Stickin’ to It

Helloooo friends! Ah man. I gotta admit, I was really excited and come back and blog. I almost logged in to post last night, but I wanted to give myself a full week to digest and ponder the thought of shutting the blog down. The sweet comments and texts definitely helped (THANKS YOU GUYS! I feel like way less of a self-obsessed loser now), but I really knew I didn’t want to close the blog down when I realized I kept mentally thinking, “I can’t wait to blog about this!” all weekend. You’re stuck with me!

A name change is definitely in the works. I know what it is, and I want to kick it off with a new blog design for my blog-iversary that is coming up in the next month or so. College Graduette was meant to be sort of an “advice-y” blog on things I did to help transition to a crazy full-time work schedule after graduating from school, and I think it has definitely served its purpose. The new blog name/focus is going to reflect what I post about more often (and enjoy more than pretending to be an expert, haha) – the randomness of my life and how I focus on bringing out the best in every day, through food (both good for your body and good for your inner fat kid), exercise, goal-setting, and smart life tips. Comin’ atcha soon! And don’t worry, the old posts will come along for the ride.

Now for a lil weekend recap – it was a good one!

First of all, I made these healthy breakfast egg muffins from Blogilates on.. Thursday? and they were a BIG hit over here.

I made 12 total using 2 cups of egg whites and 3 eggs, with sausage, mushroom, pepper and cheese in Brandino’s and spinach, mushroom, pepper and tomato for me. Okay, so mine were healthy.

Eggs with some sort of veggie incorporated is my #1 favorite breakfast – I even did a post way back in the day on working veggies into breakfast! This habit goes way back to my South Beach Diet days in high school, and it’s stuck because it’s a good one. Protein + early kick of veggie = win. These "egg cups”, as we’ve been calling them, are so easy – you’re only 30 seconds in the microwave away from a perfect breakfast each morning. They are so good and so easy I have another batch in the oven right now – 12 whole muffins for each of us.

All the nutritious breakfast food got to our heads and we decided to go skiing at Afton Alps on Saturday, which is a ski hill about an hour away from the Cities. I pretty much learned how to ski from scratch when we went to Jackson Hole with friends last winter, and since downhill skiing is one of Brandon’s absolute favorite things to do, we wanted to be sure I got at least a little practice in this winter. I’ve slowly been building up a ski-appropriate wardrobe, so we stopped at REI on the way to the hill to pick up some necessities:

(do I look cool? Yeah, I definitely look cool. Okay, stop taking pictures.)

Can I just stop for a minute and discuss how much I LOVE going to REI? Being in that store makes me want to learn how to do every outdoorsy activity and spend every weekend in nature – camping, climbing, snowshoeing, cross-country skiing, canoeing… sign me up! And buy me a sweet backpack, two-man tent, and complete backpacker’s food kit to go along with all my new hobbies!

Considering I don’t even have my own waterproof ski-worthy coat yet, I have a ways to go. I ended up purchasing the helmet in the pics above and some goggles that I really like – both on sale!

I definitely look like I know what I’m doing, right? I love any activity that gets Brandon and me outside and being active together, and it’s fun to share something that Brandon loves so much, so I want to go on many ski adventures in the future. I think it was a good investment.

The ski hill at Afton is a little different than Jackson Hole…

Um, that’s Jackson Hole.

That’s Afton!

Who’s that cute skiier?

(“What are you doing? Taking pictures? Okay. Stop.”)

We skiied for a little over two hours, when we both started to get a little cold. The lifts at Afton are sort of situated all the way around the ski hill, so we tried to go up a lift, ski over to the bottom of the next one, go back up and repeat. We hit almost every lift on the hill! I am still a little timid about going fast downhill and my abilities to stop myself, but Brandon’s advice to bend my knees, “lean uphill”, and pretend like it’s ice skating really helped (I used to ice skate back in the day). By the end of the afternoon, I really felt like I was going a lot faster and was confident even on the steepest hills we took on. It was so so so much fun – I even offered to go one last time this season and ski at a local hill so I can get some more practice!

I could almost end the post here because it was such a perfect day, but I have to share oneee last thing that I’ve been dying to post about for ages – our “picture wall” is done!

Ugh, my point-and-shoot is so bootleg. Should have stuck with the iPhone. Anyway, a few close-ups:

A postcard of my hometown created by my grandma, who is a photographer. They’re sold at the local art institute – how cool?

An authentic mask given to Brandon as a gift from one of his best friends – I believe it’s from Gambia.

Plus, we included lots of pictures of the cool places we’ve been together (and separately) – notably San Diego, Jackson Hole and of course, UW Madison. I tried to include fun tidbits where I could – a ticket from the San Diego zoo, my ticket from the football game when the Badgers beat #1 Ohio State two seasons ago, a lift ticket from Jackson Hole.

We got the idea from Young House Love’s frame wall, and followed their technique exactly. We cut out templates of the frames to lay out exactly where we wanted to hang them:

And then a bearded helper elf did an outstanding job of hammering nails where the templates were placed and hanging each frame:

The eight round mirrors were a gift from my mom, and they really made the arrangement. They provided just a littleeeee more spatial coverage, and I was sure to put the larger mirrors at eye-height so I can see how  awesome I look when I first wake up in the morning.

I think it turned out so well and really adds a personal touch as you head up or down the stairs.

The whole project took us well over a month. I bought the frames and hung the templates almost immediately after we decided to go for it, but it took me a long time to choose the photos, edit them, and get them printed via Shutterfly. The end result was worth the wait!

We have a couple other apartment projects that we are slowly-but-surely chipping away at – can’t wait to share those, too!

So, what do you think? Do you like the frames? Think we should have gone with black instead of white? (I like how the white plays off the door frame and pantry door). How was your weekend? Did you get a chance to get outside?

And, I gotta ask… are you looking forward to a future of more Britta-blogging?!? … I am!