Learning to be Spontaneous

I am not what you would call spontaneous; I'm a planner and an organizer, and I'm constantly learning to be more flexible. But! last weekend was spontaneous, and I LOVED it! We decided last Thursday night to go to the beach for part of the weekend. We booked a hotel right before we went to bed on Thursday, and headed to the beach after work on Friday. We needed new beach chairs, and Target and Walmart here have gotten rid of beach things and brought in the back-to-school stuff (which, by the way, drives me crazy because it was the first weekend of August! We are still in full-on summer mode over here!), so I just figured we would find beach chairs along the way. Friday night we had a great talk in the car, our hotel was nice, and Saturday we woke up to a beautiful, sunny day. We started heading to the beach, hoping we would find beach chairs and also hoping we would find a place to park. We had never been to Isle of Palms, so we didn't know where the public beach access was or what kind of parking would be available. We just went for it! After driving around for a while we finally found an awesome parking spot right near the beach access. But, no chairs. We headed down to the water anyway, saw some rental beach chairs, called the phone number on the umbrella, and they delivered us our chairs for the day. The weather was perfect all day, the water was so refreshing, and we had such a great time. Everything worked out just fine and we are so glad we went! I'm hoping this experience will teach me to be more spontaneous in the future:) I hope you have a great weekend, and do something fun and spontaneous! xx

My Favorite Ways to Use Yogurt

Growing up I hated yogurt, but somewhere along the way it's become a staple in my fridge. One of my favorite brands of yogurt is Yoplait: I like their flavors and all of the varieties of yogurts they offer. 

Remember when I said I didn't like Greek yogurt? Newsflash! I actually like the Yoplait Greek 100 yogurt! It's a perfect mid-morning snack while I'm at work. Two thumbs up for finding a Greek yogurt I can handle!

For kids the Go-Gurt yogurts are so nice because you don't need a spoon--no big globs of yogurt falling all over your kitchen and your child! I like to have these on hand for when my nieces and nephews come to visit. And I even snack on the leftovers when they go home:)

The yogurt that I'm grabbing out of the fridge the most often is a big container of vanilla. We mix it with our granola for breakfast, and I also use it a lot in baking. 

Baking with yogurt means extra moist baked goods, which make them last longer. I also love a little bit of a deeper vanilla flavor from incorporating the yogurt. Here are a few of my favorite recipes using vanilla yogurt:

Strawberry-Yogurt Popsicles

French Yogurt Cake

Green Smoothie

Cinnamon Swirl Banana Bread

Yogurt Parfaits with Homemade Granola

Disclosure: The information and prize pack have been provided by General Mills through MyBlogSpark, but the above opinions are 100% my own. Yoplait is a brand that I really do love.

40 Days of Dating

Have you seen the blog 40 Days of Dating? I just heard about it today, and I have since become slightly obsessed. The two friends above, Jessica Walsh and Timothy Goodman, decided to try an experiment and date each other for 40 days. They made the following rules:

1. They would see each other every day for 40 days.
2. They would go on at least three dates a week.
3. They would see a couples therapist once a week.
4. They would go on one weekend trip together.
5. They would fill out a daily questionnaire and document everything.
6. They would not see, date, hook up or have sex with anyone else.

They are chronicling their experience on their blog, and it is FASCINATING. They actually began this experiment in March, but did not start posting on their blog until they completed the 40 days. So, in July they began posting a recap of each day of the experiment and will continue until August 22 when we find out how it all concluded!

I love reading a recap of each day from both of their perspectives. Jessica over-analyzes most things, and Timothy is just kind of confused a lot in the beginning. It's cute to read about them learning new things about each other ("he's more perceptive than I realized" and "she looks cute when her hair is pulled back"), and it's interesting how quickly this experiment becomes like a real relationship. They have their first fight on day 6 and have totally different ideas of what sounds like a fun date (basketball game vs. spa day).

So! If you'd like to follow along, check out their blog here, and start from the beginning! I'm secretly hoping they end up falling in love:)

(photo from here)