Author: Ariana Peters

Christian, homeschool mom, runner of 6 half marathons, PR 2:57 so far. Yes I am a slow runner. Small scale homesteading.

MIA

by Ariana Peters, posted in Uncategorized

Sorry I have been MIA! Was slogging through my last 2 weeks of school. And now I am finally free!!! 5 weeks of glorious nothing! Well at least no school work. 2 of those weekends Brandon has football games at his Alma Mater or however that is spelled. So I will have 2 days if binge watching TV hahahahaahah!!!

My psych grade has been posted, got an A woohoo!!!! Now just waiting for my finalized writing grade. Its gonna be close. I am right on the cusp on a B and A, I am really hoping she will give it to me…..we shall see.

Also this happened:::

We’re engaged!!!!!!

A productive weekend

by Ariana Peters, posted in food, House/dating/life, mini-farm, school/studying

I needed some energy gels for our long runs so we hit up REI and they were having a sale.

Sports bra for $30! Score!!!!

Stocked up on gels, jelly beans, and chews to get me through to the half marathon.

 

Making pulled pork!!!!!

Also another batch of tomato sauce in the slow cooker. We are running out of room in the freezer. I will have to can the next batch hahahaha.

Making some oven dried tomoatoes

The finished pulled pork. It was soooo good!!!!

Also made tomato and rice soup! Though it is so thick its probably more of a stew.

The finished tomato sauce before i blended it.

The Iron Nun!!!! She is sooo cool!!! No lie i kind of have a girl crush on her.

Finally started watching 13 reasons why and I am in love with it!! Only on episode 6 and i cannot wait to find out who the other 7 people are!!! And where does Clay come into it? With school slowly coming to an end i should hopefully be able to finish it in a reasonable amount of time.

That being said I have 1 essay, 1 discussion paper, 2 quizzes and 1 final left and i will be done for 5 weeks!!!! So stinking excited!!!!!

Monday Motivation**August 6, 2018

by Ariana Peters, posted in food, healthy lifestyle, training

of course i say this after just eating 2 slices of cold pizza for breakfast. Hey it was more free food from a resident.

2 runs this week….though this is counting from Tuesday. if you count a week from last Monday than it would be 3 runs but Garmin is stupid in that way. But great in so many others so I cant really complain.

No run tonight as it is out 2 year anniversary and we are going out to dinner. No idea where yet though. I will tell you all about it tomorrow!!!

Weekend wrap-up

by Ariana Peters, posted in House/dating/life, school/studying, training

Cause I go back to work tomorrow morning.

My new injini toe socks came!!! I bought the color no one else wanted and got it for $3 cheaper. Love it!!! And they still work just as well.

Date night Thursday night. I fixed my hair before we went out lol. Thanks for the wrap thing mom!!!!!!

Wow I take bad pictures sometimes lol

We FINALLY saw deadpool 2, at the $4 movie theater near us…….I laughed a lot and very loudly. Like I think I embarrassed Brandon hahaahaha!!!

Then we went to breakfast the next morning at this amazing place called Word of Mouth Neighborhood Bistro. I think I mentioned it a few weeks ago. We have a 30 min wait so we walked around a bit. We took his parents for their birthdays.

My breakfast…..of which there is still some in the fridge and I ate just that all day. The portions are HUGE.

Everybodies plates.

They are famous for their cinnamon roll pancakes so Brandon got one to go and OMG they did not disappoint.

Then it was homework time for me.

The rest of Friday was homework and food coma laziness.

Saturday we slept in a bit then got our butts out the door for our 5 mile run.

I totally tripped and ate it around mile 2 hahahahaaha, I ended up with a sweat dirt mark and that was after I washed off in the river.

Artemis was dead tired after. I cant tell if she is just lazy from a winter of no activity or if she is getting old.

The socks were a success!!! Now I just need Artemis to not eat the toes. I have lost 1 pair of toe socks that way. And a other one just disappeared….unless she ate those too and I never noticed hahahaha.

Dinner…….running makes you hungry….I might have had a 3rd one.

Then he suffered through this with me……but I LOVED it!!!! It was so cute and as someone who has been overweight before it totally resonated with me!!!! Confidence in yourself is sexy!!!!!

How was your weekend?

Garden update 8/1

by Ariana Peters, posted in mini-farm

Happy August 1st!!!!

Traffic was not horrendous today which was nice. Got home, a quick snack and changed into partial workout gear hahaha.

She is impatiently waiting for us to go do out watering in the yard.

Raspberries!!!! Well raspberry plants, they are still growing but not really producing anymore.

One of Brandon’s newly panted areas. The front yard is mostly his domain and he wants it to look presentable.

More newly planted flowers…..that i got free from someone at work woohoo!!!

broccoli!!!!!!

mixture of lettuce, flowers and my herb garden. we have basil, sage, thyme, rosemary, and oregano along with my little fig plant that is very SLOWLY growing.

My pear tree is having a growth spurt

Another area that Brandon has created. He has a good eye for yards actually.

Pea season has definitely come to an end. I am slowly getting one or two peas here and there that are no where near as sweet and wonderful as the ones at the beginning of the season. I have a bag in the freezer that i am slowly adding to, it will be good to throw in soups over the winter.

These tomatoes are finally starting produce a bit. The artichoke plant is still just there lol. The cucumber plant is hanging on, i have gotten one cucumber off it so far. The bell pepper plant is just starting to get its first pepper. and the chive are new and doing pretty well.

She LOVES to roll around in the grass. She never did this before we moved here. I think she likes it a lot.

2nd batch of onions, they are surviving!!!!

Pepper plants!

Summer squash…….do you see it?

My 2 lone pumpkins. I have cut them from the stalks and they are starting their curing process. I don’t need them to last months though, just until classes are over then i will cook with them.

This is our neighbors plum tree, i would say 1/3 is hanging over into our yard and i am watching like a hawk for ripe plumbs i can take from out side!!!!!!

Zucchini is still producing like crazy!!!!

Look how many are starting to turn colors!!!! Just a few more days!!!!

That is a cucumber plant growing in among the tomatoes, snaking its vines wherever it can find space.

The last bit of lettuce is holding on in the heat and letting us get a few leaves here and there as we need them.

That is the garden currently.

Today i made zucchini bread and zucchini pasta salad for lunch tomorrow.

Ran some sprints for run training……..my fastest sprints were in the 8 min mile time frame hahahahahaha this is hilarious because that is a lot of runners normal or slightly pushing it pace……there are people who run marathons doing 5 min miles and i am dying doing 8 min for 45 secs. But you know what………I AM DOING IT!!!! And i am proud of that no matter how slow I am.

I am about 1/2 of the way done with my essay that is due tomorrow at midnight but it is 10pm and that is my bedtime if i don’t want to be a zombie tomorrow. Plus the due date is tomorrow so i can afford to go to sleep.

Thank you for following along!!!

Hope you had a wonderful day!!!!

Race training

by Ariana Peters, posted in healthy lifestyle, training

Howdy! After yesterday’s post my mom asked me what a tempo run is so I thought I would do a quick post explaining the different kind of training runs for anyone who isn’t a runner or has never trained for a race.

*Now take this with a grain of salt. I do not know everything and only know the way I have trained.

Types of runs:

Tempo runs- this is where you try to run the pace you want to run during the race. I will slowly build the amount of miles i do in my tempo runs but it never gets close to the race mileage. My goal will be to do half the amount of miles that are in the race at tempo before my training is done. So for me that will be 6 miles.

Hills- kind of self explanatory. You need to run some hills. No course will usually be completely flat so train a few hills.

Fartleks, sprints, intervals- while not exactly the same things I count them all in the same category. Intervals are where you walk for a certain amount of time then run for a certain amount of time alternating. Sprints are where you have a set time or distance that you run all out, your hardest, then walk a certain time or distance to recover and repeat. Fartleks are another version of sprints but each round is different, you say something like ok sprint to that mailbox then walk to the 3rd lightpole then sprint to that newspaper stand then walk to that red car and so on until you done.

The last one that I do is the long slow run- this is where you increase your miles slowly each week and you run at about 1-2 min slower than your desired race pace.

Do you have any other kinds of runs you do?

Monday Motivation**July 30, 2018

by Ariana Peters, posted in food, healthy lifestyle, training

The Kind Diet another cookbook I LOVE! Yes it is also vegan and but there are some delicious recipes in here! There are a handful I make over and over and over that I just love!!!

Leftover chili with bread for lunch today. So delicious!

One of the residents where I work had their freezer break and thaw out so they needed to use up the meat that was in there ASAP, lucky for me they aren’t eating red meat right now so tonight Brandon and I will be BBqing a new York stead with grilled zucchini and mashed potatoes! And we will have lamb burgers tomorrow…..I’ve never had a lamb burger so we will see but I want gonna say no to free food!!!

It turned out soooooo good!!!!

I got the hw that is due tonight all done and worked ahead on tomorrow’s HW. I’m one day ahead now, I wish I was more ahead though. I will need to work on that for next quarter.

Stats for this week:

Cant wait to see what next week holds!!!

Not included in those stats:

My first tempo run tonight!!!!

It was only 1 mile but I didn’t walk at all and was under the pace I wanted so yay!!!

I am going to train properly for this half marathon……did I mention Brandon and I signed up for a half marathon the first weekend in October?

July 29, 2018

by Ariana Peters, posted in mini-farm, school/studying

I feel like I did so much and yet so little this weekend. Got two great workouts done and spent hours out of the house exploring and also spent a full afternoon/evening doing HW. But I got NO housework done, no meal prep, no canning/food saving. It was a successful and unsuccessful weekend hahaha.

We have been hot here this week, mid to high 90’s the whole time. Today we are supposed to get close to 100 then we start swinging down and are supposed to be in the low 80’s by Thursday.

My drive to work.

Every day a few more tomatoes are starting to turn a light orange-y, pink meaning in just a few more days they will be ready to pick. Zucchini are still going strong, I just pulled 3 HUGE ones from the bottom of the bush that had been forgotten. I need to pick a few peppers and oh man, our cucumber plants are just really starting, i have 5 pint jars of refrigerator pickles in the freezer and 4 cucumbers on the counter i need to can.

Chili for dinner!!

I have 3 weeks left of school, the next 2 are going to be a bit crazy because i have something due every day except Saturdays. With that i can feel the garden gearing up to explode more zucchini and tomato on me and i am just praying it can hold out for 2-3 more weeks when I will be able to devote a lot more time to canning and dehydrating and preserving.

And now i need to get back to school work. I currently have A’s in both my classes and i am keeping it that way!!!!!

When you should do more HW and workout but you are tired so you stop in the middle to watch Chuck, be a dork and go to sleep early.

Good night.

July 27, 2018

by Ariana Peters, posted in healthy lifestyle, school/studying, training

I slept in way too late today. I rolled out of bed at 11am. Apparently I really needed 11 hours of sleep. After finally getting up we drove to a little trail to get a 4 mile run in. I apparently misread the info about this because the little trail we did was only 1.5 miles hahaha!!! So then we moved to the streets to get in the last 2.5 miles. The downside of sleeping for 11 hours means it was HOT on our run. But we got it done.

Then it was HW time for me.

Getting down to it. Music helps me block out the outside world.

My study partner. She is beat after our hot run.

A frappachino and lemon loaf. Way more calories and sugar than I would normally go for but I needed the treat hahahahaha!!!

5 HOURS LATER, I am finally done and the assignment is submitted.

Now the wonderful BF is making me a breakfast burrito for dinner (I requested that) so i am going to go stuff my face and crawl into bed.