Home…

So when I came home this trip I opened the cupboard to this:

What what?  Are those Kashi Crunchy bars I see?  *GASP* My family is actually eating healthy type of bars?  Apparently my whole family is loving them!  And they never listen to my recommendations.  And wait…Banana Nut Cheerios?!?! Holy screamin heaven of glory.  I guess Cheerio brand was on sale and my sister bought every flavor to try, but she hates the Banana Nut.  Score! I love that cereal!  And there’s more?  This dude was found hangin’ upside down like a monkey!

I’ve been trying to get my mom to buy natural peanut butter for years.  Granted, she’s still buying the large Costco sized regular Skippy, but she bought the natural chunky stuff for her.  Go Mommy!! I’m so happy 😀  (Just ignore the Alfredo sauce in the background…)

Sunday morning started out with a treadmill run with 1.7 mile running intervals:

• .3 mile warmup
• 1.7 miles 6 mph
• .2 mile walk
• 1.7 miles 6.2-6.4 mph
• .4 mile cooldown

I then came home to pop this in the oven:

I picked this up at the Avila Barn the other day since I’ve always wanted to try their cinnamon rolls, but they usually sell out every morning.  I then froze it when I got home so it would stay “fresh”, and then reheated it up in the oven.  I kind of forgot about it and overcoked it a bit, but the middle was super doughy and the outside sugar glaze was to die for! I can’t wait to try one fresh from the barn again (no reheating necessary!).

Our Sunday birthday dinner was a nice family get together.  We met my Nana, other set of grandparents, 2 cousins, and my aunt for dinner at my Nana’s residence restaurant.

It’s kind of an “all you can eat/order however much you want” type of pre-paid meal, however the menu selection isn’t very large at all.  I’m very sorry for no food pictures, but I didn’t feel quite comfortable taking pictures of all the food during the dinner, as my entire family doesn’t know about my blogging.  I did however take advantage, and I ordered a starter of:

• Gazpacho (with chunks of avocado in it!)
• Small (teensy!) spinach salad with poppyseed dressing
• Fresh fruit bowl

For my meal, I debated between the turkey burger or black bean burger.  I got the turkey burger last year, so I opted for the black bean burger this time with cauliflower and a baked sweet potato on the side.  While the sweet potato was amazing, the black bean burger was literally the exact same Morningstar patty I have in my freezer.  No joke.  The same.  Major disappointment.

Here comes dessert! (ignore the coke can who was rudely in my way)

Dessert wasn’t too appealing to me – chocolate cake with a scoop of mint chip ice cream.  I had a few bites of the cake that was soaking in the melty ice cream, but ended up giving it to my sister.  I’m not a huge cake fan (only ice cream cake!) and am not a fan of mint chip ice cream either (I don’t like chips in my ice cream!).  I also knew we had better flavors of ice cream at home that I’d rather have!  My dad was sad by the sight of some leftover plates though:

What a waste!!

We like to have fun 😀

Monday was nothing too exciting (gym, Costco & Trader Joe’s), but some of my eats included some of this:

Yes – my mommy bought me Fage yogurt!! Awww how nice of her 🙂

Some Costco cake for my sister’s birthday at her gymnastics:

Insert Costco samples here…

Trader Joe’s vanilla oreo-ish type cookie:

And delicious figs on the drive home:

So juicy.  So sweet!

Dinner was a new try from Costco.  An organic cornmeal crust margherita pizza.  We added sauteed onions & chicken sausage to one.

And kept the other one plain:

By the time I was done prepping & cooking dinner, I was really smokin hot, and therefore not feeling like eating hot food (aka pizza).  And due to all the snacking/picking while cooking, I wasn’t hungry at all.  So I had a small slice of the chicken sausage one, and then some crust from my brother’s discarded pile.  I also had a salad with some of the leftover onion & sausage mixture.  This pizza was okay – the crust was a bit dry, crunchy and tasteless.  And while I try to enjoy food and not count calories, 1/6 of a pizza had 350 calories & 18 grams of fat.  And these pizzas were not huge.  So I tried it, said blah, and decided against eating more.

Pre-Workout this morning, I wanted to try out my new Justin’s Maple Almond Butter that I bought on sale last time I was home & left here.  Spread on toasted Alpine Valley bread = AMAZING!!  Holy yum this almond butter is soooooo good!  The best almond butter I’ve had yet.

I planned to have 1 slice for a small pre-workout snack, but I can never stop at just 1 slice of toast.  So for my second slice, I decided to model Angela and spread some almond butter & fresh figs as jam on top.

Wow.  This.  Was.  Bomb.  Amazing.  Try it.  And then of course I was a little too full after this to workout right away.  I need to have 1 slice and walk away!  When I did hit up the gym I did another treamill run just like Sunday’s run (1.7 mile run, walk…repeat for a total of 3.4 miles running).  My iPod died on the first song, so it was a boring run let me tell ya!

I then hurried back to the knee doctor I saw a couple months ago.  They said to come back next time I was home if my knee hadn’t healed or improved.  Since it’s been the same (and frustratingly so!), I made another appointment.  After waiting 1 hour 15 minutes (yes – they called my name at 3:00 for a 1:45 appointment), I was rushed in and out because of some emergency surgery going on.  The doctor was almost rude to me and asked “What I wanted to do about my knee”.  Well um….try and figure out what’s going on? I would think that might be obvious.  He asked if it was really bothering me enough to do something about it – if it was hindering my daily activity.  Well, yes, it is bothering me enough, thank you doctor.  It’s why I’m here.

They ended up giving me another cortisone shot, this time more directly on the pain below and towards the inner part of the knee.  Since the last cortisone shot did absolutely nothing (besides make my knee hurt more for a few days), I’m not sure what good this one will do either.

Sorry for the rant guys.  I’m trying to stay postitive, really.

Sorry no dinner pics – although I did grill a necarine on the BBQ and can I just recommend that everyone does this? It seriously tasted like I was eating the inside goodies of a pie.  No joke.

I ended my night with a little bit of math…

+

=

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Who You Callin’ Corny?

We’ll start out with my favorite corny joke from when I was little:

Q: Why did the dog jump in the puddle? (answer at bottom 😉 )

My swim yesterday felt great!

• 800 freestyle
• 2 x 600 pulling (1 with hand paddles)
• 2 x 200 IM
• 100 freestyle
• 2 x 75 pulling fast
• 150 free cool-down

Total: 2800 yards (112 laps for you non-swimming folks 😉 ) in 50 minutes

I felt pretty good, especially considering I’ve only swam once or twice all summer!  I had originally planned to do 4 IMs, and another pulling set at the end to get me up to 3400 yards, but I was getting tired & had a massive headache (stupid swim cap!!).  Afterwards, I changed into a more “tanable” suit (aka a bikini rather than a one piece speedo!) to lay out and read a bit, during which I finished the book Just Friends.

It was pretty good!  Preditable ;-), but good.  I would recommend for a fun, chick-lit, “beachy” read!  I’m still working on Nineteen Minutes, but have been saving it for when I’m at the gym since it makes the time pass so much faster 😉 I also need to get started on Time Traveler’s Wife sometime soon!

So I have those 2 avocados and 4 ears of corn my mom sent me that were calling to be used.  So I decided on some type of avocado and corn salsa. Black beans also seemed like a necessity in this salad/salsa combination.  Unfortunately, my ears of corn had gone bad!  All slimy and sour smelling.  Blech!  Luckily I had a can of corn in the cupboard, but fresh would’ve been so much better!  I kind of just threw things together, but based it off of this Black Bean Salad recipe.

But basically I just combined:

• 1 can drained corn
• 1 can drained black beans
• Approx 12 oz halved grape tomatoes
• 1/2 chopped red onion
• A couple handfuls chopped cilantro (I love cilantro!!)
• Garlic paste
• Drizzle of lime juice
• 1 whole cubed avocado (which got completely mushy anyways)
• Bunch of salt, pepper & a little bit of cumin

I think it had a bit too much corn in there in proportion to black beans.  Ahh well it was TASTY!!  But missing bit of spice/salt or something.  I’ll probably add more seasonings next time.  Now how many ways can I use this Black bean & corn salad/salsa?

For Friday night dinner, I spread some BBQ sauce on a Rudi’s 7 grain & flax tortilla, topped that with the salsa, and then sprinkled it with goat cheese to make a “pizza”.  Fresh out of the oven:

OH MAN OH MAN good!!!  I wish it had more goat cheese, but I’m almost out, and didn’t want to use it all! I must say, I could really get the wrap flavor in this (especially in the crispy end crust), and it was good! I really like the taste of this tortilla/wrap.  Some whole grain tortillas can have a weird taste (such as the La Tortilla brand), but I could really taste the unique flax flavor in these.  Yum!

Saturday morning I threw the corn salsa into my 2 egg white, 1 egg omelette:

Topped with a bit of Mexican 2% cheese & ketchup (of course).  I need carbs in the morning, so I also had 2 leftover blueberry pancakes on the side topped with a bit of PB & syrup.  I was just a bit too full after this monstrous baby!

Or you can use it as a plain salsa/dip, as I did for my tonight’s dinner!  It was the perfect combination with Food Should Taste Good sweet potato chips 🙂 I also opened up my box of Mary’s Crackers (in Caraway flavor) to try out.  Yum…these crackers are delicious!!

I also had another brie + tomato + basil toast:

All together (along with a spinach salad topped with feta & TJ’s Peanut Asian dressing):

Any other suggestions on ways to use up the rest of this salad/salsa dish?

On my way to work today I hit up Costco where I got an exciting sample (well, to me!).  Besides sampling a piece of a delicious veggie burger, a small piece of chocolate chip cookie, some Kashi honey sunshine cereal…I got to try a small bite of the Bear Naked granola bars! I’ve never seen these around!  New?

Mmmmm this was really really good.  Really sweet and gooey 🙂

I also quickly stopped at Trader’s where (ironically) their sample was a Roasted Corn & Tomato salsa! haha.  It literally tasted almost exactly like mine.  They had little recipe cards, so I picked one up, which read:

• 1/2 jar TJ’s tomatoless corn salsa
• 16 oz cherry tomatoes, halved
• 1/4 cup chopped cilantro
• 1 small avocado (optional)
• 1 can black beans, drained (optional)
• 2 cloves garlic (optional)

Pretty much the same thing as mine!  Were Trader’s & I on the same page, or what?!  They recommended using it on top of meat.

Other afternoon snacks included a butt-load of fruit! This plate:

+ 4 apricots & probs 8 oz of bluebs (ugh I don’t like that word – bluebs.  Remind me never to say it again).  Also a couple handfuls of cereal.  And some cottage cheese.  I get snacky at work.

After dinner I showed some self control overdid it on the froyo a bit.  I ended up eating a whole pint of my self-serve froyo I had stored in the freezer when I was still overly full from dinner.  It wasn’t a “binge”, but was definitely un-needed when I went back for seconds when I wasn’t even hungry for firsts.  But I could’ve done much worse and devoured the second container I have outside, so I guess that’s good?

In workout news, my boss recently bought the P90X fitness program, and was talking to me about it the other day.  She’s had the DVDs lying out recently, so I tried one out today (while the kiddies were napping!).  I’ve heard other great things about these DVDs, and MY GOODNESS it was hard!! I did the Chest, Arms & Shoulders DVD, and holy mackeroly.  It was ridiculous!  I thought I was relatively strong and in good shape, but I had to take so many breaks and my arms were literally shaking for a while afterwards.  I also finished off with the 15 minute ab ripper.  I’m seriously considering buying these DVDs, as I’ve been doing the same strength routine for years (yes, talk about a plateau), and this definitely breaks you out of a plateau.  Anyone else heard anything about these DVDs or tried them out yourself? Downfall is they’re pretty expensive.  But you DO get 13 DVDs!

I hope you’re all having a wonderful end to your weekends!!

A: He was a hot dog!

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RIP my Lovely Apricots

Well I think I might have gotten a bit cocky about my knee.  Thursday gym workout included:

• 20 minutes stairs level 12
• 2 mile treadmill run (with a few minutes walking throughout); .5 mile cool-down
• 10 minutes upper body

I also fit in 20 minutes total ab work randomly throughout the day.

Anyhow, my knee was feeling a bit achy with sharp pains later in the night.  I was dumb.  3 runs in one week?  Even if they are super short, I haven’t done that since I stopped running altogether!

I had to be at work by 7 am yesterday, so I brought my breakfast along with me to eat there.  I splurged on some Food for Life English muffins the other day because I’ve been dying to try them and they were on sale!  Unfortunately, they were out of Ezekiel cinnamon raisin, so I snagged the Genesis 1:29 type.  So that’s what I had this morn, 1/2 topped with Naturally Yours PB, 1/2 with cookie-dough PB:

Oh YUMMNESS!!  These English muffins are bomb!  They’re slightly bigger than the average joe muffin (and thus have more calories – 180), are dense, chewy, and just great.  I love how you can taste the seeds and crunch in them.  I love these!!  As I was unpacking my bags tonight, I realized I left my bag with the two peanut butters at work 😦 Guess I’ll be going all weekend without my naturally yours & cookie dough flavors!  I only wonder what my boss will think when she sees that I brought 2 jars of PB to work with me?  haha!

Mid-day, we took a little trip to the beach to walk along the pier:

And also hit up the local Beach Barn which I’m completely obsessed with.  It’s great – they sell tons of locally grown fruits & veggies for pretty good prices!  Almost like a Farmer’s Market.  Plus they have tons of cute little goodies & gifts.  And a candy shop with ice cream and fudge!  I sampled wedding cake & caramel peanut butter fudge 🙂 They also have amazing pies, scones, breads, etc.  Yum!

I picked up a few veggies (zucchini, an onion, cilantro) and some apricots.

They also have animals.  This guy was a beauty!

I snacked a bunch through the morning & mid-day at work (mostly from boredom eating – argh!) on LOTS of almonds, fruit (I ate my weight in fruit – 1/2 pint of blueberries, 4 apricots, strawberries, cherries, 2 clementines, pluot…), and the last of my homemade coleslaw, so I wasn’t too hungry thoughout the day.  But by the time we got home at 4:00 I was starving!  Whipped out my Kashi Tuscan Veggie Bake:

Pretty good!  It was like a veggie lasagna, but minus the cheese.  So I sprinkled some parmesan on top 😀 I loved the smokey flavor.

Once I got off work I went straight to the gym, and then to Farmer’s Market where I had one mission in mind: Get those amazing apricots I picked up the past couple weeks!!  Then I got the bad news – there was not one apricot being sold at Farmer’s!  The lady told me the season’s over 😦 Guess I should go back to the beach barn or to Costco and stock up before they stop selling them too!

Because of my late late lunch, and all my Farmer’s Market samples (a bunch of flavored almonds, and pita samples with about a serving of different hummus flavors), I really wasn’t hungry for dinner.  But I knew I needed to eat something!  Originally I’d planned to grill up another brie quesadilla with my leftover basil, but I didn’t want that large of a meal at 9:00, and I also didn’t feel like making any dirty dishes.  So I decided on toast!  Brie cheese (some under the basil as well), tomato, & basil on a slice of the best bread ever.  Popped it in the toaster oven…mmmmm 🙂

Followed by this little guy I picked up at the Farmer’s Market pie stand:

About a bites worth of apricot pie – I thought I would love it, but not so much.  It had a weird sour taste.

And then I was still craving froyo, so froyo is what I had!  Cake batter froyo with one cookie dough chunk, heath toffee bits & some FF reddi whip (I don’t like normal whipped cream, but I love this stuff!).

Why is my self-serve froyo in a Haagen Dazs container you might ask?  Well I bought the cake batter flavor to freeze (because it’s some of the best thing ever), but the container was pretty large and only about half full.  And I had just finished off this empty container, so WA-LA!  I transferred the froyo into this container to store in the freezer.  Complicated, but it worked out, trust me.  Plus I like eating out of ice cream containers 😉

Today I had originally planned to make another trip to LA (yes third weekend in a row!) to visit one of my old great friends who’s visiting from Colorado.  Rob and I were next door neighbors from 6th grade until junior year of high school when he moved to Colorado.  He was one of the best friends I ever had – he was always there for me, and I loved being able to just wander over at any moment.  I don’t have any old pics on this computer, but this was the earliest I could find:

He visited once or twice during high school, but then I didn’t see him again for over 3 years – when I went to visit him in Colorado 2 years ago:

So now it’s been another 2 years, and he told me his plan to roadtrip out to CA this summer!  YAY!!  The roadtrip plans fell through, but he still planned to fly out to the LA area and wanted me to drive down.  (Why couldn’t he have been in LA either of the last 2 weekends?!  haha).  Since I don’t work at all today, I thought why not?!  Well I let him know earlier this week I’d try to make it down Friday, then I texted him and called him a couple times yesterday – with no answer and no call back.  I’m super bummed because I really wanted to see him 😦 I don’t know if his phone is just dead, or he was really busy, or what’s going on.  I do know he was with one girl who yesterday (who I never got along with), so I don’t know if that has anything to do with it.  Bummer 😦 Okay…vent over.

In a way, I’m excited to have the whole day free since I haven’t had one of those days in over 2 weeks (with work, vacations, trips, etc).  I slept in, and woke up dreaming of pancakes!  I decided to try out my new Quaker pancake mix I picked up on sale the other day.  My roommate had also made Raisin Bran muffins that smelled amazing so I helped myself to 1/2 a muffin as well:

Topped with a little PB for my morning nut butter fix 😉 And like 3 cups of coffee.

My knee is slightly more sore than usual, so I know I pushed my run yesterday.  My bunion is also bothering me a bit (weird – it hasn’t hurt me in a while!), so I plan to stay out of my running shoes this morning.  Plan to hit up the pool for a nice swim!  And maybe some lounging around after 🙂 Then I’ll tackle my To-Do list:

• Gym – swim & tan
• Clean room (it’s a disaster after 2 weekends of vacations and visitors!)

• Upload pics to Costco online
• Costco (Paper towels, pictures, & apricots!)
• Call friend Jamie and see what she’s up to this weekend! (catch up with old friends!)
• Scrapbook (haven’t done this in ages and have free time!)

Okay, so it’s not really a “to-do” list, more like a “what I want to accomplish today for fun!” list.  But I honestly haven’t had any free time in so long.  I’m excited!  But still bummed about my friend of course.  Bittersweet…

Here’s a giveway – but don’t forget to mention my name when you leave a comment! 😉

And I don’t know about you, but I’ve been dying to try out the Sunshine burgers after seeing so much hype about them on the blogs!  Luckily there’s a chance to win some coupons for them here!

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Bars of all kinds!

My late lunch (at around 3:30) consisted of pan-fried & marinated tempeh, along with sauteed onions, some lettuce, BBQ sauce & Laughing Cow cheese spread sandwiched on my fave Alpine Valley Bread.  I felt it was lacking a bit of crunch so I added a few corn/potato/flaxseed chips into the mix.  Mmmm.

I finished my meal by polishing off the rest of this baby:

Definitely one of their best flavors 😀

This evening before work I got bored and made Chocolate Cookie Oat bars!  These bars actually called for half chocolate chips, half butterscotch chips, but I only have chocolate.  And I had no wheat bran on hand, so I used my handy dandy Magic Bullet to grind up some multigrain cereal flakes & used that instead.

Ehhh…at first I liked them warm out of the oven.  But once they cooled, they’re kind of chewy and bland.  It doesn’t look like my roommates are such fans either!  Aww well I just like to experiment!

I also received a package from Kashi in the mail today!

More Crunchy bars!  She sent me a chocolate almond, chocolate pretzel, and chocolate peanut.  Perfect, because I have the coffee cake flavor and chocolate caramel flavor in my stash already (as you’ve seen me eat early today!).  I can’t wait to try these other flavors 🙂

Because I had such a late lunch, and snacked all evening, I really wasn’t hungry for much of a dinner.  I stopped for a double chocolate chocolate brownie, vanilla & cappucino frozen yogurt on my drive.  Then I had lots of veggies and had a tiny slice of this cake at work:

Yes…it’s been quite the day of treats!  But oh well…yummy yummy!  Once I got home, I was slightly hungry and was munchy for cereal:

In the mix w/ almond milk:

• Shredded spoonfuls
• PB puffins
• Kashi cocoa granola
• PB2

Anyone tried PB2 before?  It’s a powdered, defatted peanut butter with only 50 calories per 2 tbsp.  I know, I know…why not just have regular peanut butter?  But honestly, powdered peanut butter can come in handy!  Such as when wanting to mix the PB flavor into cereal!  It was really good – I got a PB taste with every bite.  It’s definitely no replacement for my creamy (or crunchy!), good fat delicious nut butter…but it’s good for other uses!  I’m also interested in mixing it into yogurt or cottage cheese and look forward to trying that out!

Well I’m exhausted I almost feel sick!  Time to get a mug of hot chocolate and call it a night :-).  Night y’all!

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Sushi Time!

I really didn’t get hungry again until 3:00, and even then I wasn’t very hungry!  I decided on a Pizza Bagel (surprise, surprise!  When I discover a new food I love, I kind of get into a food “rut” with it!).  And a side of honeydew melon:

Multiply that bowl of honeydew by like 4.  I ate half the entire melon!  Plus 2 clementine cuties 🙂  An hour later my tummy was still a little grumbly so I made….

A green smoothie! I was low on spinach, so I put in extra frozen mango chunks.  Surprisingly, it was less sweet with less spinach and more mango.  I would’ve thought the opposite!

I napped, lazed around, and watched some TV for the rest of the afternoon!  Tay Tay was tired!!  Then my roommate invited me to the one thing I’ve been craving for weeks – SUSHI!! Wahoooo!  No question about it, I was going.  But since they weren’t going until later, I had a litte snack around 7:00 so I wouldn’t be completely eating my stomach out while waiting for our dinner:

The end piece of my Alpine Valley bread (about half the size of a normal piece of bread) toasted and topped with my new jalapeno & garlic hummus + sprinkled with some nutritional yeast.  Honestly, I was less than impressed by the hummus.  Not that much flavor, and it’s super thick and almost gritty?  Aww well!

Sushi was a California Roll and a Bonzai Roll (which is pretty much a CA roll + tempura crab).  Yes, I need to branch out more.  But I’m still pretty new to sushi, so I’m taking it slow!  I also tried a piece of my roommate’s Spicy Tuna (good flavor!  But I don’t do well with spice) and some of her Seaweed Salad (yummy dressing!).  Followed by a walk to the most AMAZING candy store ever!  I’ll have to take pictures next time.  And a frozen yogurt treat: York peppermint, Peanut butter & Vanilla flavors topped with oreos, cookied dough & fudge sauce.  Dang good I tell ya!

Well the roommate and I rented Bride Wars so off to watch that!  Have a wonderful Friday night!!

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Meetings

Just got done with meeting with our landlord for next year – she is quite the little chatter box.  4 of us our staying in the house, and we’re getting 2 new girls.  They both seem super nice, so hopefully it’ll be a little better than the “drama” of this past school year!

I started my morning out by sleeping in rather than getting up for spin class.  Oops! Stumbled downstairs for my coffee…

This particular mug my sister made for me for Christmas.  She copied that picture from a painting we saw in Paris.  On the back is the quote…

I this mug, but rarely use it because of my fear of it breaking.  This first mug she made for me fell out of the cabinet and shattered!  But this one is much more special.  Here is the actual painting she copied from:

She left out the firey windows, but amazing!  After “organizing” my room for a bit, I craved nothing more than…french toast.

Bomb Diggidy.  The white stuff is Einstein’s Honey Almond cream cheese (I always put cream cheese, berry preserves or some type of nut butter on my french toast) + syrup & I love the Banana Nut Cheerios sprinkled on top.  Although these were slightly stale…still yumm-o!!  Made with the absolute best bread on the face of this earth:

I found this stuff at my local Costco, but it’s only sold in certain locations.  Check out Alpine Valley Bread to see if it’s sold near you!  I’m not kidding, it’s worth it.  It’s best toasted – the outside gets slightly toasty but the inside stays all chewy & dense.  I can’t even put into words how great this bread is.

I’m surprisingly quite hungry now (even though I had such a late breakfast – more like lunch time!), so I had a big bowl of blackberries & carrots.  And made myself a delicious green smoothie topped with Zoe Foods cranberry currant granola.  I really like this granola – it’s not as dense as most granolas, and much lower in calories/fat.  Sorry, no picture of my green creation.  Maybe another time!

Well I’m off soon to visit the Avila Valley Beach Barn.  It’s an amazing place with wonderful freshly grown produce and cute little gift type things.  Plus a candy shop and fresh grilled corn on the cob!  Have a wonderful Sunday afternoon!

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