P90X Day 90

Today is Mark's and my final day of the P90X program.  We made it through a full 90 days of grueling hour+ workouts every day.  We completely changed the way we ate and followed the nutrition plan precisely.  Yes - this means we made it a full 90 days without beer, wine, butter, bacon, chocolate, candies, chips, or any kind of culinary loveliness!  It was excruciating at first, tolerable in the middle, and it's second nature by now.  We'll have champagne tonight at midnight to celebrate and maybe an indulgence or two on Sunday, and then it's back to the gym/basement/dungeon on Monday.

I love the way I look and feel now, so I'm now on a quest to maintain my new, healthier lifestyle while still mixing in my love for wine, cooking, and pork fat.  So I'm going to continue doing the strength training workouts I've been doing while mixing in some more varied cardio options.  I'd love to start doing 5Ks again, and I'd LOVE to do the Color Run when we get back from our honeymoon!

I'll be posting our before/after pictures and measurements after we do body fat measurements at the gym tomorrow.  I'm very excited to show the final results!

Professional Plant Murderer

I kill plants for a living.  Really, I feel like this every spring and summer.  I inevitably start the growing season full of energy and excitement, and I run off buying seed kits and soil only to murder my little seedlings before they even make it a few weeks.  It's not that I completely neglect them...I just have no idea where I go wrong.

Plant Graveyard?

photo by M. Markus

This year, I was inspired to make a fresh start.  Mark (my fiancé) and I are just finishing an intense diet and workout routine called P90X, and it's shifted our diet toward more fruits and vegetables.  Our weekly grocery trips have gotten pretty expensive as a result, so I wanted to offset that cost a bit by trying to grow our own.  On a side note: living in a townhouse with a tiny yard whose soil is mostly clay means you have to buy lots of pots and lots of soil.  This isn't the cost-saving I had in mind.  :/

Anyway, I bought a whole host of gardening books.  I wanted to do this right.  I may have gone a bit overboard...but so far this year, there have been no plant murders at my hands...yet.  This morning, I got the shot in the arm I needed to continue.  One of our strawberry plants is starting to form minuscule little fruits for us!  Hooray!  There's hope!

Welcome!

Hello and welcome to my lifestyle blog!

I'm Natalie, and I've started this blog as a way to get all the happiness in my life onto paper and hopefully into others' lives as well.  It has taken me a long time to get to the place I am now, and I want to take advantage of that journey as best I can.

I want to share the loves of my life with the world - my family, my cats, my love of food and wine and travel and adventures (suburban and abroad).  I have such a difficult time with introductions - I think I'll dive right in instead. :)