Wednesday, November 28, 2012

My very first post!

Greetings Blogland!
After years of loyally following the blogs of many of you, I'm finally joining your ranks! I'm new to this world and barely know how to start, so to take the pressure off a bit I'm just going to save an official introduction for later and dive into acting like we know eachother. We can get back to the formalities eventually :-)

A few weeks ago K. (the boyfriend) and I decided that we really wanted to watch our spending on utilities this winter. It's our first time living in a multi-floored townhouse, as opposed to our past tiny apartments, so we knew that winter would be a bit more expensive than in the past. We held out on turning on the heat for as long as we could- Ohio is famous for having the temperature go from 70 to 20 back to 65 in just a week so we thought we'd be okay. I caved in early November and set the thermostat to 65 which felt pretty good on the main floor of the house. When we left for Thanksgiving break we turned it down to 60 (and left the kitties many blanket forts) and since we got back we haven't touched it. Amazingly I don't typically feel like I'm freezing, just wear the layers and keep blankets everywhere. But the mornings, OH THE MORNINGS! Until this week I've been great about my 5a wake up calls. I'd made it to the gym 5 days a week despite the dropping temperatures. But this week all that changed. Our ginormous down comforter means that nighttime is oh so warm and it has just been physically impossible for me to drag myself out of bed when it is so dark and so cold. This morning I had to be at work by 9:30 and I kid you not I didn't get out of bed until nearly 8:30! I miss the gym, I miss my morning energy but do I miss it enough to increase my heating bill? Yes. Yes I do. The thermostat is going up tonight.

What I do love about cold weather is all the delicious comfort foods you can enjoy. Last night we had one of our favorites- messy Mexican quinoa. A simple mix of quinoa (with a dash of sriracha), sauteed peppers and onions, black beans seasoned with chili powder and cumin, homemade salsa and a big dollop of plain greek yogurt. Heaven in a bowl, I'm telling ya'! Dessert was the last of our Thanksgiving leftovers- a shared piece of apple pie topped with a handful of peanut butter & chocolate chips (and maybe a few more handfuls enjoyed separately ;-) )

This afternoon I really needed a pick me up (despite my 3.5 extra hours of sleep!!) and splurged on a skinny peppermint mocha from Starbucks. I'm generally not a big Starbucks fan but somehow their holiday drinks (and the gift cards my aunt sends me) always draw me in.

I'm off to learn more about Blogger and read how-to blog articles (this is all a bit overwhelming) and hopefully I'll be back tonight with a post complete with pictures!