmer, and cook till tender; about 5 minutes. Drain.
2. Place all ingredients in a food processor or blender and blend until smooth.

Enjoy!

Workout of the Day
Les Mills PUMP: Pump & Shred

Y'all, Zach is still training for the upcoming Dallas marathon, and I am just so thankful that I got out of the running business in time for the weather to turn cooler! I am a fair weather exerciser...heck, I am a fair weather HUMAN, and do not operate well in temperatures below...uhhh, let's say 76. That's a pretty optimal temperature, in my book. He's doing really well, though, and completed 20 miles last Saturday. Looking forward to cheering him on at the race on December 7!

Clean Cleaning

When it comes to my two most dominant personality traits -- 1) frugality and 2) a desire to be fit, healthy, and as "natural" as possible* -- it's hard to say which trait is stronger.

So when I find tips and tricks that serve both masters, I'm a pretty happy camper.

The other day while perusing Pinterest (it's grown on me in the past year -- I don't check it daily, but a few times a week I scroll through and repin some things that interest me...and sometimes I actually FIX the recipes I pin. Novel!), I saw a pin about Natural Cleaning Tips and Products. It linked to this blog telling about "Eight Ways to Ease into a Natural Home."

Katie outlines some facts about cleaning products, including the one that there is no Federal regulation for cleaning products and that bleach, when mixed with other cleaning agents, releases a poisonous gas. (And which "other" cleaning agents are they, I always wonder? That's had me scared straight for years--I never mix bleach with anything.)

So I was pretty interested in learning all those little tidbits, but then Katie says she's going to show us some  natural products that work just as well and...it will be cheaper too! Smack me sideways...you had me at "cheaper."

I'll let you read Katie's blog for the whole story, but here's the gist:

For pretty much any kind of clean up you need, you can turn to one of four products that you probably already have in your house:

• White vinegar
• Hydrogen peroxide
• Baking soda
• Rubbing alcohol

(And I'll add two of my own that I've used in the past: lemon juice and salt -- they make an excellent scrubbing agent.)

For counters and floors you've got your vinegar and water mixture (4 TB vinegar to 3 cups of water). For mirrors and windows you've got your hydrogen peroxide:

Look at that! I love how you just stick the spray nozzle straight onto the peroxide bottle. I went to The Walmarts this weekend and picked up two empty spray bottles (98 cents each) and a bottle of hydrogen peroxide (52 cents). I stuck the sprayer in the peroxide bottle (apparently it's important to keep peroxide in the dark bottle), and cleaned the yuckiest of yucky mirrors -- the sweat-stained one in our gym. It worked great! 

Like she mentions in the blog, I'm going to have to wean myself from my view that bleach smell = clean. But if I can get things reasonably sparkly with those few easy "ingredients," I'm happy to comply with Katie's wish that we would "Get rid of the toxic stuff."

Try it and let me know how it works at your house!

* I have to admit that my desire for non-toxic things abruptly fell by the wayside the minute I had an ant problem in my kitchen, at which point I wanted to lay down a chemical storm the likes of which those ants had never seen. I didn't end up unleashing it full force, but it seems to be enough to have stopped the problem for now. I wonder if ants hate vinegar?

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Workout of the Day

Insanity: Pure Cardio

Love this one! It's brutal, but it's over quickly.

Why Tony Horton is Still the Man

While I may have broadened my horizons and moved on to some new workouts, Tony Horton is still the man. And Facebook posts like this show why:

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Do You Believe In The Truth?

The truth is that thing that is happening to you right now, not that enhanced fantasy version you use to protect your vulnerabilities. People can't move forward in life because they hold too tightly to the past. We also get lost in concepts and beliefs that might have worked for our parents and friends but don't apply to us anymore; which can make it confusing when it comes to making decisions to improve our lives.

If you look closely at my first 30 to 35 years on earth you would have bet big bucks on a inept outcome. Bad student, bad athlete, no discipline, poor confidence, lousy work ethic, speech impediment, low self esteem and the biggest procrastinator on earth. What changed?

I began accepting reality. I stopped lying to myself and the people around me. I searched for second and third opinions. I stopped hanging around people with bad attitudes and no ambition. I stopped using the word "party" as a verb and grew up. I signed up for seminars and yoga retreats and saved up for ski camps, so that I could meet people who were curious, outside of my circle and who were kicking ass.

My persona to the world as a young man was just big talk and hyperbole because I didn't have the guts to get in the game and step up to the plate. It was a safe and easy way to exist but it made me sick. I slowly began to force myself to do things that scared the hell out of me. Every single experience built my confidence and improved my life, so I kept going no matter how many times I fell flat on my face.

If you want to believe in the truth then you need to follow some simple life altering steps. Exercise 5 to 6 days a week for the rest of your life. Eat whole foods more often than not, for the rest of your life. Allow your mind, body and spirit to heal with patience, curiosity and plenty of rock solid sleep. Figure out what you love and put as much time and energy as you can, into that. Then share what you've learned with people who ask for your help.


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Workout of the Day
Les Mills Pump Extreme