Red Pants

Apparently, Brooke and I have matching red pants:) We went to eat at Guru's and found this lovely brick red wall and decided to just have a brick red fiesta.  Also, I think this shirt is becoming my signature color. I keep buying things in it.  And I love it:)

Mountain Mornings Are Beautiful

It was a cold winter.  Like, bad.  It snowed all the time and was subfreezing. Spring has finally come!  I feel like in Utah we usually just go from winter to summer, but this spring has been nice.  Maybe I'm just noticing it more after all that snow;)

My apartment is right next to the mountains. When I leave for work in the morning, the beautiful sun is just coming over the ridge.  All the cool mountain air has come down into the valley and everything smells fresh.  I love the landscaping here, we have a lot of pine trees, which are my favorite.  I get to go to work feeling like I was just camping:)  And it's the best feeling in the world.

Nice brown van from ca. 1960 against the sun coming over the mountain 

Our beautiful pine trees

There was just so much sunshine everywhere

Au Natural

Natural woven dress Lauren Conrad, Cardigan Target

Shoot, my ponytail is getting long! I never notice.

I love this cardigan, it was from my roommie Rosi's wedding.  It makes me happy every time I wear it.:)  I also was wearing a wooden beaded bracelet from El Salvador, but I forgot I had taken it off when I took these photos:)  My favorite part is that the lining only goes down to my knees (originally it was mid thigh, but I added a little more fabric) and I can feel the breeze on my legs through my dress:) 

Golden Girl

I was just feeling golden this morning:)  I have yellow gold and white floral cutout earrings from Forever21 (don't you love their super cheap girly earrings???) Gold sequined tank from Forever 21 (seriously, where else are you going to buy sequins?) grey pants from Forever 21 and Yellow cardigan from Target.

Shuga Shuga

Today's post is dedicated to sugar.  Kind of the way I'm dedicated to sugar.  I majored in public health. I try to live a healthy lifestyle, you know, fruits/veggies, whole grains, sleep, physical activity.  If I have one Achilles's heel, it's sugar. I just love me some sugar.  In basically every form.  When I was diagnosed with dairy allergy, I had to give up ice cream (I have almond ice cream sometimes, or sorbets, but they're just not the same). Since cutting out milk, cream, cheese, ice cream, cream cheese... my diet's gotten healthier, but I still eat cookies/chocolate/treats every day, sometimes multiple times a day;)

Over the last few weeks I've been getting the message that I need to be eating less sugar.  I keep talking to friends who tell me their worried about diabetes, just trying to be healthier, etc. and they're decreasing their sugar intake.  I've been in the "contemplation" stage of change:) I know there's too much sugar in my diet, but there are barriers to cutting it out.  For example: I love it.

But I've committed to my first baby step of change.  Because I'm serious about this.  Diabetes runs in my family, and also in our country...so I want to get serious about not overworking my dear pancreas.  I've decided to try this:  no sugar before lunch or after 8:00pm.  

It reminds me a little of a roommate I once had (who shall remain nameless) who gave up food after 8:00pm and felt the need to force her diet on us all whenever we ate something at night by saying, "uhhh, you really shouldn't be eating.  It's too late." Well maybe I'm hungry!  I still eat late when I'm hungry, I'm just eating real food, not sugar.:)

Anyway, I've been trying it for the last few days and it hasn't even been hard:)  Which is why I chose to start with such an achievable goal;)

I will probably add some better guidelines to help me stop eating so much sugar in the future.  I feel like the less processed sugar/foods you eat, the less you crave them. We'll see how it goes!