Good Monday morning, friends!

 

This weekend was packed full of fun, baking, family, and food.  It was great!  Here is a recap of Saturday evening and Sunday day.

 

After I was finished baking and preparing all of my Easter day goodies on Saturday afternoon, Brian and I headed out for a little bike ride around town and picked up a Red Box movie to watch later in the evening.

While on the bike ride, we rode by a fire department.  Brian pointed out his grandfather’s name on a memorial to firefighters who lost their lives in the line of duty.  That’s pretty cool to have a family member on a piece of the city’s history like that.

We then came home, and I whipped up a quick meal of a tossed salad, baked sweet potato medallions, and baked cod.  Seriously, this meal was delicious and it came together in about 20 minutes.  No time at all.

We then popped in our movie for the evening…Paranormal Activity 3.  That movie is super scary!  We both saw the first Paranormal Activity in theaters but hadn’t seen the second.  I had heard that the third was the best, so we decided to give it a try!  The movie was good, but Brian and I found that throughout most of the movie we each had one eye closed…luckily we could huddle nice and close to each other to stay “safe!”  I love scary movies…but I do get very scared during them!!

 

Easter

On Sunday, I woke up bright and early to put the finishing touches on the Easter decor before Brian and I headed to church.

 

They look like little carrots!

Each year, I make some sort of special dessert for Easter, and this year my special treat was flower cupcakes!

I found these little gems by searching the web, and I used this how-to guide to figure out how to make them.  They turned out great 🙂  Half of the cupcakes were strawberry and half were lemon.  So springy!

Flower Cupcake How-To

I saw a couple of ideas on pinterest that inspired me to put jelly beans in the bottom of this flower vase.  It was actually harder than I thought because I had to figure out a way to put water in the bottom without melting the jelly beans…I put a little shot glass in the bottom with water in it, put the flower in it, and then covered the glass with aluminum foil.  Then I dumped the jelly beans over the top!

After church, Mom, Dad, and Brenna came over for Easter Brunch.  Mom made carrot bread, banana bread, and oatmeal muffins.

Brenna brought the most creative dish according to my vote.  She brought Apple Nachos!  They were apple slices topped with coconut, peanut butter, chocolate chips, walnuts, and dried cranberries.  They were so delicious!  She found the idea on pinterest 😉

We then had some fruit salad with delicious fruit dip from Mom.

I made a raspberry french toast bake that I based off of this recipe.  I changed a couple of things, but the idea is still the same.  It was delicious!

I also made a savory spinach quiche with an oat crust based on a combination of this recipe and this recipe.

Mom also brought a special drink…homemade sangria!  This was delicious.  Needless to say we had plenty of leftovers of everything!  Except the sangria 😉

Every year, we color Easter eggs and do a little Easter egg hunt around the house. Mom…I mean the Easter bunny is usually the one to hide the eggs, but since Brian and I were hosting the party this year, we didn’t have a chance to actually color the eggs, but we did hide some plastic eggs with little treats in them!  I made sure that Brian and I were able to participate in the hunt, so I hid half of the eggs and Brian hid half of the eggs.  We had a great time finding all of the eggs…except there are two missing!  Luckily they weren’t real…otherwise they would start to smell if we never found them!

Dad had to head to work before we thought to take a group picture.  After Dad headed out, the rest of us walked downtown to look at a couple of cute little shops, and head to the movie theater.

We have been planning this for a while and anxiously awaiting….The Hunger Games!  The movie was so great.  Even though we have all read the book and knew what was going to happen, we still found ourselves glued to the front of our seats anxiously awaiting the next scene.  I can’t wait for movie number two! (Brian and I are still reading that book).

We shared popcorn...Brian had a diet coke, but I brought my water 🙂

After the movie, we walked back to the apartment and it was time for Mom and Brenna to head home.  It was a perfect way to spend Easter!

 

I then headed out to run 5 miles.  I am trying to focus on speed, but this was the longest run that I have done in a couple of weeks, so I just ran without focusing on pushing my speed too much.  I ended up completing the 5 miles with just over a 9 minute pace…not too bad if you ask me!  I can only improve from there 🙂  And most importantly…it felt good!

 

Today

This morning, it wasn’t super cold so I wasn’t in the mood for hot oatmeal, and I didn’t prepare any overnight oats last night, so I opted for a smoothie!

Strawberry Protein Smoothie:

  • 1 cup strawberries
  • 1 scoop pea protein powder
  • 1/2 cup Unsweetened Original Almond Milk
  • 1 handful spinach
  • splash of water
  • 3 ice cubes

It was delicious and gave me perfect fuel for the day!

 

I hope you all had an amazing weekend and have a great start to the week 🙂

What treats did you make for Easter if you celebrated this weekend?  What are some of your favorite traditions?

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