Tag: East Boston

Weekly Workouts: Lots of Booty Burner Workouts!

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Happy Monday, friends! How was your weekend? I was totally lovin’ the weather- how perfect was it?! I went apple picking with some of my college girlfriends and we had a blast, but I’ll catch you up on that tomorrow 🙂

Last week, even though I had planned to take it easy on Monday or Tuesday if I needed to, I realized that I was feeling refreshed and ready to be active. So, active I was, but always being mindful and listening to my body. With a that said, a few workouts left me sore, in particular, my booty and my abs… 2 areas that I love being sore after a workout! Athena said I should post my “Booty Burner” workout, so I think I’ll do that for you Wednesday!

This week’s workouts are going to be a little “TBD” for the later half of the week since I’m going to Michigan with my parents, but I’m hoping to come up with a few hotel room workouts that I’ll be able to share with you!

Last Week’s Workouts

  • Monday- After my tour of Eastie last weekend, I was itching to run to Piers Park and use the little outdoor gym area that they have. It was a nice, cool, fall night so it was great weather to run and I got to “play” in the gym which was an added bonus! Let me tell you, my abs were SO SORE for a few days after some decline leg lifts and sit ups. WOW. loved it! This gym area is a really neat resource to have for the public. They offer different level, 4 move strength and stretching workouts using all sorts of different pieces of equipment.

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  • Tuesday- I got the schedule mixed up for the East Boston YMCA and Pilates was actually on Tuesday, not Monday, so I hit up the 6:15pm class Tuesday after work. It was very slow-paced, but it was nice to stretch and work my incredibly sore core. The class incorporated weights and I was able to take some of the moves into my classes- win, win!
  • Wednesday- I went for a really hot 2.5 mile jog before teaching UXF Burn. Lots of members told me how sore they were on Thursday from the class, so I guess it was a good one!

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  • Thursday- I taught this workout followed by cardio kickboxing. A member asked me to include my “Booty Burner” since skinny jean weather is coming up, so I was more than happy to oblige 😉
  • Friday- I’ve decided that I don’t like to go to the gym on Fridays, so, I did 10 rounds of this work from home workout which was plentyyyy. 10 rounds ends up being 100 reps of each, which is a lot!
  • Saturday- I taught the same kickboxing routine, including the Booty Burner, from Thursday at the YMCA. I also had time to squeeze in abs at the end!
  • Sunday- I planned on going to BodyPump, but I realize I was a little sore so it wouldn’t make sense to go to a muscle class. Also, once I walked outside and saw how nice it was, I knew I wanted to go for a walk or run. I ended up running 4 miles (no idea where that came from), and felt great! I wore my older running sneakers and they felt so big and bulky and I felt like I was stomping around! I guess I’ve just become accustomed to running in the more “minimalist” style of sneaker.

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This Week’s Workouts

  • Monday-Since I didn’t do weights yesterday and did lots of cardio, I’m going to go to the gym after work and do just strength and maybe this ab burner that Athena posted yesterday.
  • Tuesday- I have after work drinks with my team at work and then dinner at Jessi’s, so I’ll get up and run before work.
  • Wednesday- I am subbing Kate’s 5:30 Sports Conditioning class before teaching my UXF Burn class. Since I won’t be teaching on Thursday, I figured I’d pick up an extra class!
  • Thursday- I’m going to get up and do something before my parents pick me up. Or, maybe not. I feel like I’ll want to workout before being in the car for 8+ hours, but I may also need a break! If I do anything, it will be light (maybe yoga).
  • Friday- Not sure. I think we are getting on the road early to make the last leg of the trip, so if I haven’t slept well, I won’t get up to workout.
  • Saturday- Hopefully my sister will want to workout with me in the morning, and then hopefully lots of dancing at the wedding!
  • Sunday- Likely nothing. I have a 12:30pm flight and will probably be ready for rest.

So, there you have it! I hope you all have a great week!

Questions for you: What’s a good Pilates studio to try out? Are you interested in seeing “Booty Burner” workouts now that skinny jean season is coming up? Does weather influence your workout?

Girls Night & Other Weekend Happenings

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What a fun weekend I had! I am loving having some extra free time on the weekends to go out and have fun in Boston, as well as get my apartment more and more settled!

Friday evening, the Shapleigh girls came over for a girls night. I did my best to play “hostess” and set out snacks and drinks.

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Our original plan was to go to Rino’s or Prima e Dopo, but we decided we were having too much fun drinking wine and munching on snacks at my place and didn’t want to leave! So, we ordered pizza which did the trick!

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I’ve lived with all of these ladies at one time or another and we all grew up together (Amy’s sister, Sara, is the last piece of the Shapleigh girls puzzle; she lives in NH so when we go home we make it a point to always get together!) so when we get together, it’s basically like hanging out with 3 sisters. We do stupid stuff like have random dance parties and jump contests. Friday was no different as we had a stretching competition to make fun of Danielle for being so un-flexible!

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Clearly the wine had set in at that point so we called a cab and got ready to head into the city.

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Amy had some friends going to Tia’s so we headed there first. From Tia’s, the plan was to go to The Brahmin, but per usual, the line was crazy long so we hopped over to Red Lantern to have a drink while waiting for the line to go down. I’ve never eaten there, but it’s been on my list of places to go for a while now!

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I think this is where things started to go from casual fun to drunken fun, haha I blame it on Amy’s college friend, Andrew, as he could be a professional partier 😉

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I hadn’t planned on going out and/or drinking wine like it was water, but the nights where you don’t plan on going out and end up going out tend to be the best, right?! Saturday night was no different! Any night with dancing is a good night in my eyes 😉

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Needless to say, I did not feel up to my normal self on Saturday, but I made the best of it! I got new glasses, went to the beach, made pizza, watched half of The Great Gatsby (couldn’t stay awake for the whole thing!) and was in bed by 9:30- regular ol’ crazy Saturday night 😉

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What do you think of my new glasses?? I am totally loving them and it’s fun having something so different than my other 2 pairs! They make me feel smarter, haha.

Sunday I got up and felt so much better so I went for a nice walk to enjoy the weather. I met up with my college friend, Pat, and his wife, Colleen for breakfast at Angelas Café, which is equidistant from both of our apartments. I’m SO excited to have some friends within very close walking distance- it’s going to be so fun 🙂 They also took me for a tour of Eastie and introduced me to another amazing park and ‘must try’ restaurants.

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Beautiful, right?! I’m excited to run there and use the gym that they have in the park- it’s a little area with all sorts of fun things to use as workout tools.

After the tour was complete, I headed back to my apartment to do laundry and hang up pictures and other random new apartment organizing things before my sister came over for a Target and Market Basket run.

I finallllyyy got a normal sized tv! It’s awesome!
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I also got new pillows for my couch! I’m going for a yellow/gray/white color scheme and I found these at Home Goods and couldn’t resist!

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I made Shepherd’s Pie for dinner, which I’ll post for you later this week 🙂

Questions for you: Have you seen the Great Gatsby? What was the best part of your weekend? Do you know of any “must try” restaurants in Eastie that I should add to my list?

Weekly Workouts: Taking some time to rest

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Hi there! How was your weekend? Mine was really great, but I’ll catch you all up on that tomorrow. I like to use Monday’s as my “weekly workout” post day with the hope that it helps to get you motivated to stay on track and get workouts planned throughout the week. It’s harder to skip a workout when you’ve written it down and held yourself accountable, right?

As I mentioned on Friday, I decided to give myself a little break from any sort of intense physical activity over the weekend. My old injuries started to flare up and I was just feeling continuously exhausted, which told me it was time for a little T.O. from the gym and working out. Surprisingly enough, it was easier than I had imagined! And get this- I even enjoyed it 🙂 Friday is generally my rest day and Saturday and Sunday I kept busy with other things so I didn’t get antsy and feel like I needed to do something! I am going to take this week light, too, which is totally fine.

Last Week’s Workouts

  • Monday- I was home in Maine and completed a workout in my parents living room. It was 2 short, 4 move circuits that I repeated 3 times before doing cardio and moving to the next circuit. I think I’ll post it for you this week because it left me sore!

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  • Tuesday- I got up and ran 3.5 miles before work. It was a beautiful morning for a run, but the last 3 blocks to my apartment were brutal as they are up a BIG hill.

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  • Wednesday- I ran 2 miles before teaching UXF Burn. It was a great class- lots of people and lots of energy!
  • Thursday- I taught another similar format to what I have been teaching as everyone has been loving it. It was 2 strength moves (15 reps each), 60 seconds of abs, 2 minutes of cardio. I repeated a workout in kickboxing from months ago, but I don’t think anyone noticed 😉
  • Friday- rest! I walked .5 miles to Shaw’s and back, but that’s it.
  • Saturday- nothing!
  • Sunday- I went to bed on Saturday night at 9:30 and didn’t get out of bed on Sunday until 8:15! After Friday night’s festivities, I cannot tell you how much that was needed; I woke up feeling like a million bucks on Sunday! Since the weather was amazing, I laced up my sneaks and went for a nice morning stroll, making random stops to do a little stretching and light core work. Felt great!

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This Week’s Workouts

  • Monday- I think there is a Pilates class on Monday nights at the East Boston YMCA, so I may try to go to that.
  • Tuesday- Pending on how I’m feeling, I may run or just do some light cardio at the gym… or rest.
  • Wednesday- Teaching UXF Burn. If I do anything before class, it will just be a walk or something else low impact.
  • Thursday- Teaching SHRED and kickboxing. I think I may teach a tabata themed class in SHRED, thanks to a reminder from Athena!
  • Friday- Not sure! If I’m feeling rested, I may workout before or after work, but I’m going to play it by ear.
  • Saturday- Teaching kickboxing at the Oak Square YMCA! yay!
  • Sunday- Not sure- I’d love to get to a BodyPump class 🙂

Questions for you: Do you like to take your rest days during the week or weekend? What’s your favorite Tabata combination?

Settling in: First weekend in my new place

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I finally feel like I’m starting to get settled in to my new place. It was such a great feeling going into the weekend knowing that I had loads of time to get my “to-do” list in order.

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After work on Friday, I headed back to Somerville since I needed to go back to the Christmas Tree Shop and Home Depot (I should get a frequent shopper card for all these stores. Either that or buy stock in them since I think I’m keeping them in business with my recent purchases). I decided to get my coffee table and end table (that I’ll be using as a TV stand) at the Christmas Tree Shop, not because I was looking for outstanding quality, but more because I don’t want to spend a lot of money on furniture until I buy a home and won’t be moving for a while. At this point, my furniture gets very dinged up every time I move, so it’s not worth buying nice stuff right now.

I also planned on spending the night at my old apartment to hang out with my sister and keep Charlie company until she got home from her week of travel. I had a bunch of things to do at the apartment and near the apartment, so it made sense to stay there! I couldn’t wait to open some wine- it had been a long week!

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Although I contemplated chips and wine as my dinner, I decided to get some real food in my system and made a quesadilla with chicken and peppers and onions. So good and perfect for a quick and easy meal!

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I woke up on Saturday and had extra time before BodyPump, so I finally cleaned my old room. It was really weird seeing it so empty, but Charlie was having a field day with all the extra space!

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Since my sister was going to Country Fest and left at 8am, my plan was to hang around the apartment and keep Charlie company (I know, totally a crazy cat lady move, but I feel bad that he’s been alone so much lately!), however, when I got a text from my friend, Athena, asking if I wanted to join her at Winthrop Beach, I quickly changed my plans, packed up and headed to my apartment to drop everything off and meet her. Winthrop Beach is less than 15 minutes from my apartment and it’s a really nice, quiet beach! We spent a few hours chatting and catching up about all things fitness, work, blogging, etc. It felt great to relax and not feel bad about it!

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When I got home, though, I got into serious productivity mode. I opened a beer and put furniture together and organized my apartment for two solid hours. I couldn’t believe it!

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My place feels SO much better now that I have furniture set up, curtains hung, and closets organized.

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Looks good, right?! To reward myself, I met my friends out at Pier 6 in Charlestown. It used to be Tavern On The Water, but recently opened as Pier 6. I took PT into the city and decided to bring a little road soda, errr, road wine. The ol’ Dasani water bottle trick isn’t hiding anything from anyone, but my mom is convinced it works.

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Although I went to hang out with my friends, I ended up spending the whole night talking to Jean’s niece, Michelle, and her cousin Hilary. I couldn’t believe it when I ran into them, but Michelle is basically the Mayor of Charlestown so I guess I shouldn’t have been too surprised to see her on the opening weekend of Pier 6 😉

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These ladies are a blast… I better get that pool invite, Michelle- don’t think I’ve forgotten about that!

Even though I could have chatted with them the entire, time, I did break away to hang out with the birthday girl!

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And, did you know all the fall beers are out?? I’m not really ready for summer to end, but having a sip of this Shipyard reminded me of how much I love fall!

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YUM!! Such a fun night 🙂

I woke up Sunday feeling like I had had a liiiitle too much wine the night before, but felt much better after an English muffin and lots of water! I had very sad looking bananas, so I decided to make some banana bread… with a twist! I’ll post it later this week. So yummy. While the bread was cooking, I tried to get caught up on blogging. I have a number of draft posts for lots of different topics so it was nice to have time to develop those posts a little more.

Around 11, I decided to get out and go for a nice walk. I’m loving the neighborhood near my place! It’s so nice to have a good place to walk/run.

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Danielle came over shortly after I got back and we headed back to Winthrop Beach since the weather was so nice! Couple of hours at the beach was a very nice treat!

And, that about sums up my weekend! Be on the lookout for a recipe or two this week! 🙂

Questions for you: Have you been to Tavern on the Water or Pier 6? What’s your favorite fall beer? What was the best part of your weekend?

The Big Move…

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“The Big Move”… I am so overly, unnecessarily dramatic 😉 But, in all actuality, it was a pretty big move for me. Even though I am very independent and am not one of those people to always need someone around to go shopping with, watch TV with, workout with, etc. etc., I have never lived alone (although for the past year or so, I’ve wanted to! No offense, Danielle or Amy, but at 28 it was just time to have my own place and no roommates), so this was a big step!

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I started my search in May or June (I think), and found my new apartment basically right away. My landlord is awesome and we got along great right from the start, so it just felt right to sign the papers, not to mention it was a super affordable 1-bedroom apartment!

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This pretty much sealed the deal that I made the right choice! I can be won over by wine.

So, Saturday morning, Sue and Al (aka mom and dad) packed up the truck with my couch and other various things I needed from home and came down to help me move.

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It didn’t take Danielle long to figure out what she was going to do to help us

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assume position and start barking orders. Just kidding! She was actually very helpful for the entire day and in no time at all, we had the first load ready

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I breathed a huge sigh of relief when my parents immediately started gushing at my new place. My only issue with the apartment is that it is basement level and although the ground is at a slant and my bedroom has 2 full size windows, I was just having a hard time accepting the fact that I was on ground level. Walking in with my parents and sister and having them all talk about how it didn’t seem like it was basement level, made me feel great (even if they were saying it just to make me feel better).

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Kitchen and living room

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Bedroom- see? It’s bright!

I put mom to work with getting my kitchen in order while I finished bringing in load after load after load of my stuff. Once everything was in from the first load, it was time to pop the bubbly!

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What I really love about my place is the back patio! I can’t wait to have little BBQ’s and little gatherings out there. It didn’t take dad long to break the patio in!

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We finally got lunch around 2 or 3 and I didn’t take a picture because I was way too hungry. Between teaching cardio kickboxing in the morning and doing heavy lifting/moving for another 3+ hours, I needed food in a bad way. Once we finished eating, my sister left to go to a friend’s house and mom, dad and I went to Home Depot and Target.

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Once we got the vast majority of things on my list (at the time… my list seems to continuously grow as the days go on. yikes!), we dropped dad off at my old apartment and mom and I went back to my new apartment to unload some more things. I was obsessed with getting my bathroom set up- weird, right?! I also put together shelves and mom unpacked and set up other random things.

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By 7:15, we were absolutely beat and decided to head back to Somerville for the night (it was easier to stay there since there was more room)… but not without picking up Chinese food for dinner. Yes, you read that correctly: we had Chinese take-out on Saturday night. I haven’t had Chinese food in probably 3 years!! Totally worth it, though… I was famished and it absolutely hit the spot.

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I crashed pretty hard on Saturday night and before I knew it, it was time to get up and start all over again on Sunday! While mom was at church, Dad and I packed up the rest of the things in my apartment: bed, bureau and all my clothes/shoes/food/etc. Gosh, I was dripping in sweat within minutes! Moving is seriously NO JOKE. Great workout!

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It was definitely bittersweet leaving my old apartment knowing that I had everything packed up (ok, almost everything- I realized later that I forgot all of my jackets in the coat closet there, but no biggie since the girls are staying there this year!). But that feeling went away as soon as I had everything in my new apartment and started making it feel more like home.

We broke around 1 to go have a birthday lunch for my parents at Joe’s American Bar and Grill in the North End. The purpose for going there was to have brunch on the water, but long story short, we ended up inside. I’ve always enjoyed the food there even though it’s a chain restaurant, but this past experience was horrible!!! From the food to the service, everything was awful! Well, except for this drink

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Now THAT was good!

After lunch, I was feeling like it was time for some “Monique alone time”, so I sent my parents and my sister off so I could be in my apartment alone to putter and try to organize my life! I washed things that didn’t need to be washed and moved things from one place to the next and then back to the original place. I finally decided it was time to get out and grocery shop and pick up a few more things at TJ Maxx and Target.

My trip to Market Basket was rather large, but I think I spent half what I would’ve spent had I gone elsewhere! I love that store 🙂

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I also bought myself flowers because, well, sometimes you just need flowers 🙂

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Again, I didn’t stop until about 10pm on Sunday, but it was nice knowing that I’d be working from home on Monday (Comcast was coming so I wanted to be around for that!). Besides work on Monday, I was able to get some things done around my apartment, go to BodyPump after work (holy moly… I lifted heavy and was rather sore on Tuesday!! I secretly loved it 😉 ) and then hit up the Christmas Tree Shop for a few things. I also made my first “dinner” at my new place. Nothing fancy, but I’m loving my new pots and pans!

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I made my first commute to work on Tuesday from my new apartment and was pleasantly surprised with how easy it was!! My old commute was a short walk to the bus, a bus ride to the T, taking the T 4 or 5 stops into the city and then walking about 15 minutes to the office. Phew! My new commute is an 8 minute walk to the T, 2 stops into the city and a 12 minute walk to work- amazing!! 🙂

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When I got home, I went for a 3.5 mile run around my new neighborhood. There is a REALLY nice park with all sorts of paved trails a half mile from my house which I see myself taking advantage of during my time here!

By the time I got home from work last night, I was utterly exhausted! I ended up subbing the class before mine and I found myself having no energy to teach which never happens. I took that as a sign and did the low-impact version of the workouts. Thankfully I had leftovers for dinner, otherwise my dinner likely would’ve looked like this:

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My friend, Tim, texted me that and I thought it was perfect timing! Mom, he thought you’d get a kick out of it, too.

Even though I’m not completely settled in, I feel like I’m getting there, bit by bit! Luckily I don’t have any big plans this weekend so I’ll have time to finish up even more!

Questions for you: When is the last time you moved? What’s the first thing you like to set up in your new apartment? How long is your commute to work?