Author: thehealthypineapple

I'm Holly. I'm a Registered Dietitian, I teach fitness classes at our local YMCA and I love food. Join me here as I try out new recipes, sweat it out at the gym and strive for health in all areas of my life!

it’s been awhile & a list

It really HAS been awhile.  Three months and eighteen days since my last post.  No excuse, really, except that the summer seemed to vanish before my very eyes.  (I suppose that happens when you spend one month of it in a foreign country and another with your head buried in a book studying.  When I came up for air, it was August. Gasp!)

LOTS of things going on in the Layer household this summer…and I can’t wait to tell you all about them.  Briefly. (Otherwise, we’d be here all day.)

  1. France Trip: It was fabulous.  I have a draft in here with a bunch of photos I intended to post when we got home…except that all the photos were the exact same ones that have already appeared on Facebook and I got busying studying for my test. Andrew and I diligently sorted his approximately 6,058 photos into a ‘highlights reel’ that we haven’t managed to show anyone, not to mention picking out the ones we need to get printed.  (Not that we’ve managed to sort and print the pictures from our Italy trip two years ago, either.) It will happen, one day, perhaps by Christmas.
  2. RD Exam: I passed!  I can’t believe I didn’t blog about this.  I did, however, post to Facebook.

The test was way harder than I anticipated it would be, and while I scored well, it certainly didn’t seem like it at the time.  In fact, during the entire test I thought it was just as likely that I was failing as I was passing.  And the ‘security measures’ they put you through certainly don’t help; I was photographed, finger-printed, forbidden to bring anything but my driver’s license into the test with me and denied my water bottle. The horror!  By the time I was finished, I was a nervous, sweaty, dehydrated mess.  The proctor handed me a folded-up paper with my score and I couldn’t bring myself to turn it over…until I accidentally dropped it while fumbling for the key to the locker they make you put everything in.  I saw the word ‘congratulations!’ and allowed myself to breathe.  It was all over.

3.  I was in a wedding.  Actually, Andrew and I both were.  One of Andrew’s work buddies, Jon, got married to Stacey this July at Belhurst Castle in Seneca Falls, NY.  Factoid: Seneca Falls was the model city behind the famous ‘Bedford Falls’ of It’s a Wonderful Life fame.  So cute.  I love her, we love them, I loved my dress and we can’t believe they’re moving to Rochester.  Sad.


4. Just days after my test, in August, we flew to Florida for a few days to join the rest of Andrew’s family on vacation at the South Seas Island Resort on Captiva Island.  Both Captiva and Sanibel Islands are so cute and charming.  It was such a relief to go on the trip after passing my test–I could finally relax and really enjoy myself.  Below is the view from our villa (we had our own balcony with a table and chairs where I spent every morning reading), and below that is the ocean from my perch on a lounge chair by the pool.  Florida is ungodly hot and muggy, but there is no where I’d rather be for a beach vacation.


  5.  I’m on book number FIVE since passing the exam.  I love to read, and it’s been so hard to find the time these past few years with school.  I really enjoyed A Small Indiscretion by Jan Ellison, The Dive from Clausen’s Pier by Ann Packer (get the tissues!) and Days of Awe by Lauren Fox. Picking up my next one today!

6.  We’re projecting.  Again.  We’ve been at it all summer.  I’ll need to do a separate post with photos to do it justice, but our new deck/patio/partial fence project has enlarged in scope to include a new ‘roof’ for our cellar door opening and extensive drainage for the yard.  We just finished the french drain and new gutters and picked out our stone and deck wood today, so that’s exciting.  I’ve also tackled perhaps 60% of our landscaping…and it has taken all darn summer.  After doing barely the bare minimum in terms of yard work, no joke, for the last three years, I certainly had my work cut out for me. Again, I’ll need to do a separate post with photos.  I finally finished a giant bed on the side of the house and am very happy with how it turned out.  I’m already excited for more landscaping next summer once we finish the fence in the back and tear out the awful bushes in the front.

7.  I protested!  As I’m sure all of you are aware, Planned Parenthood is under some major scrutiny after it came out that not only are they taking the lives of unborn babies, they’re profiting from the sale of their body parts as well.  A good friend organized a group of us to go to Buffalo and protest Aug. 22, along with others locally and nationally.  My picture even made the paper!  I was trained to be a crisis pregnancy volunteer in Ohio before we moved, and I’ve always felt called to this area of service.  I’m hoping to get involved by offering nutritional counseling to pre- and post-natal women at one of our local centers.

8.  I have a job!  My first day of work was yesterday.  I am a nutrition counselor at Weigel Health Center on the Buffalo State campus.  It’s part-time and I really like it.  I did it as a student this past spring, and now that I’m official, I get paid more and no one has to sign my notes (sweet).  While I’d like to work in a hospital part-time as well, I’m appreciating the downtime right now after four busy years in school, a very busy summer and while we’re still elbow-deep in our summer-turned-fall project.

9.  Writing: I’m stepping away from my traditional freelancing with the Advertiser, but am picking up a monthly nutrition column.  I think was starting to get a little burned out on the features and really need to focus my time and energy on nutrition-related endeavors, writing and otherwise.  I am, however, SUPER excited about the nutrition column.  It will be a Q&A format, which I’m also excited about.  It will appear later this month in our hometown paper, the East Aurora Advertiser.

10. Big changes are coming to the blog!  Now that I’m an OFFICIAL Registered Dietitian, I’d like to take the blog in a more nutrition-focused direction, and use it to further my professional writing. I’m actually having a friend who works in her company’s web/graphic arts department to help me get going tonight!  I’m really excited for a new look and purpose to the blog!

strangest dinner ever

Andrew and I have an impending trip and I’ve been trying to clean out our fridge, freezer and pantry for the last few weeks. Tonight, we were each on our own for dinner, and Andrew finished off what was left of a rotisserie chicken and some veggies.

I, on the other hand, got a little more creative: 

Salad with the last of the lettuce, the last of some jarred beets, red onion, the last of some shredded cheddar cheese, the last of some cukes and onions in vinegar and a little ceasar dressing.

But wait–it gets better.

Bacon on Ezekiel bread with almond butter. In an effort to eat some bacon I cooked for Andrew’s weekday breakfasts, I channeled my inner chef to mimic the bacon and peanut butter burger I had at Cole’s, a bistro on Elmwood Avenue in Buffalo. Sounds crazy, but it’s good. And so was this. Thinking I might make one as a snack tomorrow…

Graduation!

I’m FINISHED!  (Except for that giant test I have to take at the end of the summer, but close enough.)

Last Saturday, myself and a handful of my classmates walked across the stage to receive our diplomas after FOUR LONG YEARS of academia. It’s crazy to think that it really took four years to get another bachelor’s degree (?!?!), and that it’s come and gone already. In some ways, it felt like an eternity; in others, I blinked.

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Mom and Andrew’s grandma joined us for the event at school.  The ceremony was 2 1/2 hours long and by the end, all I could think about was how thirsty I was!  A HUGE thank you to my mother, who did the most loving thing anyone could have at that moment – she got me some water. She also got yellow roses, my favorite 🙂  It felt like such a fuss over something I didn’t think was ‘that big of a deal,’ but in the end, it was nice.  These last four years were – hands down – the hardest of both mine and Andrew’s lives.  This calls for a celebration!

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After the ceremony, we headed back to East Aurora to join friends for lunch at our local Mexican place, where I got my celebratory post-semester margarita. It still doesn’t feel quite ‘real’ that I’ve graduated (again, it might be the big test looming), but each day it feels like a bit of the weight lifts off my shoulders.

What’s next?  Well, Andrew and I are about to head off on a much-needed vacation, and then I’ll be back and ready to spend some quality time on the yard, teach cycle classes at the YMCA, sit on the porch to read…and study.