Harry & David Pears!

Right now I'm sitting in the airport and couldn't be happier - I finished my last final exam yesterday and am FREE for the holidays!! I can honestly say that I've never worked harder for anything in my life and accomplishing what I did this quarter is something I'm really proud of.

There were a few things that definitely got me through finals week - coffee, dance parties with my amazing roomies, living in sweatpants, quick treadmill runs to bust stress, and PACKAGES! Y'all know that packages are some of my favorite things ever.

My momma sent me a finals survival care package with lots of goodies. She even included two CDs for dance party breaks (she knows me so well ;) which definitely came in handy!!

I also received a box of Harry & David freshly-picked pears to try out. When the company kindly contacted me to see if I would be willing to review some of their fruit, I immediately said yes!

I've been living off of bananas over here (you don't even want to know how many bananas I ate this quarter) so I was dying for some good fruit. I'd heard so many good things about Harry & David through friends and other blogs and couldn't wait to try the fruit out for myself!

I received a box of the Royal Riviera Pears, which are the most popular fruit that Harry & David harvests. And now I know why they're so popular - these were literally the best pears I have ever eaten.  The pears were perfectly soft, sweet, juicy, and all-around fantastic. I needed at least 5 napkins just to eat one pear because they were so juicy!

You know how some people say that they are perfectly fine with eating just fruit for dessert? Normally I would never say that, cause this girl's got a huge sweet tooth and loves her baked goods. But these pears were so good I would consider them dessert-worthy. They were the perfect late-night study snack for finals, too!

I even shared a few pears with a couple of friends and one of them proclaimed the pear to be the best thing she'd eaten in weeks. I definitely agree with that statement!

And that golden pear that they include in every box? I saved it for last and had it today on the way to the airport. I gotta say it was the best of the bunch ;-)

I've been eyeing lots of other goodies on the website and there are so many that would make a really great gift for the holidays - there's even up to 25% off on certain holiday gifts! I'm thinking about getting another box of pears for my family as part of their Christmas gift (okay, okay.. I just really want more fruit)

Thank you, Harry & David! 

Disclaimer: I received this box of fruit free of charge. All opinions are my own. 

WIAW: 10th Week & My First Barbell Competition

hi friends! happy WIAW!


i don't have any healthy recipes for ya (but will have plenty when i go home!), but i did actually take pictures of most of my food yesterday - so here's a mostly full day of eats for me!

breakfast: cereal, banana, milk, and a few sips of {awful} coffee. i cannot wait to drink good coffee at home again!

midmorning snack: roasted almonds while studying in the library. chemistry, i hate you.

lunch: whole wheat sandwich with turkey, lettuce, tomato, and dijonaise, an apple, and SoBe Lean.

i also grabbed an {unpictured} nonfat no sugar added mocha as a treat on the way to class. i'm addicted to these things and don't really care about the whole fake sweetener thing. i tried to look it up online once to make sure there wasn't anything crazy weird in the drink {the cafe on campus is coffee bean & tea leaf} but then realized i was still going to drink them anyway so it didn't really matter. i'm weird like that.

afternoon snack: animal crackers (real ones! not those weird cookie things.. anyone else know what i'm talking about?) while doing my reading. it was only a buck for a bag of them at target! i put them into individual baggies so that i wouldn't plow through the whole bag in one study session.

workout: yesterday was my first ever IFT barbell competition! i almost chickened out but i am so glad that i went since it turns out that i won't be able to make the second half of the competition on thursday.

yesterday we did deadlifts and pull-ups & we got three attempts to get our heaviest weight. since i wasn't quite sure how much i could lift, i started with 135# for the deadlift and worked my way up to 160# (which was my 3rd attempt). i think i probably could've done 5-10 pounds more but i am so proud of that!

for the pull-ups, girls were supposed to do as many pull-ups as they could consecutively or do a negative (where you start at the top of pull-up position and lower yourself as slowly as possible) for as long as they can. i haven't exactly attempted a full on pull-up yet and i didn't want to screw up the form, so i did a negative and held it for 40 seconds! i was so proud of that - i hung on longer than any of the other girls in my class (there were ones in other classes that did 45 seconds i think) and everyone was cheering each other on which was so cool. makes me sad that i won't be able to make it tomorrow!

post workout: almond butter + chocolate chips. i should've grabbed something with a lot of protein but i reeeally wanted nut butter! it is what it is.

dinner: plate 1: steamed broccoli and cauliflower, some sort of chicken & spinach salad, and a barley salad.

plate 2: veggie pizza with parmesan cheese, a cup of milk, and a half decaf half hot chocolate mix.

{unpictured: small cup of plain vanilla froyo with sprinkles, and then a piece of AMAZING yellow butter cake with raspberries and white chocolate buttercream that we had at bible study cause one of my leaders' birthdays is today! it was so freaking good. no regrets whatsoever about breaking my 'fruit for dessert' during the week rule.}

also, yesterday was probably the last day i'll actually have worn real clothes for the next 8 days..

cause the week of yoga pants is beginning! everyone knows it's perfectly acceptable to wear yoga pants and sweatpants 24/7 from now until christmas break ;-)

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thought of the day:

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have a wonderful wednesday everyone! 

Life is Crazy.

hello friends! happy monday! i hope you all had wonderful weekends :)

life has been quite crazy over here. ever since i got back from home a little over a week ago, i've been catching up on all the work i failed to do over thanksgiving (a girl's gotta get a break sometime!), catching up with all my friends, and most importantly, catching up on sleep.

recently i've been getting headaches a LOT more frequently than i used to. as in, every day kinda deal. i knew something had to be wrong and i started keeping a journal of possible triggers that could be causing the problem - workouts, food, caffeine (aka coffee), stress, sleep. i tried to fix the first three in the beginning, but when it came down to it, i discovered that i just needed more sleep. period. my body was used to having anywhere from 8-10 hours of sleep a night before i came to college and i just expected it to adapt to only having 6 or 7 without any problems.

i think it's crazy that it took me until 9th week to figure out the cause of the problem, but hey, at least i did eventually! ever since i've started going to bed earlier (i made a rule of 8 hours sleep minimum. don't care how much work needs to be done, going to bed is more important) i haven't had a single headache in over a week. big stuff, people!

in trying to figure out the cause of my headaches i've also tried to clean up my diet a little and eat more foods that energize me, and don't leave me in that post-meal slump. most of these eats are comin' your way tomorrow for a WIAW food dump post. haha :)






















on the workout side of things, last week i took things easy because i was nervous that doing high intensity workouts might have been part of what was causing my headaches. i went on quite a few runs with girls in my bible study, did the elliptical, and took a few rest days.

**just wanted to throw in a note here that if i wasn't able to figure out the cause of my headaches on my own, i was going to go to a doctor to make sure there wasn't a bigger problem**


but today i went back to my IFT class and did a totally kickass workout that i wanted to share with you guys! it was probably one of the hardest workouts i've done so far and it. was. awesome.

Source: Uploaded by user via Julianna on Pinterest

i used a 60# bar for my cleans, 2 15# dumbells for the thrusters, and the thickest resistance band for help on the pull-ups.

you could easily do this workout at home if you have a jumprope and kettlebells or dumbbells - just leave off the first exercise (cleans) and last exercise (pull-ups).

after the workout one of my instructors came over and told me that my cleans were looking really good (YAYYYY! i've been working on my form for so long now!) and asked if i was going to the competition tomorrow. IFT is very similar to CrossFit (not speaking from my own experience here, just what i've heard) and they have competitions here at UCLA at the end of every quarter to see how much you've improved since the beginning. if i'm not too sore from today's killer workout, then i think that i'll go tomorrow and see what i can do! i'm really excited for that.

post-workout fuel today: chicken caesar salad, milk, and a fruit cup. you gotta make do with the food to-go and this lunch was pretty good!

on that note i better get off to studying. 10th week = death week. quarter system peeps, ya feel me? i'm drowning in work over here and studying for finals is scary and overwhelming. i'm doing my best to not stress like crazy, focus, and get things done. but if i don't resurface until i'm home for christmas break, you'll know why! 11 more days of busting my butt and then i will be home and truly enjoying the christmas season. until then, michael buble will have to do ;)

what's the best workout you've done lately?