November Book Club

First Wednesday of the month is BOOK CLUB book announcement day! And it is November, the thankfulness month. With Thanksgiving at the end of the month it just makes sense to make this month the most happy and sharing of our thanks. This month I wanted to focus on working the good inside of us but also to see what makes us happy! Hence book #2 The happiness project! How excited are you for these books this month? Have you been keeping up with the books? 

Goal is to read at least 10 minutes of day. You can read both books this month or just one. You choose and have fun! Comment below with which one you decide.

Check out our books this month! 

Book 1: 
Rebecca Rosen- Awaken The Spirit Within: 10 Steps to Ignite Your Life and Fulfill Your Divine Purpose

We all want to be happy and fulfilled. We want to understand the very point of our lives—why we’re here and what we’re meant to do. Yet, when we think about how to get from here to there and answer life’s “Big” questions, so many of us don't know where to begin. The advice from so many different people and sources can be overwhelming, but it doesn’t have to be. In Awaken the Spirit Within, acclaimed author and spiritual medium Rebecca Rosen offers us an inspired and invigorating prescriptive program to give our lives clarity and deeper meaning. With Rebecca’s down-to-earth and conversational style, this book will help you learn how to: 

   • Create more peace and fulfillment in your personal relationships 
   • Gain confidence in your natural talents and abilities 
   • Succeed in greater degrees at your job 
   • Develop financial abundance and prosperity 
   • Conquer addictions and negative thinking 
   • Find freedom from weight struggles and poor body image 
   • Gain the clarity to make the “right” choices and decisions for your life

Bold claims? Yes. But when it comes to Rebecca Rosen, you’ll understand just after a few pages, why Time.com has told its readers to “Take her advice seriously.”

Book 2: 

Gretchen Rubin - The Happiness Project: Or, Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun

In this lively and compelling account—now updated with new material by the author—Rubin chronicles her adventures during the twelve months she spent test-driving the wisdom of the ages, current scientific research, and lessons from popular culture about how to be happier. Among other things, she found that novelty and challenge are powerful sources of happiness; that money can help buy happiness, when spent wisely; that outer order contributes to inner calm; and that the very smallest of changes can make the biggest difference.

What To Do With All That Halloween Candy?

Donate your leftover Halloween candy. Many homeless shelters, crisis relief centers, and food pantries, even dentist offices take candy donations. If you’ve got excess, why not share some with someone in need? Also you can send it to our military overseas! Check out Operation Gratitude for the details! They would love it! (as an army wife who used to send care packages and my husband telling me about all the goodies they received and LOVED!) 

Make goodie bags for an easy way to say thanks. Anyone in your life do something nice for you? Repay the kindness with some candy! 

Take your leftover Halloween candy to the office. My husband’s coworkers devour just about anything I send in. I think a bowl full of chocolates left in the break room would be a huge hit.

Bake with it.  These candy bar cookies can help get rid of the chocolate candy bars!  You could also chop bits of candy and use them in place of chocolate chips in cookies, add them to brownies,  or to top a cake. The options are endless really. Then give them to a friend, neighbor or someone who just had a baby as congratulations or someone might need a yummy dessert.

Save your leftover Halloween candy. Chopped candy will also freeze well. Freeze it in 1 cup increments for maximized baking. See above for uses.

Save it to celebrate the December holidays with. Use some of your leftover Halloween candy in your Advent countdown, Hanukkah nights,  to decorate holiday cookies, or to decorate a gingerbread house. Why buy what you’ve already got and it will help save you some money!

Share it or swap it. Do you know of someone who has a child with a food allergy? It is likely that the child got a ton of candy they can’t enjoy. Give them the candy from your stash that you know they CAN enjoy.

Celebrate with it! Hosting a party soon? Have a candy bar or use it as a great snack for your party!

Involve your kids in this too. Share with them what you are going to do especially if you are donating it. Let them know that you are serving someone and they will want to serve someone too!What are you doing with your leftover Halloween candy? 

Want more daily motivation and inspiration? Click here get free daily advice, support, motivation, encouragement + a free copy of my Clean Eating guide to help you get started on your health and fitness journey! Are you following my INSTAGRAM yet? Check out my stories and feed to see how I fit a healthy lifestyle into my busy mom life! 

30 Days Of Thanks-November Support Group

I am so excited! I am setting up my next challenge group that begins THIS WEEK! 30 Days Of Thanks! Why not have a whole month to be thankful for our friends, family, health, strong bodies, and clean healthy foods!

I still have available spots to help more people stay on track, avoid the holiday bulge and food comas and feel their best EVER this holiday season!

Now that Halloween is behind us, more and more sweets and treats are going to be around and tempt us. Let this be the first year that you say "NO" to excess sweets this season. We will work together to find a workout program that fits your life. So you can Connect The Dots with your Fitness, Health and Life!

Are you ready?

By joining our group you receive:
~a workout program that works for YOU
~a months supply of superfoods nutrition
~meal plans/ prepping and planning help
~support/accountability and a community that helps motivate you daily and allows you to DREAM BIG!

You are worth it! Why not start today?

Fill out this application to let me know YOU WANT TO JOIN! 

Post Halloween Candy Coma Relief

How is everyone doing with their candy comas after last night? My kids are still wired since they had fun with all their candy last night. So what are you doing to help combat the after effects of tons of candy???

WATER! Flush out your body with WATER! Get water in you as soon as you can. Drink more water than you usually do. Flush that crap out of you! Just drink water! Add some lemon to it too or ginger to help with any tummy troubles you might be having today. Try adding in some fresh fruit too! Anything to get more water into your system.

Goal for today: only water. No other drinks (1 cup of black coffee in the morning is fine or tea) The rest of the time, water, or fruit infused water. Help your body flush out the candy or other goodies you had over the weekend! Start Monday out right feeling less bloated and regulated!

Happy Halloween Recipe!

It's Halloween! What are you dressing up as for halloween? 

I will have our family picture up tomorrow for you to enjoy our Jurassic World Themed costumes! Hope you guys have a happy and safe day!

How about a perfectly yummy healthy seasonal recipe to celebrate the day!!! 

CLEAN EATING HOLIDAY BUTTERNUT CRANBERRY BAKE

(Makes approximately 4 servings)

INGREDIENTS:

1 lb. chopped/cubed, peeled butternut squash
2 large apples, peeled and cored
1/2 cup fresh cranberries
1 tbsp. olive oil (or coconut oil in liquid state)
1/4 cup maple syrup
2 tsp. ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp. ground nutmeg
1 scant tsp. ground cloves (optional if you like cloves

DIRECTIONS:

Place all ingredients in a 1 gallon-sized ziplock bag or a large container with a tight-fitting lid.
Shake well to coat everything in spices and maple syrup.
Pour out into baking dish (Mine was 9×13) and bake at 350 F. for about 1 hour to 1 hour and 20 minutes.
Note that if you have a smaller, deeper baking dish that this will take longer in the oven. The bigger and more shallow the dish is, the quicker this will cook. (I do not recommend a cookie sheet due to the cranberries)
Add salt to taste after cooking if needed.

Modified From The Gracious Pantry

Want more daily motivation and inspiration? Click here get free advice, support and encouragement + a free copy of my Clean Eating guide to help you get started on your health and fitness journey! Don't forget to follow me on INSTAGRAM and FACEBOOK!

Healthy Halloween Game: 2015

I did this last year with Anna and Elsa costumes that came a knocking and ended up doing 60 squats for the night. I wanted to up the anti this year. Adding more categories of costumes and a variation of exercises to do per costume.

So the rules: Whenever one of these little costumes make an appearance at your door keep a tally and do the exercise associated with it either right then and there or after the little monsters have gone to bed. Think of this as your way to eat a candy bar or 2 for the night. Fun way to help keep you healthy and happy this holiday season!

Also check out my trick to keep the candy in the house at a minimum! Big bucket, lots of stuffing!

Halloween Candy Workouts

Here we go! CANDY-PALOOZA! Saturday is Halloween. How many of you are excited to get dressed up and go trick-or-treating...with your kids I mean! Come on with your kids! I love Halloween. I love dressing up. It is the one day I can be whatever I want to be. And now I get to see Mason's face full of excitement as he goes and knocks on a stranger's door asking/begging for candy from said complete stranger! (How is this legal!)

But still creepy stranger factor allowed, it is still fun! It is still magical for kids, and I want it to be that way for as long as possible. With that being said, how many of us eat our kids Halloween candy??? Cue Jimmy Kimmel!

Well, if you want to avoid the temper tantrums from the kids the next day and not gorge on their sacred candy, check out these charts on what and how many exercises you need to do to negate all those sticky sweets!

So Snickers is my favorite candy and you better believe that in the past I would dig those out of Mason's bag and claim them for myself but not anymore. I WILL NOT BE DOING 50 BURPEES to burn off 1 tiny little fun size bar! 50 BURPEES! What is your favorite candy and how many exercises will you be doing? Comment below. I wanna hear what your favorite Halloween Candy is! 

And, of course, be sure to like our FACEBOOK page and follow us on PINTEREST for motivation, clean eating tips, and healthy lifestyle resources.

November 30 Day Squat Challenge

New month means a whole new monthly challenge! Here we go 30 days to a sexy, lifted, slimmer, rounded butt!

You do not need to do these all in one sitting (squatting) Break it up throughout the day. That's ok. Your goal is just to follow the amount of squats per day! Let me know if you are doing this! Comment below or send me an email. Need daily support and motivation? Follow me on FACEBOOK or join my monthly challenge group! Hope to see you there and GOOD LUCK!

And, of course, be sure to like our FACEBOOK page and follow us on PINTEREST for motivation, clean eating tips, and healthy lifestyle resources.

Halloween Week- Day 2

Today's look! So loving it! Every day this week I am wearing a different wig. 1) I love Halloween, why not extend the holiday a little! 2) I am surprising my piano students with something fun. I do something every year for them and this is this years. 3) I am making daily motivational videos for my private health and fitness clean eating group and wanted to change it up a little and have some extra fun!

Halloween Candy Alternatives!

Remember when you were a kid and went trick-or-treating and you had that neighbor that gave out a toothbrush or some non candy thing? Well, they might have had something right about. Out of all the candy you got there was just a few things that were non candy. I know it wasn't the coolest thing to get but if you are on the fence about handing out some preservative laden candy to kids that already will have a bucket full of it here are some ideas to help figure out what you can hand out, besides a toothbrush. 

So here are few healthier options, a list of candy alternatives you can hand out Saturday night. And, consider this, since most houses will be handing out candy, your treats will stand out (in a good way) from the bunch!

Crayons
No kid can have enough crayons. And they inspire creativity instead of obesity. You’re not going to get much healthier than this, provided kids don’t eat the crayons, of course, like Collin, last night at the table, EWWW!

Bubbles
Mason loves bubbles and will spend all day playing with them if he could! 

Fruit “Snack” Rolls
They may not be as good as a real piece of fruit, but they’re individually wrapped and they usually contain about 1 gram of fiber for every 12 grams of carbohydrates.

Healthy Snacks
Healthy individually wrapped snacks, like Pirate's Booty or pretzels.

Finger Puzzles
Remember these little bamboo puzzlers? Stick your fingers in each end of the tube—and you can’t get them out! Check out Dollar Stores for these fun gadgets! 

Stickers
Kids LOVE STICKERS! That is a given. Let them sticker their sibling with love, or the house or their favorite books!

Temporary Tattoos
Not all parents will like these but kids always do! They are fun and there are tons of fun variety packs!

Halloween Toys
Most stores carry bags of spider rings, bouncy eyeballs, or snakes. Or consider handing out Halloween-themed pencils and erasers. The fun of these will last long after the Halloween sugar high is gone. 

Glow in the Dark Sticks
Mason loves these at night after the sun goes down and you can get a box with a ton of them in it for fairly cheap! 

What do you like to hand out for Halloween?