Saturday, August 27, 2016

Win some Shakeology!

Don't miss out! As I stated in my live Facebook video (you can watch below!), I'm giving away 2 Shakeology sample packs! Each pack includes a Shakeology bottle, and a vanilla, chocolate, and cafe latte shake packet! Visit the linked site to learn about all the awesome benefits of Shakeology. Contest is open to anyone in the U.S. who is not already a Beachbody customer. Contest runs now through midnight on September 3rd. Two winners will be selected to each win one Shakeology pack. Good luck!! :)

Just follow the prompts on the Rafflecopter widget to enter. You can enter daily by sharing my new Facebook page, Coaching by Kristy!


Wednesday, May 4, 2016

Ethan's {Lego Star Wars Themed} 7th Birthday Party

I'm starting to fall behind here, but figured what better day than "May the Fourth be with You" Day to share about Ethan's Star Wars Lego themed birthday parties this year! I haven't updated you about Ethan's 7th year yet either (hopefully I will soon!), but here are the details (finally) from his parties 2 months ago. Better late than never, right??

He had a Lego Movie theme last year, and Star Wars the year before that, so I guess this was a good mix of the two. ;) Definitely two of his most favorite things anyway! First on the agenda, the invitations. Ethan ended up having three different parties (and I wonder why my boys are spoiled?!?) this year, so I had to make several versions of the invite. The first party was with his classmates from school. We had it at a local bowling alley/laser tag venue. The kids loved it and it was super easy for me! I just showed up with cupcakes and favors and that was it. The kids ate pizza, bowled for awhile, played arcade games, then played a game of laser tag. Tons of fun.


His next party was at our house with my family. My niece, Hannah, had just turned 4 a couple weeks before Ethan's birthday, so we had a fun combined party for the two of them. Luckily, they both love Star Wars and legos, so it made for a fun dark side/light side theme. :) I just printed on both sides of the invite. And yes, as you can see, I have entirely too much fun putting the kids' faces on invites (like I did with Noah and the firetruck a couple years ago). Haha! I used their favorite characters and made them each into tiny legos as well. His final party was with Josh's parents the following weekend. We were all partied out by mid-March, and still recovering a bit now. ;)


To decorate the house,  I made a custom banner that read "Happy 7th Birthday Ethan" using the same theme from the invites. Ethan and I worked together to create the banner, selecting characters for each letter - i.e., Han Solo for H, Admiral Ackbar for A, etc. You can see all the characters below. I strung the pendants together with black yarn and used black glittery cardstock for the spacers. It worked well and looked great! For Hannah, I made one that said "Hannah is 4!" :)
For the party favors, I lucked out and found huge bubble wands that were red and blue light sabers at the dollar spot at Target. Perfect! I made little tags to tie to the handles. Amos was a big fan of those, so I'll let him model them. ;)


This year, I made simple cupcakes for his party with friends. Half had black wrappers and half had silver. The frosting was decorated with edible spray-on color in silver or black. For his party with my family, I made death star cake pops. I hadn't made cake pops in a looooong time, and they are something I still need to work on. :/ They still tasted great though, so no one seemed to mind their lumpiness. :)


The following week, I went back to cupcakes. I had finally received some molds I ordered, so I used candy melts to make Darth Vader and stormtrooper heads to decorate the cupcakes. Yay sugar!


I made light sabers out of the napkins, forks and spoons again. I had done this for his other Star Wars party as well. I found cute Star Wars plates (simple black with silver writing) at Target, as well as the coordinating tablecloth. Unfortunately, most of the pictures I took didn't turn out great because we had just purchased our new camera and I was apparently having focusing issues. Sigh. 

I love a good pun, so for the dinner menu, Ethan and I chose:
  • Pizza the HUTT (Jabba the Hutt)
    • CHEWIE'S cheese pizza (Chewbacca)
    • SITH 'shroom pizza (a sith)
    • HAN'S Hawaiian pizza (Han Solo)
    • VADER'S veggie pizza (Darth Vader)
  • BOBA-que chips (Boba Fett)
  • PRINCESS Lays (Princess Leia)
  • FALCON fruit (Millenium falcon)
  • g-REY-pe sabers (Rey)
  • DROIDIKA dip (a droidika)
  • DEATH STAR cake pops (the death star)
  • JAR JAR drinks (Jar Jar Binks) - drinks were served in mason jars
    • Milk in a JAR JAR
    • JANGO mango juice (Jango Fett)
    • LUKE skywater (Luke Skywalker)

Here are some pics of the birthday boy enjoying his THREE parties!! :)


The final item to take care of was the thank you notes. I made a simple flat 4" x 6" card for his friends and added his pic with the present since he opened them at home instead of at his party. :)


Happy 7th Birthday to our biggest little man!








All items you see above are available for customization and purchase through my Etsy shop. You can also visit my website, or find me on Facebook.

Tuesday, April 5, 2016

Beachbody Update!

I haven't been very good about blogging lately. I still need to post about Ethan's 7th birthday...that was over a month ago now!! It's been pretty busy around here lately. I'm hoping to get caught up soon though.

So I recently took the plunge and signed up to be a Beachbody coach!! I figured that I love the products so much that I should go ahead and do it, getting myself the coach's discounts, and creating the opportunity to help others find health & fitness again like I have. I truly believe that if I can do this, anyone can do this. Before starting last October, I hadn't done a "workout" since college. And yeah, I'm not 23 anymore! ;) It wasn't easy at first (I had to drag myself up and down stairs for a week or so), but now that I've found a routine, it's kind of like second nature to get up and do my workout before starting my day. I've found that it helps wake me up, gets me moving, instead of feeling like I am dragging all day, and puts me in a better mood. Add on top of that the fact that I'm burning calories, and I'd say it's a win. I love that most of the workouts are just 30 minutes or so. While getting up at 5:30 am is fun and all, I don't want to have to drag my booty out of bed any earlier than that! Some people love going to the gym, the social aspect of it all. Me, not so much. I'm an introvert at heart, and frankly, I prefer to sweat in the privacy of my own home. These workouts are perfect for me. I prefer to have Autumn push me through the TV screen than have a trainer breathing down my neck.

Now that I'm 6 months in to my journey, I've completed 3 rounds of the 21 day fix, 3 rounds of the 21 day fix extreme, an 8-week round of PiYo, and another couple weeks of the 21 day fix extreme. I also did a Beachbody 3-Day Refresh at the beginning of the year, and I continue to drink Shakeology every day. I'm in better shape than I've been since I was rowing my freshman/ sophomore years of college, and I now weigh less than I did both before kids and before I got married!! Things are distributed a little differently than they used to be, but I'm working on that. ;) As you can see, a huge change from where I was 6 months ago. I'm down 23 pounds and 11 inches (measuring shoulder, chest, waist, hips, one thigh, and one calf). I still have some problem areas to work on, but the proof is in the pics. This "diet" and exercise routine works. That's what I love most about it - it's not a diet. It's eating a portioned amount of healthy, real foods. I don't feel hungry at the end of the day, or like I'm starving throughout the day. By spreading my meals/snacks out throughout the day, I keep blood sugar stable and energy levels up. I'm still working on the little cheats I keep finding on the weekends (my sweet tooth is a force to be reckoned with!!), but overall, I do a great job throughout the week at least.

As you can see, it's possible to lose weight without eating salads every day. I actually don't really even like salad that much. It's ok, and I'll eat it if I have to, but I've found that if I cook/roast my veggies, I actually love them, and I don't have to force them down.

With the 21-day fix, you're provided color-coded containers and you figure out how many calories you should eat based on your current weight. I'm currently in the 1500-1799 range (for a little bit longer at least!). Based on your calorie range, you are given a certain number of each container to eat. I get 4 green containers (veggies), 3 purple containers (fruits), 4 red containers (protein), 3 yellow containers (carbs), 1 blue container (healthy fats), 1 orange container (seeds/dressings), and 4 teaspoons (oils and such). I'm not very good about getting my orange containers in, but I normally get all of the others. This sample meal plan from my day one contains all of my containers for the day except the orange. As you can see, it is a TON of food!! No starving myself here! Here's my detailed meal plan for the day:

  • Breakfast (344 calories)
    • GREEN: sautéed bell peppers, onion, spinach
    • RED: 2 eggs, over easy
    • YELLOW: 1 slice whole grain toast
    • PURPLE: 2 clementines
    • TEASPOON: 1 tsp EVOO
  • Morning snack (176 calories)
    • GREEN: spinach
    • RED: 1 scoop vanilla Shakeology
    • FREE: 2 espresso ice cubes
  • Lunch (413 calories)
    • GREEN: roasted Brussels sprouts
    • YELLOW (2): quinoa
    • PURPLE: mixed fruit (grapes, raspberries, clementine)
    • TEASPOON: 1 tsp EVOO
  • Afternoon snack (436 calories)
    • PURPLE: Granny Smith apple
    • RED: vanilla Greek yogurt
    • BLUE: chopped walnuts
  • Dinner (225 calories)
    • GREEN: roasted broccoli
    • RED: Cajun sautéed shrimp
    • TEASPOON: 2 tsp EVOO
  • TOTAL: 4 green, 4 red, 3 yellow, 3 purple, 1 blue, 4 tsp; 1594 calories

To make things, easy, I actually eat these same items every Mon/Wed/Fri, only changing up the dinners for the rest of my family's sake. :) I do normally cook a carb for them to eat with dinner, but I try to eat all of my fruits and carbs before 6 pm, which means before dinner for me. Sometimes I will have a carb with dinner, but not as often.

Beachbody is currently doing a #summerstrong challenge through the end of May. I am completing the 21-day fix extreme for this, but there are other exercise program options as well. Once I finish this, I'm planning to start either the T-25 program with Shaun T (the P90X guy), or the Master's Hammer & Chisel with Autumn and Sagi. There are so many great options depending on the type of workout you're wanting. I'm so happy I made the decision last fall to let Coach Fraley start me off on my journey and I can't wait to start helping others in my situation, too!! Contact me, visit my Beachbody website, or comment below, if you'd like more info! I'm getting my body beach-ready, are you?? ;)

October 2015                        March 2016