Sunday Runday??

I woke up this morning with every intention of heading to the gym and getting a run in....but my legs had other plans. Ouch. Apparently I pushed it a little too hard yesterday and Friday because my legs are KILLING me today! So, I decided to stay home and do a workout with my new favorite piece of workout equipment, a resistance band! I have been taking strength training classes at the gym for a few years so I am no stranger to a resistance band but somehow I had never thought to buy one for myself!

I live in an apartment with not a lot of extra space for exercise equipment. As much as I would love to have a home gym one day, it's just not practical right now. I don't know why it took me so long to decide that getting a resistance band was an awesome idea! You can work out every part of your body with it and you pretty much make it as easy or hard as you want so you don't have to have different weights like with dumbbells. And when I am done, it will fit in a drawer to be stored! So yesterday I picked one up at Target and played around with it last night and came up with some pretty challenging moves! And at only $10 I would say it was a pretty good investment!

Today is my mother-in-law's birthday so we will be spending most of the day in Muncie visiting her and then visiting my family. Should be a great day with my husband and family :)

Now I am off to drink my coffee, watch Fashion Police (a guilty pleasure of mine) and do an arms and shoulders workout! Happy Sunday to all!!

A new day.

I am a firm believer in listening to your body. For the last few days mine has been complaining to me about the way it has been treated and yesterday it went into full-on revolt mode. I have eaten well or exercised very much at all for the last week or so. I have just been so busy (not a valid excuse, I know) and every time I turn around there is some kind of party or celebration telling me that it's ok because it's an occasion!

Yesterday started out by me not eating breakfast. Great start to the day. I instead just filled myself with what I am pretty sure was extra-super-duper caffeinated coffee from the gas station (instead of my normal half-caff from home) and got to work on my checklist of things to accomplish at work. By 9:00 I was so amped up on caffeine that I could barely sit still. I was also starving by 11:00. I decided to go to Noble Romans with a co-worker for lunch where I got a personal pepperoni pizza and breadsticks with cheese. Another great choice. By 2:30 I was really starting to feel icky. I was dizzy, sweaty, nauseous and could barely form a sentence because my thoughts were so frazzled. I left work an hour early and went home and rested.

I woke up this morning feeling infinitely better. I know my body pretty well and I know that it cannot tolerate greasy foods very much at all and that is pretty much all I have been eating. My health as well as my waistline has suffered from it. As I post this, I am drinking my half-caff coffee (which I am now able to drink with only half a packet of Stevia in it) and eating a Van's whole grain waffle with Dark Chocolate Dreams peanut butter on it. For lunch I will be having a reduced sodium chicken soup with crackers and an apple and I have a frozen greek yogurt for an afternoon snack. Hopefully I will have my poor body back into the swing of things by the end of this week.

I am, unfortunately, drawn to greasy fast food much more than I am whole, healthier foods. I wish I weren't like this but I am. Every day is a struggle for me to be healthy and fit. I sometimes feel that I am the only one who struggles with this at this extreme level. I know I am not but I oftentimes feel that way. So, I will keep pushing on and taking things day by day!

The Ball and Biscuit

Side note--please excuse the quality of my photos at the present time. :( They are currently all being taken with my iPhone. Hopefully this will be changing shortly!!

Interesting title for a blog post? Well "interesting" is exactly what I thought the first time I heard about this restaurant in downtown Indianapolis. Over the past few years, Grant and I have grown to love and appreciate local restaurants. Growing up in Muncie and with parents who aren't exactly "foodies", we were pretty much only exposed to chain restaurants and fast food when we dined out. As we grew up and branched out a little bit, we discovered just how awesome of an experience dining out can be.

As soon as Grant heard about The Ball and Biscuit, he was talking about going there. I didn't know much about it and quite frankly, I was terrified of going downtown so I was deterred from trying this new place at first. When I moved to Muncie I felt like I had moved to "the big city" so driving on one-way streets on small, narrow roads was very scary to me. And there is also the fact that I have never parallel parked in my life. Yes, people, you heard right. I somehow managed to skip that class in drivers ed. and when I took my driving test we were conveniently in the middle of an ice storm (were my parents crazy??) and the instructor let me slide on the parallel parking and to this day I have never done it. So anyways, back to the restaurant :)

The unusual name for the restaurant actually comes from the name of an old microphone, the STC 4021. The microphone received this name because of it's unusual shape and less than exciting formal name. The owners of the restaurant, Zach Wilks and Trevor Belden, liked the idea of the homage to vintage music and therefore The Ball and Biscuit was founded. While it is a bar and you do have to be 21 to get in, it definitely has more of the laid back vibe of a lounge rather than a rowdy bar. It was fairly early when Grant and I got there last weekend, around 5:30. We went there to eat as well as to enjoy cocktails and I wanted to really be able to see the place and take in the atmosphere.

We chose to sit at a table in the more open area of the bar. The front of the restaurant is 2 large windows which were opened up and looked out onto Mass Ave. It was an absolutely gorgeous evening.

B&B Champagne Cocktail

St. Germaine Elderflower Liqueur stirred with The Bitter Truth Orange Bitters and House Bubbles

We started out with cocktails. I chose one of their signature cocktails, the B&B Champagne Cocktail. It was delicious. I love champagne and the subtle taste of orange was delicious!

Bulleit Bourbon and Coke

Grant chose a more traditional cocktail, Bulleit Bourbon and Coke. I didn't try it, but he said it was wonderful :)

Their menu consists of small plates meant for sharing. We decided on 3 different plates, the Po Boys sandwiches, Creole mac and cheese and a cheese plate. The verdict??

Trio of Po Boys sandwiches

These sandwiches were amazing! One each of pulled pork, chicken and beef served on a toasted bun topped with cole slaw and chipotle mayo. Yum. We each ate half of each sandwich but I could have easily eaten all three myself!

Creole Mac and Cheese

This mac and cheese was spicy and delicious! We are pretty big fans of mac and cheese in general and this one definitely tops the list! It had just the right amount of spice to it without making your nose run!

3 cheese plate

The cheese plate? Sadly, I was underwhelmed. Maybe I just have too high of expectations when it comes to cheese (I could never be vegan) but from the presentation to the overall taste of the cheese and crackers it was just very sub par. We chose a Spanish goat cheese, taleggio, and an aged cheddar and it came with a jam on the side. The aged cheddar was probably my favorite which was surprising to me because I very much enjoy goat cheese. The crackers were somewhat tasteless and just really didn't accompany the cheese very well. But overall, our meal and experience was fantastic! 

Whether you are wanting a delicious meal or just a place to relax and enjoy a couple drinks with friends, The Ball and Biscuit is a wonderful place to do it!

Crazy, crazy life!

Last weekend and the past few days have been crazy! I feel like my life never slows down lately. Every time I feel like I am about to get a break it gets crazy again! 

Saturday night I took my husband out on a surprise "progressive date". We went to 4 different locations then came back home to carve pumpkins. I have already shared one part of the date in my Harmony Winery post. I will be going into more detail about some of the other local gems that we visited in later posts :) I think it is so important to take time to go on dates after you get married or even after you have been together for a long time. Grant and I both work a lot and we don't see each other every night so sometimes it can be hard to plan together time. Having a Saturday night together is very rare so when I heard that was happening I jumped right on it! I read somewhere that when you can no longer laugh together then you know the relationship is going downhill. If that is true then we should be heading uphill for a while! We have so much fun together. I am often amazed that we can still have so much to talk about and laugh about when we have been together for so long. We have been dating for almost 7 years and married for a little over 2. He truly is the love of my life. 

Anyways, on to a less mushy topic :) On Sunday I spent most of the day lounging around. I had every intention of getting to the gym but unfortunately that didn't work out :( Sunday evening I headed to Muncie for a birthday dinner for my sister. She turned 21 yesterday! It was a lot of fun to have dinner with my family and get to spend time with them. I have the best family ever!

Sorry about the somewhat generic post today but this week at work is month-end week where we close out the previous month and that always results in long hours and stressful days so I haven't had time to sit down and put together a post about some of the other places I visited! For now, here are a few of the pictures from my adventures this weekend.

Beautiful flowers at the Carmel Farmer's Market

My delicious produce that I brought home from the farmer's market.

Homemade salsa!

Beautiful sunset over the canal downtown Indianapolis.