Some of my favorite things right now

This week I was determined to only spend 30 dollars on groceries.  I usually do my grocery shopping on Mondays, so yesterday I went out and took 30 dollars cash with me and only spent 30 dollars!  It was a miracle.  I am trying to budget better so we can have more money for uhhhh vacations duh what else would we save for?  

this sun dried tomato pesto at walmart for about 2 dollars is so delicious and I add it to couscous.  

I found organic lettuce at the superstition farmers market today for $1 each.  I was so excited!  It made my day.  I love a good deal

I love making my own peanut butter.  It's so easy and a lot cheaper.  Just add honey roasted peanuts to a food processor/blender (blendtec or vitamix) and mix with desired amount of peanut oil depending on how creamy you want your peanut butter to be.  

I love these measuring cups I got from anthropologie

Walmart now sells organic eggs for only about 3.20 per dozen.  I am loving walmart lately.  I got this egg crate at anthropologie too

This ice cream is so delicious and dairy free.  I try to stay away from dairy as much as possible. 

I love trying new healthy cookbooks from the library.  This one was pretty good.  She has a couple of good recipes I tried.  She's a little bit too extreme vegan for me.  I didn't recognize a lot of the ingredients in her recipes.  

Healthier cupcakes.  I love finding new dessert recipes and making them my own.  These were really good.  I will put the recipe on my next post.  

Make Your Own Gym for $100

I love finding new workout equipment to add to my little gym I made for myself.  Craigslist is definitely the way to go with most workout equipment.  You can get weights for more than half off.  This is a list of my top 5 workout items for making your own gym.  It will cost you only 100 dollars to make your own gym.  

Resistance band: $10 walmart

apex workout bench: $39 walmart

Pull up bar: walmart $19

40 Pound Weight set: walmart $20

Stability ball: $10 

 These are a couple things that I want to get soon:

wall ball: I use this every day at cross fit.  I want one so I can start doing cross fit at home.  

Kettle ball: also used every day at cross fit.  I found one for 35 dollars at walmart

Power tower: I found one on craigslist for 80, but I'll have to save up for this and find somewhere to put it.

Resistance band that hooks in door.  Walmart: $20

Since I started doing cross fit I realized that you don't even need a gym membership, in fact I get a better work out without one.  At the gym I would never sweat as much as I would at cross fit.  I like to make my own workouts I can do at home.  When we were at Lake Powell last weekend I made my sisters do cross fit with me on top of the house boat.  They were sore the rest of the trip and hated me haha.  

Here is my work out for the day!

-cardio: 30 minutes (swim laps) since I am obsessed with watching swimming on the olympics right now

-cross fit: 30 minutes

Here is the cross fit at home work out:

Warm up: Complete 2 rounds of:

-20 push ups

-20 squats

30 sit ups

100 jump ropes

The Work out: Put a timer on for 20 minutes and complete as many rounds as possible

-20 pull ups

-50 lunges (25 on each leg)

-30 sit ups

-10 burpees

-10 knees to chest

-20 leg raises

Notes:

what you will need for the work out: A pull up bar (20 dollars at walmart) or do push ups instead of pull ups.  For the pull ups I get a jumping start so that I can actually do 20 of them.  

Here are some videos of the exercises:

Knees to chest exercise:

burpees:

  

New Favorite Drink

We have been at Lake Powell this past weekend.  I wish I could stay there an entire month each Summer.  It is one of my favorite places in the World.  I spent so many hours paddle boarding.  The house boat we stayed on had four paddle boards so whenever we weren't on the boat I took a paddle board out.  This is the first lake trip I have been on that I surfed more than wakeboarded on the lake.  My dad just bought a brand new wake surfboard and we had a blast trying to learn tricks on it.  
Check out this cool wakesurf youtube video.  I have been constantly watching youtube videos of pro wakesurfing.  I'm convinced that I need to go to the lake everyday so I can be a pro!  Its as good as surfing gets here in AZ.

This is my new favorite drink!  I hardly ever drink anything but water. Sometimes that gets a little boring.  

What you will need:
any kind of mineral water
crystal light pure pack
-Add half of a crystal light pure pack to your mineral water and mix! 
crystal light pure packs are sweetened with truvia which comes from a stevia plant.  This is an all natural sugar from a plant.  Definitely a better alternative to other sugary drinks.