Tag Archives: leaf your negativity behind

MIA…So Here’s a Wild Harvest Giveaway!

Like that rhyming title? You know you do.

I felt well again yesterday but today am back to feeling blah. So frustrating and I am beginning to think this is more than a stomach virus! I don’t think it’s typical for virus to flare down then back up so frequently. That makes me worried because I do not want to be dealing with something more chronic – I always think of poor Tina and her colitis and get freaked out! And the stress is certainly not good for my stomach so I’m trying to Leaf Negativity Behind and smile. After all my symptoms are not nearly as bad as what Tina went through and I am thankful that I was able to get into another doctor’s appointment this afternoon. My employer is nice enough to let me leave early without hesitation.

But leaving work early means I’m slammed (I’ve been slammed all week) and have little time to blog. Therefore no Fashion Friday 🙁 didn’t want to leave you hanging though so I do have a quick giveaway for you all from Wild Harvest, the top sponsor of the Healthy Living Summit in Boston this past summer!

Before HLS ’12 I received a box of Wild Harvest goodies to sample, and they are offering one lucky Cait Plus Ate winner the same box! It includes:

  • Animal Crackers
  • Peach Mango Salsa – This stuff was away awesome! It went so well on seafood.
  • Applesauce
  • Black Beans – OMG you know I was all over these.
  • Raisins
  • Creamy Peanut Butter
  • Cherry Vanilla Granola
  • Ginger – Now that’s something I could use a lot of right now!
  • Cayenne Pepper – Kick those recipes up a notch 😉
  • Coupon for eggs – One of my favorite forms of protein!

This giveaway will end Sunday evening at 11:59PM EST. One winner will be selected – continental US only please. Here’s how to enter (leave a separate comment for each please or multiple entries won’t count):

  1. Comment here and tell me how you’d use one item from the box (mandatory).
  2. Follow @CaitPlusAte on Twitter and comment saying you did.
  3. Follow @Wild_Harvest on Twitter and comment saying you did.
  4. Tweet “I entered to win a box of @Wild_Harvest products from @CaitPlusAte! http://wp.me/p1SfTW-1xY” and comment here with the link to the tweet.

That’s four easy ways to enter – good luck to all who do so!

General Giveaway Rules: No Purchase Necessary. The email addresses that are collected for this giveaway will only be used for the purpose of contacting the winner and will never be given out to anyone nor sold. The winner will be randomly chosen and contacted via email. The winner will have 72 hours to respond. Only one winner per household. Please make sure you check your junk mail folder.

A Whole New Accomplishment!

Thank you to those who entered my Mohegan Sun BrewFest giveaway! I’m pleased to announce the winner…

Leah of A Lil of This…A Lil of That! Thank you for entering and I will be contacting you about getting your passes to the BrewFest session of your choice!

Remember everyone, tickets to this weekend’s event are still just $20/session and you can attend Saturday 12-4pm or 6-10pm (I’m going to that one), or Sunday 12-4pm. So many choices, so many beers…you have to be there!

I have such exciting news to share! I have been aware of this announcement since Monday but was waiting until I had photos to include in this post before doing a “reveal post”. It was hard…believe me. But now I’m here writing this, and I can SHOW you all my big news, and I’m so glad I waited.

Whole Foods Market puts out a magazine in its stores for customers to have for FREE, and the holiday edition just started arriving in the 28 North Atlantic region stores yesterday (yes I know, holidays already). Before you decide to hold off on picking up your copy until after we actually get to Halloween, you’ll want to know that this issue is all about the FOODIE, a category I definitely would place many of my readers and myself in. And apparently, Whole Foods agrees.

I spy with my little eye…

The early pages of this holiday issue contain a section called In the Market, with a feature titled “On the Web: Fresh Voices” about “food-loving bloggers right here in New England”. And the last (but not least, don’t worry! :-P) blogger on that list just happens to be AMAZING ME!!!!!

And major props to fellow Fitfluential Ambassador Elizabeth of On Tap for Today for being featured too!

I was so shocked and honored when Whole Foods contacted me to let me know that I’d be in the magazine. The Connecticut stores recommended me to the North Atlantic region’s PR department! As if they haven’t been kind enough to me already. And the PR department was kind enough to send me several copies of the magazine for myself…obviously I need way more than one.

However I didn’t think the department would get me my copies in the mail so quickly, so last night I hit up my closest Whole Foods. The helpful customer service staff gave me a few copies of the magazine from the back despite the fact that it’s not sitting out in stores just yet. Another local store hadn’t even received it yet. But hopefully by next week the magazines (all 200,000 copies!) will be sitting out in North Atlantic region stores if anyone wants to pick one up 😉

Last night, this big news played a huge role in my participation in Becki‘s Leaf Your Negativity Behind October challenge. Yesterday was not the best of days. My stomach wasn’t behaving and feeling crappy physically does not lend itself to fighting if I’m feeling crappy mentally. But before bed I did my meditation on positive truths about myself. And this Whole Foods accomplishment was just what I needed to focus on and allow myself to be proud of all I have done with my blog in only a year. Who cares if I had a glass of wine with dinner last night? I’m in a WHOLE FOODS MAGAZINE. I deserve it!

Encouraging note my sister left me in our bathroom once after I’d had a stressful night…it now has a permanent home in my room above my bed!

While I do wish that I’d had some input in the magazine’s description of my blog (I feel like “healthful diet” does not really describe what I am trying to attain…more like a happy, health physical and mental life), I am again taking Becki’s advice and leaving the negativity behind. My blog is in print! The people of Whole Foods think it’s worthy of their magazine! And the bloggers I’m featured with are so incredibly talented. Being in their company is truly an honor!

This big news just makes me want to dive into my blog in an even bigger way and get to an ideal balance of posts about foodie events, restaurant reviews, my mental struggles, fitness, daily life, giveaways…I feel like my fall semester workload and increasingly busy full-time job have been getting in the way of that! Part of me is worried that a few months from now, Whole Foods will be wondering why they put me in their magazine. But wait…that’s negativity. That does NOT have a place in the celebration of such accomplishment. Nope, not allowed.

So thank you all for supporting me over this past year (and longer to you “real life” readers 😛 ) and thank you Whole Foods for recognizing my blog! And GO ME!

What’s your biggest “blog accomplishment” so far? Everyone has one, even someone who just started. I declare this post’s comments to be a BRAG BONANZA!

Do you have a Whole Foods near you? I know some of my readers are Whole Foods “deprived”!

Here Comes a Fighter

Have you entered my Mohegan Sun BrewFest giveaway yet? Don’t forget – you could win two passes to this weekend’s beer bonanza! Giveaway closes tomorrow (Wednesday 10/3) at 12PM EST.

Geez, so far fall has been extremely busy in terms of my full-time job!By the time I got home last night from my post-work gym session all I wanted to do was sit on the couch with my mom and watch the season premiere of Grey’s on the DVR with dinner. And wine. So that’s what I did – no blog post.

My setup at Art With a Twist in New Haven, CT!

But now I’m ready to blog about this past Saturday. As I mentioned in Sunday’s brief giveaway post, I have a lot to say! The day started out in typical Caitlin fashion – spin class and #plankaday, a few hours of much-needed study time at Daybreak. Then I hit the road for New Haven to have a date with Maria of Pappa Don’t Preach! We’ve never been able to do a good one-on-one hangout before, but we are two peas in a pod and I’m so grateful to have met her through blogging. She drove all the way from Stamford to meet me at Art With a Twist for a BYOB painting class! We used a Groupon🙂 of course.

Maria listening to our instructor, the fabulous Bella Zadore.

Maria did a great job sharing more photos of Art With a Twist’s lovely location, and info about the business itself, in her recap! We decided to go sweet on the booze and shared Riesling and champagne. Thanks Maria for introducing me to Asti! It was delicious.

Everyone painted the same illustration, but then everyone’s came out looking different. My water turned out a bit sickly looking, and Maria pointed out that I was just trying to paint the Long Island Sound. Truth.

Pondering the sounds of the Sound…champagne in hand.

I also must’ve still had BlogHer on the brain because my palm trees looked like Lorax mustaches.

Lorax #1

Lorax #2. He’s unimpressed. Source

I was doing a little too much hating on my painting, so Bella sprinkled me with confetti as “punishment”. Okay okay, I complained on purpose so that I could get showered in confetti. Who doesn’t love that?!

There’s a 30% chance it’s already raining.

I had a great time chatting with Maria about our gym sessions that morning (of course) and also taught her how to take silly photos. She deemed me a silly photo queen. I am honored!

Help me take silly photos, Caitlin!

Don’t mind if I do!

How amazing are the “men/women” signs for the bathrooms?! Bella is so creative! She decorated everything in Art With a Twist herself.

Blogger in action.

Despite the fact that my painting did not look like Bella’s, I’m gonna refrain from saying that it wasn’t as good as Bella’s. After all, she wasn’t painting the Long Island Sound!

It’s beauuuuutiful!

Stealing this from Maria’s post…BYO-Blend!

You are what you…paint?

After class we hit up 116 Crown for a pre-dinner cocktail. Because when you’ve been drinking since 2:30PM, why stop?

I ordered the Negroni!

Unfortunately before I could even get to the point of ordering, I had to wait outside with Maria for 15 minutes because we arrived at 4:45PM and they weren’t open yet. It’s fine, another opportunity to practice her silly photo taking!

Let me at the cocktails!

Why am I not drinking a cocktail right now?!

Once we were seated and with drinks in hand, our kind bartender (and very patient I might add, we had SO many drink ingredient questions) took some awesome above-view photos of us 😀

I love the modern “pod” seating!

It was my second time at 116 Crown in September (and ever). I’ll definitely be back! It’d take me eons to work through that drink menu.

Falafel, hummus, cucumber yogurt sauce, pita.

By the time we got to the ultimate dinner destination, Red Lentil, I was staaarving! I’ve been pumped to try the place because it offers unique vegan/vegetarian dishes and had gotten a rave review from Heather. Maria and I started with the appetizer special, the above falafel platter. Be still my heart! It was excellent. I also had the beet-sweet potato-apple latkes. The picture looks totally ugly but they tasted the opposite of ugly.

They may or may not have been equated to “bad weed” in an Instagram comment.

After dinner, I hit the road…but I didn’t head back home like I thought I’d be doing when I woke up that morning. Instead, I responded to a spontaneous text I received during the paint class, inviting me to the Full Moon Onyx Moonshine Party at Taqueria Tavern in West Hartford.

Onyx is an awesome local CT company. I love local, I love booze, and I love unique marketing. Onyx Moonshine has all three of those on its side! You may remember that I worked with them at the Farm to Shaker Bartender Challenge as a cocktail competition judge!

The party included many delicious Onyx drink specials (I had a cinnamon infused Onyx on the rocks that was to die for) and a super-spicy wing eating contest. The photo above includes the two Onyx founders Pete and Adam, and between them is the winner of the wing-eating contest, Judson!

Judson and his winnings!

Judson is a champ. He decided to enter the contest THAT day! He also happens to be the boyfriend of my friend Jennifer! They’re an adorable couple.

Jennifer and I!

I took a bite of one of the wings (DUMB) and my mouth was on fire for almost an hour afterward! I don’t know how these champs did it! JD of Ripe Bar Juice (also from the Cocktail Competition at the Coventry Farmer’s Market) ordered me up a Kahlua drink made with Onyx, and it certainly coated my mouth with some cooling dairy and helped stop the burn.

JD is fearing the wing!

I’m realizing right now that this post is really long and I am only just now getting to the part of it that I have been wanting to write for the last couple of days. This was a long day. I was drinking from 2:30PM to about 10:30PM. I definitely did some chip nomming at the Mexican restaurant. That Kahlua drink most definitely had whole milk in it. I didn’t get home until 11:30PM. The day may have started out Caitlin-style, but it didn’t end that way.

And as fate would have it, the beautiful Becki has started an October challenge that I decided today to join, because it fits with what I want to say today and what I want to DO for myself for the rest of the month and beyond. You can read the details here, but it entails 10 minutes a day of meditating on why you are AMAZING.

I woke up in the middle of the night on Saturday after having gone to that party in a panic. I was about to go get my mother out of bed and pour out my heart. I felt worthless. I felt guilty. I felt like I didn’t deserve to have the fun Saturday I’d just had.

But instead of going to get my mom, I took a deep breath. I lay in my bed in corpse pose and tried a calming tactic that has worked for me before. I breathed in and out, and after each breath I said out loud something from my #AmazingMe list. In, out. “I worked out yesterday.” In, out. “I had a wonderful time.” In, out. “I did something I knew would put me out of my comfort zone.” In, out, until I fell back asleep.

After all, only #AmazingMe could have made this painting!

I woke up on Sunday morning still feeling, to put it bluntly, like a piece of shit. I was proud of myself for having worked through my mid-night anxiety on my own, but was still being bombarded by the most hateful, mean thoughts. I went to the gym – yes, partially because I felt like I wanted to get in a workout to “make up” for the previous night. But also because I wanted to be powerful, feel strong, and do something that I enjoyed. I even putzed around the house for a bit before hitting the gym instead of dashing there like I usually do on weekend mornings, because I just wanted to wait it out and go to the Sunday morning spin class, which always leaves me feeling refreshed and has the BEST music. I did a lot of singing-and-spinning that morning.

I took a little social media vacation. I went on Instagram for a second, and realized the last thing I wanted to see was peoples’ food and workouts. Sometimes I’m okay with that stuff, but sometimes it triggers me like crazy. I tweeted that I was going to spend the day doing nothing except what makes me feel good. Then I stayed away from Twitter for most of the day.

After the gym, I took a long, slow, hot shower. I had a date to study with Jenny at J. Rene Coffee Roasters in West Hartford, and was still going because seeing Jenny and drinking coffee in a unique cafe does NOTHING but make me feel good, but I decided to take it slow. I decided not to be go-go-go to the next appointment on my “agenda”. I closed my eyes and sang in the shower, because that felt great. And while I was getting ready to go, Avril Lavigne “With You” came on my playlist and I suddenly got the urge to just dance around my room like a half ballerina, half hip-hop queen. I felt like it’d make me feel good. So, that’s what I did.

Even right now as I write this I am overwhelmed with pride over how much self love I practiced this past Sunday. Almost every activity I did, every action I took, I stopped and asked myself, “Is this what I want to do?” If it wasn’t, I didn’t do it. I still felt the hateful thoughts coming at me from every direction. But I was on a mission to medicate and heal their damage with something other than restricting, than over-exercising. I didn’t want to lose another battle.

At the end of Sunday evening as I lay in bed listening to an inspiring NPR interview recommended to me by Jenny, coloring with my Sharpies, inhaling my Pumpkin Buttercream Yankee Candle, I felt at peace. Again, I still had mean thoughts popping up in my head. I still felt a bit miserable. But getting past this is going to come in increments, and any little peace I can give myself means the world to me and makes me feel proud.

An evening of serenity.

What this all comes down to (I felt a bit word vomit-y as I wrote this but I just kinda let it flow), is the following: Yes, I was beating myself up all Sunday for having a spontaneous Saturday night. BUT I did not curl up in a ball and hide. I did not obsess over how I’d “make up” for what I had “done wrong”. I did not try to punish myself by letting my mind just sit back and take the negative thoughts. Instead I tried to HEAL myself from their damage by practicing self love and doing things that soothed me and taking it easy. I took it easy on myself, and as a result, felt like a fighter. I still feel like one! I didn’t feel that way a couple weekends ago in Tennessee, but this time I feel like I have come out successful in this battle. You lose some, you win some. And hopefully this is the start of continuing to win some!

Have you ever been to a unique BYOB activity or partaken in a crazy food contest?

What do you think about Becki’s Leaf Your Negativity Behind challenge? Who’s with me?!

Tell me a way you recently practiced self love!