Pre-Travel Money Saving and Earning tips and tricks

Hello Friends!

According to my trusty Trip-It app, I am only a mere forty-nine days away from departing from Dallas on my journey to Rome!

After a three day tour of Rome,  I will travel by bus to Florence where I will take a four week course, and then travel to Budapest. Now that this is all starting to sink in, the reality of me being a broke college student is sinking in as well. And believe me, I am not letting myself go to Italy with empty pockets. So I’ve decided to compile this list of tips, and tricks that I’ve been practicing to help me to save money, and even earn some extra money before my trip.

1. Stop all unnecessary spending. Yes. That means Starbucks. Typically that’s never really a problem for me, but it’s been challenging considering that finals are quickly approaching. I have to constantly remind myself that it does indeed add up, and it’s not worth it in the long run.

2. Sell on eBay. I can easily clean out my closet almost every season and make minimum an extra $50 on eBay. That’s a train ticket to La Speiza all on clothes that I don’t want! I’m a pseudo established eBay seller having had sold quite a bit of clothing, but what I’ve found that I can offer up as advice, is to only sell brand name clothing! Forever 21, H&M, J Crew… brands that you know that people will be searching for. You may have an adorable blue dress that you’re looking to sell but if you don’t know the brand, chances are that no one will find it.

3. Don’t waste time trying to sell at Platos closet. Seriously. Stick with eBay. Plato’s will not do right by you.

4. Gigwalk. This is by far my favorite tip, and Gigwalk is my new favorite App. I’m an emerging digital media major, so I have to keep up on these sorts of things, and it is truly an undiscovered gem! Here’s the story. This app pays you to go into local stores and act as a mystery shopper, collect information, or take pictures for Bing. Tasks that take 2-5 minutes pays you an average of $5-$7 per gig (but up to $100 in some cases) that is deposited into your paypal account. It maps your location, and shows local gigs which you can then apply for, complete the instructions and submit your submission within the given time frame! That’s it! I went out to run some errands the other day and applied for a three gigs that all took about 5 minutes each, and I made $17… for 15 minutes of work. What a cool way to earn spare cash, huh? I swear that I’m not sponsored by them to tell you this… just a happy user Seriously… try it out soon…

5. Don’t estimate the generosity of others. I went ahead and created a gofundme account, which is an online donation website that has an option for study abroad, internships, etc. I’ll be posting mine up here on my birthday this Sunday to try to shamelessly internet panhandle whatever I can from friends and family. I haven’t been advertising mine much because I’m kind of uncomfortable asking people for money, but I’ve seen some folks have some amazing success with it!

6. Sell a service. Pet sitting, baby sitting… something that you’re good at and enjoy! Like blog header design… which I totally do for a small fee by request. Considering that graphic design is half of my job and degree I’m not half bad at it

So, those are my tips for saving and earning money before a big trip!! Do you have any favorite methods for saving money?

Picnics and Piggies

As you may or may not know, my boyfriend is a talented cook who works in the kitchen of a very nice corporate training center. In true corporate fashion, they host a Christmas party, and a spring picnic every year, and this was both mine and Nicks’s second year.

Considering that this facility hosts  guests from all over the world, they do a great job of conveying “Texas” by taking advantage of the natural Texan landscape, and bringing in some unique Texan art.

It’s a great opportunity for some mingling, and some barbecue, but since I’m perpetually four years old, I spent most of my time glued to the petting zoo.

Call me childish, but seriously… how cute is this guy?!

And my personal favorite, the bunnies who were all incredibly well behaved, and friendly.

After my wrists began to cramp from my excessive petting, I made my way inside to watch my boyfriend and his work buddies shoot some pool while he made this awesome expression.

I was too taken by the animals earlier to really focus the food spread, so I grabbed these tasty pita chips to munch on. I recognized the packaging, but had never had them up until this weekend, and I have no idea what the heck I was waiting for considering how tasty they were.

And if the rustic wild horse sculpture from earlier didn’t scream “Texas” enough, here is myself and Nick in front of a longhorn.

Yup. Don’t think I’ll be seeing a lot of that in Italy.

So, tell me how was your weekend??

Life, injury, and the pursuit of travel.

Welcome back to my own little personal spot on the internet where I sometimes like to pop in and show my face! No but really, I have some updating, and some big news for my blog.

So what has been going on in my life? Besides the big news… school… yup… basically just a lot of school.

Oh and the injury? That’s a doozie.

I’m not the most athletic individual on Earth, and considering my new found love for CrossFit isn’t exactly “easy”, I was a little bit of a injury waiting to happen. I pictured myself whacking myself in the head with a kettlebell, or smashing my face on a box during box jumps. But no… this was from tripping whilst running. I wish there was a cooler story, but there really isn’t. I just lost my footing on a 200 m run. Sounds innocent enough but trust me, you don’t want to see what’s under this bandaid. I had 5-6 stitches after going down chin first.

It wasn’t a good feeling… but luckily the worst of it was located right at the bottom of my chin, across my jawline, so unless you’re looking for it, you can’t really see it.

The CrossFit Gods have looked down on me and smiled with that one.

But anyway… the news. The big news.

I wrote this blog post in October of 2011 about studying abroad, but unfortunately it had never materialized.

There has been a lot that has happened between that blog post and this one, and I am very happy to say that I will officially be studying Travel Writing in Florence, Italy this June/July!

That’s right, Florence!! I’ll be visiting Rome, and Florence, as well as taking a short trip to Budapest to see my grandma. Though I have indeed neglected my blog because my life at home is inherently boring, I am more than thrilled to start blogging towards a whole new passion and goal of travel writing!

Florence is my dream destination… the scenery, the culture, the history, the food… oh the food.

There is a lot of preparation to be done as well, and I hope that you all will join me on this once and a life time journey!

Nightshade and gluten free Crawfish Étouffée

As you may or may not know, I reside in Texas where it’s still been 80 degrees for the past few months. I’m originally from New York, where we have four distinct seasons, so I’m not a fan of the constant onslaught of heat here in Texas. Thankfully, I’m happy to say that the weather has finally broken! It’s been some nice sweater weather…

And snugglin’ weather…

Something about the cold air makes me want spicy food. Sadly, spicy food is far far away in my rearview mirror. Reason being, I have a nightshade problem. What are nightshade? Potatoes, Tomatoes, Eggplants, and all types of pepper (bell peppers, red peppers) and paprika. Yup all the good stuff. The thing that connects them all are the alkaloid levels that tend to be a major irritant for those of us unlucky folks with autoimmune disease and/or leaky gut. For the most part, I deal, but I was really disappointed when my boyfriend gave me some of this that he got from work (he works in a kitchen)…

Crawfish and spice just… goes. You can’t have crawfish without spice right? Wrong… Here’s my nightshade, and gluten free Crawfish Étouffée recipe. Keep in mind that this just feed me. I would’ve shared, but my boyfriend was at the gym, and my family is just one big cluster of weird food allergies. So this serves one with some left overs.

Ingredients:

1 cup of crawfish tail meat

1/2 celery stalk

1/4 onion

1 tbsp parsley

1 tbsp butter

1 tbsp cornstarch

1 cup of rice

Salt and black pepper to taste

Cooking instructions:

1. Chop the onion and celery, and sauté with the parsley in the butter until they’re very very lightly browned.

2. Add 1/2 cup of water and the cornstarch to create a roux. This is where the flour would go if this weren’t gluten free. Stir with a whisk until it gets thick, and saucy.

3. Add the crawfish and cover the pan with a lid which is in essence, the étouffée. Cook for 8-10 minutes and try to keep the lid lifting to a minimum.

4. Serve over a bed of rice and salt and pepper to taste.

Delicious!!!! The crawfish is so flavorful on it’s own, I didn’t really even miss the spice! But given, I peppered the heck out of that sucker.

Something else that I wanted to share were some new crossfit PRs that I’ve achieved in the past 2 weeks! Which means personal record… I had to google that myself too a little ways back

95 back squat

85 front squat

65 push press

125 deadlift

45 overhead squat

And down to one resistance band in pull-ups! I started with two

I hope everyone is getting as excited as I am for Thanksgiving!! Definitely can’t wait! How about you?

Homemade Protein Bars and a ROMWE haul/review

Happy freaking election day! I hope that you folks take up the opportunity to vote regardless of how you feel about the candidates, because we are truly blessed to live in a country where we have that right. I did my voting last weekend. It was also my first time since I was 6 months shy of 18 in the 2008 election.

They actually gave me two stickers Regardless of what happens tonight I feel like I made the right choice for my first time out.

Any who, I wanted to share a recipie that I adapted from Real Fit Moms. With my leaky gut and various food intolerances, it’s hard to find food on the go. I’m at school for up to 8-9 hours at a time so I try to bring lots of nuts and seeds to keep my going, but I was wanting to mix it up. Since store bought protein bars are latent with soy, hydrogenated oils, and full of sugar, I opted to make my own.

Ingredients-

One large mashed banana

1/4 cup of coconut oil

1/4 cup of sun butter

1/4 cup coconut thread

1/4 cup of dried blueberries

1/4 cup of chocolate chips (I use enjoy life)

1/8 cup of water

1/8 cup of coconut milk (or regular)

3-4 scoops of protein powder (I prefer vanilla and use the sprouts brand)

1 1/2 cup of steel cut oats

Preparation:

1. I use steel cut oats because they are gluten free friendly (for most of us). Now, they’re harder to digest raw than quick oats would be, so you have to toast them in about 1 tbsp of butter until they brown just a bit.

2. Wait for the oats to cool, and add all ingredients into a large mixing bowl, and mix with a good mixer. The sunbutter is quite difficult to blend, so be patient and add more liquids if needed.

3. Rather than freezing them into bar form, I scoop the batter into mini cupcake tins and freeze for 2 hours (or overnight if needed).

Then all you have to do is pull them out of the fridge for a few minutes to let them thaw, and they’ll pop right out with a fork.

These are probably my new favorite staple seeing as they’re easy, delicious and incredibly filling. They sustain me hours and definitely count as a lunch when combined with some fruit and nuts during a school day.

One tip that I’ve found useful if you’re traveling with them is to not store them in a bag. They’ll lose their shape within an hour or so after being pulled out the freezer, and the bag will turn them into mush. I store them in a tight tuperware and attach a little icepack with a rubber band which helps them last for 3-4 hours with their shape held.

ALSO, since I’m trying to move more in the lifestyle blog category, I wanted to share my experience with romwe.com. Not sponsored by the way I find out about the website through youtube and had to give it a shot when I saw their halloween sale where nearly everything was being sold at a reduced price. Not to mention that I’m a sucker for free shipping. Surprisingly, it actually arrived super quickly considering that it was coming all the way from China! It took about a week. Check out this distressed jumper that I got which is similar to a Wildfox jumper for $150+ that I snagged for about $20!

Loves it Romwe is a winner!

Have a happy election day internet! And let me know if you give the protein bars a try

Happy Halloween! Hipster Crossfit and Star Wars meet Disney Style!

Happy Halloween internet!

One of the positives/negatives of food allergies like mine is that it most candies completely off limits so I’m not temped. So, I’m not much for candy today, but I’d be lying if I said I haven’t indulged in some enjoy life chocolate

So the first Halloween festivity that I participated in was my Crossfit box’s Halloween WOD, which was also a costume WOD. There were some pretty rad costumes there, but mine was one of the more functional ones. I wore just a tee shirt, DIY studded leggings, a flannel, and some hipster glasses and called myself a hipster crossfitter… because, “Globo gyms are too mainstream”.

So, the deets of the WOD… it was a toughie. I scaled it down so these weights aren’t RX.

WOD:

20 push jerk (45 lbs)

run 200 m

20 kb swings (26 lbs)

run 200 m

20 toes to bar (my least favorite in all of CF)

run 200 m

20 toes to bar

run 200m

20 kb swings

run 200m

20 push jerks

Time: 20:37

I tend to really hate seeing any sort of running in a WOD, but the fact that it was broken up into 200m at a time made it more manageable for me to wrap my mind around it… but not any easier.

So for actual Halloween, I was planning to just wear some galaxy leggings, and my star wars shirt and call it a day. But if haven’t heard the amazing news (or at least I think it’s amazing) Disney basically bought Star Wars and is completing the other trilogy that was originally written into what was a 9 part series that was cut down to 6. So for all of the nay sayers, these movies were originally intended to be made when Star Wars was first pitched… the force is at work here. Therefore, being a former Disney cast member and a devout Star Wars fan, I had to ham it up last minutes.

Yes that’s actually my iphone case everyday. I’m a tad obsessed. My “necklace” is actually a car decal. I don’t know why I’ve had it so long and haven’t actually put it on my car yet, but that worked to my advantage today. As for the helmet, I already had a full Vader mask and helmet, but I decided to be extra nerdy and make it into a Mickey Vader. So here’s Mickey Vader and Chewy.. hehe

Have a safe and happy halloween world!

Wait. What’s a blog?

I’m not sure if I remember to be honest.

The last time you heard from me (if you don’t follow me on instagram… same username by the way) I was in kind of a weird transition period. I was somewhat on the mend with my leaky gut, and I was really unenthusiastic about the gym. I was a little dry to be honest and clearly didn’t have the inspiration to blog. So. What’s changed? Why am I back? How about a list…?

1. I can now have things like gluten .

Yup that’s a pizza with actual gluten that I made with my boyfriend.  BUT that’s not tomato sauce…

2. I discovered my nightshade intolerance.

I had found it really weird that I could eat gluten after my leaky gut detox, but I would get bad headaches from eating too much potatoes, tomatoes, red peppers, and paprika. I just didn’t see the link. Thanks to the interwebs, I figured out that all of these foods are classified as night shades, and that I had a nightshade problem. It effects people with finicky stomachs like mine, and is really quite common. The good news is that since it’s so common there are options. Like this nomato ketchup with sweet potato fries as a substitute for ketchup and fries! (recipie to come).

3. I crossfit. 

So I’ve learned to live with this as a result.

4. I wear cute things like Wildfox jumper that I got 80% off…

Feeling better about my health and fitness level in general makes me want to feel better about myself all around. So where as I was living in sweat pants with my severe leaky gut, I try to put more pride in my recovery and progress with how I look now.

5. My story needs to be told… and I just really want to tell it.

Non-bloggers always seem to bash bloggers for wanting to share their lives because they think that they’re so interesting. Well, I’m not that narcissistic but I’ve been down a not often traveled by those my age. Not by choice. But I did it. I learned a lot about how to solider through it. I learned how to take a diagnosis that initially seems like a terrible weight crushing me more and more day by day into just another part of what makes me, me. I know that when I was at my lowest, certain things that I found on the internet lifted me up and provided me with knowledge that I wouldn’t have been able to get else ware. I want to try to be that for someone. Plus I like to write. And social media is my job.

So what can you expect from me now? I don’t want a strict blogging schedule. That’s part of what turned me off the last time. If I’m inspired by something, I’ll share it, and if I’m not, I won’t. I’ll share some recipes and tips, some WODs (crossfit lingo), and probably the occasional OOTD since it’s all over my instagram anyway. Oh and fluffy pets and boyfriend things of course. But I’m not going to be a slave to things that I don’t want to post about, and I’m not going to be cheesy and post every single meal that I eat. I’m going to try to be as organic as possible and be a helping hand.

So let’s so how this goes.

Toodles.