Daily, Photos, Vacation

Date night in Niagara Falls

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A few weeks ago I blogged about a hotel stay and free voucher for The Keg that was available for purchase at the Ramada hotel in Niagara Falls. On Friday, we went! Scott wasn’t able to leave work as early as originally planned, so I came home and packed our overnight bags and picked him up at work as needed.

It took us a little over two hours to arrive so as soon as we checked into the hotel, we were notified of the free shuttle that comes twice an hour to drop people off at the attractions. The Keg being one of them, in the Embassy Suites hotel. Quite fancy, over looking both the USA Falls, and Niagara Falls. I didn’t end up taking any photos of the falls as we were enjoying our fancy meals and having good conversation. I have only been to the Keg maybe 3 times prior to this trip, and I completely forgot they had complimentary fresh baked buns/bread. So we chowed down on that and also ordered a ceasar salad each before getting our succulent meals.

I ordered the Honey Dijon Salmon which was served with some asparagus and my choice of roasted garlic mashed potatoes. The salmon literally melted in my mouth, I hardly had to put my chompers to work!

The boyf ended up ordering a 20oz steak, lol. It was completely polished off after he was done with it.

We were debating whether or not to go all out and have some dessert as we were both pretty full by this point. Apparently the server was surprised I polished off my meal. She said she was quite impressed. Ha! I’d say I polished it off, it was flipping $29.00, it better be floating all in my belly and not in some garbage can for that price.

So, we ordered a fancy dessert. It was ice cream, and it was mocha-ey, chocolatey fudge, with caramel and slivered almonds. I could’ve definitely eaten two slabs of this myself, but I was reserved for once and shared with my Boyfriend.

After we left the restaurant we decided to head back to the hotel and put on more layers of clothing and head out and explore. We hadn’t seen Niagara Falls during the winter, and it was definitely a bitter cold night. I’ll spare you the details of how many layers I actually wore and was still chilled and just show you some photos of us.

Inside the building/mall part of Embassy Suites. So ritzy looking. The building, not me.

There’s a casino inside… we looked around inside here a few years ago when the Duathlon and Triathlon used to be in Niagara. They canceled it, so we never come down to the Falls anymore!

Snapping a stalker secretive shot of the Boyf. Check out that bum. Oh yea, he works out. Sarrrrry Scott. He’ll probably ask me to take it down when he reads this blog in a few days, weeks, months. ha! NOIWILLNOT.They had a candy shop inside this place.HUGE!!! Gimmie chocolate. Scott thought I was being weird to take this shot quickly, and told me that I’d make a good Chinese person, since I like to take a lot of photos. I like to ignore him when he makes those statements.We weren’t to successful getting a night time shot of Niagara Falls, since I suggested Scott not bring his SLR camera out into the misty rain. Sorry Mom! (She wanted some dreamy looking photos of the falls.) Oops.Oh, then it was time to go outside. Next to the falls. We didn’t see a soul. Gee, I wonder how come. Can you see how cold I was? My teeth were chattering and my nose was running. Remember how many layers that I said I didn’t want to tell you I had on? Well I’m going to tell you. Because I want you to FEEL for me. 2 tee’s, 1 long sleeved, 1 fleece, 1 rain coat, 1 red pea coat. SIX LAYERS peeples. You know I complained. At least it was fun.We walked up the hill with all of the attractions. This place is buzzlin’ in the summer time. Let me tell you!

After about an hour of talking and walking we decided to finally catch the shuttle bus back to our hotel and spent the night watching some luxurious cable tv. So many channels to choose from! We were soo lost. I ended up watching Sister Wives on TLC—they were baking cupcakes for their parents wedding anniversary? So stupid, yet so addicting. Millionaire Match Maker wasn’t on this time. Hahaha..There was an iHop restaurant in our hotel, which again we had another coupon for that came with the room. $10 off a minimum purchase of $25 or so. I gotta say, I wasn’t the hugest fan of the 80’s decor, nor the 1990’s top 40 music, but the food was pretty good. Wanna know something crazy? I asked for a hard boiled egg and she told me they couldn’t make that for me. What gives? I guess I don’t go to many breakfast spots, so maybe a lot of places don’t do that?

It was 5ºc outside the next morning and we decided to take advantage out of every last shuttle ride we could. We headed down to the falls again and took some more photos.This was the casino/Embassy Suites Keg area we were in, the night prior. This place is SOO pretty in the summer.The couples mandatory self portrait. It wasn’t really that sunny out. Photoshop helped out a bit.

This time the boyfriend brought his fancy camera and I was his el model.Oh and some photos of the falls without my fat winter hat in the way. Like my purse? So do I. Best $30 spent at H&M last August.

Fake CN tower with a revolving restaurant just like the CN Tower’s. Isn’t there some sort of architectural copy right on those sort of buildings? Whatever.

Just as we were about to hop back into my little car and head home, I had to stop back into our hotel for a moment to piddle. After, we both noticed some flyers for touristy things to do, and I certainly notice the brochure that said OUTLET MALLLLL. Whoa. I’ve never really been to one. I mean, I suppose I have back when I was 14 years old in Buffalo NY but that doesn’t count because I don’t remember it all that well. We had to check this place out. It wasn’t very big—40 stores, but I did end up picking up a Nike fleece zip jacket for $23.

It has thumb loops!

Tommy Hilfiger also had some really outrageous deals, and I wanted so badly to blow so much of my paycheque on everything (and I don’t even LIKE their clothing!), so that goes to show you how good it really was.

I gotta say, I felt so relaxed and so genuinely happy this past weekend. It was SO out of our normal routine to do something like this since we’re both really frugal and careful with our money. It was really great to get out of town like that for a night.

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CrossFit, Daily, Photos

My CrossFit Journal (Week 3)

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My popeye arms (yes, plural) are back to normal. [Read about my swollen elbows from last week.]

Olive Oyl normal? Ha ha!!! I can workout regularly again! So I did, 5 days in a row in fact. WOA.

Day 1: Last Sunday’s workout was working with a ‘teammate’ and basically here’s the workout we did together.

1 set/round
30 Ring Dips Combined
150 Wall balls (while the other person held a plank – we didn’t EACH do 150, again it was combined)
30 Ring Dips Combined
150 Box Jumps (while the other person held the “hollow hold” a difficult ab workout)
30 Ring Dips Combined

What the workout looked like:

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Day 2: Monday’s workout was as many sets as you could do in 15 minutes, but since there was only a few of us doing the 15 minute round and everyone else was doing 20, we decided to not stop. But first the warmup —oh brotha, we had to skip 300 times, do inchworms back and forth, then push ups, and after that lunges. Sweating before we even start!

AMRAP (As many reps as possible)
75 skips (can I tell you right now, that I used to be awesome at Double Dutch skipping as a kid, now I can barely skip 15 times in a row!)
5 dead lifts (T and I were teamed up so we used 75lbs)
75 skips
10 kettlebell swings (I used 8kg kettlebell)

I was annoyed with this workout because the skipping slowed me down. I had to stare at a spot on the wall and just concentrate on keeping everything timed perfectly. I can’t wait to be able to do double unders (swing the rope twice and jumping only once. BAM! Looks hard.), but at the moment when I try DU’s the rope smacks my butt pretty hard and stings lol.

What the workout looked like:

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Day 3: The warm up we ended up doing on Tuesday left me gasping for air and sweating like a guy. It was great. We even had the choice to run outside or do 40 mountain climbs. I wasn’t looking forward to the run outside, but my friend convinced me! I took photos of the warm up and our workout scale (apparently that’s the name of it, right?). I think I got it right. Either that or scale means the lower (‘easier’) workout.

I tweeted right as I drove to another gym to pick up my Boyf who was doing interval run training, and I tweeted this. I worked out so hard and so fast this night, I wanted to feel that PUSH again.

(Note: I did not barf. Just felt the need to lol)

Lots of laps in there, and we were givin’er too on the laps! Here was our scheduled workout:

I guess there was a second warmup too, since we had to do 100 three times of cross over skipping, or double unders—which is near impossible for me since the skipping rope keeps whipping my legs and butt, literally. It stings!

AMRAP (As many rounds as possible)
12 Pistols (basically squat with one leg – we didn’t go as low as the photo shows lol)
10 Burpees
8 Supine Pull-ups

What the workout looked like:

The workout was apparently only 12 minutes long, but you had to punch out as many rounds as you could. Since my supines were on the way-easy side this day, I was going super fast because I was almost standing up. Ugh. The trainer told me to do it this way til I got used to the technique, since we both didn’t want me to injure my elbows again and have them swell up. I ended up doing NEARLY five rounds, I finished my burpees just when the clocked beeped and we had to stop. Can I just say one thing? I freaking love burpees. I was speeding through those like no other. Loved it. The pistols however, left my legs weak at the end of the workout.

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Day 4: Wednesday’s WOD (Workout of the day!) My ITB or whatever that ligament is called along the side of the kneecap gets easily irritated. Therefor I had to do a modified workout this day.I don’t remember a lot of the warmup, but I know we had to do planks in there

AMRAP in 12 minutes. Can I just say I’m kinda getting tired of pumping out as many reps as possible in a quick amount of time? I like counting down some days, lol maybe tomorrow will be different.
10 push ups
10 kettle bell front squats

I managed to do 7.5 rounds (meaning finished the push ups in time but not starting the squats.  I ended up using a 16kg kettlebell and nearly dropped the darn thing numerous times. It was a difficult one! Also starting to love push ups, probably because I can do them fast. But only fast on my knees.

What the workout looked like:

This is what everyone else was doing instead of my kettle bell squats. I forget what this was called:

Thanks google images! (Psst, check out her awesome abs)

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Day 5: OH MY GOD. 5 work outs in 5 days. This was what I had originally planned. I’m not as sore, or as tired as I thought I would be. But my hands have taken a beating. Reminds me of the climbing days!

We did “death by pull ups”, which wasn’t hard as it actually sounded. Probably because I was told to stop due to the ripping on my hands. You start off with one whole minute to do 1 pull up, then wait til the clock hits 2mins, and you do 2 pullups. 3rd minute – 3 pullups. I made it to 12 minutes and I felt that I could keep going. Don’t think I’m a super strong chick who can just do pull ups on her own. I was using this elastic band type of thing where you put your foot in it and it takes off 50 or 70lbs off your weight, so it makes it incredibly easy.

I’m not sure I’ll be posting photos in the week, unless the wordy post gets to you and you’re not interested without a some photos. But let me know if you guys are interested in me updating these workouts to go with the photos. It took a lot of work these last three weeks to find the correct photos and post them.

Should I keep posting photos of CrossFit workouts?

Yes, I love knowing what exercises are what.

No, I can look them up if I’m that interested.

Doesn’t matter to me!

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POLL EMBEDDED for those that read via google rss.

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Fashion, OOTD, Photos

OOTWW

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I’ll be heading out for an overnight getaway with my Boyfriend today after work. I treated us to a night out in a different city with a voucher for a restaurant and an overnight hotel stay. I’ll chat about it all when I come home! Have a great weekend and maybe I’ll blog on Sunday about it? We’ll see!

For now, I leave you with my outfit of the work week, along with my workout outfit of the week. Don’t forget to check out my YouTube channel while you’re at it, you may have missed a few videos!


P.S: I think having humidifiers in our apartment would make my skin not as itchy and dry in the winter. I’m kind of slack about slathering on moisturizer…


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