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Winesday Wednesday 12/4

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Oh hey. I’m back.
 
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For the last week Tyler and I have been in Las Vegas, hanging out with fam celebrating Thanksgiving sprinkled with early Xmas gifts, drinking, and relaxing. (The last two go hand in hand, no?)
 
It was glorious. Especially the whole being removed from the real world bit. I was hardly on my phone (gasp) minus instagram, because that’s just fun.
 
Quick recap of some highlights:
 
Tuesday night: arrive. Do NOT even get me started on the Calgary airport. I was HANGRY to the max and they closed all the vendors in our terminal. I can’t even talk it about it because it makes me mad.
 
Wednesday: Saw Ka at MGM. WHY do they sell 32 oz drinks and NOT have an intermission?!!! I am writing them a letter.
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Thursday: Wear stretchy pants and drink beer. And eat stupid amounts of food.
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Friday: Breakfast at a yummy local diner, shopping, Bellagio-ing, hike at Red Rock Canyon, hot tub
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Saturday: Buy candy, eat steak, hot tub
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Sunday: Shop, mani/pedi, hot tub fo life
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Monday: Brunch at the M casino, more hot tub
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And I actually worked out!
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Wednesday: Deck of Cards workout
Thursday: Ran 2 1/2 miles
Friday: hike
Sunday: 1/2 mile running intervals with tabatas of legs, arms and abs.
 
I had two days ‘off’ which mentally I wasn’t too pleased about, but I kept my food portions in check and was always WALKING–> a super huge component of aggressive shopping.
 
HOLD THE PHONE—> I forgot to announce the winner of the Elevate Me bars giveaway! Congratulations to Melissa….
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email me your mailing address and flavor of choice and I’ll pass your info along!
 
On to Winesday Wednesday shenanigans (slap me on the wrist for failing to post one last week).
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On one of my shopping excursions in vegas (not including the several trips to Sam’s club for margarita mix and coronas, and the other trips to Vons for Pyramid Apricots and Shock Tops….I stopped in World Market (one of my faveys) and picked up 3 fall-ish beers for Tyler and I to try:
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Shipyard Smashed Pumpkin Ale (different from the Shipyard Pumpkinhead Ale) and Samuel Smith Organic Apricot Ale. Yes, I said THREE but I only remembered to photo two of them. The other was Rogue Pumpkin Patch Ale. All were pretty good. 
 
PS: Shock Top makes resealable aluminum cans?! What the what! So useful to have around the hot tub!
PPS: We also had mimosas
PPPS: Mom’s mimosas didn’t have any orange juice
 
I have your submissions from the past two weeks and I PROMISE to include them in next week’s post…I’m off to bed!

Where the Tweens Go {& a Giveaway!!!}

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I can’t believe I’m actually telling you this. I went somewhere this weekend and it was completely embarrassing. Here, let me give you a hint: said location is plastered with pink and purple and glittery things, smells like a combination of plastic and cherry chapstick, and is running rampant with tweens.

Did you guess Claire’s?

You’d be correct. I need a drink, I feel so ashamed.

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(If I stayed in there any longer than I actually did, I might have just come out looking like this cheapy Cinderella.)

Let me rewind to tell you exactly why I had to step foot into my former store of bejewelled choice. Sometime during the week, the screw ball of my belly button ring came out. Since I’m no where NEAR mature enough to actually take it out and leave it out, I freaked that I needed a replacement ASAP. You’d think I’d be able to find a replacement in one of the bajillions of kiosks in the malls, but NOPE there were none. So I was fated to be a Claire’s customer yet again.

I had to elbow quite a few little 4-footers (girls ranging from 8-12 years old) to find the spinny display of ‘alternative’ jewelry. (Which is odd because no girls in that age range should be checking out jewelry for belly buttons or eyebrows or tongues or anything of that sort). Anyhoo, I ended up having to call one of the associates over to actually unlock the case so I could buy a glorious 6-pack of belly button rings. First gripe with that situation is the fact that they actually lock up really cheap jewelry. Second gripe is that my lovely assorted package even came with a zebra/glittery ring. Not sure when that would ever get use.

I guess I can be optimistic about the whole situation and not feel as embarrassed as Tyler must have been since he was with me.

MOVING ON.

Can I get a slow clap for my first ever real giveaway?!!

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A while back, I posted about a new-to-me energy bar: Elevate Me bars. Tyler had bought a few on a whim, and when I saw them in our pantry- and eventually tried them, I was intrigued and decided to check out their website. Not only do they have amazing flavor combinations, but they really are aiming at keeping their products as natural as possible <—something I love. I NEED to be able to pronounce every ingredient! The below info is taken directly from their website:

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Key facts on these bars—>

  1. Gluten free, wheat free
  2. 24% protein (whey isolate)
  3. 3 pieces per ‘bar’
  4. cold formed, not baked
  5. low fat, high fiber
  6. no added sweeteners, preservatives or flavors

What I think is the coolest part of these bars is that they’re portioned into 3 sections, so you can save a square or two for later (more often than not, I could eat the entire thing all at once!) And their flavors are just so unique! They include:

  • Cranberry Blueberry Goji Berry
  • All-fruit Original
  • Banana Almond
  • Cocoa Acai Berry
  • Coconut Cocoa
  • Cocoa Espresso
  • Cranberry Matcha Green Tea
  • Apple Strawberry

The kind people over at PROsnack Natural Foods have offered to send ONE lucky winner a 12-pack box of their choice! There are 209527039 ways to enter (I lied. There are only 3 ways to enter.)

Leave a separate comment for each of the following you complete:

1. Check out additional info on all the flavors of bars here, then leave a comment on which flavor you’d choose.

2. Follow @nutcaseinpoint on twitter and tweet: “I entered to win a box of @ElevateMeFoods energy bars from @nutcaseinpoint and you can too! http://wp.me/p2fSnj-3sX” <—Copy and paste the link to you tweet in your comment!*

3. Like Nutcaseinpoint’s Facebook page. If you want to be EXTRA nice, you can leave a comment on the link to this post! 🙂

 

*how to get the link to your tweet from your computer: once you send the tweet, scroll over the time in the upper right hand corner and click. Then copy and paste the URL.

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you’re welcome for the awesome example.

Giveaway is open until Friday, November 29th at noon (PST) and open to US and CANADIAN residents! Good luck!!!

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Latests 11/21

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Yay, it’s Thursday again! (not as great as Friday, from a work aspect, but quickly becoming my favorite blog-day of the week. WAIT. NO. I love Winesday Wednesday, too. AH MAN, this is a dilemma.)
I really do love sharing stuff I’ve come across lately- whether it’s crap I buy, do, see, yadda yadda (‘yadda yadda’ NOT being used as a verb here, English Majors). And I’ve got some more cool stuff to share with you this week!
1. So I cut my hair this weekend. 6 inches to be exact. Only 2 people have noticed. 6 inches is a LOT (that’s what she DIDN’T say! oooooooooo snap) But my hair was pretty dang long, so I guess it didn’t make that much of an impact. Of course, at the end of my appointment I was suckered in to buying a Christmas gift set of some pretty nice products. Womp goes the wallet. It’s totally getting wrapped and put under the tree for myself.
11.21 hair
This isn’t the exact set I got, but it looks pretty similar!
2. Gastropost! So this is a pretty neat website- they set weekly food ‘missions’ for people to snap photos of foods/meals that meet the particular mission and post then on social media using their hashtag. Some of the best are taken and put in the local paper! Apparently this has been going on in other big cities in Canada and it was just launched in Calgary this week. In fact, I was contacted by the lovely lady who is running this shindig to see if I wanted to be a part of it. UM OF COURSE. I take way too many pictures of my food- and now I can get in the paper for it! Sweet and yummy deal right there.
11.21 gastro
3. A couple of weeks ago, I kinda slammed Lady Gaga’s lastest album. I’m still not loving the majority of the tracks, but after watching her on SNL, I’m sort of obsessed with this song. And the outfit she wore performing the song. It’s been stuck in my head ALL week and I know I’m probably scaring Tyler with random fits of screaming ‘DO WHATCHA WANT, WHATCHA WANT WITH MY BODY.”
11.21 lady
4. I didn’t post about this because I was going to wait until I actually bought it, but now that I know it’s sold out I will proceed to RANT about how upset I am at myself for not purchasing it the DAY it came out: Benefit’s Advent Calendar. Ugh, I would NOT stop talking about it for weeks, and when Tyler actually tried to go get it for me and suprise me with it, he was told it’s sold out everywhere. Insert a night full of tears. Then insert an email I got about THE TWELVE DAYS OF ESSIE. Nail polish, my friends, is AMAZING. I am addicted (remember I went to SEVEN different drug stores to find For the Twill of It?!). In attempts to get me to shut up from my Benefit FOMO, he offered to buy me the Essie gift set. SO I ORDERED IT BEFORE HE COULD FINISH HIS SENTENCE. It gets shipped the first week of December. And I’m so excited. And it’s only available in Canada, so SUCK IT AMERICA. (no no, America, I’m totally kidding. I love you and your Trader Joes and In-n-Outs and lower taxes and amusement parks and Bravo network).
11.21 essie
5. I really love creating my own workouts (this is where I puff my chest and boast about being a group ex instructor and all that jazz. But not jazzercise.) but every once in a while- since I no longer take any group ex classes, I love to rely on other people’s workouts. The past two weeks, I happened to do just that. Below are links to some of the workouts I’ve tried- and really liked!
6. The Chimes Ginger Chews– I’ve seen these all over instgram and the internet, and never gave them any thought because, YUCK I don’t like ginger. But, I needed to make change for a $20 the other day, and opted to buy a small pack of their orange flavored- chews. They were actually kind interesting…in a good way. The chews has good flavor at first, then they had a big KICK of spice. And since I’ve been somewhat of a spice whore as of late, I accidentally ate the whole pack.
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That’s it for this week, what are some of your latests?!!

Winesday Wednesday 11/20

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It’s that time of the week again…Winesday Wednesday! (I actually used to drink wine on Wednesdays just for the sake of participating in WW, but now I don’t even think of it- any alcohol during the week just kills me!) I just love having a weekly post that enables me (and all of you) to share.

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My friend Ashley sent me a pic of something I IMMEDIATELY wanted to try. Too bad I was at work when she sent me the email 😉

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She wrote: “It’s a beer float! With vanilla gelato and raspberry lambic! It was sooo good!” 

As soon as the weather warms up- meaning anything without a negative sign in front of it [I’m thinking this will happen around April 2014], I will totally indulge! Actually, who am I kidding- beer is cold and I drink it year round. So yes, I have just rationalized that I will in fact try this soon. Thanks, Ashley!

Athena tweeted:

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Great way of celebrating. And congrats for a successful health fair! [I secretly wish I could do something re: health and wellness with my company, but head office is on the other side of the country and my guess is they won’t want to make any major changes. womp]

Keith sent me a great email. It really made me laugh:

This bottle is anonymous. Other than it being a red, you are all in the dark. However, I know it’s an an, hmmmm.
 
In fact I’m not sure what it is. I think it’s an Amarone, given where it was, and knowing I was inconsistent with the labels on that batch. I don’t remember drinking during the bottling process, but I missed more than a few labels. However, it could be a Barolo or a Sangiovese. All are full rich wines, which is a good thing tonight. It took 2 hours to get home, so I’m enjoying it, whatever it is. 
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Last weekend, I had TWO beers. Really partying it up over here. The first one, Big Surf is a beer brewed in Kelowna, BC. I first tried it when we went to the Rocky Mountain Wine and Food Fest a few weeks back. I prefer the Honey Brown Lager, and it was really refreshing to enjoy while relaxing over the weekend. The second is one of my faves -and even more so my favorite after not having access to it since I lived in Boston- Magic Hat #9! The guy at our local liquor store brought in a few 6-packs to see how they would sell, and Tyler and I were beyond ecstatic to be able to stock our beer fridge with some of these!
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**Remember, if you want to contribute to a future post, email me jennifer(dot)l(dot)linton(at)gmail(dot)com; tweet @nutcaseinpoint (make sure to follow me so I can follow you back and see your tweet); or hashtag #winesdaywednesday and tag me @nutcaseinpoint on Instagram!
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 ****Edited to add: I miss Shannon’s tweet last week and then forget to include it in this week’s post (sorry dont be mad.) So here it is!
11.20 ww8
Mmmm….

Making a Bold Statement

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I feel the need to talk about workouts and/or fitness right now. I haven’t really addressed it lately on the blog. [Don’t get me wrong, I am still SUPER active, I’m just SO active with work-workouts-life-and such that I haven’t really focused and sharing some of this stuff!]
 
I’m a terrible writer, so  bear with me here.
 
Around this time last year I lost a ton of weight. Not drastically. Unemployment allowed me to focus on any and every workout I wanted, plus I could exercise a lot more restraint in the eating department. If I was bored [and that was a LOT] it was usually something I’d remedy at my desk with a snack. The big ‘U’ [referring to unemployment, don’t get lost!] allowed me to just nap it off. Or take the dogs for a walk. Or head to the mall and window shop for however long I pleased.
 
Back to that weight loss thing. SO. I loved the way I looked. More importantly, I loved the way I felt<– most likely a result of how the way I looked. I wasn’t killing myself in the gym, yet I was buying smaller and smaller pants.
 
Then my trip back home in January happened. Once I got in mom’s kitchen, I just couldn’t stop eating. Eating and working out. More eating….more working out. Blah. My main focus then was making sure I fit into my wedding dress by July. HUGE STRESSOR THERE YOU GUYS.
 
The scale barely moved.
Then I discovered hot yoga. The scale didn’t go back down, but my body responded beautifully to the new practice, and I was in love with the way my muscles looked and felt.
Then I got into more heavy lifting. And I saw the muscles really pop.
Heavier weights=more muscle= weight gain because muscle weighs more than fat.
 
(The above paragraph was a 4 month time-lapse, FYI)
 
Now, I don’t dare get on that nasty little scale. I know the number is going to be higher than it was last year, but it’s because I enabled my body to gain more muscle and change through a variety of different and new fitness activities. And I LOVE how I feel because of it. I’m going to bold the next sentence because it’s a heck of a statement for *me* to make.
 
I am more proud of what my body is able to do than what a scale could ever tell me.
 
Besides, if I brought my scale to Jupiter, I would be crazy obssessing over a number that would be well over 300 lbs 😉 (check out the link here if you want to see what your weight would be on other planets!)
 
That statement has taken me just about 27 years to realize. And I am SOOO happy to come to terms with it.
 
Soon after starting my new job, I noticed some changes in my body that immediately triggered thoughts that I would gain it all back because I was back at a desk job. But then I reminded myself that my eating is a LOT better, I am getting in a 2 mile walk at lunch each day (something not done at previous job) AND I’m working out 5-6 days a week, remembering to change up my workouts so that I don’t fall into a routine [routine= SLUMP].
 
If I eat something crappy, I know it’s just one meal/snack and that I have a liftime of workout/healthy eating opportunities to reset from what is, in retrospect, a very minor teeny tiny setback. Plus chances are I ate said rappy thing because I WANTED it, and pleasing the brain is just as important! Craving met= crisis of binging later averted.
 
So that, my dear friends, is what has been happening with ME lately. Lots of physical, emotional, and mental changes.
 
Be sure to check in on Thursday for this week’s edition of “Latests.” I’ll be linking up to some of the workouts I’ve been doing lately!