Hosted a Christmas Dinner

Today was my day off, but I decided I’d get up at 5 AM with hubby so I could get a lot done today. Crazy? Maybe.

For breakfast, I had oatmeal with milled flax and blueberries along with skim milk.

I spent some time trying to figure out what to buy for a couple of gifts I need to get…but I spent way too much time trying to find something and didn’t have any luck. I have been so busy with school, I kind of put off buying gifts until now!! And I’m really pressed for time now. While searching, I drank coffee with FF creamer.

And then I got to work. I had laundry and dishes to do. And then I got started on getting everything together for the holiday dinner that that we decided to host tonight, kind of at the last minute! Not a big deal because it was just hubby’s parents…but I still wanted everything to turn out well.

I baked peanut butter kiss cookies. I also got the dough made and in the fridge to chill for cut out cookies.

I may have eaten one…why is it so hard to control oneself when cooking? I should have chewed some gum!

And  then I started the prep for supper. I was pretty tired out by this point, so I sat down for a few minutes to make a list of all of the things I needed to accomplish. I am all about lists and organizational tools, so I am LOVING my new iPad. I found this really cool app for making a to do list.

I also love it for cooking. Most of the time, I get recipes online and I don’t feel like wasting paper by printing them out, so I always have my laptop in the kitchen and it just takes up too much space. The iPad is PERFECT. I have an app for allrecipes.com, where I get a lot of my recipes, and I can just prop my iPad up and get to cooking! So handy!

I had the inner battle of should I or shouldn’t I work out today. And I won. I worked out. I did a run/walk for 30:33 and completed 2 miles. I am proud of myself. It’s so hard for me to run the entire time on the treadmill, but I find if I break it up into runs and walks, it really helps. I need to get over feeling guilty for not running the entire time. I can work on speed this way, so it’s actually a good thing! I burned 274 calories. Do any of you workout each day to achieve a certain calorie burn? How do you figure out how many calories you want to burn? I’ve been thinking about getting a Body Bug type device, to see if that would help motivate me to see the numbers of what I’m consuming vs. what I’m burning. Do any of you use something like that? Does it help motivate you?

For lunch, I ate a protein packed salad with lettuce, tomato, FF cheese, a boiled egg, chicken, and Canadian bacon. I topped it with FF ranch and FF Western dressing. So good!

After lunch, I made my cutout cookies. This was the first time in my life to make these as an adult and by myself! They’re a bit of a mess and apparently, I made neon pink Christmas cookies. lol. But they taste good.

That’s a lot of work though! I was tired out by the time I was done with that! But I had a lot left to do…

I feel like I spent all day preparing for supper tonight…and I pretty much did!

I made recipes that I saw on the Biggest Loser Thanksgiving special. It turned out delicious! I was able to sneak my pictures when everyone else was in the living room!

We had Herb-Orange turkey with roasted pear gravy.

I also made mashed beans with cauliflower and leeks—SO good! It was really funny because hubby’s parents are the “meat and potatoes” part and they had no clue these weren’t mashed potatoes until hubby said something!

And Spinach salad with pomegranate—this was supposed to have pears but I forgot! It was still beautiful though. I also made the vinaigrette that goes with this and OMW…so good.

And for dessert, we had the cookies that I worked so hard to make along with decaf coffee.

Supper was very healthy. All made with filling foods. Simply amazing! The cookies were the worst part about today, otherwise I think I did well!