Fortunate Fridays!

Hello! As write this I am relaxing on my couch seeing the snow fall down through my window. Candles on and everything! I am watching an episode of What Not to Wear from my DVR collection (my fave show!). Needless to say I am feeling pretty relaxed right now after such a long week! Thankfully, the 'crazy' snow-storm they had warned us about hasnt been so bad. After the whole Sandy fiasco we now have a tendency to freak out (which doesnt hurt because is better to be safe than sorry) but I am happy to announce that so far so good. Lets see what happens during the night and tomorrow.

So, here I am like every Friday. And these are the things I am feeling fortunate for this week (in no particular order).

1. A job that embraces and celebrates different cultures. One of the days this past week my company celebrated "Chinese New Year" and brought in several traditional Chinese goodies for us to have. Most of it was pastries and sweet stuff. Sounds like I need to take a trip to china ;). I opted for this item. I have no idea what is called. I asked my chinese co-worker and he didnt even know! But It was good!!:

It tasted like chocolate angel cake and I was able to split it up in two and eat it as a snack during the day. Anyone know the name of it or seen it before?


2. The freedom of choice and to pursue my dreams! We had a guest speaker in my entrepreneurship course this past week and she was sooooooooooo inspiring. As she told us her story of how she came about her business and how she made the jump from an engineering career in to soap-making I almost started to cry. My favorite phrases from what she told us were: "what do I have to loose? If things didnt work out I could always go back to my carrer" "what If I loose some of my saving? I could make it back!". She was literally glowing and you could see that she was pursuing her dreams and somehow that shined right through her. Nedless to say, she made me realized that I have the freedom to get up one day and just decide to "go for it" whatever it may be. How amazing is that?! Freedom of choice! We only have one life to live!!! You can check out her business here. the name of her business is Kalliste Organics. I plan to make a post on her products soon :)

3. The fact that I SOMEHOW ended up with the perfect combination of courses this semester. After spending a week going crazy and stressed out; I ended up choosing the entrepreneurship course to compliment finance. I couldn't be happier with this combination. Praise the lord! Lesson learned: probably not a good idea to wait until the last minute to register. I feel really lucky everything worked out as it did.

4.  Learning 4 new things I didnt know before (These facts are pretty random and you probably wont care about any of this but I am sharing anyways. Sharing knowledge cant hurt, right?): 
-Someone made me aware of the wonderful world of S.E.O (search engine optimization)
-That you are allowed to claim the student loans that you take out on your taxes (I was under the impression you could only claim student loan interest).
-That anyone can invest on preferred stocks (not only for high wealth individuals)
-That January has always been a good month for the stock market, historically speaking (the recent rallies are apparently nothing new).

5. Being able to enjoy my mom's bread pudding today as a after-lunch snack. Ate it with some green tea. Sooo good. Everything in moderation of course! 
New goal: will learn her recipe and make a "healthier" version of this substituting certain ingredients.

 

By the way, below is what I had for dinner this evening (RIGHT AFTER FINISHING JILLIAN'S Ripped In 30: Day 6, week 2! Looking forward to a delicious dinner is always a great motivation to work out!)

Shrimp quesadilla made w/ a whole wheat tortilla, shrimp and 1/4 cup melted part skim mozzarella. So good! Plus, had a left over piece of sweet potato and baked it it in to chips: 

 

And last but not least---In honor of Fortunate Fridays, this was my YOGI Green tea message today:

 

Couldn't agree more!!! Have an amazing weekend everyone and stay safe!

Share with me something new you learned this week!

Sunday Happenings And a QUICK money saving tip

Hope you're all having a great day thus far. My sunday is rounding out to be quite productive. However, I must confess that yesterday there was whole lot of "leisure" time spent at my apartment just lounging around. I managed to do some cleaning/organizing and did pay some bills but a lot of time was also spent watching pretty useless TV (aside from a couple of somewhat interesting lifetime movies ha!). I downgraded my cable to save money so I am missing a couple of channels that I really loved :(. I am considering bringing back those channels or just finding a way to get them and still make my cable bill cheap enough. I made a quick stop at my aunts house but then came back home and relaxed some more.

Today, however, is going pretty well. Woke up with running on my mind and so off I went for a nice 3.47 miler around my neighborhood. I must admit it was windy and somewhat cold but it was quite a gorgeous day thanks to the sun.

  
There was also a TON of geese just "chilling". Wish I would have taken a photo. It was quite the view. Anyways, here is the run down of my run/walk (I had to stop and walk at certain times because of the wind):

 My first mile was ran in less than 10 minutes which surprised me because last time I checked my average time was around 10-ish so, I am excited that I am getting better (either that or the wind shall be credited for pushing my assets me forward). Post run I immediately took a shower, changed and made a pretty satisfying breakfast:

 

On the plate: 2 eggs (1 with yolk, one without), scrambled with white onions and spinach. I added a little bit of organic ketchup to the eggs, post pic. On the side-- one whole wheat English muffin, toasted w/ a little bit of butter. Plus my cafe and milk on the side (no sugar) on one of my absolute fave cafe cups!

I decided to get ready before breakfast because that way I knew I would need to get out of the house as soon as I was finished. Sometimes I just lounge around in my pajamas and ultimately decide to stay in. That wasnt happening today! (interesting how much we can learn from carefully observing our behavioral patters).

Before leaving the house I noticed my gazillion bananas sitting on top of my fridge (which I had purchased for about $1.29 at the supermarket about a week ago). They were getting extremely ripe (borderline going bad) so I had to rescue them!!!! I mashed up the ones that were the most "mushy" and put them in containers (I see delicious banana bread and muffins in my future). The rest I split them up in to pieces to make smoothies-- put it all in the freezer and you're good to go!:

So here's a money saving tip (you may or may not know this, but here it goes): Next time you're in the supermarket around the vegetable/fruits area, see if the have a section where they place things that are about to expire or "go bad" according to their standards. (I am pretty sure there is an official name for this which I cant remember from the top of my head). You can find all kinds of fruits and veggies but I usually just grab bananas from there. I get a TON for about 99 cents or $1.29. Is pretty crazy. I make smoothies and banana bread from that. Some of the bananas often times arent even ripe yet so I can eat them right away.

By the way--- Aside from my love for health and fitness I am also a HUGE fan of personal finance. My undergrad degree in finance, my MBA pursuit and my dad may or may not have something to do with that ;). I am thinking of starting a series on the blog where I'll share tips on personal finance, and anything else on the matter than may seem interesting. We'll see if I can gather enough material. Let me know if you have any questions or anything you'd like to see on the series regarding money matters.

Anyways, now I am visiting my parents and sis and taking advantage of their washing machine. Sometimes is awesome having family so close :)


Question: Do you have any supermarket "money saving tips" you can share? What do YOU do with ripe bananas?