Thanksgiving Prep Day

Had a great Saturday! Husband and I did lots of prep for Thanksgiving and got most of our Christmas shopping done! We’re on a roll! We’re hosting our first Thanksgiving – my parents and husband’s mom, brother and a friend. We’re SO excited we’ve been planning for weeks!!

Breakfast:
Started the day a little different than normal – cereal. Well I was very unhappy with this choice because I was starving two hours later in the middle of cycle class!

Kashi Heart to Heart with skim milk and banana (370 calories’ worth too!)

Also had hot tea:

Workout:
Breakfast was at 7:30, and we planned to hit the 9:15 a.m. cycle class, which is only 45 minutes and the PERFECT cycle class length. The instructor was great today and the class was hard – I burned 426 calories! (I also did 8 minutes elliptical as a warm-up). Workout – check!

Snack:
After cycle, we made lattes and I had toast with pear. I was soooo hungry. Not sure why!! I ate this snack way too fast, and then my stomach was cramping all morning and thru lunch. Not sure what was going on!

Snack calories: ~176.

Lunch:
After a much-needed trip to the grocery store, we prepared the most delicious lunch.

Smoked salmon, avocado and Laughing Cow with dill on Ezekiel Sesame Bread. I enjoyed having that catering smoked salmon a few weeks ago so much that I’d like to have it more. It’s only real downfall is the sodium amount, so I wouldn’t make it a weekly lunch, but maybe once a month?

Also, this Ezekiel Sesame Bread is the BEST YET!!!! Very nutty and delicious!! Look for it in the frozen section of your grocery store. Don’t be scared of frozen bread!! Just thaw it in the fridge and then let it warm to room temp or toast before eating.

Also made a salad with spinach, broccoli, carrots, cuc, and pom seeds. I got the new Ken’s Spritzer Honey Mustard Dressing – the kind you spray on 10 sprays for 10 calories. (Hungry Girl said it was good). It was OK. Not great, but better than plain? I also cooked the veggies for a few minutes in a hot pan to take some of the raw out.

And lastly, I had Mango-Apricot yogurt by Cascade Fresh, which I really liked. Added a little ground flax after the photo.

All together for 500 calories:

Afternoon:
We hit the mall for some Thanksgiving/Xmas shopping after lunch. We got the cutest leaf plates on sale at Pottery Barn that will serve as our Thanksgiving centerpieces. And cute squash + pumpkin candles to go in them! You’ll see these again soon!

I also got us cute green placemats to dine on. Neither husband or I come from a “placemat family” so we have never really used them, but now that we’re eating in the dining room and not on the couch (which I LOVE, by the way – no wonder the table is the preferred and recommended dining location!), we need something to protect the table each meal. Plus, I really like the look of placemats. They dress up the table without hiding it with a huge tablecloth (as long as they’re modern and not frilly and from the 80’s!). I hope to purchase many more in the future 🙂

We shopped for almost 2 hours and walked from the mall, across the street to Williams-Sonoma and back, so I gave myself 150 extra calories for the day.

AND….I didn’t snack ALL AFTERNOON!!!! I got pretty hungry around 5:00, but a Diet Tonic and Lime fixed that.

Dinner:
Dinner was great – all grilled!

Here’s the husband enjoying a beer with our new placemats:

Dessert:

G’night!