{"id":308,"date":"2014-04-22T07:45:55","date_gmt":"2014-04-21T22:45:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/penniestoyennies.com\/?p=308"},"modified":"2014-04-22T07:52:30","modified_gmt":"2014-04-21T22:52:30","slug":"checking-in-with-food-shoes-and-work","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/penniestoyennies.com\/?p=308","title":{"rendered":"Checking in with Food, Shoes and Work"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I figured today I would give little updates on topics I&#8217;ve touched on recently. I&#8217;m super excited to do a post about this past weekend, my nephew&#8217;s second birthday, but figured that deserved a post of its own!<\/p>\n<p><b>Food<\/b><br \/>\nMy diet&#8217;s been going really well for the most part, with the exception of this past weekend where I went to Oregon and had some Easter indulgence. I&#8217;m keeping portions tame and really questioning if I want to calorie splurge on certain things. <\/p>\n<p>When it comes to dieting, marinades have been my bff. I&#8217;ll find a bunch on Pinterest, do a grocery trip, and then I have fun options for my chicken for the next few weeks (chicken breasts I buy in bulk at Costco). Even better, the more frequently I marinade, the better a stash of staple ingredients I&#8217;m building in my cabinets at home. <\/p>\n<p>Last weekend I made shrimp tacos, and soaked the shrimp in a cilantro lime garlic marinade.<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/s2.photobucket.com\/user\/hardcandy627\/media\/IMG_0975.jpg.html\" target=\"_blank\"><img decoding=\"async\" width=\"70%\" src=\"http:\/\/i2.photobucket.com\/albums\/y35\/hardcandy627\/IMG_0975.jpg\" border=\"0\" alt=\" photo IMG_0975.jpg\"\/><\/a><br \/>\nI made a small portion of <a href=\"http:\/\/penniestoyennies.com\/?p=194\">Guacamazing<\/a>, and used that with store-bought salsa and cheese for filler. It was absolutely delicious!<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/s2.photobucket.com\/user\/hardcandy627\/media\/IMG_0981-1.jpg.html\" target=\"_blank\"><img decoding=\"async\" width=\"70%\" src=\"http:\/\/i2.photobucket.com\/albums\/y35\/hardcandy627\/IMG_0981-1.jpg\" border=\"0\" alt=\" photo IMG_0981-1.jpg\"\/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>My biggest indulgence last week was Seattle Restaurant Week. Restaurant Week is when restaurants prepare a prix fixe menu that&#8217;s a pretty good deal. We went to The Commons in Woodinville where I had a blue cheese burger, bruschetta and espresso salted caramels. It was awesome and definitely worth the calories.<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/s2.photobucket.com\/user\/hardcandy627\/media\/IMG_1013-1.jpg.html\" target=\"_blank\"><img decoding=\"async\" width=\"70%\" src=\"http:\/\/i2.photobucket.com\/albums\/y35\/hardcandy627\/IMG_1013-1.jpg\" border=\"0\" alt=\" photo IMG_1013-1.jpg\"\/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Kelsey also has a hobby of making cookies and freezing the dough. It&#8217;s pretty smart- when we&#8217;re ready to sit down and watch a show, she pulls out 2 dough balls for each of us, and we have fresh baked cookies with yummy melty chocolate chips. We also can&#8217;t overindulge without firing up the oven again and waiting for them to bake again, so that&#8217;s nice. Since she&#8217;s always taking the time to make cookies I decided to donate to our cookie dough stock house, and made banana walnut chocolate chunk cookies. They&#8217;re good, guys. Really good!<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/s2.photobucket.com\/user\/hardcandy627\/media\/IMG_1017-1.jpg.html\" target=\"_blank\"><img decoding=\"async\" width=\"70%\" src=\"http:\/\/i2.photobucket.com\/albums\/y35\/hardcandy627\/IMG_1017-1.jpg\" border=\"0\" alt=\" photo IMG_1017-1.jpg\"\/><\/a><br \/>\nAs for a weight update, I&#8217;m moving painfully slowly down the scale. I&#8217;m also trying to put on a lot of muscle, so that could be why. I&#8217;m due to take measurements in about a week and a half, so maybe that will give me a better idea of my progress.<\/p>\n<p>Oh, and one more thing that&#8217;s made cooking fun- I&#8217;ve started gardening! On an incredibly small scale. I started with an herb garden and have since added some fruits and veggies. In the herb garden I only have cilantro, rosemary and chives, but I&#8217;ve used some of each so far and love it!<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/s2.photobucket.com\/user\/hardcandy627\/media\/IMG_0778.jpg.html\" target=\"_blank\"><img decoding=\"async\" width=\"70%\" src=\"http:\/\/i2.photobucket.com\/albums\/y35\/hardcandy627\/IMG_0778.jpg\" border=\"0\" alt=\" photo IMG_0778.jpg\"\/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><b>Shoes and Running<\/b><br \/>\nI&#8217;m really pleased to say both are going well. I didn&#8217;t even have to break in my new shoes, and found that lacing them tighter keeps my low cut socks in place. So, the shoes are doing awesome and I&#8217;m happy I opted not to return them. Here&#8217;s to many miles in my new Brooks!<\/p>\n<p>As for running, speed work is going really well. I power through 1 or 2 mile runs in my slopey neighborhood, then take it easy at the flat trail for a little distance work. I&#8217;m starting from the ground-up, so last week&#8217;s distance run was only 5k, and tomorrow&#8217;s will be 4 miles. I just figured I have the time, so why not work up slowly? In addition I&#8217;m still weight training every other day (and moving up in weights!) and occasionally doing my Turbo Fire dvds. Not as often as I should, but enough to cross train decently.<\/p>\n<p>The 5k I ran last week rocked my socks. My 5k pr at races is currently 31:11, and when I generally run an easy 5k on my own it&#8217;s about 39-42 min. I did this one 35:21, giving me an 11:23 average. Check out these negative splits!<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/s2.photobucket.com\/user\/hardcandy627\/media\/ScreenShot2014-04-21at32411PM.png.html\" target=\"_blank\"><img decoding=\"async\" width=\"90%\" src=\"http:\/\/i2.photobucket.com\/albums\/y35\/hardcandy627\/ScreenShot2014-04-21at32411PM.png\" border=\"0\" alt=\" photo ScreenShot2014-04-21at32411PM.png\"\/><\/a><br \/>\nKind of hard to read, but my splits were 12:25, 11:36, 10:16. <\/p>\n<p>To be fair, I ran the first mile easy, and then saw my time and felt so good I picked up the pace a bit. So there was effort, but I wasn&#8217;t dying like I am during speed work. Woop woop! I also had a fabulous talk this past weekend over beers with my beloved college bestie <a href=\"http:\/\/thomasg86.blogspot.com\">Thomas<\/a>. He may prove to be useful in my running training, as whenever I told him what I was hoping\/ attempting to do with my running, he always had advice or an answer. So I might chat w him more about running. Anyway if you enjoy reading my blog as a runner, check out <a href=\"http:\/\/thomasg86.blogspot.com\">his blog<\/a>! T is funny and awesome and I&#8217;m so glad we became friends in college EIGHT years ago. Yikes, the time flies. T and I have a race coming up later this year, hopefully next time I blog I can go into detail about it!<\/p>\n<p><b>Work<\/b><br \/>\nAs I&#8217;m sure you&#8217;ve gathered by now, I work part time as a nanny in downtown Seattle. I love my job. I say that with 100% sincerity. I don&#8217;t know how I got so lucky to fall into this gig with such a wonderful family. The problem is- I can&#8217;t be a nanny forever, and E will be 16 and driving on her own next year, thus not needing me \ud83d\ude41<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve been job hunting, and when I first moved here I hit it hard, blanketing Seattle w my resume. By late February I got a bite from a sweet marketing and advertising firm. I interviewed for a position, and they thought I&#8217;d be a better fit for a different position. So I interviewed for that. FOUR times. It&#8217;s been tough. Especially since before my first in-person interview I had company in town- Dan&#8217;s cousin Becky came to Seattle; her marketing firm was giving a pitch for a job campaign. I got her and her designer from the airport, we had a late dinner, slept for a couple hours, I took them to their pitch, got breakfast, and then I drove them to the airport. We had so much fun though! Becky helped me get ready for my interview and everything.<br \/>\nHere we are saying bye at the airport, before I headed to my interview (with the blouse tucked in and the blazer buttoned, of course \ud83d\ude09 ). I hope she visits again soon, she&#8217;s so fun!<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/s2.photobucket.com\/user\/hardcandy627\/media\/IMG_0796-1.jpg.html\" target=\"_blank\"><img decoding=\"async\" width=\"70%\" src=\"http:\/\/i2.photobucket.com\/albums\/y35\/hardcandy627\/IMG_0796-1.jpg\" border=\"0\" alt=\" photo IMG_0796-1.jpg\"\/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s been a few weeks and no word on the position. I finally got the nerve last week to send them an email and ask if I was still in consideration, and they said yes. So I guess I keep on waiting! <\/p>\n<p>And finally, I hope everyone had a great Easter! My mom sent me a See&#8217;s Candy gift card, where I bought a haul of chocolate to share with my nieces and roomies.<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/s2.photobucket.com\/user\/hardcandy627\/media\/IMG_0992.jpg.html\" target=\"_blank\"><img decoding=\"async\" width=\"90%\" src=\"http:\/\/i2.photobucket.com\/albums\/y35\/hardcandy627\/IMG_0992.jpg\" border=\"0\" alt=\" photo IMG_0992.jpg\"\/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>That&#8217;s it for now. I seriously can&#8217;t wait to talk about my nephew&#8217;s second birthday. In the meantime, here&#8217;s Nate and I the day before his party!<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/s2.photobucket.com\/user\/hardcandy627\/media\/IMG_1030-1.jpg.html\" target=\"_blank\"><img decoding=\"async\" width=\"70%\" src=\"http:\/\/i2.photobucket.com\/albums\/y35\/hardcandy627\/IMG_1030-1.jpg\" border=\"0\" alt=\" photo IMG_1030-1.jpg\"\/><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I figured today I would give little updates on topics I&#8217;ve touched on recently. I&#8217;m super excited to do a post about this past weekend, my nephew&#8217;s second birthday, but figured that deserved a post of its own! Food My diet&#8217;s been going really well for the most part, with the exception of this past [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[129,55,181,76,45,463,93,130,37,465],"class_list":["post-308","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-diet","tag-family","tag-fitness","tag-friends","tag-kelsey","tag-nannying","tag-oregon","tag-running","tag-seattle","tag-thomas"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/penniestoyennies.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/308","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/penniestoyennies.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/penniestoyennies.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/penniestoyennies.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/penniestoyennies.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=308"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/penniestoyennies.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/308\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/penniestoyennies.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=308"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/penniestoyennies.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=308"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/penniestoyennies.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=308"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}