An Out and About Kind of Day

Yesterday was an out-and-about kind of day. After my breakfast of yogurt and granola I decided to head out on a bike ride. Our house is on a long spit, very close to the end, so we can easily walk or ride out to the ocean whenever we want.

I just rode to the look out bench. The islands in the distance are actually in the U.S., that's how close we are to the border!

It was such a nice day out!

The way to the ocean is all down hill, so you can imagine that by the time I got home I was out of breath and hot from going back up all the hills. Good exercise! So I made myself a smoothie. I wanted to try out one of my packets of smoothie vitamin enhancers, so I pulled one of those out. Here's what went into the blender.

Frozen blueberries, leftover fruit salad, fresh spinach, rice milk, and a vegan smoothie packet.

I was so ready to drink this! It looked sooo good!

But then it so wasn't. I am NEVER buying that brand of smoothie vitamin mix again. It made everything taste chalky and almost bitter. GROSS! I could only manage to drink half of it before it went down the toilet. B made a terrible face and hated it too. So disappointing! It was so promising too!

While I was sipping the nastiness in my glass I wandered around our yard, checking out the plants, searching for new blooms. My jasmine is doing so well! It's almost made it to the top of it's stake!

Then I found these awesome mushrooms just coming up. they are huge!

We have a small veg garden going, but it got started so late. We do have a few green tomatoes though. Hopefully they'll ripen.

This is a cute little succulent we planted. It's blooming! Isn't that just the coolest little flower?! We had never seen this variety before. (The snail shell is decorative only, it's inhabitant has been evicted!)

This is a wild-ish area of the yard, and we've got native wildflowers mixed in with the stuff we've planted. Daisies, rose campion, curry, lavender and who know's what else. Very pretty, though!

I was happy to see that my wisteria is finally sending out shoots of new growth.

My rose from B is blooming like there's no tomorrow!

And B and his dad finished the fence around the yard! They have been working on it for SO long! It looks great!

It's nice to see that all of our plants are finally starting to fill in. It's been fun starting a giant yard from scratch! Can't wait to see what it'll look like in the years to come!

Fruit, Fruit, Everywhere!

Yesterday evening was a hot one, and reminded me of the summers in California when I was little. In remembrance, I made us an all-American style dinner. Simple, healthy-ish, and tasty.

Once again our kitchen is overflowing with summer fruits, nothing to complain about there, but they all need to be used up! You know what this means! Yup, fruit salad yet again! I started cutting up all the different fruits, but got distracted when I was cutting up the watermelon. I remembered a tasty sounding recipe on a blog I had read for watermelon lemonade! I had to try it! I followed Miranda's recipe, and tasted. Pretty good, but I remembered I had a few strawberries and raspberries cut up in the fridge, so I tossed those in for good measure. The result was this refreshing icy treat. Not bad!

My strength renewed I kept on chopping. Today's salad had pineapple, watermelon, cantaloupe, peach, strawberries, cherries, coconut, mint and lime juice. I thought it might be good with some lavender too, so I tried it out on a small bowl.

Um, yeah. Not so much. The flowers were too intense, bitter, and kinda tasted like cleaner. That idea was a bust. Oh well, at least I didn't put it all over the whole bowl of fruit!

It was a good fruit salad, very fresh and light.

I wasn't very good about taking pictures last night. No pics of dinner. But we had the fruit salad, Yves veggie dogs and fresh buns heated on the grill, and some baked beans. The perfect summer meal.

B and I watched a few movies last night, keeping to our late schedule for work. This means that on the weekends we watch 2 or 3 movies a night and staying up until about 3am, but during the week we don't watch anything. So, we started with Cop Out, Kevin Smith's newest movie. It was funny, I always love Bruce Willis. Not one of Smith's best though. Worth at least one viewing in my book. Then we put on Ben Hur, as I had never seen it. We only made it through the fist disc because it's about a million hours long. We'll finish it tonight. And finally, we watched the new Death at a Funeral. I personally liked the original with Hugh Grant much better. Chris Rock seemed like he was trying too hard to actually act. Oh well, it was good for a few laughs.

Before our last movie B and I went on a nice walk out to the ocean. The moon was almost full, and all the surrounding islands were illuminated. It was so mild out, and the stretch felt good after sitting so long. Very pleasant.

This morning I slept in again. I LOVE weekends! I made myself breakfast: another banana spelt muffin, yogurt with a peach on top, and sliced casaba melon with lime juice. I ate the muffin, and drank my tea, and started feeling kinda full. I wrapped up the bowl of yogurt and peach for later and just dug into the melon.

Casaba melon is my all-time favorite melon! It has so much flavorful juicy sweetness! My dad used to serve it chilled, with lime juice. SO refreshing and amazingly good! Oh, just talking about it makes me want more! This specific melon was perfectly ripe too, adding to it goodness! (I guess all those years picking out melons for people in the grocery store produce department paid off!)

I folded the laundry and helped B clean up our room. Then I tried to get in some much needed exercise. I just bought a new exercise ball, as my last one ended up like this...

It was a victim of our new cat Andy. He's kind of a spaz, being only a year old and still kitten-y.

I got the new ball all pumped up, and tried out the dvd that came with it. They had some pretty good exercises on there. Lots of leg lifts, pelvic tilts, and crunches. I did about 30 minutes worth of work with the big yellow ball, then some core stuff with my little medicine ball. It's about 3lbs.

I also did about 15 minutes with my 3lb weighted hula hoop. I love this thing! It gives a kind of massage to your midsection.

Andy cat was interested in the goings on in the living room.

I made myself a smoothie with the left over yogurt and peach from breakfast, adding a handful of frozen raspberries, and a big handful of fresh spinach, plus a slosh of vanilla rice milk. It was just what I needed after my workout.

Now to go wander the garden with Izzie, and enjoy the evening. No ideas whatsoever as to dinner. Oh well.