Friday Food Finds {2}

Labor Day weekend is upon us!  We are totally bummed that we aren’t yet again make a trek out to Anaheim to race the Disneyland Half that we LOVE like we last year and the year before that!

Anyway for us this weekend makes us think of pool parties, BBQs, college football……so in case you are still searching for your perfect side dish to bring to  a Labor Day party look no further.  #LiAR has got you covered!

Peas & Crayons – Chipotle Sweet Potato Salad:  Why make your normal potato salad when you can put a healthy and spicy spin on it?! Our mouths are watering just looking at this picture!

Happy Healthy Mama – Fruit Salsa and Cinnamon Chips: Down hurre in Texas we pretty much break out the chips and salsa for any and every occasion.  This weekend instead we’re sweetening it up with this fruit dish and homemade cinnamon chips! Another mouth watering recipe!

Kate O Lynch – Best Ever Guacamole Recipe: This recipe truly lives up to it’s name! We can both attest to that as we both have made and enjoyed it many a-times when Kate’s brought it over for a celebration of some sort!

Pinch of Yum – Southwestern Quinoa and Black Bean Casserole: If you are a 7 layer dip loving person THIS is the dish you need to try for this weekend!  You can thank us later! 🙂

A Hint of Honey – Tomato and Fresh Corn Quiche: Maybe since it’s a long weekend you’re wanting to have brunch at home with your roommate or husband or your neighbor.  Here is the breakfast must make dish!

Happy Labor Day {weekend} to you all!  Be sure and let us know what you make! 🙂

The Happiest Race on Earth Weekend [Part One]

Our labor day weekend slash Disneyland Half weekend started out with the two of us not getting to sit together on our flight out to Orange County. 🙁 You might remember from previous posts that Teal isn’t the biggest fan of flying, but as you can tell we made it there in one piece! Hooray!

Thanks to Beth’s friend Chris for picking us up from the airport and then grilling up a delicious meal for us. Once Saturday morning rolled around we were texting each other from our rooms to see if it was time for us to make our first trip to Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf. Ha!

20120903-210710.jpg

We should probably mention what ridiculous creatures of habit we are – Teal definitely brought a snack bag on the trip. We were both prepared with single servings of Shakeology and Beth brought servings of oatmeal for breakfast each day. Don’t worry we also made a trip to the grocery store for almond milk, fruit and nail polish remover. We told you we have an obsession! We did paint our fingernails twice while on this trip. 🙂

20120903-211004.jpg

20120903-211020.jpg

Later that day Chris took us to The Habit for lunch. Tasty salads and we love trying places that we don’t have in Texas! We did make it to a beach for about two minutes that afternoon too.

Then it was expo time! This year we didn’t really spend that much time here.  We, of course, got our bibs. We got our Coast to Coast Challenge wristbands! Eeeee!!

We got our race shirts.

And then we HAD to have a pic or two with the finish line.  You know just in case we didn’t actually make it across the next day! 😉  Chris also had some fun at the finish line too.

Shortly after that we were off to meet LISA!!!  Or as you might know her on the twitterverse – @runlikeacoyote.  We all decided to meet up at the Irvine Spectrum and hung out over dinner at the Yard House.  Lisa, thank you again SO much for treating us to dinner! That was so sweet of you!  It was so great to finally get to meet Lisa!  She is an incredible running inspiration and we love following along in all of her running adventures.  We are forever grateful to her for all of her support of us as well! Such an encouraging woman!  We are lucky to know for sure!

After that it was off to bed since our half marathon had a 5:45 a.m. start time.  Thankfully we were still on Texas time so we were both ready for bed pretty much immediately after getting back to Chris’ house.  We had to keep reminding ourselves when it was 8pm it was OK that we were tired and ready to sleep because it was getting late in Texas especially when you include all of our early mornings leading up to and during the weekend.

You will have to wait for our race recap until tomorrow! 🙂 [we don’t wanna make you read such a looooooong post – thank us later ;)]

After the race our friend Monica took us out for brunch at El Torito.  Let us just say, a brunch that includes sparkling wine is a brunch you can never go wrong with, or at least in our books!  It was the perfect celebration to completing our 13th half marathon.  Then Monica arranged for us to all drink some wine with Claire much like we had done this time last year.

We had a ton of fun hanging out with you, Monica & Claire! Thank you for sharing some fabulous wine with us!  There is never a dull moment with these fun ladies!

And with that our weekend was pretty much over! 🙁  It went by so fast and was full of so much fun we both will probably be recovering from it for a few days!

We got to sit together on the plane ride back!  We made our seatmate’s day by telling her she could have the window seat we wanted to sit next to each other instead of having her in the middle of us. 🙂

Check back with us tomorrow for our full race report! We hope all of you had a fun and safe holiday weekend!