Travel Thursday: How to Make Your Vacation Work-Out

I’ll admit, I’ve never been very athletic. I love participating in heart-healthy activities, but I hate going alone, and forget about working out while I’m on vacation (thank you 5 months in New Zealand, I think I went running 4 times??).  Glamour’s Vitamin G blog has lots of health and fitness tips, and I searched for the easy ones to pack along on vacation with you.

This easy ab workout can be done in your hotel room in front of the tv or out on the porch watching the sun rise or set. . This move targets your abs, but also–bonus–your shoulders and obliques. All you need to pack is a pair of shoes (check!) and a long, rubber exercise band. There are also three good exercises to keep your behind toned up for all those LBD’s you’ll be wearing out and around your exotic location. It might be hard to take along an exercise ball, I like leaving extra room in my suitcase, but squats and lunges can be done anywhere! Other good options: the never-fail run (if you’re ambitious), or a long walk on the beach. Just don’t go too slowly.

Glamour plus some healthy snacking tips. Let’s be honest, eating healthy foods on vacation rarely happens. This list makes it easy, like putting healthy foods within eyesight so you are more likely to choose them, and eating more frequently throughout the day. I am always a fan of the afternoon energy snack and love anything that can be thrown into a Zip-Lock baggie and brought along in my bag.

What are your healthy vacation tips? Any snacks that have to come along or any exercises that you do no matter where you are? Here’s to a happy, healthy vacation!

Cheers,

Jenna Kate

Where’s My Hotel?

Photo source.

Can you find your hotel room? Check out this new eco-friendly tree resort in Sweden. Click here for the resort’s website for more photos and booking info.  I can’t wait to go with Adam!

Cheers,

Jenna Kate

Pink Living

Sorry for the delay in posting, I’ve had a busy weekend. Adam and I went down to Duke for a wedding on Saturday night. We also made a pit-stop at the J.Crew Warehouse sale in Winston-Salem where I scored a few good items including:

the Impressionist Floral Silk Dress (which I wore to the wedding on Saturday night):

the Black Blossoms cardigan:

The silk Blakely Wrap Blouse:

As well as a pink haberdashery blouse, black skinny pants, and a perfect tan ruffle neck racket that I have been eyeing for a while. Some serious finds!

The wedding was beautiful, the bride very gracious and Southern, the groom his usual goofball self. We had salad to start, and I’m aching to find out the vinaigrette recipe, followed by delicious chicken and crab cakes for dinner, with a yummy wedding cake finish. I’m proud to say I’m one of the few ladies in attendance who kept my heels on all night.

On Sunday, we went to the Duke gardens for an adorable picnic lunch:

We went for a stroll through the grounds. Here, Adam asked me to go to his fraternity formal with him, and I was hesitant to say yes. Here, we played bocce and drank cheap wine in the middle of the day to relax from senior year stress. Here, we began our graduation festivities with a reception held for the Duke 2009 seniors. This place has quite a few fond memories.

And five minutes after this photo:

He got down on one knee and asked me to marry him! Then he even had champagne waiting back in the picnic basket. How perfect! My awesome pink engagement dress? A flirty INC floral jersey knit. All weekend I carted around my new pink Coach bag Adam gave me when he first got home last week, just to take my pink to a new level. My mom did tell me to wear something cute just in case!

Sunday night we went out to celebrate at Lauriol Plaza in Dupont Circle for lots of margaritas, another bottle of champagne and a few good friends. And, as if the phone hadn’t been ringing enough all Sunday, Monday morning at 8:30 am I had my first “Wedding planning!” text from my mother. I’m glad she’s so excited too!

My future husband is being sweet enough to let me use pink in our color scheme, and I’m going to try to ease him into the idea of letting pink be part of our more daily life. Today I found a great new photography blog for company Enchanted Dream Weddings & Affairs with some amazing interior design photos of how to incorporate pink into your lifestyle. This is my favorite:

Hopefully this helps make pink seem less intimidating, hunny. I’m so excited to start planning!

Cheers, Kate

Weekly Newscap 7/2

Sorry I’m a little late on last week’s Article of the Day update. Enjoy:

Monday 6/28: Like a good Kiwi, this driver opened another beer to quench his thirst while waiting for the police to arrive on the scene to free him from his car.

Tuesday 6/29: We had some fun Guerrilla Gardening to beautify the cracks and crevaces everywhere. Then enjoyed some frisky astronauts. It’s not like they’re really stranded somewhere with nothing to do and no one to see or anything.

Photo source. Follow-up unreliable info from Wikipedia, and reliable from Wired.

Wednesday 6/30: We turned a little Patriotic in anticipated of the upcoming Fourth of July weekend. And appreicated the vigor with which this gentleman defended his right to a good corner-stand taco.

Source.

Thursday 7/1: In honor of my fellow proofers, out Standard American English is under threat by the NY Times. And we watched the Duke of Germany get arrested for taking a shower.

Friday 7/2: The office teared up (just a bit) at the site of this tree-top, camo wedding.

Airport Snafu’s

TIME magazine released a great little slide show of  some pretty big ‘Oops!’ moments at airports around the world. While this article originally debuted in March, it’s interesting that the front page is showcasing it now - 5 days after the closed runway at JFK was scheduled to be reopened. Luckily for them, it reopened ”under budget and ahead of schdule,” according to this CNN article.

Source.

Others on the list include the disastrous opening days of British Airways’ T5 at Heathrow, where thousands of bags were lost and passengers stranded, and the redevelopment of Chicago O’Hare airport. All but two of the O’Hare runways intersect, and the redesign project will oust the residents of nearby Bensonville. Also on the list was the 2007 JetBlue incident where passengers on nine flights were stranded on the runway for upwards of 11 hours. Congress didn’t pass a passenger’s bill of rights until 2009.

Any good airport accidents you’ve witnessed?

The Greenbrier

According to Lilly Pulitzer’s Facebook update today, The Greenbriar in West Virginia is the East Coast place to be this Fourth of July weekend. Jessica Simpson, Jennifer Gardner, Ben Affleck, and Brooke Shields are going, so it must be cool. [Photo Source.]

I took a virtual wander around the resort and was entertained and impressed. Want to try your hand at falconry? No problem. Want to eat the wonders of a “renound chef [and his] culinary brigade?” Go ahead. Need room for your kids? How about staying at Heritage level accommodations with two to four bedrooms. I wonder who won the spacious seven bedroom Presidential Suite – Brooke and Jessica must have had a walk-off to determine that one.

How about being at the grand opening of the Casino Club! Scheduled for tomorrow, this “102,000 square foot facility” has over 300 slot machines and a measly 30-plus gaming tables. I’m sure you can fit in family time between hands of Black Jack and Poker.

But for the regular travelers out there, you can book a family package for $250 a night with kids staying free, or pay just $125 if they want their own room. You can golf the famous Old White Course, a new addition to the PGA Tour, FedEx Cup series in 2010. And you can take advantage of the ‘Wild, Wonderful, West Virginia’ through kayaking, white water rafting, and mountain trail rides. Then relax at the spa with signature treatments and natural mineral waters. For a fun, adventurous weekend getaway, I’d sign up in a heartbeat. As long as there weren’t any celebrities blocking the view with their egos.

Most Expensive Cities

 Yahoo released a list of the world’s most expensive cities today. Not surprisingly, most of them are in Japan, and the rest are in Northern Europe.

Number One? Tokyo:

Source.

Have you been to any of these?

Come Check Out the Oil on Our Beaches

CNN Money posted up a great gallery today with ill-conceived advertisements taking a hit on the oil spill disaster.  Apparently the travel industry isn’t the only one trying to take advantage of the situation, like this ad for Spirit Airlines.

New York Sports Club released an ad saying “Exercise sharpens the brain. Oil execs come in asap.”  You even get a week free membership to the gym if you are an executive or you are “tired of their excuses.”  Bravo NYSC for donating old towels to help the clean up effort and call out execs for poor management.

The other ads listed include an airplane flier for PETA blaming the meat industry for rises in oil prices and usage, as well as a couple of cute aliens laughing at the Gulf.  The tagline: “Let’s not be the joke of the universe. Make Earth proud.”

Site Feature: Design*Sponge City Guides

Thank you Ross, Communications Career Counselor at Elon, for pointing out this awesome new site to me!

Design*Sponge is a great blog that happens to have a series of city guides. I took a peek at the DC guide and was thrilled to find it neatly broken up into various popular neighborhoods: Adam’s Morgan, Dupont Circle, Georgetown, and Old Town Alexandria were some of the bigger ones. Now at least I have an idea of where to start when I move to Alexandria next week.

They also have a section called ”Product Guides” with great lists like picnic accessories for under $100, jewelry storage for under $100, and luggage ideas. There’s even a DIY section with great activities like this portable sunshade.  Definitely a cool site to check out for lots of ideas!

The Titanic Awards

Thanks to the Huffington Post, today I discovered a brilliant new website: The Titanic Awards. Writer Doug Lansky compiled a list of user-voted top countries with the worst cuisine. And of course the UK tops the list. Sorry Emma, Anna, Mark, Sarah and Nicole. When I finally make it to England, I’ll be counting on you all to make sure I still want to eat. And it’s called French toast, not eggy bread.

While the US is also on that list, at least that can be attributed to our poor taste in fast food. McDonald’s at least doesn’t serve pig’s feet or duck stuffed with chicken livers. Maybe that French dish is the other way around…

Read the post here: 9 Countries with the Worst Cuisine.