Leaving the Nest

Phew! Today was a really big day. I mean, we actually left the house for like 5 hours! Shocking I know.

Again I got up early to try and chat with my best friend, but alas she was a no show (turns out her alarm was not set!) so I decided to just eat breakfast and get on with my day. Today I felt like something easy and refreshing so I went with cereal. 1/2 cup Kashi Golean Crunch, 1/2 cup Annie’s Chocolate & Vanilla Bunnies, ground flax, blueberries, and dried cherries. All enjoyed with skim milk, of course. ^_^ Yum yum yum.

I didn’t feel like hoofing it over to the fitness center this morning because the cumbersome weight machines there didn’t sound like any fun. So for my strength training I followed three different workouts from Fitness and Women’s Health magazines. It was pretty fun to get it all done right in my apartment and I worked up a good sweat.

Vincent, however, thought maybe his mother was crazy.

After bringing cupcakes over to the apartment staff, getting all prettied up, waiting for Chase to do the same, and browsing the internet it was almost time to head out on our outing! Chase and I both decided since it was 12:30 that I should probably have a pre-lunch snack or I’d be cranky by the time we got there and that we really shouldn’t spend money and eat out. This Chobani 0% Apple Cinnamon is one of my new favorites! Mixed with Kashi Golean Crunch it tastes like an apple pie. <3

We then hit the road for Bellevue Square Mall! The place where all the shops live! (There is honestly nothing in our area. >.< So Bellevue is terribly exciting!)

As we browsed, I remembered seeing on Twitter that it was Free Pretzel Day at Auntie Anne’s and we just so happened to walk by one! Even though neither Chase nor I are big fans of soft pretzels, we figured hey, free food is free food, so we stopped to get ours.

I had 1/3 of an Original…

…and a 1/3 of a Cinnamon and Sugar. I really wasn’t too hungry due to the yogurt and Kashi but it was quiet a treat I couldn’t pass up. We browsed all over the mall and I even have some job applications to do. Normally we both dislike malls due to all the people, but today it was really fun to just see all that was offered there.

Of course our main destination was the Sanrio store! I’d received a coupon on Facebook for a free tote with $10 purchase so I had to look! Isn’t the tote cute? Kind of ironic, but cute. Man I would be happy with just one friend around here!

My actual “purchase” is this really cute and sharp pill case! I’d been really needing one because I always keep Beano and Valtrex (for cold sores) in my purse and the container I had them in kept opening. Yay! Free tote and I got something I actually needed!

My other purchase was at Crate & Barrel where I found some napkins for only $0.98 on sale! Now I just need to buy an iron so I can use them as placemats for photos…

After the mall, we stopped by Uwajimaya, which is an Asian grocery store! This past month I have been craving everything mochi so I really wanted to see what they had to offer.

I was in heaven! This is pretty much what I lived off in Japan: Kakipi mix (spicy rice crackers and peanuts), Calpis (Calpico in US), salmon onigiri (rice ball), and dango (little mochi balls on sticks, grilled, and covered in fun sauces)!!

It was very hard not to fill my cart with everything. I vowed to return!

It was after 5 when we got back to the apartment and I was really really running on empty by then. I ended up having my salmon onigiri (not as fresh tasting as in japan), Calipis, some golden tomatoes…

…and 1 stick of red bean dango and 1 stick of soy sauce dango. I split this package with Chase but I could have ate them all! Again, they weren’t as good as in Japan but man they will do.

You know how I’m trying to try a lot of new fruit and vegetables this month for National Nutrition Month? Well at Uwajimaya they had a ton of things I’d never heard of! It was a bit overwhelming, so Chase and I decided we should stick to something small and not too out there. Enter the Kiwi Berry.

These little berries originated in China and are pretty much mini kiwis without the fuzz, high in both potassium and vitamin c! We ate them like grapes and while it may have been due to them not being perfectly ripe, they were somewhat sour! I saves a few to really add some punch to a salad.

Due to my super late “lunch” (I really don’t know what to call it), I wasn’t hungry for dinner until after 9pm. Part of me wanted to just have a small snack and call it a day but the other part of me knew that I hadn’t eaten any vegetables today and that needed to be fixed stat.

I ended up making a big salad of raw baby spinach and topped it with quinoa, a Morningstar Farms Chicken burger, golden tomatoes, parmesan, crasins, and drizzled it with an olive oil dressing. It was super tasty and though I didn’t think I would, I ate the whole thing!

Goal tomorrow: eat more vegetables!

What fun (and free!) activities do you do outside of the home?

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