Coconut Oil Benefits

I know that most people have been on the coconut bandwagon and everyone has been doing posts on it, but here is a fun piece I did a little while back to share for those who have never given this amazing product a try :) be sure to check it out!

Coconut Oil Benefits

Adorable kids clothing

While I was bored taking a lunch break I started browsing around and stumbled across this adorable kids clothing website that is totally reasonably priced as well.  My little nugget is 16m now and we have worn through most of our summer clothes and a lot of our generous hand me downs.  I'm super excited to start shopping for the fall!  She is a little young for most of these, but I will totally keep this site in mind for the future!  Here are some of the things I am looking at for Nolyn.  Here is the website where you can purchase all of this!  Cotton on

Camo pants

Every fashion blog you read and every magazine you see camo is the craz for this fall.  Of course all the camo I rocked back in college I have disposed of, so I decided to cave and purchase some.  There are a few boutiques around me that are selling some great items, and I decided to go with a pair of pants to start off.  I bought these bad boys from Gap, but here are some other awesome things I am loving right now.  Oh and PS Gap has a 35% off sale that ends TODAY!

These two items above can be found at Lavendar Boutique!  You can purchase them online here 

Best healthy on the go snacks

Let's be honest.  I love to snack, but I have been working hard to find healthy snack alternatives so I don't feel as guilty afterwards.  I have a problem when eating that once I start I have to finish all of what's in front of me.  It's what we like to call mindless eating.  When running errands or while I'm out and about I like to keep snacks in my bag to fight the temptation to go through a drive through and eat junk.  Here are some of my favorite healthy snacks that I like to take with me.

Here are some more great options!

New favorite dress

Even though the summer is winding down I am still making some summertime dress purchases especially since so many of them are on sale now!  I have been doing a lot more filming with my job, and have been trying to find some fun new outfits with colorful prints to add to my wardrobe since it looks good on camera.  The other day when I was in Target I did my usual browsing in the clothing section (I can never get out of there without something in my hands) and stumbled across this dress.  I am in love!  It is super cute and can be worn casually, or dress it up.  I loved it so much that I went back and bought it in pink as well.  Adam and I had a dinner last night that I wore it to, and put a waist belt.  To top it off, in stores it's on sale right now for $12.48.  Hope everyone has a good weekend!

Here is the link to this dress-

Rosemary quinoa with tomato and cucumber

Recently my awesome sister in law as a gift bought us a gift card to this local vegan organic food company in Charlotte called Nourished where you can pick out various meal plans for the week.  This definitely helped kickstart our healthy eating even more and gave me some ideas for new recipes that I wouldn't normally tryout.  One of the things we got was this incredible quinoa salad which made me want to test out eating it a little more.  While I did say that we are trying to cut our carbs out, quinoa is a similar to a grain, but not quite in the grass family.  It also contains a good amount of protein and amino acids which many vegetarians substitute for a protein.

I've been trying hard to branch out and create new things and recently bought some boxed quinoa with rosemary which is super easy and fast to cook.  The box made about four servings so we got two meals out of it and also fed our baby girl some as well.  I diced up cucumbers and tomato's as well and mixed those in and it was the perfect light summer lunch.

I am a pretty big eater so this wasn't quite enough for an entire meal for me so I also had a side of cottage cheese :)

All you need is a tomato, cucumber and box of flavored quinoa.

Happy healthy eating!  Enjoy!

Healthy Alternatives- Cucumber sammy'

As some of you know, my husband was recently diagnosed with testicular cancer which many of you can imagine rocked our world over night.  While Adam has been super strong through this entire thing, we have become very pro-active in continuing our healthy lifestyle.  A friend of Adam's had informed him that cancer cells feed on carbs and refined sugar, so we are trying to be extra good about eliminating it as much as we can.  I won't lie, we have our cheat moments when we like to crush a large pizza.

I know a lot of people are trying to cut carbs out of their lives as much as they can too, so I figured I would share some recent things that have been on the menu.

Today's lunch:

Cucumber sammy's!

All you need is a cucumber, tomato, turkey bacon, turkey, cheese.  Basically all your favorite sandwich items, just substitute the bread for cucumbers.  Today I made us two different kinds:

1) Cucumber, bacon, tomato and veganaise

2) Cucumber, turkey, cheese, mustard and veganaise

Balsamic would be a good flavor burst if you don't like mayo or mustard.  Next time I'm going to throw some avocado on there as well!  Happy eating!