Soooo…Saturday at the Healthy Living Summit. I’m sure you have seen most of it on other blogs already so I will give you my personal spin on it all.

The day started with a simple breakfast of Attune Foods cereal and fruit.

We had to get some food in our bellies after the run and before starting the long day of conference sessions ahead. I had the Honey Almond Crunch cereal, which filled me up surprisingly well. Normally I can eat me some cereal. A huge pile of fruit always helps.

I also had the fun task to spread the love. Thank you so much again to Love Grown for sponsoring me at the conference. They truly were so awesome to work with and I loved getting to meet some friends and share the granola I believe in so much with all.

Then, conference time commenced! I attended some fabulous sessions about action mantras from Dawn at Quaker Oats, recipe development from Stepfanie at Spark People, and negative commenting or feedback in blogging from my girls Brittany, Courtney, Heather, and Julie. Every session was so fabulous! Let me know if there are any that particularly interest you so I can maybe do a more detailed description later. 🙂

And then came the time…

My panel discussion on “The Numbers Game: Goal Motivation”!!

I actually didn’t feel nervous at all and felt like the discussion went really well. Janetha, Lisa, Beth, and I tried to have a variety of perspectives that hopefully everyone who attended could relate to on some level. I also really appreciated the participation from the audience and all the different insights. We touched on so many different things from the pros and cons of using specific numbers in tracking and motivating progress, how to have a healthy balance with our goals, and more. I plan on giving all the nitty gritty here later this week. Don’t want to overwhelm you with so much in this one post. Because a lot more happened to catch you all up on.

Like Katy Widrick’s super amazing, inspirational, informational talk on not selling out your blog and how to monetize it well. I love her! Her blog is a wealth of information, including much of what she touched on in the conference. If you don’t know Katy already – read her blog!

Then…it was done. I could hardly believe that our last full conference day had come to a close so quickly! Luckily, we still had a solid 8+ hours of fun ahead of us.

Gabriela, Julie, Courtney, Allison, Brittany, Gina, “the Pilot” (aka Tom – Gina’s husband), and I all visited a really cool restaurant called Pod for an Asian fusion dinner.

We started off with a round of drinks – the “Green Martini” in particular for moi.

It had Midori Liqueur (a melon liqueur), Smirnoff vodka, Calpico (not a clue), and fresh lime. It tasted really bright with a slight tang and smooth finish. Mmmmm for an adult night out.

While waiting for our main meals to come out we all dug in to a large portion of salted edamame.

Thank goodness they had a ton since the kitchen forgot half of what I ordered for dinner. I had ordered a side of bok choy with a garlic sauce and a Spicy Crunchy Yellowtail sushi roll that had mango and jalapeno.

The roll tasted great and had a good melody of flavors and textures with the crunch and spice in the jalapenos mixed with the sweetness and juiciness of the mango. Nothing compared to what came next though…dessert!

We split three different choices – a mocha brownie…

a butterscotch caramel cake…

…and some fluffernutter spring rolls.

Oh my goodness. Everything disappeared in point two seconds flat I swear. I think dessert quite literally took the cake for the meal.

After dinner, we rounded out the night with a pit stop to a wine bar not too far from our hotel. Funnily enough though I ordered a beer at the wine bar. It was fabulous.

We only spent a short time there before heading back to the hotel lobby for our last round before heading up to bed. We knew we had to finish out with a celebration of time with great friends and did so with a bottle of champagne.

Cheers to the best weekend with friends!!

With Gina and her gorgeous baby bump

With the ever gorgeous Courtney

Two of the best – Gabriela and Julie

We spent quite awhile hanging out and letting the Pilot entertain us with ghost stories while trying to soak up every last moment we could.

I’m so sad to leave them all! It’s so weird because we have no clue when we will get the chance to meet all together again. I just know it can’t come soon enough. It will feel odd not settling in for the night with lots of blog chat with these wonderful ladies every night.

We shall meet again, friends! This community is truly one of the best things that has happened in my life and I’m thankful for each and every one of you – whether we have met already in person or not. Thank goodness for the blogosphere so we don’t have to get out of the loop with each others’ lives. 😉

• If you attended the conference what was your favorite part?
• If you didn’t – what was the best part of your weekend?

Earlier this week a certain someone (cough Katy cough cough) divulged that you can now find fall candy in stores. That means candy corn, people. I’m not a huge candy eater. I will occasionally nab a box of Hot Tamales when going to a movie in the theater. And I won’t turn down a good piece of chocolate if its around. Nevertheless, I will still choose a mountain of ice cream, a hunk of frosting, or a slab of brownie over candy. Except for candy corn. It does something to me. It triggers this monster of a sweet tooth and I can visualize my hand trying to grasp as many of those smooth little triangles as possible to nibble away on until I reach the oblivion of sugar ecstasy. Yea, Katy. Look what you did. 😉

Despite my appreciation love preference full-blown-obsession with the stuff, I know I can’t gobble candy corn to my heart’s content and honor my health in the process. So instead of hunting down a bag in early August (stores just turn stuff out earlier and earlier, huh?!), I decided to ease my candy woes with healthier choices to dull the longing. Who says healthy eating can’t be fun and taste like candy? Okay, the tasting like candy thing may be a bit of a stretch…but healthy food sure can taste amazing and satisfy just as much as candy in its own right. I present you with  my healthy “candy” filled day!

Breakfast: Mounds / Raisinets / Reese’s Oatmeal

Or, more simply, chocolate oats with some coconut, raisins, and peanut butter tossed on top. 😉 I don’t care what you say, though. This bowl was epic! And I would probably choose it over the above in candy form.

To make the oats chocolate, I used unsweetened chocolate almond milk instead of vanilla and added a spoonful of cocoa powder to the oats. Other than that, I prepared them as normal and piled on the coconut, raisin, peanut butter goodness when done. It’s a new obsession.

Lunch: Starbursts

Fruit = nature’s candy. Perfect mango chunks and grapes = better than any Starburst I’ve ever tasted candy. Each bite bursts with such juicy, fresh flavor. Y-U-M. Oh – there was a sandwich and some carrots there too. They were good…but they weren’t starbursts.

Snack: Chocolate Covered Strawberries

Would you believe me if I told you that the above chocolate pudding look-alike actually contains spinach? That it’s actually a green smoothie masquerading as pure decadence? Well, it is. Trust me. This Chocolate Covered Strawberry green smoothie started as a bunch of things thrown in a blender -

• 1 cup unsweetened chocolate almond breeze
• 2 handfuls spinach
• 1 frozen banana
• a few large frozen strawberries
• a spoonful of cocoa powder
• 1/2 tsp xanthan gum

Then, it became the best green smoothie I have ever tasted. I discovered the one and only downfall to smoothies in a wine glass with this blend – you can’t lick a wine glass clean.

Dinner: Errrm…Green M&Ms???

Alright…dinner doesn’t really have anything I can call candy. But I do love me some Brussels sprouts (favorite veggie besides spinach in smoothie form) and so I shall call them Green M & Ms. Work with me. We can’t allow an entire post’s theme to fall in a shambles now ,can we?

Dinner brought back one of my favorites – BBQ Tofu Wraps! These make healthy eating fun and irresistible…like Ryan Reynolds. Hey, what do you know? I did find a way to tie in the candy theme. Eye candy at its best!

Oops. How did that get in there? So – dinner. BBQ Tofu Wraps with a side of Brussels sprouts. There’s your description of dinner. I’m currently mildly distracted and have no more words. Plus, I don’t want to short circuit my keyboard with my drool. Purely from my candy delicious eats today. Purely. Happy What I Ate Wednesday, friends!

• Are you a candy fan? Any healthier options you use to satisfy cravings?
• Who would be your eye candy?