I have some very special jewelry to share with you.

My cousin Rawan is a designer, and when I saw her new collection this weekend I fell in love. I insisted she let me take a few pieces and sell them to all of you at a discount. If you are interested in purchasing any of these pendants just email me at rhodeygirltests at gmail dot com.

Each piece is handmade by Rawan and for sale at $100 plus actual shipping.

PS- Check out my latest Babycenter post on swaddling.

I am pleased to announce the giveaway winners of the last 3 giveaways!

The d’andrea clutch:

Before I announce the winner of the clutch let me share some exciting news. If you want to order anything from d’andrea’s latest collection you can receive $50 off your total order! Just enter the code “rhodeygirl” at checkout.

Now, the winner! The winner was selected randomly and is:

Will

May 21, 2011 at 8:17 pm (Edit)

Need this for my wife’s birthday, she would adore it!

The Le Creuset Farm Fresh Steamer Pan

Winner is:

Lauren

May 26, 2011 at 2:18 pm (Edit)

My favorite veggies to steam are asparagus, spinach and broccoli!

Chicago Metallic Winged Cookie Sheet

Winner is:

Kari

May 26, 2011 at 4:28 pm (Edit)

and I’ve been wanting to try baking cookies with buckwheat flour, so I’d happily give that a whirl with that pan!

All winners please email me at sabrina at rhodeygirltests dot com to collect your prize!

Want a gorgeous d’andrea clutch?

Then keep reading!

I first learned of d’andrea handbags around Christmas. My dad took me to the sample sale in Providence and I fell in love with a gorgeous large navy bag that I use every week still- it even fits my big camera! I love how soft the leather is, how light the bag is, the big zippered pocket inside, and the color.

When Nicole, owner of d’andrea handbags, contacted me about her latest collection of clutches, I couldn’t wait to share them with you! I love supporting local, small companies, and Nicole is from my favorite state of Rhode Island. I always have problems with clutches because they are too small for me and rarely have a good zipper. This one has a nice zipper under the flap and a zippered pocket. They are constructed in the U.S. (!!!!) using fine Italian leather.

Nicole has offered to share one of the best clutches with all of you! One winner will win this awesome clutch (retail value $295):

Description reads as: baby zebra pony-style leather body, gunmetal lambskin flap, and finished with black smooth lambskin leather trim on flap.

I’m in love already (hint hint wink wink PB…)

Here’s what you can do to get one:

1. Leave a comment saying why you NEEEEEEEED this clutch.
2. Visit the website and share one fact or thing you like via Twitter. You can also just share the link to this post. Be sure to cc me (@rhodeygirltests) so I see it.
3. Share the link to this giveaway on Facebook and come back to let me know.
4. Visit the website and buy one!

**Only valid for U.S. readers (sorry!)
**Giveaway ends May 27th at 12 noon EST.

Best of luck!

While I am completely ready for fall, I will still be a bit sad to see summer go. This was such a memorable summer filled with our fabulous trip to Jordan, a few weddings, and lots of fabulous food. Relive it with me!

Recipes
Last Minute Brunch Menu
Summer Salmon Salad
Cobb Salad
Caprese Barley Salad
Healthy Chicken Salad Sandwich
Rustic Lentil Salad
Red Lentils for 1
Mushroom Lentil Burgers
Eggplant Parmesan
Deconstructed Healthy Spanakopita
Healthy Zucchini Pasta
Greek (Italian) Salad
Pesto Pasta Salad
Bean Salad
Caprese Panino
Rolls with Jam

Haunted Hotels
The Hotel DuPont
Congress Plaza Hotel

Events
Rittenhouse Row Spring Festival
Amy & Joseph’s Wedding
Tory & Anita’s Wedding
Taste of the Nation Philadelphia
Citymeals-on-Wheels Silver Spoon Event
BlogHer 2010

Stories
PB & J
If I really did what I wanted…
1st Wedding Anniversary (Photos from our wedding!!!)
His & Her Choice
Sometimes…
I must admit…
Welcome to my Blog.

Jordan
Planes, Cars & Family
Jerash  & Figs
I miss the Dead Sea
Karak Photo Shoot
Petra, Jordan
Sunset in the Desert
A Second Wedding Celebration

And now that I’ve gotten all of that off my chest, bring on fall! Bring on pumpkin and apple cider and apple picking and leaves falling and soup and… what else?

I am feeling a bit nostalgic and emotional right now.

My cousin is visiting and we have been having a rather lovely time. For some reason I miss my mom a lot today. I did something I haven’t done in years- I mentioned my mom and I said, oh my mom IS from Italy and HAS a strong accent. It just sort of slipped out, and I felt really awkward and sad afterward.

Sometimes I forget that she has passed away, and all of that sadness seems just like a distant dream. It’s like I block the sadness from having ever existed. Every few years or so I do something strange like the above and completely forget. Once I even called her old cell phone number to share great news with her and when a male answered I was so startled.

I don’t know why that happens. Truly wishful thinking. Hopeful.

My life is really so wonderful- I am so blessed and lucky and it seems that in so many ways she has caused it all to happen. Some things just turn out so right and so perfect that it could be no other way.

She passed away eight and a half years ago. How does time pass like that? I haven’t been to visit her grave site in at least four. I try to, but I always find a way out of it. I think I am afraid to face that sadness. I was afraid to leave Rhode Island for fear that her memories would fade without driving by them all the time, but nothing has changed. The memories that have always been strong are as strong as they have ever been. The blocked ones are still blocked. I don’t know why I can’t remember some things. If I think too hard about her not being here for my dad, for my brother, for my aunt, for me, for herself… I feel like I can’t breathe.

I forgot what she smells like, but her laugh is there deep in my heart every time I need to feel warm.

I don’t know why I am sharing this.
I am usually much more private in my tears.

Please update your readers to www.rhodeygirltests.com/feed !

For five days last week I documented almost every bite that crossed my mouth. It was an interesting experiment into the world of food blogging and into my body.

Day 5:

Breakfast
Lunch

Day 4:

Breakfast
Lunch
Dinner

Day 3:

Breakfast
Lunch
Dinner

Day 2:

Breakfast
Lunch
Dinner- recipe for Baked Breaded Eggplant

Day 1:

Breakfast
Lunch
Dinner

And a LOVEly Weekend.

I would like to say that what you saw was exactly indicative of how I would normally eat, and I think it was. However, just the act of taking a photo of the foods made me think about them more than I usually would. Looking back on the week, I made some observations:

1. I thought my diet was 90% healthy, but in reality it is more like 70%. I *often* make really good choices, but not always.

2. I have a difficult time eating out, in that I overeat. I need to implement my snack before restaurant philosophy. I used to always eat a piece of fruit before going to a restaurant for dinner, and it helped me to stay away from the bread basket and community appetizers. I need to start doing that again.

3. My breakfasts are always sweet, but always healthy. I have a balanced breakfast every morning, and always have at least one serving of fruit. It is a great way to start my day!

4. While I tend to overeat at restaurants, I always make healthy choices. I order something good for me and then take a few bites of junk if I want it (like the one mozzarella stick and the hot chocolate at lunch this day).

5. I eat a lot. I definitely eat a higher calorie diet than I did before I got married. I am guessing this is normal, but it is something I would like to adjust.

I really liked this activity, and I loved blogging a few times a day, but I think I will stick to my normal recipes and such. I will definitely be sharing my daily diet with you every few months though, as I found it to be beneficial to some readers as well as to myself.

Snowboarding in Colorado is an incredible experience. We went to Vail today (this post is from Friday but I wasn’t able to post it until now). I had no idea that the terrain here would be so different from the East Coast. In the morning we stayed on the front of the mountain, and I really enjoyed the fresh powder. Some of the trails we did were groomed on one side and left fresh on the other side. I had a blast weaving back and forth. I am happy we all got up super early despite being exhausted because the conditions were really incredible. I did not see one spot of ice. It also snowed all day long which was so fun! It wasn’t stinging snow until the very last run.

Vail is gorgeous.

About halfway through the morning I became absolutely famished, and exactly at that time PB offered me half of his Luna Protein bar in the Cookie Dough flavor. It was exactly what I needed to hold me over until we were ready to stop.

For lunch we headed to Vendetta’s in Vail Village.

We wanted to eat lunch as quickly as possible so we basically just stopped at the first restaurant. We all shared an order of mozzarella sticks, and I had one dipped in sauce.

I ordered an unsweetened iced tea and the Vegetarian sandwich with grilled vegetables, sprouts, provolone cheese, tomato, and avocado. I took off one of the slices of cheese (there were two) and only ate half of the bread. Instead of fries or pasta salad I asked for a house salad, but it accidentally came doused in dressing. I could barely take 2 bites of it because the dressing was so heavy.

Of course I also had to try PhillyBoy’s lunch. He had a chicken parmesan sandwich with french fries and I had two bites of each. I still felt absolutely HANGRY after this lunch and ordered a hot chocolate, which came with whipped cream. I love enjoying hot chocolate when we are skiing, but I haven’t had one with whipped cream in years. It was delicious!

I was impressed by the quality of the food for the price. PB’s sandwich came out extremely hot (just the way he likes it) and all the vegetables in my sandwich were very fresh.

After lunch it was time to head to the BACK BOWLS! Every time I mentioned Colorado to friends I was told that we must check out the back bowls at Vail. I am kind of mad we didn’t go earlier in the day because they were incredible! Here are my thoughts:

The trail we had to take to get to China Bowl (and The Orient Express chair lift) was extremely flat and difficult for us snowboarders. Thank goodness PB is a great snowboarder now (He really is! I’ll take a video tomorrow) because it was an incredible challenge. I had to unstrap my board a couple of times and every leg muscle was burning by the time we got to the bowl.

China Bowl itself was insane. Riding through snow that is several feet high is an extraordinary experience. I really focused on keeping the tip of my board up so I wouldn’t get stuck in the snow, and it was like surfing on snow! It was so easy to pick up a lot of speed without being afraid of getting hurt.
PB and Gina, the newest to mountain sports, did NOT like the back bowls at all. I think that it is just such a different type of skiing/snowboarding and might take some time for them to appreciate. I bet PB will forget that he hated his first time there when we go back some other time. It got super dark really early in the back bowls! The clouds came down really low by about 3 PM, so it makes sense they close early.

Getting back to Vail Village was a bit of a difficult task and required flat terrain again. I did not like that as my legs were tired. At the end of the day all four of us were exhausted. I have never had to engage my leg muscles to the extent I had to today. It feels really good to know that I used my body so fully today. I feel great. I also felt really hungry again!

We had a bit of an issue getting back to the car as, um, we couldn’t find it at first. After 10 minutes we did and made it back to our hotel. We busted into the snacks we brought right away.

I had a serving of Stacy’s chips plus a few extra chips + 2 tbs hummus. I only had a small taste of the guacamole because it had way too much garlic. I didn’t even know guacamole ever contained garlic. I also had a few pistachios and an orange. I love snack time after snowboarding!

Thoughts on eating out while traveling so far: I think that I have made really good choices so far. It can be so hard to balance enjoying different foods and keeping a healthy diet, especially when the mountains remind you of junk food like mozzarella sticks and french fries. I am trying to focus on eating the foods I know are good for me while having a few tastes of the fun foods.

We are all trying to get motivated to head to the hot tub downstairs to soothe our muscles and relax. We are all cozied up in our rooms and it is really hard to go anywhere!

RhodeyGirl Tests has moved to a new kitchen, and there were a few spilled dishes on the way… but they have been cleaned up and are ready for serving.

The kitchen is open!

Some more changes will be happening in the next week or two.. please be patient as they are made.

In the meantime, please update your Google readers to www.rhodeygirltests.com/feed !

We are so excited to be here! The weather is ideal- we got 7 inches of snow last night and it is super sunny with clear skies today!

Since it is a weekday we are doing Vail today. It will be insanely busy this weekend. I can’t believe this is my first time out West to snowboard!

We have a little kitchenette in our room and stocked it with some good snacks I will show you later. The whole group picked one breakfast so that we only had to buy one set of ingredients- whole wheat English muffins, peanut butter, and bananas. I had half of an English muffin with peanut butter and 1/4 banana.

Gina and I picked up a box of Mighty Leaf tea in vanilla bean and it is one of the best vanilla teas I have ever had. I had a big mug of it. I am also focusing in drinking a lot of water so I continue to feel good at this elevation.

Since I ate a light breakfast I packed a snack in my pocket for later!

Happy Friday!

-Sent from my iPhone en route to Vail!!

When I travel on planes I am always more hungry. I can’t decide if it is boredom or actual hunger, but I always eat more when traveling. I saved my snack to have on the plane for this very reason. Am I alone in this?

On our flight from Philadelphia to Denver I had a small container of pistachios I had purchased in the airport as well as a Luna Protein Bar in the chocolate peanut butter flavor. I really like these bars although I wouldn’t call them protein bars necessarily- they don’t contain that much protein. I also had some sparkling water, one of my favorite beverages.

Dottie, from Food Cents, lives in Colorado and sent me some tips for our trip. One tip she gave us was the address for a Whole Foods right off of Route 70, right on out way to Beaver Creek. That tip saved us! We hopped in our rental and headed straight there to eat dinner and grab some groceries for our room.

We all made big salads from the salad bar. Mine had mixed greens, romaine lettuce, artichoke hearts, roasted chicken, a few peas, dried cherries, shredded carrots, 2 delicious tortilla chips and some balsamic dressing.

This was delicious and perfectly satisfying. A lot of time in these situations we end up eating junk that doesn’t even taste good. I am happy we had a nice healthy dinner.

As soon as we got back in the car I shared one of my mini muffins with Gina (see yesterday’s post for details). I then had my own whole one!!

I now feel great- not full and not hungry either. This is the ideal way I’d like to feel after every meal.

This morning I woke up early but not early enough and had to choose between doing my hair and having it look nice tonight and tomorrow or going for my run. I chose my hair, how vain! I actually happy though because my legs are super sore from my strength workout and run yesterday.

PB is driving and Jake, Gina’s husband, is the navigator. That means Gina and I can nap in the back. Buona notte!

-Sent from my iPhone