yankee swap – Burpees to Bubbly

My weekend recap is a little late this week, but it was a good one, so it’s better late than never, right? Although I was super tired on Friday night, I was excited to head to Needham for a gym friends party. A gym friends party, you might ask? What is that? Well, it’s when a bunch of gym-going, gym-loving ladies get together to eat good food, drink good wine and share ~~horror~~ funny class stories (most of us are instructors, so we’ve got stories for dayssss). Athena wrote up a really nice post about why she loves gym friends and I couldn’t agree more. It’s funny because when I was telling my mom about it on Saturday, I used the same exact “they just ‘get’ me” line that she used in her post. (photo credit: Athena!)

On top of good company, I love gym friend parties because the food is always delicious… and usually healthy! There were so many different appetizer treats to snack on- I was a happy camper 😉 I brought a dessert treat that I came up with fairly quickly. Could’ve been a hit or miss, but, luckily, it seemed to be a hit. I’ll share it with you soon, but here’s a sneak peak:

I had so many people to catch up with! These girls all frequent the Oak Square YMCA as their “home” gym and get to see each other at least a few times of week, but I only see them every other Saturday if they come to my class. Womp. Needless to say, the wine was flowing, conversation was non-stop and before we knew it, it was time to do the Pink-themed Yankee Swap!

I put together a cute little “relaxing night in” package which had an OPI 4 color sampler nail polish package, a candle and a bottle of wine. I wouldn’t have been mad if I went home with that, although I was SO HAPPY to go home with a stability ball. It’s been on my list of things to buy for a while now (for exercise and to use as my chair when I work from home), I just keep forgetting to get one. Problem solved!

Big thanks to Liz for having us and thanks to all the girls for being such fun gym friends!!

Saturday started off my favorite way: kickboxing. Even better, was knowing a bunch of girls from Friday night would be there… they asked for burpees and I aim to please 😉

The rest of my Saturday was busy with lunch plans and then going to Southie to see my sister’s new apartment. Her roommate, Amy, bought a condo in Southie and they moved in on Friday night. I was a bad sister and didn’t visit until Saturday night, but I did come bearing gifts of Prosecco, Bud Light and an AMEX gift card, so I think that counts for something, right?! 😉 We grabbed dinner and drinks at The Playwright Bar since it’s literally a 3 minute walk from their new place. I am so jealous that they are so close to so many fun places!

Another friend from home met us out, which was a nice surprise!

Sunday was a busy day. I wasn’t home for more than 5 minutes all day on Saturday, so I didn’t have time to do anything on my to-do list. But you know what? I survived. Funny thing about that! Between laundry, baking, cooking, grocery shopping, blogging, making workout videos and prepping for a busy week… Sunday was over in a flash!

I knew my week was going to be crazy busy between teaching 7 classes, going to the ClassPass launch, going to a wine tasting, etc., so I spent some time on Sunday prepping for the week to make it a little easier! I wanted to share some things I do to help make a busier week go a little more smoothly, especially when I have to be up and out of the house super early to teach in the morning.

How to prepare for a busy week

1. Food prep!! I can’t stress this enough. I don’t have the money to buy lunch out every day (or the snacks), so prepping my salads, fruit, snacks, etc. on Sunday night makes the world of a difference.

Since I needed to be up and out the door by 5:30 on Monday, I even had to pack breakfast!

Nothing exciting, but it did the trick!

2. Plan my outfit the night before. And, for me, it meant packing it up in my gym bag since I had to get ready for work at the gym.

3. Plan my workout that I’m going to teach. If I don’t plan something out, I’ll keep thinking about it, so it’s better to just write it out and be done with it.

4. Make a meal that can be reheated throughout the week, especially for the nights I get home late (pretty much every night this week). This ensures that I have a healthy, well balanced meal that I can eat within 5 minutes of walking through the door. What can I say? I get hangry!

5. Go to bed early. There’s no better way to end the weekend and start the week than getting a good nights rest. I’m not used to getting up on Monday mornings in the 5 o’clock hour, so that will certainly take some getting used to, but having everything literally ready for me as soon as I wake up makes it easier!

Questions for you: What was the best part of your weekend? Do you have a group of friends that “get” you? How do you prepare for a busy week? Do you plan ahead and do prep work to make it easier or just go with the flow?

Happy Friday, B2B readers! I hope you’ve had a good week. Mine has been good… let’s catch up quickly!

Tuesday- We got so much snow! I went to the post office at 3pm and there was no snow. When I left work at 5:45, there was probably 4 inches. I loved it!

Wednesday- We had a company holiday dinner at The Palm (it’s in the same building as our new office!), but since I was going to a SMC girls Yankee Swap after, I just had wine and a few bites of the passed apps. Dinner at Jessi’s was amazing!! Honey mustard glazed chicken and cheesy mashed potatoes with a side spinach salad. So good! But even better? Getting together with some of my favorite girls. And presents. I love presents.

I ended up with an Alex and Ani bracelet. It was my first one and I was so excited about it, not to mention the one Nikia chose was perfect for me. Very special!

Thursday- I treated myself to Cosi for lunch as I got home a little late on Wednesday night and didn’t have the energy to pack a lunch for myself.

SO good. Do you guys like Cosi? Their signature salad is absolutely delicious. It was the perfect fuel to teach my Thursday double, which consisted of the following 25 Days of Christmas workout and then kickboxing. It was so fun!

This workout was awesome. It was a total body workout and I loved that once we did something (besides burpees… there can never be too many burpees 😉 ), we didn’t have to do it again. A bunch of members came up to me and said the same thing, so apparently it was a crowd pleaser! If you’re running short on time, feel free to skip the second round for the various exercises where I wrote “X2 rounds” after the exercise.

**Edited to Add: I was so tired when I was writing this last night that I forgot to say where I got this idea! I was looking through Facebook a while ago and came across this workout and just loved the idea. I took the first few exercises from Aimee’s Fitness Advent Calendar, but the rest were just random ideas I came up with. I also took the chest press & leg lift exercise from Athena, which I learned during her Fall Into Fitness challenge. It’s one of my favorite moves at the moment!

I’m hoping work flies by today because I have after-work drink plans with my sister and my old yoga instructor/friend Alyson, who I love! I think we are going to Granary Tavern, but that hasn’t been confirmed. Saturday will consist of a workout, birthday lunch for my friend Lauren and Sunday will hopefully will be ok weather for the Jingle Bell 5K!

Questions for you: What’s your “go-to” lunch place during the week (if you get lunch out)? Do you have any Alex and Ani bracelets? What are you looking forward to this weekend?

PS- We got new computers for my new company because we finally moved offices and they are tracked a lot more than before, so I haven’t read any blogs this week 😦 I will catch up over the weekend!