Life, CF, growth... and a cooking class!

Not a whole lot has been going on lately.... other than life. You know how it goes. :)

CrossFit has been going well. The Open WOD's are done, which is a bit disappointing. The best part about those is everyone in CrossFit does them... and it's fun to see how you stack up and compare.

I didn't do one of them, as pushing motions are still on the back burner for me. 150 wall balls? Ain't nobody got time for dat!

However, the rest of them have gone great.

This was 13.4:

95-lb Clean and Jerk's with Toes-to-Bar

Two of my favorite moves! What a blast.

I read this awesome article about what the Open teaches us. It's a sense of accomplishment, a measure of how we compare to ourselves, and what we can prove to ourselves. We can be proud of the accomplishments we have, no matter how humble they seem. Read the article here.

In general, I have multiple goals for CrossFitting, but I keep coming back to these main ones:

1. Have fun
2. Get strong
3. Prove myself by giving it my all and never quitting
4. Encourage others

I've had a lot of victories lately, physically. My injuries from the past have been healing.

Aside from burpees and a few light reps here and there, I hadn't done any pushups or bench-press type motions since last November. They would ignite my upper traps and neck and send me straight to migraine city. But I (weakly) did 84 of them on a 24" elevated box (along with 84 push presses and 84 situps in 15:32). Success! No migraines! Is this any more reason to head over to Valley Spine and Sport? Seriously. Dr. Alex is a genius. I was, however, sore for nearly a week with good ol' DOMS. :) I'm excited to cross off pushing and pressing motions from my list of can't-do's!

My deadlifts are back up where they're supposed to be plus my shoulders are holding up for toes-to-bar, kipping pullups, split jerks, and overhead squats. Hamstrings aren't complaining lately either! *knock on wood*

I've been photographing some different things lately too. I helped Dr. Alex update some images for his website and social media, as well as my good friends at CrossFit Appleton. It's been fun to photograph these Open WOD's and the incredible athletes getting it done. Check out some of the photos here.

Other than that, I've been enjoying time with family and friends.

We hosted supper the other evening and then played some games. I love my in-laws. :)

We also had a couple's weekend a few weeks ago where a bunch of us younger, married, child-less couples got together for games, food, and fun. That was a blast too!

In other news, winter is still. dragging. on. It's still cold, wet, and there's a chance of snow for later this week. Oh well. Summer has to come eventually, right?

Here's one of my Paleo fails from recently.. these are always fun! I saw several times online about mixing avocado with cocoa. Some people added a banana and blended it, which would have helped drastically. I'll admit that this required a LOT more chocolate chips to make it palatable. ;)

Oh, and how could I forget?!

I have been invited to teach a cooking class, for which I am super excited!

It's called "Civilized Cavemen: Gluten Free and Paleo Cooking"

Click here for more details, but this is the description:

"We might not grunt and live in caves, but we can learn a lot from our ancestor's diet of unprocessed whole foods and sustainable meats. Join us and learn how to create gluten-free, Paleo meals that incorporate fresh, local foods. We'll share an overview of the Paleo template, strategies on how to stock your kitchen, time saving tips, tricks and resources for preparing meals. Mariah will demonstrate tasty recipes that even your gluten-eating friends will love - no caves or fires required! Come learn (and taste) how great eating like civilized cavemen can be!"

I will be demonstrating a few recipes, plus doing a little educating and offering plenty of resources to make things easier. This will be fun! :)

Also, tonight I watched the documentary "Forks over Knives" about a whole-foods, plant-based diet, or veganism. I have quite a few reactions to that, and I even took notes during, so expect a post coming soon.

Anyway, I'm off to bed... Can't wait to CrossFit tomorrow morning. :)

Chocolate pancakes, the weekend, and why I CrossFit

What a great day today!

It's 1-rep max week at CrossFit this week... score! :) This means I should be in bed right now and not blogging. Oops. It has been an interesting few days, though, so I wanted to tell you all!

Today we tested cleans (squat cleans) and power cleans. I managed 120-lbs for both, which was awesome. There's nothing like everyone cheering you on as you're struggling to stand up. :) Coincidentally, that was a 5-lb PR, so that was awesome. Then I got my butt handed to me by the WOD, which was squat cleans and pullups.

Honestly, today was the first time I ever got close to losing my breakfast. I think I ate too close to working out. And it was one of those exhausting, on-the-brink-of-tears finales. I'm far too stubborn to quit though.

On that thought, over the weekend, it was brought up at the photographer's lunch table that I was a powerlifter. An older lady turned to me, wrinkled her nose in disgust, and asked why.

Oh, all the reasons I could have said, but I gave her my megawatt-endorphin-smile (see photo below), and simply said "Because I love it!"

Then the heavy-set, vegetarian older lady next to her proceeded to carry on about her life, husband, circumstances, how she was the strong one in the marriage and he was dragging her down, blah, blah, blah, for the rest of the meal. So I got to thinking about why I work out. Why I lift. Why I Cross Fit.

Because...

That first moment I bent over at home to get something out of a cupboard, and I felt my glutes fire as I stood back up.
I can help my husband move furniture.
I can move furniture myself.
I can kindly thank the gentlemen that offer to help me with groceries... and then decline while chuckling inside.
I can stand at a wedding show all day long without my feet hurting.
I can open sealed jars easily.

...and the big things:

There is no greater feeling than discovering my mind and body are powerful.
Pushing myself to the limits always yields results.
Each success brings more self confidence.
Every new measure of strength helps me walk with my head held higher.
Nothing can bring me down when I am assured in myself and my abilities.
If I am determined enough to get through a workout that nearly has me puking and crying all in a span of 15 minutes, I can get through anything in life.

I don't know what image the word "powerlifter" brought up in her mind, but I'm imagining it was fat, hairy balding men grunting, snorting, listening to heavy metal, and bench pressing.

In short, the reason why I do what I do is for the quality of LIFE.

Moving on. Mini heart-to-heart done.

Here's my official new member picture from awhile ago:

They insisted on taking it post-WOD. Lovely. And me being the photographer: "Can I see it? Ew, it's blurry! .... oh, wait. That's perfect." ;)

After the WOD today, there were free 10-minute massages by area students. It was awesome. I was trying out the the panorama feature on my phone finally. And I love it. Except for poor Inna here in the first one...

On a slightly related note, we got news a bit ago that we're moving to a new, huge space in June this year. I'm super pumped!

After that, it was the usual groceries, then back home. And then the dog ran away from me (again). Sigh. I wanted to strangle her. Yesterday she was mad at me for leaving her all day while I was at the photo convention. I didn't think she held grudges...

As I was rushing around to eat lunch and get ready for my chiro appointment, the doorbell rang in the middle of my shower. The dog was barking, the doorbell was ringing, there was pounding on the door, and I managed to throw a few towels on to go kill whomever was at the door.

Turns out, it was the Fed Ex guy with my newly repaired camera body and lens. Okay, I guess that was worth the hasty shower. 

Welcome home, my lovelies. I can't wait to use my new and improved lens!


The rest of the afternoon was pretty normal.

Speaking of normal. Or the absence of normal. This was a crazy weekend! Friday night started the WPPA (Wisconsin Professional Photographer's Association) spring convention which continued each day until Monday. The speakers were great, and it was fun to reconnect with some past friends and meet some new peers!

This was the view from the skywalk looking farther into downtown Friday evening.

And this was the speaker on Monday.. he talked about weddings, sales, marketing, and we had great fun learning from his posing and photographing demonstration. He's incredibly talented.

He started out with a bang... I loved this thought: Do you live to work? Or work to live?

Going back a day, Sunday offered another lovely wedding show.

These really sap the energy out of me... but I love it. I was told by two different future brides that I was their favorite photographer they had talked to that day. Another couple came back and asked if they could look through my albums some more because they liked my work so much. Talk about heart-warming!! I could hardly fit through the door to leave from my big head and inflated ego. ;)

And I haven't changed the teal and green at all.. because I get so many positive comments and feedback. "Oh, you're the teal and green lady!" Yes! My branding is working! ;)

Monday evening, I also had a wedding professionals networking meeting where I got to see a lot of my friends/other vendors from the wedding show and catch up with them. It was great.

The bummer part was, Joel was working out of town all week, and only home for the weekend. Thankfully I was still able to see him in the evenings, and he even helped me set up at the wedding show. I love that. :)

Okay, so back to today.



I was hungry for pancakes this evening. Again. It seems like an every other day thing since being off the Whole 30. Weird. I'm keeping them clean though.

So, I loosely followed this "recipe."

Ingredients:
1-ripe plantain or banana
1/4-cup nut flour (I used hazelnut this time, as the store was out of almond. Don't get me started on that.)
2-eggs
1/2-tsp of baking soda
1/4-cup cocoa powder
2-3 drops of vanilla stevia (optional)


Directions:
They're pancakes, not rocket science. ;)

1. Blend. I used my awesome immersion blender. Buy one. Make this. And squash soup.
2. Cook them. I heated my pan, put coconut oil in, and poured the batter in.
3. Flip and top them with any variety of berries, fried apples or bananas, coconut milk, coconut cream, pure maple syrup, nut butters, etc.
4. Enjoy.

I worked hard for those frozen raspberries. They were on sale at the store, so there were only a few bags left. I had to step up and nearly crawl into the freezer to grab some! I can't let a great deal on my favorite organic frozen berries go to waste.


Now.. off to bed finally. Tomorrow's lift is the snatch and power snatch! Woo hoo! :)


PS. I turned off anonymous comments. I hope you can still comment if you like, but I was getting sick of the spam. Let me know if you have issues.

PPS. I stumbled across some pictures the other day from New Years' Eve. Those will have to get on here soon. Along with our ugly sweater/men-cook-the-food-potluck from Valentine's Day. Fun times.

PPPS. And this was a great article. But I can't pin it due to lack of images. Boo! So it's linked here for me to remember. Food Logging, What I Learned

PPPPS. Kidding. ;)

August, part 3

So, I survived the first week of August with the Aussie photography workshop, traveling, and weddings.

The next weekend we packed up and headed to Iowa to visit my mom and dad. The pressure was definitely on as far as work goes, but I had planned the trip earlier in the summer and there was no way I was backing out now! :)

If you're going to cheat, do it well! When in Rome, right? You can't stop by Le Mars, Iowa, home of Blue Bunny and Ice Cream Capital of the world and NOT get a delectable treat! :)

It was a very nice vacation with forced relaxing.

And then the rest of the month was spent working. Photographing sessions, editing orders, working on images, more of the same...

So between this

Source: seersuckerandmagnolias.tumblr.com via Mariah on Pinterest

and this

Source: nanacompany.typepad.com via Mariah on Pinterest

I made it through.

And now that August is finally caught up, I can move on! :)

September was busy too with a couple weddings and conventions.

Then October came with my last wedding of the season and struggling to catch up.

And now it's November already. Which makes me want to cry. Where did my summer go?!?

Ah well, it's nice to be back to a bit more "normal" of a pace... :)

August, part 2

So after the photography workshop in the first 3 days of the first week in August, the next few days were spent in limbo trying to get to Florida for this super-secret wedding I was going to photograph. ;)

I was set to fly out of Milwaukee around lunch time. I was all ready to go.

I even had a delicious salad. Mm. And then I settled in to a short wait to board the plane from MKE to ATL, and then from ATL to Pensacola (PNS). I was supposed to arrive in Pensacola, Florida, later in the evening. Supposed to.

We boarded, taxied out.. after a slight delay due to MKE having only one operational runway. (I know, I was like whaaat? too. Darn construction.)

And then. At when I can only image was about 10 seconds from taking off, we headed back to the gate. Oh no! My connecting flight through Atlanta ended up being severely delayed due to their thunderstorms. Apparently all incoming flights to ATL were delayed. Yikes.

Then it was a flurry of frantic phone calls, scrambling, going out of security to get a last-minute ticket from Milwaukee to Pensacola while somehow avoiding Atlanta, going back through security, and up to a different gate with a different airline. This time I would be connecting through Dallas.

Phew. All set, right?



Wrong.

Another delay from MKE. Of course, they still hadn't figured out their timing with the whole one runway thing. We finally boarded the plane, phew. Right? Wrong.

Another delay! There had been a mishap with a plane on the airport's one and only operational runway, and it took the better part of 45 minutes to get the wreckage cleaned up.

By this time, I'd been sitting around MKE for the better part of a day, now on the plane and still feeling somewhat hopeful I would make it to PNS yet that night.

My seatmates were incredibly optimistic about the whole situation. The best part of a last minute ticket is sitting in the middle in the back. Oh, wait. Those were outright lies. In fact, the gentleman next to the window was so jittery and anxious I wanted to bonk him over the head just to put him (and me!) out of his misery.

Finally, we were off.

Once we finally pulled up to the gate in DFW, they let those of us with connecting flights leave first, told us where to go, what gates, etc.

I sprinted up to the tram to go to the other side of the airport to get to my connecting flight. Obviously, it couldn't be right next door.

And in my best Olympic form, I sprinted the 100m dash to the gate....

*pause for dramatic effect*

Frantically, I looked around to see... nobody. Absolutely no one was there. I saw the plane still outside and the door was shut.

And promptly burst into tears.

I finally found someone from the airline (I mean, hello, it was like a ghost town by the gate!) who hooked me up with a discounted motel, the shuttle to and from the airport, etc, etc.

It took me awhile to get settled down, so when I set my alarm the next morning for...

... I realized it was going to be my shortest night going into my longest day. See, this was already Friday morning, so I would photograph the wedding once I finally got down to PNS, turn around and fly home through ATL to MKE, then drive the 1.5 hours back home, which would put me back home after midnight.

Don't ask me how I remembered to screen shot my alarm. I myself don't know.

So, bring on the coffee!! Good morning, Ms. Venti.

And when you're traveling and stuck in the airport, it's perfectly fine to eat chocolate for dessert at breakfast. It wasn't until later that I realized I grabbed the regular instead of the mint. It disappointed me.. even though I had enjoyed it immensely. Hah!

Well, I finally made it to Florida...and hit the ground running. Or maybe I should say photographing! I photographed the beautiful, surprise ceremony that was pushed back especially for me.

Many thanks to the help of my second camera-woman! It was nice to have another angle!

During my 7 hours in Florida, we made use of the time! This was a late lunch at the Portofino grill with everyone there. :)

Yes, this is bacon topped sweet potato fries. They were amazing.

Another bun-less burger. I seem to never tire of them, especially when there's bacon present!

Then the time came for us to head back to the airport. When I say us, I mean my namesake who flew home with me. See, she flew down to PNS via MKE and ATL earlier the same day I was supposed to and then we were flying home together. The only difference is, she actually made it with no hiccups. ;)

Here I am sporting her sunglasses. And a failed attempt at... something.

Note to self: using coconut oil for lotion works great.. until you're out in the Florida sun for a few hours and your skin is literally fried. Oops.

Nothing like a little Pinterest browsing at the airport to pass the time.. especially when it hits home!

Yup, changed the wording there to make this G-rated for the blog. ;)

We made it to ATL just fine, then I was nearly late getting to the gate after searching out some coffee.

And then from ATL to MKE, we talked, laughed and no-doubt annoyed the poor guy in the seat next to us. It's always fun trading stories with a nice-looking stranger. ;)

Anyway, I was able to follow her most of the way home, which kept me awake.

I made it home just fine, quickly kissed my hubby hello, backed up my memory cards, charged my camera batteries and finally went to bed... only to wake up a few hours later for another wedding to photograph.

It also was a beautiful wedding which went very well. Despite the week leading up to it. ;)

I was pretty excited to snuggle Turbs after being gone all week. Eye bags? Those aren't eye bags.

But I was even more excited to see him.

See that mega-watt smile Sunday noon? I'm counting down the minutes until my nap at that point. ;)


Then, more exciting news! My car was finally done at the shop after 2 months and 1 day spent in the shop after my accident. Remember that? Ugh. Me too.

Anyway, it was finally done!

And I was quite happy about that!

So, I survived the first week of August. Phew. The workshop, the flying, the weddings...

The next weekend we had planned a trip out to my parents, which I seriously considered cancelling because of all the work I had backlogged at that point. But seeing as though I hadn't been home in over a year, my heart was longing for Iowa. Stay tuned...

August, part 1

Hello? *tap tap* Is this thing on?

Again, another whole month has flown by in a whirlwhind, but before we get to October, let's take a trip down memory lane!

I promised an August post was coming. I didn't promise two or three posts, but sometimes the greatest things in life are free. Right? ;)

The first week in August was, um, life-altering to put it lightly. I don't think I've crammed that much into one week before.. and I never want to again!

However, it was packed with amazing things. Not quite Eat, Pray, Love (which I didn't like anyway)... maybe more like Learn, Don't Sleep, and Eat. :)

Like my photography workshop in Wausau taught by an incredible husband-wife duo from Australia. I stayed in a beautiful motel within walking distance from the workshop in the beautiful downtown. And I left these images nice and small in hopes to not take up so much space.. click on them to enlarge!

A completely stocked room. Party for one! ;)

I was super happy to head to the same amazing restaurant two nights in a row for supper: Red Eye. If you ever. EVER. are traveling through Wausau and don't stop there, it means you are crazy.

Local produce, grass-fed meats, fresh fish flown in daily, and sustainable practices.

Did I mention delicious? :)

Connected to my motel/complex, I thoroughly enjoyed a few cups of joe from this lovely local coffee shop.

Parker, the adorable, friendly fluff!

This is the view from the studio where the workshop was held. Bonus: you can see my motel off on the left!

Taking a break from learning..

Marie, one of the photog's who coordinated Matt and Katie's workshop... and an amazing friend!

Matt and Katie

Parker, once again. He was so stinkin' cute... kind of a mid-point, size wise, between Turbo and Mom and Dad's dog, Sage. I was already missing Turbs, so I loved getting a few snuggles in. :)

The McCartney's were such gracious hosts in offering their studio for the workshop at the last minute. Fun times!

And what's a girl to do, headed for a two hour drive home at 8:00pm after a learning-filled, food-deprived afternoon? Hit the grocery store on the way out of town obviously. :) Smoked, uncured turkey without sugar? Score!

The workshop was awesome, exactly the inspiration I needed. Matt and Katie are quirky, funny, yet real and heartwarming. Katie shared her story in tears, talking about how photography and her business had nearly destroyed her life by exhaustion and causing her to spend months in bed recovering, unable to work. Matt stepped in, and together they dreamt, planned, and visioned a better future. They created the workshop around the things they implemented in their businesses and lives to make photography enjoyable again.

So the first three days of the week spent learning and the next morning, it was re-pack and head off to Florida! Or try to anyway... :)

Stay tuned, that tale is coming shortly!