VLOG Giveaway!

My first Vlog!

Good luck on winning the mug!

The draw will be done on January 3rd 2011!

To enter the draw you can....
1 entry: Be a follower and leave a comment on my blog (mandatory entry)
2 entries: Follow me on twitter and tweet me!
3 entries: like my Growing Towards a Dream Facebook page! ------>
4 entries: recommend my blog to a friend! :)

Vlogging is tough! hahah!

So glad to be off this week!

I'm off this week! And I love it! I love not working (minus the whole not getting paid thing haha!) But If I could work from home I totally would! So I have some BIG side biz goals for the new year!

I just love the holidays, we've been visiting family and friends and having a great time catching up with every one.

The last 10 years I've had a lot of different jobs and from every single job I have friends I still keep in contact with, even if it's only a couple times a year we see each other we have blogs and facebook and email these days so we are always in contact with each other. :) Tonight I met with one of those friends for a coffee, it was so nice to catch up.



Zoe loves when we are home. I love how this little fur ball loves our attention and always wants to be around us. When husband and I are sitting on the couch she's always between us. And she follows me everywhere! The minute I get up she following me. Wherever I go sit, she's beside me.
(I was yelling at her to get off the table, so she went on the chair)
Hope you all are enjoying your holidays!!! Hoping to do a VLOG (video giveaway) soon! I'm a little nervous about it though! :)

Merry Christmas Friends!

Christmas is over :( but we had a great time!
It was really busy with our very large families. The schedule:... Christmas Eve - 6pm-10pm we went to my mom's side, siblings,grandparents, aunts and cousins! A lot of fun and laughter! Our family is growing so much with new marriages and babies!


Then from 10-3am we went to my husbands side to celebrate Christmas eve. His little cousins loved the gifts we got them. :)
Like I mentioned before I have a lot of family so Christmas day we went to my dad's side for a Christmas lunch, hosted by one of my cousins. It was so nice to see all the family this holiday!

And of course there was NO counting calories at Christmas. It was a lot of eating delicious food and VERY delicious desserts!!!!


All pics taken with my new iphone 4 :)

Hope you all had a Great Christmas!!!!

PS. I'm thinking of posting my first VLOG this week! If I get the courage to do it I will hahhaha!

Wordless Wednesday!

Healthier eating during the holidays

Christmas is just around the corner which means visiting a lot of family and friends and eating a lot of delicious food with no calorie counting! (not allowed on Christmas!)

So I want to focus a lot on what I'm eating this week before the Christmas weekend.

I have been having the Kashi cereal for breakfast. Let me say it's not my favorite breakfast but it's not too bad. I've been doing really well with having only 1 coffee a day. It's actually half a cup of coffee since I do half milk half coffee. Too much coffee gives me a BIG headache so it's forced me to give a lot of it up. I'm also skipping the sugar and putting a dash of cinnamon instead.

Everyday for lunch this week I'm going to have a big salad! Lettuce, Cucumbers, cilantro, tomatoes and avocado. Yum!

Tonight I bought some new products. I follow @joyoushealth on twitter and and she posted a cozy warm healthy drink.

Earl Grey tea
Honey
Almond Milk
and vanilla.

I'll be trying this out soon!

A Busy Week Giving and Helping.

What a busy week! I didn't blog much last week because I've been hardly home! Thursday night my sister, mom and I were babysitting my nieces. It was so much fun. We baked while listening to Christmas music and then watched movies!
Baby M is sooooo adorable!!! It was so cute having my mom showing my sister and I how to feed her and how to change her diaper and clothes haha! (putting clothes on a baby is hard!)
The best part was that I actually got her to sleep in my arms. I loved it. I can't wait to start a family of my own! I know God has a plan so I'm not going to worry too much about it, but I really can say I can't wait to be a mom! (Although from what mommies say, my babysitting experience was good because baby went home and I got a full nights sleep :) lol
That night we also took my other niece A with us to deliver our baskets for the family we sponsored to the church. She was so happy to help us and loves hanging out with her aunts. :)

Our church also needed lots of help with delivering these gifts today. So we woke up early, grabbed our coffees and headed to church this morning.
I'm so happy we had my husband and my sister's fiance with us to help with the heavy boxes. They got right into it and were so quick and organized. Our delivery crew rocked!
We were able to do 7 deliveries in 2 hours and the organizer named us her #1 santa's little helpers! ahah!

The families were so grateful and happy to see us. It was such an amazing feeling.

Hope you all are having a great weekend! I'm finishing up my Christmas shopping for the rest of the weekend!

Monday Night Groceries

Tonight I went grocery shopping and I really wanted to buy the yogurt with granola that I use to have for breakfast, but they don't carry them anymore. They had other brands but the calories seemed high for yogurt! So I bought Kashi cereal, the commercial got me haha! I also bought cottage cheese for my salads and it can also be a sweet treat by adding cinnamon to it :)

My workouts are going well. I never listen to music while I workout, not sure why but I never liked it. So I usually work out in front of the TV or in silence. But since I moved my gazelle to the spare bedroom I've been searching for health related pod casts in my iphone that are about 30-45 mins long and listen to them as I work out. That way I don't focus on the time and just wait until the podcast is over and when it's over I'm done my workout. It's working well for me so far :)

Looking forward to a healthy week!

Hope you all are having a great Monday! :) We are freezing over here! -10!

(Some pics from last weekend My nieces :)

Oh just can't get enough of her softness!

Helping others during the Christmas Holidays

A couple years ago my sister and I decided to start a new tradition and take part in sponsoring families for Christmas. Our church assigns us the family and we put together a Christmas basket full of goodies! This year we received a large family 4 children and 2 adults. Some of our family and friends helped with donations too (thanks guys!) Yesterday we went to buy all the items for the baskets :)

I remember when I was younger my parents went through a tough period. A couple years the salvation army brought us gifts and I remember how excited I was when we received them. I remember receiving so much help from family and friends, everyone helping our family out when we needed it most. I guess this is my main reason of always wanting to help others, when I do so I feel that same happiness inside that I felt when I was a kid, and it feels right. When we were shopping yesterday I had the flood of memories fill my head as I picked items I would have loved to get. It's a feeling I can't really express in words.

Instead of boxes we used laundry baskets. :) Something they can use too!
We have a few more items to buy. Fruits and Veggies, but we will buy them the day we deliver. This is the first year we volunteered for deliveries! I'm excited for that :)
Sister, Me and Mom :)

All about meal planning

I've been buying a lot of frozen edamame lately. It's cheap and easy to make. I steam them and have them as a healthy snack.

Once again the key to staying on track is meal planning. My busy schedule leaves me falling off my track a lot! So planing my meals is key.

Thank you all for the BF suggestions. I may go back to the yogurt with granola BF that I use to do. (my doctor had told me "only yogurt for BF that's all you need and a apple for snack, salad for lunch") I'm sure that will get me to my goal faster but I would be one cranky lady. I like my carbs, I need these incorporated ahha! I'm not looking to be very thin, I love my lady curves Ha! Just want to drop 10lbs. Seems easy enough right.... but my MC in June set me back and since then I've been on and off track a lot! I'm more concerned about being healthy. So healthy is my main focus.

I am increasing my veggies(steamed or raw) and fruit intake. Especially now that it's flu season. I've had a headache and earache all day! :(


This weeks Goals:
*Switching back to yogurt with granola for BF
*Only 1 coffee a day (going well!)
*Increase veggies and fruit as snack and with meals
*Drink lots of water everyday! I really need to increase my water intake!
*2 cups of tea in the evenings
* 3 bite rule on sweets or no sweets at all!
*4 /20 min workouts and at least 2 /45 min workouts
* Weigh myself weekly.

Breakfast suggestions?

My schedule feels like it's getting tighter and tighter and I really want to incorporate more workouts in my week! So I decided to bring my gazelle up to one of the spare bedrooms where I have my trampoline. This way I can sneak in workouts in the mornings.

My goal this week is to have at least 4 /20 min workouts and at least 2 45 min workouts. Oh It's on!

Breakfast has become an issue for me. I really love having smoothies but since it started getting colder I just can't do them brrr! I was having oatmeal for a while but now I feel bored with it.

So I bought these 100 cal bagels, they are cute haha! pretty good with a little bit of peanut and jelly!
But I'm looking for some variety... any suggestions for a quick healthy BF?????