The Name Game

Happy Tuesday morning to you all!

I hope you are having an awesome week so far and are getting psyched for the upcoming holidays!

Thanks so much for your understanding on Friday’s post. Some other bloggers decided to make Monday a Day of Silence, so I extended my silence as well. Today though, I’m ready to post!

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Now, I know that the holidays are a fun time- Buy presents, putting up decorations, and of course, spending time with family. At the same time though, these same things can cause a lot of stress. Presents are EXPENSIVE. Decorations can be a HASSLE. And family? Well, sometimes family can be downright IRRITATING.

So in light of all these stressors, how about a fun game to lift up your spirits?

This is hilarious—-Give it a Try!

(mother and fathers middle names)

Kay David

(first name of your mother’s dad, father’s dad)

Edward Oliver

(favorite color, favorite animal)

Pink Prairie Dog

(middle name, town where you were born)

Alexandra Mansfield

(2nd fav color, fav drink, add “THE” to the beginning)

The Blue Water

(fav ice cream flavor, fav cookie)

Cookie Dough Snickerdoodle

(1st pet’s name, street you grew up on)

Lizzie Sandusky

(first 3 letters of first name plus ‘izzle’)

Madizzle

(black, and the name of one of your pets)

Black Lilly

(name of your fav perfume/cologne, fav candy)

Vanilla Kit-Kat

Now, I’m supposed to tag 10 people, but really, I just want to tag all of you, and that’s what I’m going to do! Just try a few and put them in your next post. They are sure to bring a smile to your face, and really, aren’t the generated names pretty fitting?

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And now, my contribution to Sprint 2 The Table’s Strange But Good Round-Up.

Do you all remember my meatballs from a few WIAW’s ago? Well, personally I thought that they were very good. One ingredient. Plain and simple.

But… a few people thought that they were hideous, ugly even. Therein lies the “strange.”

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Now I’m off to make some banana ice cream, procrastinate on cleaning, and maybe, just maybe, put up the lights on our Christmas tree.

Then this afternoon I have a doctor’s appointment. Here’s to hoping we figuring something out.

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Did you participate in a day of blogging silence?

What is your “Street Name”?

What food do you like to eat that is Strange  But Good?

Liebster Award

So, I’ve been nominated twice in the past week for this Liebster Award by the lovely ladies at Keeping it Real Food and Nutritiously Sweet.

There are three different badges that I’ve seen for this award, and I’m going to just post them all here and you guys can decide which you like best:

According to Nutriously Sweet, a “Liebster” is German, meaning sweetest, kindest, nicest, dearest, beloved, lovely, kind, pleasant, valued, cute, endearing, and welcome.

Ready for some more survey fun? 

Here are the rules:

• Write 11 random facts about yourself
• Answer 11 questions given by the person who nominated you
• Create 11 new questions
• Nominate 11 bloggers
• Thank the person who nominated you and tell the people you’ve nominated

Random Facts About Me:

1. I would still say that my favorite food is peanut butter even though I haven’t had it in about six months and can’t even remember what it tastes like anymore. Sad but true.

2. My dad is 6’3″, my mom is 5’7″, and my brother is 6’2″. I’m only 5’6″ so I am the short one in the family.

3. One of my best friends and I are obsessed with Leonardo DiCaprio. We always manage to talk about him when we are together.

4. I played clarinet in high school and was in the color guard for marching band.

5. My favorite color is pink though I almost always wear blue or black (I only have 2 pink shirts in my closet at college).

6. I love making lists and time schedules for things to do when I’m done with class. I rarely stick to them.

7. (Never)homemaker was the first blog that I ever read. I stumbled across it when looking for a  chocolate cake recipe involving Greek yogurt.

8. I hate shoe shopping.

9. While I have a complete set of sheets and a very nice quilt on my bed, I actually sleep on top of them with just a fleece blanket. I’ve done this since middle school and my mom gets so annoyed.

10. I’m currently staring at my still unpacked bag of laundry from Sunday. I really don’t like hanging up clothes. (I actually just put my clothes away a few minutes ago…).

11. When I was little I taught myself to use Microsoft Office and would make PowerPoints and fake websites for “fun.”

11 Questions That I Have to Answer:

1. What are your desert island albums?  Wow Christmas, Lonestar‘s Let’s Be Us Again, and any Backstreet Boys/N Sync album.

2. How did you celebrate your last birthday? With a Scooby Doo Party!

3. What’s your favorite way to spend a day off? Reading, blogging, or watching a movie with my family.

4. Hot weather or cold weather? Err. I’m going to say hot weather because I don’t have very good circulation so my hands and feet are always really cold.

5. Do you have a “signature” dish you make? What is it? I am infamous in my family for making awesome things in the microwave. But there are a lot of other things that I can make well too like homemade pizza, cinnamon rolls, banana bread, sugar cookies, chili, chicken and dumplings, goulash, etc.

6. When you were younger, what did you want to be when you grew up? I always wanted to be a teacher like my mom, dad, and aunt.

7. Do you think all water tastes the same? No. Like Jessie said, Aquafina is terrible! It tastes all milky and weird. I also don’t like Nestle, but I can’t really remember why. My favorite bottled water is Deja Blue.

8. How many times have you moved in your life? Let’s see… First time to the house in town, Second time to the Apartment… Third time to the house in the country, and then Fourth time to college… Does college count? Ya. I think it does.

9. Blogging or Vlogging? Definitely blogging. I like making vlogs, but I much prefer to stay as “behind the scenes” as possible. Plus, videos aren’t flattering at all, especially to my voice.

10. First phrase that pops in your head when you hear “It’s snowing?” No School!

11. What’s your favorite fruit and vegetable? Favorite fruit is bananas, and favorite vegetable is butternut squash or zucchini. I can’t decide!

11 Questions for You to Answer:

1. What is your favorite brand and style of jeans? American Eagle Artist Jeans.

2. Do you prefer hot or cold beverages? Hot!

3. If you could marry one celebrity, who would you pick? Leonardo DiCaprio… Duh!

4. How many places have you lived? 5.

5. What is one bad habit that you want to break? Eating right before I go to bed.

6. What is your favorite “secret” guilty pleasure tv show? Vampire Diaries or Pretty Little Liars.

7. What was/is your favorite class in high school or college? Ethnic Studies.

8. If you could have one thing for free, no matter how big or small, what would you pick? The smartest doctor in the world on speed dial- free of charge everytime 🙂

9. Lake or ocean? Ocean.

10. Do you get dressed up even when you stay at home for the day? Not me!!

11. How many blogs do you read on a daily basis? A lot. Maybe twenty??

My Blogger Nominations: (These may be repeats… Sorry! It’s so hard to tell.)

1. Fueled By LOLZ

2. Clean Eats Fast Feets

3. Peachy Palate

4. After the Ivy League

5. Chasing Chels

6. Lisa Lately

7. Liv Lives Life

8. (Never)homemaker

9. A Spoonful of Sunshine

10. STUFT Mama

11. Loveolution

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Now for something that I just discovered today. Remember when I asked you all about GOMI awhile back? Well, apparently they decided that this picture from my WIAW was worth mentioning on their forums:

I believe some of the comments referred to these meatballs as “brains.” Ha. What’s funny is that’s exactly what I thought when taking the picture. They actually reminded me of one of the movies that I watched when I was younger- Spy Kids:

    It involved Antonio Banderez creating a “third brain” that would eventually be used to create robots that looked like his children. And that’s what you get…

I kind of want to know what their suggestions are though. My body reacts poorly to all types of grains, seasonings are basically out, and oils/nuts make my stomach want to curl into a ball and hide… What else could I do with ground turkey other than make burgers (which coincidentally involve oil)?

*Edited to add: I acknowledge that they probably just don’t know about my food allergies and serious digestive issues. I mean, why would they? I think all of you would have stopped reading by now if I posted an annoying disclaimer at the top of each post saying: “I have food allergies. My food is so plain; hear me roar!” 

Anywho… Time for questions!

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Answer one of the questions above.

What is the ugliest food that you’ve ever made? Might be hard to beat meatballs that look like brains, but we’ll just have to see about that.

Have Yourself a Merry Little Playlist (WIAW)

This is going to be a quick post today as I have a presentation tomorrow in my Business class, a speech on Thursday in my Critical Thinking class, and two exams next week to study for. WHOA.

In case you missed it, here is my last post for Marvelous in My Monday featuring “search terms.”

I wish I could say this week is going by fast, but it’s not. Which is even worse when you have tons of studying to do, because then it seems like every page and every question is TWICE as long.

Oh well. At least it’s Wednesday and I get to do another WIAW post!

After you’re done here, make sure to check out Peas and Crayons for more WIAW fun!

Now, let’s get this party started so that I can get back to watching Netflix studying. (Man are these next two weeks going to be tough!)

Breakfast

Over the weekend I didn’t use any brown rice protein powder because I was out, so for breakfast I had butternut squash cooked in the microwave.

Lunch

An Oldie but Goodie. A super large salad with red grapes, cucumber slices (hidden way below), a can of low sodium tuna, and of course, lettuce!

Snack

There were a lot of brown bananas to use up when I got home. Yay!

One of the things that I made was this Strawberry Banana Smoothie in a Bowl.

The bananas weren’t quite frozen enough to make “ice cream,” so I added some frozen strawberries and blended it to make this thick, luscious smoothie!

Strawberry Banana Smoothie in a Bowl

Ingredients:

• slices of 2 partially frozen brown bananas (about 1-2 hours in the freezer)
• 1/2-3/4 cup frozen strawberries

Directions: Add all of the ingredients to a food processor or blender and combine until smooth. Place in the freezer to firm up if you prefer a “ice cream” texture and are patient unlike me! Eat with a spoon.

Dinner

When I got home there was also a lot of zucchini and yellow squash to use up, so for both meals on Saturday I had sliced and steamed squash.

I also gave some to my mom, since she was the one who originally bought the vegetables!

For supper Saturday night I paired some steamed yellow squash with 4 turkey meatballs.

To make the meatballs I took 1/4 lb of lean ground turkey, divided them into 4 sections, and rolled them into balls. Then, when I was done steaming the squash, I just plopped them right into the boiling water from that. Just cover them and cook until they are done! About 10 minutes for me.

I ended up cooking up a whole pound of ground turkey into meatballs to take to school with me. Sadly I forgot them at home in the refrigerator. Oh well; at least I’ll have something to eat when I get back!

Snack

Like I said… Lots of food to use up! Here is what I did with two more large bananas. This time I planned ahead and put the banana slices in the freezer for about half of the day. Then I made them into banana “ice cream.” Delicious.

In addition to this week’s WIAW, I also want to add a little Christmas spirit with an idea that I got from Life of Di:

Have Yourself a Merry Little Playlist

1. Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas by Yolanda Adams

2. Christmas (Baby Please Come Home) by Michael Buble

3. White Christmas by Michael Buble

4. Jingle Bells by Michael Buble

5. Baby It’s Cold Outside by Jessica Simpson and Nick Lachey

6. Winter Wonderland by Avalon

7. A Strange Way to Save the World by 4Him

8. Let it Snow by Jaci Velasquez

All of these songs come from my family’s favorite three Christmas CDs that we listen to during December:

WOW Christmas (2002)

Michael Buble’s Christmas

Jessica Simpson: The Christmas Album

And now I’m off to practice for my Business presentation and work on writing my Critical Thinking speech!

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Do you ever have to use up food when you come home from college or a trip?

What is your favorite use for ripe bananas? I think mine is pretty obvious!

Do you have any big tests coming up? If so, good luck!

What song would be at the top of your Merry Little Christmas Playlist?