By the Light of the Moon

Hey there blogger besties! Have a good weekend? I definitely did--which is part of the reason that I didn't post all weekend also because I was lazy. Fortunately (or unfortunately--whichever way you want to look at it), I have PLENTY of pictures to compensate for my lack of weekend posts. Now if I had thought this through a little more, I should have split this into a few posts throughout the weekend.

Let's start with Friday... Of course no day is complete without a little bit of protein ice cream, so if you were wondering how I make it, here it is!

Protein Ice Cream

• Equal parts almond milk & greek yogurt (I eyeball this)
• 1 scoop protein powder (right now I'm using ON double rich chocolate and/or caramel toffee fudge)
• 1 packet Stevia (to counteract the tartness of the yogurt)

Blend! Then pour into an ice cream maker. This is the basic recipe, but sometimes I add in other ingredients before I blend. In this case, I added 5 pitted fresh cherries and a splash of coffee. When there's about 5 minutes left of churning, I add in my mix-ins (this gets omitted during prep).

Churn, baby, churn!

Final product (well, before the Walden Farm's chocolate syrup):

Tada! The cherries gave it an interesting (good) consistency!

By the end of the day Friday, I was invited to go downtown with a few friend that night. One girl is heading out overseas for 4 months for work, so they decided a bar crawl was in order. I figured why not--I've been good up to this point, and in 7 more weeks, I won't be able to again. 

The only thing about downtown is you kind of have to dress decent-ish. And my supply of "going out" clothes is pretty non-existent. I don't have much, and what I did have, I consigned because it was all too big! I opted for an LBD after Megan told me that her and the girl leaving were wearing dresses. Note: Please do not judge me for my overly-enthusiastic behavior in the next few photos. It was a fun night, but I kept myself in line :)

Heading downtown! 

The proposal

She said yes!

Laine & Me 

Megan (partner-in-crime) & Me

Don't you worry, we went through all the bases of a bar crawl, including Laine's "Sweet 16" sash, tiara, and a fake proposal. To top it all off, Megan brought Mardi Gras beads, so everyone could join in our fun. I not-so-slowly, but surely got rid of my beads--they were hot around my neck, and I already have a LOT of hair!

Confession: It sort of freaks me out when I go out with friends drinking, even if I'm not drinking that much. And I do feel a bit uneasy posting these on here, because I am afraid that people, whether they mean to or not, DO judge others. Yes, I used to be a big party girl, but I'm not that girl now, and I do not want to revert back to her. That being said, I don't think I will, but I do get nervous about it. I kept myself in check that night, and skipped some rounds of drinks, so I was in good shape. And of course, a night out does NOT mean I can skip the gym the next day, so I was up bright and early and at the gym at opening for a workout :)

All that being said, my body still does not like me indulging in a drink here and there, and my stomach would not rest the next day! So the solution that Megan and I came up with was a trip to Bluegrass Bakery & Grill for some brunch. Megan was feeling the breakfast food, I was feeling lunch. Compromise!

I rolled with the gyro pita

And megan got the Black Bean Bfast Burrito

These pics were actually taken by Megan--I found out she's secretly a foodie! Shhhh ;)

Saturday was a bit less eventful--I relaxed until work later that evening, but Sunday was fantastic! I got my baking skills (and apron!) on and went to town in the kitchen! My mission: peanut butter cookies! I had been planning these out for a while--one regular batch with regular peanut butter and dark chocolate kisses, and one batch with Peanut Butter & Co's Dark Chocolate Dreams. I was going to put dark chocolate Reese's cups on top of these, but the bag I got from the store had obviously been sitting in heat and reshelved, so I returned them and just went with the dark chocolate kisses. Unfortunately my hands and tiny kitchen were a mess while I was baking these, so I only have pictures of the contained final product:

I added oats to the 2nd batch of dark chocolate ones

Death by (PB) chocolate!

Now, I MUST get these out of my apartment ASAP! I indulged in a couple, and I'm satisfied. I've already brought some to work, and may have a list of people who want some. PS, these pics were after I already brought about half of them to Loft. So. Many. Cookies. What was I thinking?!

And finally getting to the title of my blog post, last night I decided I would run to the gym this morning. No excuses. I mean, the gym only takes me less than 5 minutes to drive to, so it can't be that far away... I was right. Headed out the door around 5:15 and got there around 5:30. The only potential downfall I saw was that I would then have to run back after my workout. But all I do in the mornings is C/A/C (calves, abs, cardio) so it couldn't be too bad of a return run. It wasn't--my calves were a bit tight, and it was uphill rather than downhill, but it was definitely worth it! I would totally do this again! In fact, I want to tomorrow, but I have to drive because I have to be at work at 7am, yikes!

This is shaping up to be a good week though! I thought my mom was coming up here with the pups, but the heat index is through the roof! After tomorrow morning, I'm off work til Saturday midday, so it looks like I'll be heading down there instead of her coming up here. Unfortunately that means no peach picking down here, but there's plenty of farms in Virginia Beach and she offered to pay for the maintenance on my car. Can't argue with that!

Did you do anything fun this weekend? Do you get nervous about going out on the town or am I the only one?? Anyone want to come to Virginia and take these cookies off my hands please?! There was about 5 dozen...