Running, Food & Holiday Cheer

peppers

This weekend was a great one, particularly in the food department! The weather in Denver has hit record highs for this time of year… highs have been in the 60s, which means both of my runs this weekend were in shorts and a tank top. What? It’s December!

We also tried to get Harper in the Christmas spirit. Cute photos ahead!

Friday, I headed to a Mountain Living edit lunch at Piatti in Cherry Creek. The food was delicious, as always! I ordered a Caesar salad and this shrimp saffron pappardelle. Yum!

After running a few errands, I worked from home for the rest of the evening. Here I was in the kitchen, admiring the pup and my red nails + engagement ring. 🙂

Saturday morning started with my favorite meal ever: our morning scramble + toast and butter. Just a reminder of what’s in our breakfast every morning: mushrooms, spinach, garlic, three eggs (split between us both), tomatoes, and avocado. Nothing gets better than this. Add Cholula and coffee, duh. In the background, you can see evidence of what we had for dinner Friday night: Cosmo’s pizza and wine.

walk

Nick set off to run 17 miles in the mountains with some friends, and I did some laundry and housework before setting off to walk the puppy.

Harper decided she’d rather sit down and chew on sticks than walk. Seriously. It took us an hour to walk 2 miles!

After Harper got her exercise, I set out to get mine. I ran a slow and steady 8 miles by adding an extra mile in the neighborhoods before doing two laps at the park. It was so sunny and beautiful outside that I got a funny runner’s tan on my legs! I also didn’t eat anything after breakfast, so by the end of my run, I was feeling quite unhuman (lightheaded, no appetite even though I needed food, wanting to sleep, etc.). Thankfully I force-fed myself some scrambled eggs, toast, and a leftover broccoli fitter, which I knew would bring me back to life.

After Nick got home, we rested up a bit before walking to The Spot for a dinner of nachos and fries (+ ranch). So good!

A week ago, I picked up a live tabletop tree for our apartment, since Harper’s giant crate is in the spot where we usually set up our Christmas tree. We’d been too busy/tired to decorate it during the week, but Saturday night we finally found the (nacho-fueled) energy to dig up the lights and ornaments from storage and show the pup what Christmas looks like!

Voila! It was Nick’s genius idea to hang our stockings off of the skull.

Sunday morning, Nick went to get groceries while I walked the pup, and then we ran 7 miles at the park. After running 14 miles at Lair o’ the Bear two weeks ago, I’ve been burnt out and haven’t run much since… but that’s about to change! I’m training for the Moab Red Hot 33k, which is a 20-mile trail run. I thought diving back into a 15-mile long run might be overkill, so I split it up over two days this weekend. Sunday’s 7 miles were rough, but it’s all good mental training.

For lunch, Nick cooked up a lentil burger on a whole wheat tortilla, topped with tomato, spinach, avocado, and a fried egg. Delicious! I spy Harper in the background eyeing my lunch…

We did some finance-y things and also ordered our holiday cards! We needed a little photo of Harper for the back of the card, and nothing we currently had would fit just right. So I decided to snap a few photos of Harps in the Christmas spirit… Above, we have her take on “Merry Christmas, ya filthy animal!”

Not a fan of these shenanigans…

Bingo! The winning shot! Don’t worry, she earned lots of treats for this.

We concluded the weekend with a night of meal prep galore. For dinner, we enjoyed this Moroccan stew with couscous (topped with Greek yogurt + cilantro), and for dessert…