Adventures in Sweet Potato and Healthworks

Does anyone have trouble motivating themselves to blog when they are having an off day? That is me today. But I also have so many things I want to tell you guys that I have decided to bounce out of my bad mood for a few minutes to say all I want to say.

Yesterday was a very productive day on the wedding front. Eric and I went down to the Wrentham Outlets and I managed to get gifts for my two readers and 2 of my bridesmaids. I still have 4 more bridesmaids to shop for, but I figure that makes me halfway done? ish. It's movement in the right direction. Also, I think the worst part of wedding planning, oops I mean wedding list is finally complete and no longer my responsibility, whoa hoo!

So the other day I tried to make Madeline's sweet potato pancakes. However, they didn't really look like pancakes...

Lol. I blame myself completely because I was estimating how big a small sweet potato would be (I had 2-3 sweet potatoes worth of mashed sweet potato in my fridge) and I think I estimated a bit wrong. Anyway, it was more like sweet potato oatmeal than pancakes, but topped with some apple it was absolutely delicious. I loved the idea of incorporating sweet potato into my breakfast.

Today I decided to create a new sweet potato oatmeal recipe.

Baked Sweet Potato & Pear Oatmeal

1/3 cup of Old Fashioned Oats
1/4 cup of mashed sweet potato
1/3 cup of vanilla almond milk
1 sliced pear

Directions: Preheat oven to 350. Mix oats, sweet potato and almond milk together in an oven safe dish. Place sliced pear on top. Bake in oven for 25-30 minutes.

I really really liked this recipe. It was by far the best thing about my day so far haha. However, if you really like very sweet breakfasts, I would recommend adding some brown sugar about 5 minutes before you are finished cooking. The potato takes some of the sweetness from the almond milk and the pear gets a lot less sweet when it cooks. I enjoyed it this way, but I think some people would prefer it with some brown sugar.

After breakfast I headed to Brookline for my first experience at the Brookline Healthworks. All I can say is WOW. That place is beautiful. Cambridge looks borderline dumpy compared to the Brookline location. I didn't want to go too crazy with pictures but I did snap a few...

Work out area:

Lounge area:

After I absorbed the beautifulness of the place, I got ready to take my first ever HULA HOOP class...

Look at all those awesome hoops.

I really had no idea what to expect from the class so I e-mailed Emily, who I know takes the class sometimes. Unfortunately, I think her class was a bit different from mine because she mentioned some arm work which didn't happen at mine (a lot of girls got out weights too that we never use so I'm guessing they go to those other classes too). Instead we did a lot of jumping in between hooping which I can't do because of my knee. So that was annoying. I got the general feeling that my instructor did not really know how to fill the time when we weren't hula hooping and just did whatever she felt like...

The hula hooping itself was better because it did not hurt my knee but the ridges on the inside of the hoop kinda hurt my stomach, hips and back as they were going around. Another girl complained about it and the instructor said thats why she brought her own hula hoop that she bought at a toy store. I think if I going to take up hula hooping I probably would get my own hoop too so it didn't hurt so much. It was fun to challenge myself by doing weird stuff with my hands and feet while hooping. However, after 30 minutes I was definitely ready to be done with the class.

Luckily, right after was an Urban Rebounding class with the same instructor so I got to do my new favorite class...

It's so fun to jump on a trampoline. Though I have to admit I got a similar feeling that I did in the Hoop class, that the instructor didn't really have a "plan." I liked her though, she definitely motivated you to work harder.

Post-gym I headed to Cambridge to see Caroline and Chris speed through a 5 mile race. I'm not going to tell you much about it though because I'm sure she'll recap it tonight or tomorrow :) Very proud of them though.

I hope so bad that someday very soon my knee can stop being the worst knee in history and I can run races again. I only barely had a taste of the fun of it before I couldn't do them anymore. Depressing. Anyway, I said there wasn't going to be anything negative in this post right?

So I'm off. I do have one thing to look forward to tonight and that is TCBY. My cousin reported to me that the Belmont TCBY is closing so I have to get my fill OFTEN before that sad day comes. I think it's being replaced by a Rancatore's which is by far my least favorite ice cream I've ever had. I don't even care if I'm spelling the name wrong because I really dislike their ice cream. Here I am getting negative again...

I hope everyone had a great weekend! What was your favorite thing you did this weekend?