This past weekend I gathered twelve of my closest girlfriends (my little women tribe) around my dinner table for a “Healthy Home Dinner Party”. I don’t know about all of you, but I am pretty sure I get invited to some kind of multi-level marketing party every other day. Don’t get me wrong I am all for helping out my friends make some extra money on the side, hello we live in CALIFORNIA, I just don’t have the time to go to all of them. But I want to support my friends that are working hard and promoting products that I truly believe in and use myself. If it’s anything to do with health, simplifying life, making life easier or helping others, I am all in.
Well that is how my Healthy Home idea was born and it was a way to have the perfect girls night in 
 I invited a few local ladies who’s businesses I truly support, to share their passions with my friends over a four course dinner. Cause everything is better with food and wine right?!
I invited my best friend Ginger with Crafted Gatherings @craftedgatherings to come over and do the fall tablescape for our dinner and once again she did a fabulous job! I feel like we could have had a wedding reception in my dining room. It was perfectly fall and welcoming, better than I could have ever imagined.
We started the evening with a little yoga in my garage lead by my beautiful friend Heidi that works at a local yoga studio in town. It was the perfect way to kick off the evening!
Then it was time to enjoy some food. I invited my friend Justine Campbell from @alowellness who is an R.D. and Holistic Nutritionists to help me prepare a four course healthy and delish dinner! It was so fun cooking with her in the kitchen and learning some fun new recipes. We paired each meal with a wine and everything tasted amazing.
As we sat around the table we played a few fun games to get to know each-other a little better, because it’s always fun to have prizes at a party! I found these two games on Pinterest.
In between courses we enjoyed a little very casual chat about oils from my friend Cynthia @kitchenblogger (go follow her on IG)Â and she was burning Young Living’s seasonal scent throughout the house the whole time and it made me want to curl up on the couch with a cup of coffee and just get cozy.
Lastly we heard from my friend and business partner Megan, @themegababe about Norwex cleaning supplies, if you haven’t heard about them you are missing out big time and they have changed my life!
We finished the evening talking around the table till 2am! It was truly a beautiful refreshing time of being still and chatting about all things LIFE and health. I couldn’t have pictured a more beautiful night and I am already planning our next Spring one!
Question: What is the last multi-level marketing party you went to?Â
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I have been thinking a lot about what gifts that I want to give this year to friends and family. Yes, I am the girl who is crazy and loves going Black Friday shopping (I KNOW NUTZO). This year I can’ t wait to blast my Christmas music in my car, wear my cozies, drink my first peppermint mocha, enjoy taking my TIME through different stores and not worry about the rush!
Aside from maybe grabbing a few things on Black Friday in stores, I plan to get most of my gifts this year from small businesses on Saturday! Here are just a few of my favorites:
2. Refresh Attire (I had to give us a plug) Open tomorrow-MONDAY December 1st!
3. Reverent Creations: The cutest necklaces with TRUTH!
4. MegNCreations: These cute coffee cozies! Megan has all kinds of designs and colors!
5. Â She Does Justice: A stylish way to give back!
10. Ollie and Bear
Question: What are you favorite small businesses?Â
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I couldnâ€
t think of a better way to kick of the Holiday season then to have a “Friendsgiving†dinner with Fresh and Easyâ€s Holiday Box preview! Have you heard of these boxes? They are pretty much liquid gold! All you have to do is go online, select your choice of meat, three sides, and you get a full pumpkin pie all for 8 people and under $65! We gave it a little test run before Thanksgiving rolls around.
[Disclaimer: Fresh and Easy sent me a gift card to try one of their Holiday Boxes, but, as always, the thoughts and opinions expressed on NHS are honest and all my own.]
I picked up my box filled with goodies on Friday!
Love that Fresh and Easy makes everything super fresh without artificial ingredients, so it as though I made it myself! All I had to do is stick everything in the oven, no cooking required = no mess!
Here is what I chose in my Holiday Box:Beef Rib Roast Dinner, mashed sweet potatoes 32 oz. apple cranberry stuffing 26 oz.and brussels sprouts with bacon 24 oz. It also came with gravy and I picked up some Hawaiian rolls.
I just love entertaining!
I also picked up a few bottles of wine and sparkling water. Everyone loved EVERYTHING! Even those who donâ€t normally like sweet potato’s loved them! We played games and enjoyed laughing together and then dug into the delicious pumpkin pie!!!!
If you have a Fresh and Easy near you I encourage you to pick up a Holiday BOX this year! We will be hosting Thanksgiving at our house this year and will be picking up two boxes and the no stress of it all makes me HAPPY!
t want to miss out on a fun way to stay healthy and happy through the holiday season! If you have already signed up you will get your official welcome email Wednesday November 13th!
Well friends I finish this fun Holiday post with an AWESOME GIVE-AWAY from Fresh and Easy!!! Who wantâ€s to win a $50 Fresh & Easy gift card???? Well now is your chance!
How to Enter: Leave me a comment about what you love about Fresh and Easy?
Give-Away will end Friday November 15th 12am PST.
]]>Created our very own turkey trot!!!!!
Bib numbers and all!!!!!!!!
Played in the mountains with the fam…..
Relaxed by the fire….
Dads feast!!!!
My dishes I created…
Then it was on to Black Friday!!!!!! A huge success!!!!
With 5 hours of sleep under my belt, I managed to create another feast for my Mom and brothers!!!!
With the help of my amazing husband!!!!
The rest of the evening was spent relaxing to an beautiful love performance that my brother put on for the family!
I am so thankful for my beautiful family, craziness and all!!!!
Mostly thankful for my Matt!! He is a God send and I am so glad we have our family and can’t wait to see what this holiday season brings us. God is so good!!
My loving husband, Bosco, the fact that I never have to think about where my next meal will come from, having an awesome Job that I get to see lives changed daily, friends that know me better then I know myself, and all of you awesome readers that encourage me in more ways then ever!
This Thanksgiving we are having TWO dinners with our family. Thanks to Pinterest I have found some AWESOME recipes and can not wait to get my hands dirty!
The first dinner will be on Thanksgiving day with my Dad and I will be making…
2. Butternut Squash Apple Cranberry Bake
My Dad and Step Mom will be making the Ham and Turkey and other wonderful goodies!
For the second Thanksgiving on Friday I am making everything myself (with Hubbyâ€s help of course!). My Mom is bringing dessert 
3. Turkey
4. Rolls
5. Brussels Sprouts, Bacon, and Apple dish
6. Fresh Cranberry Sauce
7. Yams
8. Skinny Green Bean Casserole
I am way more of a sides kind of a girl! I get most excited about Yams and Cranberry Sauce!
Question: What are your favorite sides at Thanksgiving?
]]>Thanksgiving dinner #1 at the FIL
I would love to have a porch swing at our house..one day…one day!
Being silly as always with the Hubby on the farm.
All of the wonderful food, couldn’t fit it all in.
FIL AKA Benton, uses a true “southern” band aid
Here is a picture of the feast, I had two plates. The first one had a little stuffin (or dressing as they call it in the south), cranberry’s, purple hole peas, mashed taters, olives, celery, and come sweet pickles. All veggies were grown in FIL’s garden. I skipped the rolls I knew I already had enough starch on my plate! I missed some good Ole yams! As you can see for dessert, I had some cobbler with a little light cool whip, and a bite of this cherry pie! Hubby has a very small family, at this feast it was his dad, his dad’s girl friend Sam, her daughter Dana, hubby and I. I am not used to this at all the TRUJIILLO-CLASBY clan, is huge!!! I hope to have lot’s of little one’s to add to this clan, one day not any day soon:)
After dinner, we went out to the farm to feed the goats, birds, and many dogs! I love visiting the farm, that’s right just visiting!!! I am a city girl kinda.
Hubby our entertainer for the night!
We left at 5pm and had to drive 5 hours back to Nashville to the SIL’s, here is a what hubby and I did to entertain ourselves!!!! This video is a PG-13 there are some others out there that were questionable.
Thanksgiving dinner #2
Before we hit the kitchen this morning, I ran a 11 mile run, on Stones River Battle field, SIL was so sweet to find it for me!!! How cool is that! The park was lined with REAL HISTORY, I could not have been more happy anywhere else. It was such a great run, I had two pieces of toast with PB before I left, and stopped by Sbux for a dopio espresso for a good kick. I brought my Hammer gel, and a bottle water ( did not want a Tuesday repeat). I also had a recovery drink from Camelback for after the run. The park was lovely, lots of trails, and lots of people. Which was nice because I didn’t know the area very well and didn’t want to be stranded. The whole run I was encouraged knowing that all you lovely ladies were out there POTM with me! YOU ROCK!
Thanksgiving run stats:
Time: 1:29:13
Distance: 11 miles
Avg Pace: 8:07
Max Pace: 5:51
Total Calories Burned: 1323
TOTAL POTM: 45.3
Got back to the house and SIL had already had the ham cooked and was working away in the kitchen! I love the way the house smells on T-Day! I snacked on some Stony Mills Vanilla Yogurt with peaches and Kashi. I also had two of these amazing sausage cheese balls!!!
Here is all of the yummy food! I made a sweet potato souffle with a mirange topping! I will post the recipe later because it will now be a staple in our house!
My plate
Turkey, sweet potatoes, a little dressing, cream cheese corn, purple hole peas, mac and cheese, one deviled egg (that’s a first for me), green bean casserole and some mashed taters. As you can see southerners aren’t into SALAD!!! We had dinner at 12:30pm so we had seconds for dinner forgot to take pics, was a much smaller plate.
Also I had a small piece of a NO PUDGE brownie, and pecan pie.
Didn’t finish the pie but ate the whole brownie!!! I had a small cup of black coffee too, which was perfect to balance out the sweetness.
Here is my Sweet Potato Souffle
My three Nephews wrestling with the hubby!
Me and the SIL ( Michelle)
FLYING HOME
P.S.
3 more days to POTM, just to let you know you can count November 30th as a run day as long as you finish and send me your total miles to marie.bobbi@gmail.com by 12am pacific time.
Lacey Nicole: 4 miles
Meghann: 11 miles
HangryPants: 5 miles
Andrea (Off Her Cork): between 2.5 and 3.0 miles
dryerlynt: 5 miles
just me: 10k Turkey Trot
Mica: 10 k Turkey Trot
Catherine: 10k
Caitlin (see bride run): 9 miles
therunningaddict: 3.5-4 miles
Kelsey: 6 miles
Me: 11 miles
If you need some good tunes to run with check out the Biggest Loser Workout Mix, I am downloading it right now to have it to run with!!!! I hope you all have a Thankful Thanksgiving, I leave you with this beautiful Thanksgiving day poem. BE THANKFUL YOU CAN RUN & THAT YOU HAVE FOOD:) !!!!
Thanksgiving
Cranberries dripping down my chin
Have stained my pilgrim suit.
I ate too much Thanksgiving day
But I don’t give a hoot.
I slurped a pile of dressing,
Gobbled down a turkey thigh,
Dribbled messy cranberries
Devoured some pumpkin pie.
Within me on this special day
It’s a thankful heart that beats.
For all the things that I enjoy
But mainly for the eats.
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Up this morning at 7am and put the Bob-Jillian hat at on. What is that, well let me explain. You all know Bob and Jillian from the Biggest Loser, well I was in their shoes this morning. I took hubby for a run, which turned out to be a killer workout. I loved encouraging him to keep going to push harder, he is battling a cold right now so this run was hard for him. I would love to be a cross-country coach, I love helping people push themselves!
We are in the middle of no where so we had to run on the HIGHWAY! We ran out for 1.5 miles and then turned around to do some sprints. We ran 4 sprints, ran hard for 30 seconds walked for one minute and then repeat. When hubby had to stretch on the run I did 50 jumping jacks to keep my HR up. When we got done we did 100 crunches, 20 push ups, plank work out, and some GOOD stretching.
Total stats:
Time: 34:32
Avg pace: 11:20, we did walk a little and ran easy…
Max Pace: 4:34
Calories burned: 372 ( this is off because I worked out more)
TOTAL POTM: 34.3
SOUTHERN EATING #7
We ate our first country style bfast at the FIL this morning. After our hard workout this is just what we needed. FIL makes the best home-made biscuits, I have yet to perfect this skill at home. I had two biscuits, some scrambled eggs, a small piece of ham, and my pumpkin oatmeal. I was going to have just one biscuit but then I remembered I only have these ONCE a year!!!
FIVE THANKFUL THINGS
#1. I am thankful for life, in general life is pretty good and I am glad I get to LIVE it!
#2. I am thankful for my car, I am glad that my FIL found me my little Camry no matter if it’s old or new it’s a blessing to have.
#3. I am thankful that I live in the US, I have so many freedoms that I know I take for granted.
#4. I am thankful for my couples study, I love all of the couples that are in it!
#5. I am thankful for my education, I know that not everyone has the opportunity to go to college, let a lone a small private college.
Your Turn!
Alright we have Thanksgiving #1 to prepare for, I am going to catch up on blogs, and start writing my PROBAR review:) Happy prepping!
LAST MINUTE THANKSGIVING MEAL TIPS
I want to leave you with some wise words from RD Cheryl Forberg:
Tips to Avoid Holiday Weight Gain from The Biggest Loser Nutritionist
Who says Thanksgiving dinner isnâ€t healthy? The staple ingredients of this holidayâ€s comfort food have redeeming healthful properties that make this meal extra scrumptious. Adding a little culinary know-how to traditional recipes can transform this food fest into a guilt-free feast.
The first rule of thumb for holiday gatherings is never go to the party hungry. Maintain your normal daily routine starting with breakfast and a workout. Have a snack before you go — a half a sandwich, yogurt and fruit or a glass of milk.
If thereâ€s a buffet, try to remember that most of your choices should be whole grains, fruits and vegetables; the remaining third can be lean meats. Fill up on veggies that arenâ€t drenched in butter or sauce.
If itâ€s impossible to resist trying everything on the table, make sure you take very small “tastes†of high-calorie dishes. If youâ€re trying to watch your weight, remember that this is just one day, so itâ€s OK to indulge yourself a little. Many people, however, begin a downward spiral over the holidays beginning with Thanksgiving. One day of temptation leads to another and soon theyâ€ve spiraled out of control. Donâ€t let that happen to you. If Thanksgiving finds you being a little too indulgent, begin Friday by eating a little less, exercising more, or both.
The healthier flavors of ThanksgivingCranberries: The sweet side of a puckery cranberry is its high-powered nutrition profile. An excellent source of fiber, potassium and vitamin C, itâ€s also packed with powerful compounds that kick up the immune system and slow the aging process. They freeze well, so stock up and put a few pounds in the freezer.
Sweet potatoes: Why disguise this veggieâ€s naturally delicate flavor with gooey marshmallows or a brown sugar glaze? This year try roasting peeled sweet potatoes cubes in a hot oven with a little olive oil and your favorite herbs (such as rosemary or oregano).
Not to be confused with the yam, sweet potatoes possess a higher degree of moisture and sweetness. And theyâ€re higher in nutritional oomph with a slew of antioxidant vitamins. Sweet potatoes should not be refrigerated. Store in a cool dry place between 55 and 65 F.
Turkey: Turkey is low in fat and high in protein, Use a rack to roast your turkey so the fat drips away. Baste your bird with fat-free broth, instead of butter.
If youâ€re trying to shave off calories and fat, choose a turkey breast roast this year instead of the whole bird.
Be sure to have a gravy separator on hand. This indispensable tool quickly skims excess fat from your pan drippings.
Stuffing/dressing: Whole grains deserve a place on your holiday table. Skip the tired old white bread stuffing and whip up a savory batch of cornbread croutons for a memorable holiday dressing peppered with chunks of spicy low fat turkey sausage and dried fruit.
If youâ€re using broth for stuffing or gravy, be sure to choose fat-free.
If the stuffing calls for sautéed veggies such as celery, onions and mushrooms, use a nonstick pan to minimize the amount of oil required to cook them.
If you bake your stuffing outside of the bird, itâ€s called dressing. This also means that no juice (or fat) from the baking turkey is absorbed, resulting in a drastic calorie reduction. The right combination of ingredients can result in a dressing that is just as delicious and moist when baked outside the bird.
Pumpkin pie or sweet potato pie: Make pumpkin (or sweet potato) pies with canned, evaporated, skimmed milk. Itâ€s more concentrated — rich and creamy with lower calories and fat than regular evaporated milk
Try to decrease the amount of sweetener in your favorite recipe by about 25 percent. And try using agave nectar as your sweetener. Unlike sugar, itâ€s loaded with antioxidants. Yes, it has calories, similar to those of honey, but itâ€s natural — not artificial or chemically processed. Sometimes kicking up the sweet spices a notch, e.g., cinnamon, cloves, ginger, helps to stretch the flavor so the lesser amount of sweetener isnâ€t as noticeable. Substitute most or all of the whole eggs with egg whites. Eat just the filling of the finished pie and skip the high fat crust. Or, bake the filling in a springform pan without any crust at all.
Try a different pumpkin dessert this year and start a new family tradition. Below is a recipe for Sweet Pumpkin Polenta from Positively Ageless.
Miscellaneous tips: Season vegetables with fresh herbs and low sodium seasonings — skip the butter.
Thereâ€s plenty of starch at this meal — why not skip the dinner rolls altogether? If thatâ€s not an option, be sure to choose whole grain rolls.
Happy Holidays and happy cooking!
P.S.
Don’t forget to leave a comment about what you are running Tomorrow MORNING!!!!! I will post this afternoon:)!
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