Skinny Biatch - READ!

I mentioned after we got back from Florida that I finished reading Skinny Bitch but I never got a chance to share my thoughts on it. Until now. I also wanted to have some time after reading the book to implement some of their strategies into my daily life before I reviewed it. I don't have time to go into major details and thoughts on it - I'll let you all be the judge after you read it! But I will say a couple things. This is my kind of book. I really enjoyed how Rory and Kim wrote this book...it kept my attention and had me laughing on almost every page. You really have to have a sense of humor while reading this and hopefully you don't mind a few cuss words every other paragraph.

This book stresses the importance of being a vegetarian and eating organically as much as possible to become a 'skinny bitch' and live a healthy life. I do agree with many of the chapters in this book, but I don't however obviously believe that you HAVE to be a vegetarian to be skinny. What I really took away from this book and often found myself shocked at (WITH the mouth open saying "OMG! Billy, I can't believe this!") were the parts about how the animals are killed (that was extremely difficult to read), what chemicals actually go into the meat you eat, what information the FDA hides from you, artificial sweetners, and the chapter on pooping. Yes, pooping. dropping the kids off at the pool. Billy even read a few chapters in this book after I kept reading certain lines to him and he too was shocked. It's an eye opening book that's for sure.

I knew right after I finished this book that I wanted to make some MAJOR changes. I already do eat pretty healthy and buy a lot of organic produce, but I wanted to make more of a change...

I decided that I'm going to try and become a vegetarian. I'm not saying I will forever be a vegetarian, or that I'm giving up meat completely, but I haven't ate it since and I feel wonderful. The only thing I am going to eat is fish..but I am going to limit it to maybe once a week since I am just starting off. I have noticed a significant difference in how much more energy I have and even how much better I'm sleeping at night.

My first step to this change was to CLEAN out our pantry and refrigerator. CLEAN HOUSE you could say. I threw away all baking items that aren't good for you (white flour, sugar, etc) and organized our pantry by putting the healthy things in front on eye-level shelves and the not-so-good foods (I threw out most though..sorry Billy) on the higher shelves. I absolutely love that I did this and would recommend this to anyone. We then went to Whole Foods and stocked up on all organic items..fruits, veggies, hummus, yogurt, beans, quinoa, agave nectar (to replace sugar), and the list goes on. We pretty much bought out a lot of Whole Foods. One of the small lessons I took away from the book is that spending the extra money to buy organic foods is worth it...you are what you eat. I spend tons of money on clothes, shoes, makeup, etc but I can't go the extra mile for my health?!

So let's fast forward to now. I haven't ate meat and I've only had fish (shrimp) once. Billy is still eating meat occasionally but he has actually been enjoying the vegetarian dishes I have made for dinner. I'm proud of him for cutting back a bit on meat. What am I making for dinner you ask? I will post some recipes next week, but I have been making a lot of veggie stir frys, black bean quesadillas (yumm!), and quinoa stuffed peppers. I never realized before how many options there are but there is.

I hope to continue with this vegetarian & eating natural/organic foods journey for a while so if you all are interested, I can continue updating you all. Hopefully this wasn't too boring to read, but I felt it was important to share as health is the #1 thing in my life and I wanted to document when I started this!

I would LOVE to hear from those of you who have read this book or those of you who are vegetarians now. And for those who arent..maybe this will inspire you to read the book! :)

and because no one likes a post without pictures...

have I mentioned how much I loveee avocado's? I could eat them by the spoonful. and I do.

have a great weekend!

xo. katie.

Big Week for the K's

Guess what today is?

6 months ago today I married my best friend!!!!
you know, the one that put up with me being a stage 5 clinger for a year before we started dating.  

We're halfway to 1 year..big deal people, big deal. 

I am so lucky to be married to Billy. He really is the best guy I know and I love being able to call him my husband. When I say best guy, I mean it. When Billy and I first started talking, I changed my name in his phone to "Best Girl". I would be lying if I said I just did it to be cute & different, I had intentions. I mean, so many other girls would call him all the time..I wanted to let them know he had a "Best girl". Take that girls..I thought. Well, much to my surprise, he kept me in his phone as Best girl and put up with the occasional teasing from his boys about it. He then put himself as "Best guy" in my phone. Only fair. To this day, we are still Best guy and Best girl to each other and I'm not sure if we will ever change it. 

I'm going to keep this short and sweet because I don't want to bore you all to the max...

Billy,

Thank you for being an amazing husband to me. Thank you for...taking Rocky out at night when I'm too tired to get off the couch. for making me laugh. for vacuuming all the time because you know I hate it. for putting up with my mood swings and constant need for dark chocolate and wine. for being you. for always telling me you love me even if we only leave each other for 5 minutes. for always believing in me and wanting the best for us. I love you more and more everyday.

Now that I got that out...

We have a pretty fun week ahead of us! 

We leave for Florida on Wednesday
&

Billy {and his twin sis} is turning 27 on Thursday!

 

I'm so excited to celebrate his birthday in Florida and take him out for a nice dinner on the beach. I have been casually checking stalking the weather like a mad woman and it looks beautiful - 80. 80. 80. I'm not sure if I remember what 80 degrees feels like. I may just be the happiest person in the world when I step off that plane and get the first glimpse of the beach.

This weekend we went to our local Borders because they are closing so they are having a big sale on all their books. I picked up some new reading material for our trip. 

I got these 2 books (for only $20 total):

and...

{can't wait to read this with the movie coming out soon!}

and...obviously I just had to get a mani/pedi too {my toes thank me} for all the cute sandals and flip flops I plan to be wearing. 

I went with one of my favorite colors...

Cajun Shrimp.

 

Now, tonight the plans are to hopefully get most of my packing done and errands ran that need to be run before we leave. You know how that goes.

Here's to hoping I can fit all my clothes/shoes/other random womanly neccessities into one bag. I am what you call an extreme OVERPACKER. 
 Once or maybeee multiple times...my bag weighed in at a whopping 49.3 lbs. Who does that?! It's not like I'm packing for a 3 week trip either. 

Maybe I'll try and cut it down a bit this time...

nah, maybe next time.

 

Have a great Monday!

Weekend Recap

Happy Monday everyone! How was your weekend?

This weekend we spent a lot of time with my family celebrating birthdays and having an all around good time! :) Friday night Billy and I had date night and went and saw this...

We loved it. If you haven't seen it yet, I definitely recommend it. It is one of my favorite movies that we have seen in a while!! We laughed so hard during it and not to mention Ashton is very easy on the eyes. My favorite part was when Ashton made Natalie Portman (I can't remember their character names at the moment) the "period" CD. That was absolutely hilarious. I may have to buy it when it comes out on DVD :)

Last week I asked for book recommendations - thank you to everyone who gave me some! I wrote a bunch of them down so I can read them in the future. I decided to go with "The Girl Who Played With Fire" by Stieg Larsson.

I read the first book "The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo" in the Fall and enjoyed it so I figured I would continue on with the series. Have any of you read this book yet? I hope it's good!

On a completely other random note {thanks Jess}...is anyone else grabbing the remote as quickly as possible when the ASPCA animal commercials come on?!

Did ASPCA know that it was 'my time of the month' last week because I feel like the commercial was on every channel I turned on? I got teary eyed each time I saw it so I then resorted to hitting the "mute" button or changing the channel. It is so hard for me to watch/see all those innocent sad dog (ok, and cat) faces. If I thought I could handle more dogs, I would love to help them out but I think I would turn into one of those crazy dog ladies and I'm pretty sure I don't want to be on the next episode of Animal Hoarders...

love pom's. so stinkin cute.

Lastly, I ate entirely way too many sweets this weekend that when I was at my parents house last night for the Super Bowl I took 30 minutes and went on the tredmill in the basement and ran 3 miles because I felt so awful {brownies..a red velvet cupcake..chocolate covered raisins here and there..ice cream..whoaaa.} I think it's safe to say the gym is going to kick my butt this week!

Now if only I could look this good while eating all the sweets... sigh.

Thoughts for Thursday...Book Rec's Please!

I <3 Thoughts for Thursday!

It's great that I can put together all my random, interesting, useless facts to share with you in one post! Go link up with Carolyn & share yours!

#1. Earlier this week I finished the book Water For Elephants...

Let's just say: One of my favorite books..hands down.

It had me hooked from the beginning not wanting to put it down. I am a huge animal lover so I really enjoyed all the circus parts. At times, it made me wish I could go back in history and work on a circus! You know, besides living on a train and only having one pair of clothes. (What would I do without my hair straightener?!) Not very glamorous, but a girl can dream. I don't want to disclose too much information about the book because I know some of you are either reading it or will be reading it...

but if you haven't read this book yet: GO OUT (or download to your fancy Kindle's) AND BUY IT NOW! :)

Besides, you still have time to read it before the movie comes out.

RPatz......

Reese Witherspoon......

I CAN'T WAIT!

#2. So now that I'm done with the book...I need each and every one of you girls to give me AWESOME recommendations for the next book I should read.

What books have you read lately and enjoyed?!

I want to go out over the weekend and get one so please share with me any good reads you have!!!

#3.  I have gotten around 10 recipes so far from the email recipe exchange I participated in. I love it! I got it from a friend and basically you send any recipe to the person you got it from and then add your name to the bottom of the list and send it out to 20 people.

In the end, depending on how many people participate, you only sent out 1 recipe but should get around 20 recipes! Awesome idea!

#4.  I am much more happy with 7+ hours of sleep.

#5. Why do people not accelerate when getting ON the highway?

That just drives me up a wall!!!

 You need to go the SAME speed as the traffic so that when you merge you don't get hit from behind! Why is this such a hard concept?

That's all for today!

XOXO..